Split Beam Rifle. What am I not seeing?

dpsloss88

I have a lot of these split beams in inventory. I don't use them because according to their tooltip they suck balls. What am I missing. Every ground post on here says they are the best. They are exploit weapons so even on boffs they are not going to give you exposes.

A Full Auto Rifle seems superior in every way (20% higher dps according to the tooltip, exposes, with the single exception of faster borg adaptation.

What am I missing?

deaftravis05

full autos are the best. Followed by split beam due to the secondary shot able to target up to 3 targets at once

shockwave85

If you can consistently generate exposes (or your Boffs are doing it for you with their full autos), a split beam can potentially score an exploit on 3 targets at once. You can also quickly respond to exposes on enemies other than your actual target. Sci officers make the best use of it because they have access to a lot of kit powers that can expose. Other classes can do it, but it kind of depends how you play. If you can't reliably generate exposes, you may be better off just pumping out damage with a pulsewave. For my Sci officers, entering combat looks something like this:

Tricorder Scan the strongest guy
Hyperionic Radiation, which then spreads to whole group
Tachyon Harmonic off their shields as they charge at me
Exothermic Induction Field sets them all on fire
By now, probably have a couple exposes. Pop off the alt fire on the split beam before they all scatter

If it was a group of 3 ensigns or lieutenants, I very likely just vaporized the entire group.

simeion1

I hate to be this vague but, there is a time and place for both. In pve and pvp i prefer a split beam over a full auto rifle. There is times where a full auto rifle is good. It has more to do with kit and ground abilities and how you setup you captain and away team.

demonicaesthetic

I tend to use rapid fire weapons such as full auto, or those borg prosthetic arm 'rapid minigun' weapons, with a pulsewave as secondary weapon.

Thing to remember is, that in your 'mob' you are the 'mob boss' with, supposedly, the superior combat AI.

It's YOUR job to setup flank/expose/exploit opportunities for your mob, weapons designed to use those opportunities are better off in the hands of your away team.

You have 4 grunts coming at you, you open up with primary fire on the auto-rifle, and drop one, firing aimed while moving to the flank, you are the main aggro, the mob comes at you, you wound a second, your team wounds the other 2 with flank bonus, you switch weapons and use pulsewave secondary at close range to knock the three back and on their butts, your medic uses the split beams 3-way to kill one and further wound the remaining two, you finish one with a pulsewave, and the last one reaches you for some melee, so gunstock in the face, and down he goes, switch to auto-rifle, and use secondary fire to empty a clip into him while he's down, game over.

Grenades can help, I like smoke, with the covert trait it means I and my crew can often mow down a low ranked mob while they are coughing and wiping their eyes

You can use whatever weapon you have or prefer, but, seriously, there is no overwhelming superiority to a split beam, it's good at taking advantage of certain situations, very good, but that means sacrificing overall performance.

I suspect that the reason split beams are so popular is less to do with their actual performance as much as "Kill-Master Thingy recommends them in his leet-dps ground tutorial video".

Try different weapons and tactics, using free drops of similar quality and mark, in the battlezone and see which suits your style best, then go out and bankrupt your self getting those Epic XIV versions for your 'ground build'