Build Advice - Again

jbmaverick

Looking to fine-tune my ship yet again, having switched to the Geneva Command Cruiser. I'm trying to run heavy tank and not pure damage, so I'm looking for a good hybrid of damage output and survivability. I tend to play with players below the 10k dps range so I need long-term defenses for harder missions.

I'm fairly happy with my current setup but I'm looking for suggestions on improvements, especially in personal traits and duty officers. I'm also curious about advice on my reputation traits. I have access to everything but haven't played around with them much. I can train my own officers with tier 3 Command powers as of tonight, and I have access to the full range of trainable Engineering space powers if those are recommended.

I haven't upgraded most of my equipment yet to Mk14 because I keep making little changes here and there and haven't settled on anything. Don't yet have the appropriate duty officer to attempt crafting a 360 array, and my EC is a touch low due to some other recent purchases, but if something comes particularly highly recommended I can start saving for it if I don't have it already.

Currently running Romulan Plasma but I kind of want to switch to Phasers to make my ship more canon-appropriate, despite the slight drop in damage this would likely cause. I'm also tempted by Vaadwaur Polaron emitters if I can ever afford them. If I make the Phaser switch I would replace the Zero Point Energy Conduit with the Hydrodynamics Compensator and replace an aft weapon with the Biomolecular Phaser Turret for the damage boost. Not sure how I would handle the Vaadwaur switch. Highest parse I've seen with this build (I don't parse often, mostly just to get a feel for how much aggro I'm grabbing in my teams) is around 18k. I was running the Gravimetric Photon Torpedo with Torpedo Spread 1 for a while but after some tests it turned out the damage output wasn't as high as I had hoped. Thinking I might try the Neutronic Torpedo with Spread 1, but with no skill in Projectile Weapons I doubt it would come ahead.

Duty Officer wise I have 3 VR Damage Control Engineers (EPtX variant), Keel'el, VR Gravimetric Scientist (Gravity Well variant), and VR Shield Distribution Officer (Brace For Impact variant). That last one I'm really iffy on and would definitely like suggestions for his replacement.

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=genevatank_0

adamkafei

I see you're using Aux2SIF3, I would consider running two copies of either Aux2SIF1 or 2, this not only gives you permanent resist from these abilities but it also gives you a nice heal every 10 seconds and it can be thrown at an ally if they are drawing more agro than you are. EPtW can be moved to level 1 with minimal reduction in dps. This would move your RSP to the commander slot and drop eng team off the build.

Not sure what good tachyon beam is doing you in the present meta, I would consider maybe sci team, looking at your skill spec you would benefit more from power insulators than flow caps. If you're thinking of going phaser then you should only use the turret with the hydrodynamics compensator if you are going to use cannons which given your investment in Rom-pla beams I doubt you are, I would instead use the two consoles from that set as one comes free from a mission. (I forget which mission at this time)

seaofsorrows

Not a bad build, here are the changes I personally would make.


1. Remove the RCS Console and replace it with the Shield Support Console from the Concorde if you have the 3 pack. The Console combined with your Samsar console will give you a 2 Piece RCS bonus plus you'll get a pretty powerful shield buff for you and your team. You keep the RCS bonus and gain a nice buff.

2. Suppression Barrage is currently bugged and actually gives the enemy accuracy instead of taking it away. I would remove that, replace it with Aux2Sif2 and replace Aux2Sif3 with Directed Energy Modulation 3.

3. Tachyon Beam really doesn't do much. I would swap that for Hazard Emitters 1 since there is almost no difference between HE1 and HE2. I would then change HE2 to Science Team 2 to give you a shield heal as well as something to cure science debuffs. You have All Hands On Deck, so that keeps this ability readily available and it can get you out of trouble.

4. As soon as you can, I would upgrade beams and the Tactical Consoles to Mark XIV. This will be really cheap for the consoles, but really expensive for the beams. The other stuff is optional, it's the beams that get the most from upgrades. You can do it slowly over time of course, just something to work toward.

5. For the last DoFF, I would go with a Warp Core Engineer Subsystem Power Variant Very Rare. They are very useful and frequently give you huge spikes to your power levels.

Those are my ideas based on my personal taste. I hope some of it helps.

jarvisandalfred

If you can afford good mods, the difference between phaser and romplas is minimal; in fact, crtdx3 phaser is going to be on par with or better than crtdx2 romplas. However, move the experimental beam to the second from the left whatever you do; currently you're wasting it's passive of not draining weapons power, because the first weapon to fire already doesn't.

Big problem I see with this build is the science abilities. Tachyon beam does basically nothing for a player vs an NPC, you have no methods of breaking tractors, and currently your only shield heal is one copy of RSP and your engineering heals. I'd suggest swapping to the following seating:

Lt. Tac: TT1, APB1

Lt. Tac/Command: Overwhelm Emitters 1, FAW2

Commander Engineering/Command: EPTS1, Rally Point 1, ET3, A2SIF3

Lt. Engineering: EPTW1, RSP1

Lt. Comm Sci: PH1, HE2, ST3

With the DCE's, 2 Maintenance Engineers for ET cooldown, and a Dev Lab Scientist for ST cooldown.

Big thing is to get rid of suppression barrage stat, as it will kill your reciprocity. It's currently bugged and giving the enemies extra accuracy, not reducing it.

Traits: Improved Tachyon Beam is not a significant heal, even if you're running a copy of TB (which this trait does not justify in PvE). I would take the improved Brace for Impact in it's place )I'm presuming you have the 3-pack if you have 2 of them).

I'm not sold on command as a specialization tree; I prefer intel, but command can work for a tank.

Consoles: If you're switching away from Romplas, when you do, I would drop the ZPEC, and move the Samsar console in it's slot, and replace the conductive RCS with one with a valuable mod (Em, hull repair, structural integrity, etc). If you're sticking with romplas, I would drop the conductive RCS to move the samsar console there.

I would also drop the Exotic Particle Field Exciter in favor of running 4x Embassy +Th +Pla emitter arrays - [ShH] and [HuH] are basically unnoticeable against the current hull/shield hitpoints and healing flying around on ships these days, and you want to stack up all the threat you can.

I might consider focusing the tree more; it's a good one for a tank with a lot of ships, but there's some skills I'd want to throw 9 points into.
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It's overall a pretty solid build; a good core with the Drake/Reciprocity setup, pretty solid gear setups, good skill tree, ability/doff setup and synergy, and it looks like it was setup quite nicely. I'd just tweak it a bit.

jbmaverick

Thanks for the replies so far. In reference to upgrades, I already have Phaser tactical consoles upgraded to 14, just working on upgrading my crafted Phasers to Mk12 so they'll be at least competitive with my current weapons. I haven't been terribly lucky with crafted weapons yet, but I have some at least decent ones and I can try to make "perfect" ones later which I would then upgrade all the way to 14.

On that note, I'm curious what everyone thinks of the [Over] mod. I've not found any definite data but it sounds like it's probably not as good as it could be. I understand it can't proc while FAW is active? I have a few [Over] Phasers I want to try parsing to see how much they help, but if those fail then I have some good [Pen] ones including an epic [CtrtD]x3[Pen].

I was never sure where to put that Experimental beam, I knew firing order was important but the game hardly makes it clear how the "no energy cost" is applied. I'll move it to the appropriate slot while my Phasers are still pending, thanks.

Regarding Suppression Barrage, I believe this is supposed to be fixed in this coming week's patch. Should it still be removed if that's the case? Even with the bug my average evasion is around 25% according to CLR.

Rally Point - I only tried using it in the Fleet Starbase system out of combat, but it didn't seem like it applied anything to me while I was in the area, I figured it only worked on allies and not the user, I assume I'm wrong?

I believe a dev said that temporary hitpoints, such as Improved Brace, don't benefit from damage resistance. Couldn't hope to find that specific post at this point, it's buried somewhere, but I'm curious as to others' experiences with them. Most notably they seem to restore shields to full, but logging of temporary hitpoints is terrible at best.

I was already considering trying to fit one of the Command Cruiser consoles in somewhere, I suppose it makes the most sense to replace the RCS one. I'll still have to upgrade that eventually so it gets a mod and hope it ends up being a good one.

Jarvis, your bridge officer suggestion removes pretty much the only reason I'm flying the Geneva rather than the Presidio, Gravity Well. If I were to move to the Presidio, what would your recommended layout be at that point? Also I assume at that point I would remove points from Particle and Graviton generator skills to spread them around elsewhere, what skills would you prioritize for 9s?

jbmaverick

Forgot one other thing. One suggestion was to have 2 Aux2SIFs for the maintained resists, but wouldn't a better option be an Aux2SIF and Aux2Damp with DOFF (which I have)?

Also, regarding using the second console from the 8472 Phaser set, since that second console is fixed as a Tactical console, would it work out better to slot that instead of a Vulnerability Locator and the Turret? Its built-in Phaser damage boost is lower to make up for increasing Photon and Radiation damage as well, but it would provide the Phaser bonus damage in combination with the Hydrodynamics console.

Been trying out the Presidio with a modification of my Geneva setup, haven't run any parses yet though so I don't know if it's performing better. Certainly the loss of Gravity Well is impacting my damage in Crystalline, but in other content where enemies are shielded my parsed damage may be higher since close-proximity Warp Core Breeches caused by Gravity Well don't get counted towards my damage, but that's a hard-to-account-for damage value.

jbmaverick

Finally finished bringing my [Over] Phasers to Mk12 (thank you Omega Upgrade Kits) and ended up answering my own question regarding the Phaser set, figured I'd put the results here in the off chance anyone even still looks at this thread.

Using the Turret and Hydrodynamics console together along with all my tactical consoles being Mk13 Epic Vulnerability Locators, my Phaser tooltip damage was about 50 points higher than if I replaced a Vulnerability Locator with the 8472 Tactical console and dropped the Turret. With 5 Arrays and Turret vs 6 Arrays, the tooltip DPS gained on my arrays by using the Turret over the Tac console was about equal to the tooltip DPS lost by using the Turret rather than another array. Add to this the Turret doesn't benefit from FAW or anything else in my beam build and it ends up being an overall loss. I still lose out on about 2% crit chance from a Vulnerability Locator though. Didn't do a parse, but I figure the disparity would only increase as combat buffs enter the equation.