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Are Advanced Radiant Antiproton Beam Array and Universal Sustained Radiant Field worth it?
greyknight07
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
hi guys, I have two questions for you!
Federation
Arbiter battlecruiser
Tactical
New to STO and i actually enjoy it even with the bugs haha. I am planning on doing an anti-proton weapons build and after research and discussion I want the ICO space set. (1)I wanted to know if I should also get the universal console. I think it is a must-have just like the borg universal console. Also for my weapons, as I am not good at R&D(yet). (2)Should I get the radiant antiporton beam array for weapons or is there another alternative to getting good antiproton weapons other then R&D? Is the fluid dynamics episode weapons any good?
Federation
Arbiter battlecruiser
Tactical
New to STO and i actually enjoy it even with the bugs haha. I am planning on doing an anti-proton weapons build and after research and discussion I want the ICO space set. (1)I wanted to know if I should also get the universal console. I think it is a must-have just like the borg universal console. Also for my weapons, as I am not good at R&D(yet). (2)Should I get the radiant antiporton beam array for weapons or is there another alternative to getting good antiproton weapons other then R&D? Is the fluid dynamics episode weapons any good?
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If your planning on getting the whole weapon set from the Iconian Rep I think its a good plan but just use normal Anti-proton beams as getting the correct mods will be more easier to obtain and upgrade over time. Kinda in the same why as you would use the kinetic beam and cons from the borg rep. There is also other cons you should obtain but are in the lobi store which would help with DPS by a ton [Console - Bioneural Infusion Circuits] its also good for hp increase at epic quality. Also if you are going the route of anti-proton invest into the ancient omni directional antiproton beam array from the mission sphere of influence and also buy a antiproton omni beam from the exchange might run you up to 3mil EC and just toss them on the back. Other cons you should get are Fleet +beam tactical consoles from your fleets spire or ask a fleet to use theirs to obtain them.
After obtaining all these things you will then need to work at getting everything up to Epic for the best results.
If you need some more help or need some things I can craft a few low level beams for you to upgrade since the ones that you will be looking for will cost anywhere from 2-5 million EC.
Hii Nategamers!,
I am only at beam R&D level 6, should i even start using resources to craft or wait until level 15? could you also direct me on your experience of crafting those beam weapons?
The "Dmg" mod has been buffed to the point that it is more than viable as a mod. Therefore the "best" weapons are any of the following; CrtDx3+Pen, CrtDx4, Dmgx3+Pen, Dmgx4, CrtDx2+Dmg+Pen, CrtDx2+Dmgx2, CrtDx3+Dmg, CrtD+Dmgx2+Pen, and CrtD+Dmgx3.
Which of these is the actual best will depend on your faction and build but you are pretty safe with any of them. As far as the proc goes, there are many choices that will be good depending on the build. Regular Antiproton is probably better than "Radiant" Antiproton. If you're doing an antiproton build, you're best doing it as a Romulan focusing on CrtDx4 and CrtDx3+Pen weapons since Romulans and Antiproton weapons focus on crits. Since you're a Federation officer, you're probably better off focusing on "Dmg" weapons. Some nice choices right now are the new Coalition Disruptors. Regular Disruptors are also nice. Plasma and Romulan Plasma likewise are good choices for any type of build. Polaron weapons can be devastating for Science drain builds.
Considering current exchange prices, I would pick up some coalition disruptors if I were you.
the Borg console and the Romulan console are both really good.
As for weapons, CritD x3s are pretty much the standard. You can get either PEN or DMG since DMG got a nice buff recently. If you are a Tactical captain i saw something about DMG x3 + CritD being more useful thanks to interactions with the tac's attack pattern ability. (at least that's what i remember reading.)
Here's how people do the crafted weapons route. You want your beams to be level 15+ so you always get a very rare when you craft MK IIs. After crafting many that are junk, you get lucky and get one with 3 of the 4 mods you want. You then apply an experimental upgrade and a 2x research upgrade (although this "can" be optional). Upgrade as much as it can, usually to Mk VII-VIII and if you're lucky, you'll get the last mod you want. If not, you sell it. If you get the one you want, then you can spend the millions to upgrade it all the way to Epic Mk XIV. You need millions to get all the weapons to that point. A long time player said you're looking at roughly a billion EC depending on how many you want and how lucky you get etc. Not to mention all the dil required to apply each upgrade.
I wouldn't recommend even thinking about that until you have everything else on your ship. i.e. All the various consoles you'll need, traits, getting your crit chance as high as possible. Once everything else is "done", then you can deal with the weapons. All those other things will benefit plain ol MK XII weapons that have just a couple of the mods you want. I would even go so far as to suggest you upgrade all that other stuff before you even start on the weapons.
In that light OP, between Standard AP or Radiant AP, I would side with the former. The special thing Radiant weapons have is the sacrificing of half of Standard AP's built in +Crit Severity to get the Temporary HP proc. That is not a good trade for me.
If you're thinking about the whole Iconian Weapon Set, that means slotting the terrible Advanced Radiant Quantum Torpedo. As a Quantum, Delta Rep's Neutronic is leagues better in regular damage. Also, on paper, the Adv.Radiant Quantum has, IIRC, x2 the Neutronic's Radiation Damage. Both are AOE Radiation effects. It looks like the Adv.Radiant wins on multiple targets, right? No. You have to read the fine print. Every Adv.Radiant Quantum's radiation only damages up to 2 targets. Neutronic? Every Neutronic Torpedo's radiation affects whoever is in that area, regardless of how many.
So with all this in mind, you got Antiproton weapons that hit less harder than Standard AP. You have procs that are, in my eyes, very lackluster. You have a fancy Quantum Torpedo that is still overshadowed by the Neutronic Torpedo. The Iconian Weapon Set is just mediocre.
Depends on your taste and abilities to get weapons. Generally I'd say "no" to the set, they sound good, but you shouldn't need it. Better things to put there. Same with wpns, Warmaker001b summed that up pretty good.
Assuming you are a well built tank meant to complete hard elites, The extra structural integrity will give you greater than 3k+ HP. The extra temp hp proc is just bonus. The loss of the DPS vs normal AP is overcome by actually giving you extra staying power in hard elites. Staying alive will give you more DPS in hard elites like HSE.
Now, if you are just doing normal, advance or easy elites. I wouldnt recommend this 2pc set due to survivability requirements being too low.
Thank you everyone! been great help and warmaker why is it that there is only one PVE for delta reputation?
Tempest, based on this then i will get those AP from the borg mission and upgrade them and once everything is set then I should do R&D. Should i use standard tech upgrade on them or not?
There is more than one.
Stop, take a breath and read some posts down in the shipyards.. Too many people jump on rep projects thinking they are best. Some are in limited combos, so (a lot) are junk if you have cash to get other stuff, and I can't stress this enough, BOFF layout and build! That is the magic that works with consoles (past your standard non-rep must haves).
Study builds more, full sets of rep gear almost never come into play.
The problem with upgrading any of the stuff that isn't at a low MK level, is that you have far fewer chances for it to get to epic and to get the mods you'd want. You'll also burn thru several upgrades just to move it up a single Mk. I have only 1 set of weapons I'd like to one day try upgrading but I also farmed them when I was able to get them at Mk VI-VIII. For myself, I'm currently using ones that I got as rewards from the rep projects and some mission rewards. I'm still getting fleet consoles etc to work on my crit and other more "important" things. For example, last night I was finally able to get the 3 vulnerability locators I wanted for my ship.
I would think you'd still want to use experimental and the 2x research upgrades to try and get to epic though. Perhaps someone with experience with that can chime in.
Keep in mind with the R&D, you can run 3 of the projects at the same time to make it go faster.
Yes. The 2pc rep ap weapon fires faster than your normal ap weapon. This is more noticed in longer runs. However like all haste abilities, it drains more power. That means if your build can't take that extra power drain, the damage per hit will lower all your energy weapons damage not just the ap rep weapon. Assuming one can manage the extra power drain, The damage per hit of the 2pc radiant ap rep beam is still lower than your optimal modifier normal ap beam. But the rep ap hits more times than a normal ap beam even if you trait EWC/arbiter trait.
That point aside, you sacrifice 10 CRTD for another proc which boosts tanking. Now that we have two high-end modifiers it is more than possible to get a set of these to Epic with a nice set of mods if your willing to burn piles of dilithium and EC. Although they may do slightly less damage I think the extra proc more than makes up for it. It would literally be 1% or less in an ideal situation. That makes them impressive in my book.
^^ This. In its entirety.
I am going to mildly necro this thread because I want to emphasize the above. There is no such thing as the best mods to have for a weapon. There are however best mods to have to take advantage of the strengths of one's particular build. The [CrtD]x4 and [CrtD]x3 [Pen] gained so much popularity because they best complimented the high end builds that people looking for high DPS typically put together. They became associated with high DPS as a result and were thrust into the spotlight. The problem is, just because they work so well for highly specialized builds, does not mean they are the defacto best choice for everyone.
I generally run [CrtD] [Dmg]x3 advanced fleet weapons on my alts. Fleet weapons are pretty easy to come by, relatively cheap to acquire and just so happen to compliment the builds my alts typically have better than any other mod combination. They are a bit more expensive to upgrade, but these are for my alts and upgrading isn't a high priority, especially when the Mk XIIs pack a really heavy punch as they are.
Someone has done some hard mathing and done a comparative analysis of what mod combinations give the most boost to the base damage of weapons based on several general types of captains, equipment, levels traits and a few other things.
Here ya go:
https://reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/build_anatomy/weapons/mods
Read the case descriptions and see which one sounds closest to where you are or where you want to be. Then you can compare the modifiers that are the best for that case and see if they can be applied to the Radiant APs. If you are interested in the healing proc, you might have to settle for a little less than the best for the case, but if you notice, a lot of those mod combinations are very close percentage wise. Some are only around a half of a percent better or worse.
That's the other thing. There really aren't any bad weapons in the game. Any weapon can be made to work, since
so much of the weapon's effectiveness is tied to other things. If you like the beams for whatever reason, there certainly isn't anything wrong with using them. In fact, if you fall into the "Just Geared Up" group, the CrtDx2 Dmg versions of those would actually be rather ideal. If you are "Well Geared", or plan to get there, then you might want to reconsider as those mods don't hold up well as other gear improves. In that case, you could just get advanced fleet weapons since you can get them with the best mod combination presented in the list without having to gamble with upgrades. Also, unlike the Radiant APs, the advanced fleet weapons hold their own all the way to the top of the "Min Max" chart at the end of that list.
Paxdawn makes a seemingly subtle point, but very significant. As others have pointed out, the addition of the 2/ or 3 piece set will require slotting a weapon that isn't a match for many other weapons available. However, when taking abuse is the goal, anything that adds some sort of heal or temporary hit points, and can do it very consistently, can be not only useful, but valuable.
The sustained radiant console itself isn't bad for providing a little ability to improve heals a little bit. If you can get to it quick enough, the energy refrequencer reputation trait from the iconian rep should be more than sufficient to provide some extra heals while fighting if you need a moderate boost to healing. Staying in range of things to shoot stuff increases DPS, while leaving the fight to heal up or getting blown up does nothing for DPS for periods of time. Improving your ability to stay in the fight can actually improve DPS if you find yourself having to leave the fight for short periods of time to heal up.