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yreodred
Member Posts: 3,527 Arc User
I must admit, i'm a bit lost lately regarding Ground combat.
I do Kobali and other ground stuff from time to time, when i see other players steamroll enemy troops, i tend to think i'm doing something wrong. (using a Eng, Sci and Tac captain.)
Still compared to Space combat the choices of equipment and skills aren't that big, but i feel a bit lost tbh. Especially since there's no guide newer than 2 years and i fear things might have changed since then.
Obviously no one seems to have any bigger problem with ground combat, since it is rarely a topic.
What party composition, equipment and tactics do you guys commonly use?
Do you think normal MkXII-XIV gear is good enough or do you gear up your Captain and BOFFs with Mk XIV reputation equipment?
What kind of weapon combination and skills do you prefer for your Captain and BOFFs?
Do you designate some BOFFs as exposer, others be exploiter or do you just equip them with the highest DPS weapons you can find and let the carnage begin?
Do you favour any species for your away team or is eqipment much more important?
What do you think about Reputation Kit modules, are they worth their money or wasted resources?
What about Armor is engergy dampening armor still alright or am i completely off the track?
Any help is appreciated!
I do Kobali and other ground stuff from time to time, when i see other players steamroll enemy troops, i tend to think i'm doing something wrong. (using a Eng, Sci and Tac captain.)
Still compared to Space combat the choices of equipment and skills aren't that big, but i feel a bit lost tbh. Especially since there's no guide newer than 2 years and i fear things might have changed since then.
Obviously no one seems to have any bigger problem with ground combat, since it is rarely a topic.
What party composition, equipment and tactics do you guys commonly use?
Do you think normal MkXII-XIV gear is good enough or do you gear up your Captain and BOFFs with Mk XIV reputation equipment?
What kind of weapon combination and skills do you prefer for your Captain and BOFFs?
Do you designate some BOFFs as exposer, others be exploiter or do you just equip them with the highest DPS weapons you can find and let the carnage begin?
Do you favour any species for your away team or is eqipment much more important?
What do you think about Reputation Kit modules, are they worth their money or wasted resources?
What about Armor is engergy dampening armor still alright or am i completely off the track?
Any help is appreciated!
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
A tale of two Picards
https://youtu.be/d-f3bscZa0E?t=105(also applies to Star Trek in general)
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Energy Dampening armor is fine... until something smacks you. Like Thralls or Defilers... they'll kill your very quickly without some form of Physical damage resistance. Polyalloy, Rom Navy, or one of the Rep armors is a much better idea.
Otherwise... it's like Space, what are you trying to get your character to do? I have several characters, of different factions and careers... and they all do things a bit differently from each other. There are a variety of things that do work... just as there are a variety that don't.
Kit modues can be worth the price, if the kit does something you want, that suits your weapons and tactics, as for armour, generic armour, go pollyalloy, or get the rom navy set, the latter is more than good enough for Kobali, and the set includes a reasonable kit.
weapons type and energy type is a moot point, everyone seems to prefer a diff weapon, but as a captain, you get to carry two weapons, so mix the roles, something ranged something close up, something rapid fire, something high damage.
I usually carry a full auto and a pulsewave., on my fed tac, my main kit powers are the smoke grenade and a decent damage buff, with covert ans situaltional awareness traits, for the +1000% 'surprise' damage to the targets stumbling in my smoke cloud...
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There are (close to) no recent guides but really good posts every now and then here.
Short but up date: http://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/tspcombatguide
Edit: found one of that comments: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=23654811&postcount=4
Thread http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1448531
As for doffs , 4 engies with mine barrier 1 & 2 and 2 copies of quantum mortar fabrication, each of them with a tsunkatse ( rare is fine ), each of them with a recoil compensating armor .
Race is not that important but if they are klingons, that's better.
If you are a sci with 3 phasic instability purple or blue doffs , you might try 4 sci boffs with electrogravitic field 1 & 2 and 2 copies of tricorder scan … AP rifles and same armor as before .
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I understand where you are coming from however I think it's more efficient for him to gear up first for STF, then for content together with boffs so I see the fabrication engie doffs ( who are good ) as a waste of time ; 3 purple security officers are a must then the Voth target optics doff and , well, the Doctor nurse doff and maybe a grenade doff for not specific combat scenarios .
I find engie captains need more health survivability than shield as of these times so a regen tissue trait would not be a bad idea and then he can just focus on damage ( plasma firethrower, mines, drones, mortar,, bomb )
As for sci, yes, same old story : they lack DPS.
But the support of a good sci captain to the team shouldn't be underestimated anyway ( endothermic I am looking at you)
Armor, kit, shield --> Romulan set (free)
Weapons: Plasma split beam rifle and plasma pulse wave assault (romulan kit boosts plasma damage)
devices: large hypo (or cordrazine hypos from borg stfs), large shield recharge, gambling device (30 lobi or few million ec from exchange, definitely worth the investment), 4th device is either shard of possibilities, the new revival thing from delta recruit stuff, remodulator or frosted boots
now the important part, kit modules and Doffs:
for survival nanite health monitor (auto heal when damaged) and triage (group heal)
for damage: exothermic induction field
for epic fun: electrogravitic field (doffed, see below)
the fifth module is where I take the most useful module depending on the situation:
- biofilter sweep for bug hunt (to remove the poison dot)
- tachyon harmonics for shield kill and knockback. Against borg I use a Hirogen Doff (technician I think) for extra damage
Doffs make all the difference. I have at least a purple biochemist for extra damage reduction on most abilities (sensor scan, exo field etc). At least one geologist that causes phasic instabilities (from reinforcements doff pack). That makes a ground gravity well and sucks in enemies that are even quite far away. They are quite pricey, though, but totally worth it. Another geologist (normal version) to reduce the cool down on exo field. A voth explosive expert for fire balls when using exo field.
Strategy: Beam to ground, Press "B", cast nanite health monitor, approach enemies, crouch, sensor scan, cast electrogravitic field, enjoy the hilarious ground gravity well sucking your victims in, cast exothermic induction field, fire secondary split beam or pulsewave attack. Usually that is enough to kill most mobs. I keep the abilities with long cool down (scientific aptitude and that viral damage reduction stuff) mostly for bosses or whenever suitable.
For bug hunt it is good to have some resist against their poison. Armor wise there is the counter command armor and the undine armor (from lobi store). If you do not have those, there are traits that help. One comes from "surface tension" as reward, another one is "regenerative tissues" from a box. As sci you also have the biofilter sweep ability to counter toxic damage.
Against borg you might want to get a rep set from the omega store for the fast remodulation. I like the adapt. MACO/KHG set for the extra heal (and the nice costume as KDF
Other people recommend the TR-116b rifle against borg, but I found that fires way to slow. I kill much faster with an anti-borg antiproton split beam rifle MK XIV. With tachyon harmonics you get a shield killer anyway and the fire from the exo field ignores shields, too. Another story are elachi. They have very low life and high shields. Here the Tr116 is quite efficient.
An important thing for survival is "crouch". Combine that with nanite health monitor and you won't die.
I'm doing not much gound missions apart from Kobali, since Voth BZ causes CDs all the time.
Some episodes here and there, but no STFs... ever...
@farseeridranel
Yeah, the rom Navy set is nice. Unfortunately it's only 1 per character, you can't outfit your whole Landing Party with it. I'll try getting some decent Gear for them and my captain.
@jerichoredoran
Thanks for the Links, very appreciated.
I'll going to try the Gambling device with my main character asap. (+10crth + 10crtd :cool: )
@angrytarg
I used to create a turret wood with my BOFFs in the good old times, before they revamped Ground Combat (and made it virtually unplayable for me, lol.).
When playing different characters, i always had the impression that Engineers where a bit slow because it takes a while unitl they have set up their stuff (turrets, mines and so on). Sci on the other hand is much faster and more flexible, but lack the necessary power. As i said i'll try better gear.
As i can see from your comments, using the right DOFF seems to be very important. I'm going to take a closer look what Kit powers they can enhance. (not that easy to get a general idea of it imo)
Before i gave up on Voth BZ, i was working on getting a Dyson Experimental Rifle for each of my BOFFs. I tought they are rather handy since their secondary attack is depending on situation either a expose or exploit. (great for stupid BOFFs imo)
Now i'm not so sure anymore i'm on the right track with it and be better off with more conventional weapons, since i observed that the Dyson rifle seems to lack the neccesary punch.
Sure, but it is the same for the other sets
There is also the jem hadar set and the kobali "set" that you can get for free. Also you can craft armor, shield and weapon at MK II and upgrade it, if your R&D is high enough to produce "very rare" only.
Besides that, a very useful weapon is the type 3 phaser rifle from the last spectres mission. It has an odd sound, but the knockdown explosion is great.
Unfortunately, STO is all about those stupid trading cards. Without DOFFs you are missing out a huge portion of "performance", unfortunately. On a tactical captain there the "Security Officer" Doffs that grant a chance of 20% to beam in additional "Security escorts" (the captain ability). They stack (one of those cases were some Doffs stack and some don't), so three purple ones grant you a 60% chance of beaming in 4-6 security guards, effectively doubling your away team. Then there's a doff that boosts grenades - and a tactical captain doesn't really use anything besides grenades offensively, the other skills you will use are buffs (rally cry, overwatch etc.). Engineers are also straight forward - sci captains - like I said, I have to scis I like to play, but in ground combat there skill suage is kind of... random. I just throw whatever I can get my hooves on in the mix but I never got anything really useful - even the exothermic induction field on Mk XIII purple is rather underwhelming. Electro-static to slow and root, anesthezine gas does the same, the radiation dot and the rest are heals. I don't know what really works. My cait sci uses electro-gravimetric, anaesthezine and heals because I like to play her using non-lethal abilities, although sometimes in STFs I add the exothermic, but meh. The Klingulan sci has some heals and maybe I go for radiation.
Regarding the Boffs, I went the dyson rifle route with one character. Meh. I mean it works, sure, but the boffs rarely make good use of exploit attacks anyway. I'd go with the old (very old) rule of equipping them with expose weapons and use a exploit yourself (split beam is my favourite).
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I've no idea of you're level or resources stack, so I'll jsut give you some general tips:
1: Put some points into ground skills. A handful into weapons, armour can gain you a boost.
2: the beauty of Ground combat is you can do it any way you like. But one trick I'v used, and can be done with looted gear is this:
Your captain with the best Sniper rifle he can get his hands on.
4x Science officers all with healing and a grav field. Each science officer with a Mini-gun or automatic rifle (or even dual pistols). Preferably Phaser.
The BOFF's hold them with the Grav fields, then start setting up the Exposes. With your sniper rifle you can then hit them with an exploit. There is a key in the controls to automatically target exposed targets (IIRC its default: G).
Equally an All engineer team with turret/mine spam works fine.
3: As the Leeroy Jenkins video is ten years old, how about a Leeroy BOFF? Another good trick if you have access to the Life timer android take them as a Tactical Android armed with a close combat weapon and skills like Lunge, sweeping strikes, motion accelerator and stealth field, and grenades. Stick a Physical argumentation armour/PKB shield on them and sit back and watch the fun.
4: Fleet gear is quite tasty is you've got a lot of fleet creds, but no rep marks.
5: An automatic rifle is pretty good for just raw DPS, although it lacks the Exploit
6: Primary fire switched to Auto-fire!
A lot of those captains who you see carving through legions of enemies have been about since launch (I know mine has). And thus we've had 4 years of acquiring trinkets. If you had a bit more details on what you want to do with what sort of character and what your buy in level is we could give more targeted advice.
I was lucky, on my fed tac, got 2 sets of the rom-navy gear before the stealth patch that made it 1 set only, so one of my boffs has the armour n shield from that with a plasma weapon. A cheap and reasonably decent set for boffs is the Jem'Hadar set, armour, shield and full auto rifle, from mission rewards ion the cardassian front.
Excessive turret/mine spam can sometimes lag in open ground zones, for kobali I usually take one eng boff and one tac boff, with my tac captain.
Doffs are really useful, for any ground powers, additional turrets for your eng, additionan sec teams for your tacs, reduced cooldowns and increased buffs on kit powers.
Kobali Front/Voth BZ.
If you are using the rom navy kit, the borg prosthetic gun isn't a bad free choice, decent sustained dps primary mode, ignore it's secondary mode, plasma based for the navy set damage bonus, a tac boff to lob smoke and plasma grenades for exploit/expose opportunities, an eng boff to drop turrents and mortars (they drop mines in all the wrong places and usually too damn late), both boffs in JemHadar with the auto rifles, cant go far wrong with those, and the jh set doesnt feature a kit so they can get full 3 set bonus. Optionally replace the eng boff with an eng/cmd boff, some of the command powers are very good for ground combat.
DONT bind all the kit powers and both weapon modes to the space bar, you'll end up spending more time casting 'kit spells" than shooting, do not stand still, always use aim, and try real world tactics such as 'slicing the pie' where you advance and generate aggro, allowing the boffs to mow down targets with auto rifle fire with flank/exploit/expose damage bonus. Carrying a pulsewave as a secondary close assault gun can help with this.
Smoke is often under rated, it can leave targets vunerable, or be used as cover for you, often with the same grenade, deploy smoke, whack a few of the mob while they are in the smoke, advance into the smoke and whack the survivors from cover after they leave the smoke.
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My Tac is a melee in training. Currently I use the 3-piece Undine Set (Weapon/Armor/Shield), but really for melee all you need is the armor (+30% Physical Damage) and the gun for the 2-piece bonus; the 3-piece ability is rather nice however as it gives me a free full shield heal. I'll probably switch the shield out and go either KHG 2-piece or Shattering Harmonics 2-piece. As far as Kits/Modules, a Delta Kit with CrtH is nice, and I currently run Motion Accelerator/Biotech Siphon/Sweepng Strikes as my core. Last time I played Blood of Ancients on Advanced I took down the Harbinger in about 15 seconds without my BOffs. The DOffs that increase melee H and D are a must, and the one that adds Electrical Damage to Sweeping is nice but not necessary.
Then I have my Sci Character, who is my ground PVPer. Science is easily the most overpowered in ground: while it doesn't have the spike damage and raw firepower of a Tac nor the pet spam of the Engineer, it makes up for that in pressure damage, debuffs, and unparalleled survivability. I routinely outdamage and outheal my team in STFs, and I am mediocre at best in the PVP community. If you want to do damage as a Sci you need 2 Modules: Exo/Endo (your choice) and Neutronic Radiation. Then I pack on 2 heals (MedTri Fleet Mk XII and Nanite Health), and use the final slot for whatever I need. Everyone rushing into melee (Heralds)? Sonic Pulse. Beating down Borg? Tachyon Harmonic. But Hunt? Biofilter Sweep. Team seems to be having difficulty surviving a boss? Energy Inversion Matrix. For DOffs I run the Projectile DOff for Exo, a Biochemist for the increase of Damage Resistance drain, and one that increases the debuff duration of Tricorder Scan. Because survivability shouldn't be an issue you can go for a ground set that is damage focused: I chose the Omega 3-piece. With most of my abilities having a 50% chance to expose the weapon I primarily use is one of 3 choices: the TR for Borg and Elachi, the Dyson Rifle for Voth, and my personal favorite an Elachi Crescent Bolt Pistol Dx3 H. With my current setup I hit 850 criticals with my Exo Field initial burst, my Crescent exploits are about the same on Crit, and my TR Exploits are around 1700.
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Captain Bi Shonen's official Thread! http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=22866531#post22866531
Well if you are going to make a video on something make sure your info is correct. The Jem'Hadar set does not have the best regen for health in the game.
https://startrekonlinecouv.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/navy.jpg
The Imperial Romulan Navy Armor regen 100% times more health. .1 modifier compared to a 1.1 modifier.
I would recommend running a 2 piece Imperial Romulan Navy set if you use plasma weapons. Not only do you have increase health regen, but also get 20% plasma damage to outgoing energy weapon attacks. I dont use this set up but it does work.
I prefer to the Omega shield at mk xiv it has 40% dodge chance and if you crouch and have a gambler device your dodge chance is now at 100%. For PVE i use the advance fleet armor that gives +80% critd. For weapons I prefer a split beam for the exploit because science exploits better than everyone else. I believe this because of tricorder scan is a short c/d and if properly buffed by kits and traits you can have anywhere between a 33-66% to expose. So for multiple combatants i run a splitbeam, for single targets I run a compression pistol. The exploit of a compression pistol will hit almost as hard as any other weapon in the game. Yes is does hit as hard as a puslewave (they do hit harder yes but not by much), but dont have the distance damage drop.
A good solid ground build really depends on what you want to do. Just like space there are some strong cookie cutter builds.
Tacs: can be strong spike damage or strong team support/buffer. If a tac has a dedicated healer they can run crazy with a pulsewave and get up close and personal. With draw fire and drawfire doffs you can take aggro and pretty much weapons malfuction everyone in the general area. Of course it is easy to build a spike damage tac. There is also the team buffer. While running thinks like rally cry, over watch, motivation and a few other kit abilities you become a team buffer. With over watch and the doff for an advisor you can remove debuffs. Tac also have the most powerful ability in the game with Tactical Int. A team of five tacs carefully timing tac int can always have buffs up and hardly ever have cooldowns.
Eng: I see usually only two viable builds for engineers. Either a toy/team supporter or a mine throwing mortar laying DPS king. I am not any good at engineers but I have seen and known a few good ones. I prefer the team supporter and toy maker. The good and heavy DPS engieers I know use mines, transphasics bombs. and mortars. The thing about engineers is most of there animations are long and a lot of there weapons/toys are destructible. Placement is key. it makes no sense to put a health gen down when you have low health, you usually die while in the animation, put it down first and before you need it. Shield heals are your friend.
Sci: This is my favorite class. You can do almost anything with a science character. Heal/tank, damage, team assistance, and exposes are your what these guys excel at. Just like every other class there are abilities I would stay way from, stasis field is an example of this. I prefer to debuff and expose to allow my exploit attacks to hit hard. I run a kit that give 4% chance to crit (think it is a xindi kit but could be wrong). If you run the kit for expose chance increase and run the right traits you can expose almost 60% of the time. Look at all the expose chances a science has. Just captain abilites (not from kits) nanite infestation, dampening field, tric scan, and neural nuetralizer all have a chance to expose targets. Kit abilities include electro grav, netronic and hyperontic radiation, tachyon harmonics, sonic pulse, and anesthizine gas (not 100% sure here) all have a chance to expose. most of them also come with a debuff of damage resistance also. There are doffs and traits that increase expose damage and time.
Every weapons in STO does have a purpose and use. here are some I would stay away from unless you are building around them. Blast assualts, min-guns, dual pistols, and full auto rifles. While these guns have a purpose they are sub standards compared to the others. These guns are used to expose a target and unless you are trying to expose a target i would not use them. There are far to many abilities that causes exposes, use a gun that exploits for insane damage boost. Yes some poeple are going to argue about there min-gun and full auto rifles, but his is game mechanics based on facts. Once again I am not saying these guns dont have a use but you get better results with a proper ground build.
He was corrected on this on my thread. Jemmy dose have the highest hp regen in the game. Mated with Iron Sides you will never need a hypo again.
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I stand corrected, I dont know about ever needing an hypo again but the regen is strong. There are still some broken mechanics that is stripping peoples damage resistance.
Who cares? When you can slap a few T4 dip boffs together (2 eng all turret, 1 tac for giggles, 1 med for heal) and run around, why so serious?
I giggle when I hear people place (micro-manage) bo's on ground missions. :rolleyes:
You might not care, but in area where you dont have you boffs people might still need a hypo.
IMO one of the best sources of quick, cheap Mk II ground gear is running rep projects. The boxes you get every time you run one have a very good chance of containing very nice purple ground gear, and if you know what types tend to come with which reps, you can tailor it to your needs. IIRC Nukara frequently drops purple enviro suits, Omega lots of anti-Borg antiproton weapons, etc.
They'll rarely have ideal mods, but if you're going to be running the projects anyway while you build rep, they're effectively almost free.
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Do you mean Mk XII, because it is impossible as far as I know to get MK II gear from a rep boxes since you can't start open them until level 50 when you gain access to rep.
So I was wondering would these be ok for your away team? I was thinking of runnin 8472 set for bug hunting with maybe a aoe weapon to knock out pesky kritters more research to be done later...but if you have any thoughts that would be great to.
The voth set you have to crouch to get it to do its lil resists shields thing so I heard so Im thinkin that's out for away team...I was thinking of maco omega delta and iconian? really haven't started the rep on either of them but if you could give me some pointers that would great
2: So that said, use MACO/Adapted KHG for Medics and Tacticals, Adapted MACO/KHG for Engineers. This equally applies to bridge officers, and you own characters. The only exception is if your character is using the Romulan Navy set, along with a Romulan Plasma weapon. That is all you will ever need.
3: The best kit modules are the Spire ones, along with traditional modules like Ambush.
4: My optimum away team is a pair of Medics, and a pair of Engineers. The one and only Tactical needed is you.
5: The best away team species all depends on their intended career. Humans, Vulcans, Romulans, are great for both Medic and Engineer. For KDF, Letheans are the ideal Engineer. For Tactical, Caitians/Ferasans are tailor-made for Tactical, so they are THE ONLY species you need. And then there are reward officers, like the Borg Scientist, Nelix Exil, the Kobali Engineer, and the Hologram Engineer, so make sure to get them too.
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