Questions about Skillpoint Allocation

furiontassadar

So, I've reached a point where I'm considering respeccing my skillpoints (again), specifically to see if I can squeeze out a bit more power for my warbird. In order to do so, however, obviously I'm gonna need to siphon skillpoints from other areas, and I've been trying to determine where I can make cuts.

Currently, the skills I'm eying to make cuts in are all of the ones that provide resistance to various debuffs, including:

Starship Subsystem Repair
Starship Power Insulators (Shield and Power Drain)
Starship Inertial Dampeners (Hold, Disable, Knock and Slow effects)

and

Starship Sensors (Confuse and Placate)

My question is, is it at all useful to have any points in these skills, outside of possibly PVP? In addition to having Engineering and Science Team to clear debuffs, a lot of set gear and, more recently, specialization passives also often have debuff clearing properties. So are these of any use to me at all?

In addition to answering my more specific question about where to make cuts, would people also mind posting some of their own skill builds via STO Academy? Just so I can see some of ways other peeps have managed to allocate their points, to compare and contrast?

gavinruneblade

Subsystem repair I totally feel it if I leave that at zero. 3 is fine given most clearing boff powers.

Power insulators is iffy. I've started running just one instead of my previous 6, and I'm feeling OK, but I notice it in some fights. I have two ships with zero and I can't consciously tell the difference but I feel vulnerable if I'm not on an engineer with those two power buffing abilities. Probably all in my head.

Inertial dampeners I have started just using attack pattern omega religiously as a counter not as a damage buff and leaving this zero. Seems OK so far, but then my damage is down because of suboptimal timing. So I'm eying this to go back in. And I need it on builds with few TAC slots.

Sensors, zero, always been zero. Even hirogen and hierarchy won't get me to spend here.

I don't have any of my builds on the academy, I either change too often, or its not a "build" its random stuff that looks fun. I'm a weirdo who tries to learn as much as I can from the DPs guys so I can hit reasonable numbers with the fewest parts of my "build", leaving me as much room as possible to do stupid things with. So I'm never making great numbers, but never full of fail either.

jarvisandalfred

Starship Subsystem Repair
Starship Power Insulators (Shield and Power Drain)
Starship Inertial Dampeners (Hold, Disable, Knock and Slow effects)

and

Starship Sensors (Confuse and Placate)

The only one of these I ever bother with for PvE is power insulators, and that's because it reduces shield drains (such as the borg's) and because it buffs Nadian Inversion (I fly mostly engi's). The rest of them I tend to take counter skills (Polarize Hull, Engineering/Sci Team, APO, or recently that intel spec) to deal with.

As to my skill trees, I can't be of as much help, since I lack a pure-dps romulan (and I assure you, you don't want 9 points in threat control on yours), but I'm sure some other people can provide good skill trees.

furiontassadar

jarvisandalfred wrote: »

The only one of these I ever bother with for PvE is power insulators, and that's because it reduces shield drains (such as the borg's) and because it buffs Nadian Inversion (I fly mostly engi's). The rest of them I tend to take counter skills (Polarize Hull, Engineering/Sci Team, APO, or recently that intel spec) to deal with.

Yeah, Ship Power Insulators was probably the one I was most leery about losing, since a lot of enemies' seem to make use of some sort of shield or power drain (again, the Borg chief among them) and because, as far as I'm aware, there's no hard counter to drain attack like there are for most other debuffs. I also did not think about the effect it might have Nadion Inversion (I also primarily play an Engineer), so yeah, I may want to consider keeping some skillpoints in that one at least.

Additionally, something I remembered after messing around on Tribble today, the new Bridge Officer revamp is going to make it even easier to preemptively have abilities on hand to counter whatever debuffs one is expecting to have to deal with.

gavinruneblade wrote: »

I'm a weirdo who tries to learn as much as I can from the DPs guys so I can hit reasonable numbers with the fewest parts of my "build", leaving me as much room as possible to do stupid things with. So I'm never making great numbers, but never full of fail either.

This is kind of my goal as well, which is part of the reason why I've been asking so many questions, both here on the Academy forums, and elsewhere in game. I don't see myself ever becoming one of those folk with, like, 100k dps, but I feel like 20k or 30k is a bit more reasonable to shoot for. More than enough to carry my own weight, even if I do wind up in a group with one of those uber-dps players, as well as enough to comfortably carry other players myself, if I wind up in a group where peeps are doing significantly less than 10k dps.

Incidentally, the other day, I did actually carry an ISA pug. Upon checking the Combat Log afterwords (I had actually qued up to measure my own dps) I found that the person doing the next highest dps besides myself was still only doing 9k, and everyone else was doing 5k or much less. And we still somehow managed to successfully complete it. So that was kind of exciting.

And don't worry about not having an STO Academy skill build to link. I guess I assumed it was one of those instances where everyone (but myself, as usual) had a build saved to the Academy. Guess I may not be in the minority after all.

taylor1701d

furiontassadar wrote: »

Currently, the skills I'm eying to make cuts in are all of the ones that provide resistance to various debuffs, including:

Starship Subsystem Repair
Starship Power Insulators (Shield and Power Drain)
Starship Inertial Dampeners (Hold, Disable, Knock and Slow effects)

and

Starship Sensors (Confuse and Placate)

Subsystem repair, you'd be fine with 2 or 3
Power Insulator, 3 - 6 depending how dmg aggresive your console selections are.
Inertial dampeners, 3 - 6 again depeding on how aggresive your console setup is.
If you use resistance consoles, then you can add less.