Remember how annoying those could be, when they'd suck your power dry and leave you sitting there raging?
Obviously those don't work anymore, or we would still see them. But I was just thinking about my Vesta build, wondering if it might be fun to try an alternate build with focus on drain rather than GW3/TBR2, and I remembered those old siphon drones with a nostalgic chuckle. That was the one good reason for having Vent Warp Plasma, which is otherwise rather hard to use effectively.
Among other things, I suspect the ubiquity of FAW would make picking off the siphon drones all too easy. But they were fun back in the day
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Agreed... I took my drain/debuff build Samsar running high flow caps with leech and polaron also running Supressive Barrage on an Aux2Bat cruiser build... lets me debuff a lot and often, hard for mirror ships to take any hits when I leech their shields offline with polaron proc and Plasmonic Leech taking roughly 65-70 energy per SS before resists. Easy to tank when your enemy's weapons are at half power AND do about 35% less damage on top of that with Supressive Barrage.
My best platform to do it was with the Vo'Quv. SCI-heavy Carrier, 2 hangars with Elite Siphon Drones, Aceton Assimilators, Tyken's Rift / Energy Siphon. I have not tried it however when Tachyon Beam got buffed.
Voth Palisade, especially with its console/console set is specifically suited for Flow Caps. I remember seeing long ago a pair of Voth Palisade players coming for me and I thought, "Well, I'm really f***ed now"
Anyways, I don't recall any meta changes to drains making them worse off. It SHOULD still be viable but Drain Heavy builds have issues if you're heavily dedicated to it like my Vo'Quv was:
1. You need significantly high Flow Caps to have any sort of effect, the same sort of build specialization that a truly effective PartGens build needs to stack Particle Generator Skill, Drain Boats need to do the same with Flow Capacitor Skill for its best performance.
2. Drain Heavy Builds work slow on trash NPCs. I tend to save my best for the big targets so that it is easy for others to take it down with no worries (of course, a high DPS team wouldn't even need me in this regard). If I wanted to "Turn Off" a target, I had to stack everything against it. Not one ability. Everything. With cooldowns and such, this was why I saved my best for the main targets.
Also, the Breen ships do well for that sort of build. Might not be a place to set it up. Although, yes, a Vesta would work, too. It just wouldn't benefit from the Breen Console Set.
Which is probably why a lot of people don't "get" science and it's not as popular as just dps'ing the game.
Absolutely true, and everything is so DPS-oriented these days, which is why my current Vesta build is so focused on damage. I used to load up with heals and support type stuff, now all she uses is Sci Team and Hazard Emitters; the rest is all damage output, aside from Polarise Hull, which is needed given Cryptic's obsession with putting tractor beams on everything lately
IMO, you're better off without the Breen Console Set even if you could use a Breen ship. It takes an unholy amount of Console Slots and for that kind of space, does very little in giving you Flow Capacitor Skill increases. The 2 piece bonus is the equivalent of one Flow Cap Console and none of the consoles actually grant Flow Caps by themselves. Almost all the Breen Consoles have nothing to do with Flow Cap abilities, which is the funny part of the set and intent of the set.
The Breen Console Set suffers from a lack of focus, reinforcing very little of what it's supposed to actually do. It's nothing more than a bunch gimmick abilities with nothing to make said abilities actually better.
You're better off using things like Rom Embassy / Research Lab Consoles, Rule 62 (which has more pertinent bonuses for the way many Science ships are flown), Plasmonic Leech, etc than the Breen Consoles.
On a side note, AHOD and some of those Terran Reputation Traits bring interesting aspects. Hell, the old Reciprocity + AHOD combo can still help in cutting down the SCI cooldowns.
Yeah the Breen consoles are just silly gimmick clickies that give very little to your build or to the battle in general. Most of them don't even synergise with boff powers either so you don't really gain anything from slotting them. General science boosting consoles with +flow and +prtg etc. like the embasy or R&D lab stuff will give far more then the Breen set ever does.
I didn't mean the entire Set, just the ones that fit with the Drain Build. My fault; I should have been more specific.
I love the IKC from 3-piece bonus, but that torpedo gets less appealing all the time.
They may as well just delete torpedo spread from the game as the list of times when it's actually useful (especially with special torps) is rapidly being eroded by a barrage of nerfs.
^^ This, exactly.
I think what's going on is the usual thing that happens; a tiny group of elite players is achieving remarkable results with something, so the devs nerf it to death for everyone. As usual, the many are punished for the doings of the few.
It's a heavy-handed, authoritarian, meat-axe approach to things.
My character Tsin'xing
Now I have to decide between the Breen carrier and (some)of the Breen set, or my palisade and it's aceton console...
Are we talking about the Rule 62 console?
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Ferengi_Marauder#Console_-_Rule_62_Multipurpose_Combat_Console
Wouldn't the level 61 part seem to indicate that these are a newer version of our old favorites?
I am almost tempted to give this a try...
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
The captain skills are universal so you can have a sci heavy tac or end to boost sci tricks. And the captain abilities whilst nice are not essential as most of your buffs will be coming from a very specific and well thought out set of equipment and boff powers.
It's the equipment and use of those powers that makes science difficult to truly master I find. You can slap some random stuff on a build and it might work but to get a real science build working takes a fair bit of planning and choice of items.
That's why I find it so much more appealing than just going for all out attack DPS builds. But un some ways a good science build is similar to a top 1% DPS build in that both need to be well planned and piloted.
It's the main reason why I think the overwhelming majority think science is pointless as they just don't have the commitment needed to push that build as far as it needs to go. You've gotta put together a very specialised set of powers and parts that all synergize well and people just don't have the interest or patience in that it seems.