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Iconian 4-Piece vs. Iconian 3-piece + Terran Core?
alphahydri
Member Posts: 391 Arc User
Hello all! So I'm currently in the process of heavily reworking my builds for all my Tactical captains, including skill respecs, gear additions/removals/upgrades, and just general finagling of stats. I am currently stuck on a dilemma regarding my main space set and what I should do with it.
Currently all my Tactical captains use the full Iconian Resistance space set. I love the set due to the two hot restarts and the periodic debuff cleanse, and the 3+4-piece set bonuses are great for DPS. That being said, I have playtested the Terran Task Force space set on other characters and the warp core/singularity core in particular caught my eye. I love the passive boost to all subsystems, as I tend to run with maxed out weapon power and balanced power for my other subsystems. The hefty bonus to EPS is also nothing to scoff at, which is where my dilemma comes from.
The Iconian Warp/Singularity Core's shining feature to me is its hot restart on weapons, as it makes Heralds and Tholians much more bearable to fight. The Terran Warp/Singularity Core offers a lot more versatility and utility, but I wonder if it would be worth it to drop the Iconian core for the Terran one and lose the 4-piece. Could any of you fine folk provide me with some advice on how to get through this impasse? Thanks!
Currently all my Tactical captains use the full Iconian Resistance space set. I love the set due to the two hot restarts and the periodic debuff cleanse, and the 3+4-piece set bonuses are great for DPS. That being said, I have playtested the Terran Task Force space set on other characters and the warp core/singularity core in particular caught my eye. I love the passive boost to all subsystems, as I tend to run with maxed out weapon power and balanced power for my other subsystems. The hefty bonus to EPS is also nothing to scoff at, which is where my dilemma comes from.
The Iconian Warp/Singularity Core's shining feature to me is its hot restart on weapons, as it makes Heralds and Tholians much more bearable to fight. The Terran Warp/Singularity Core offers a lot more versatility and utility, but I wonder if it would be worth it to drop the Iconian core for the Terran one and lose the 4-piece. Could any of you fine folk provide me with some advice on how to get through this impasse? Thanks!
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My take? The Terran Rep Warp Core is beautiful in what it does. It has so many things going for it. However, people point to one of the great benefits, the ability to increase the max power levels as time goes on in combat but there are detractors to this from what I'm told by users.
1. It takes time to get the full stack for max subsystem power levels, long enough that depending on the crowd you run with, i.e. even half-decent teams, you're not going to get the full benefit in time. The content is finished just as you get that benefit.
2. I am also told that once you're out of a combat condition, i.e. no longer in red alert/combat mode, *POOF* the benefit drops off and would have to restart. Again, this buff relies on being on combat for the timer to stack the buffs. But there are numerous content that combat is an "OFF and ON" type of affair. You blow stuff up in one part of the mission, combat ceases, then you Full Impulse to the next fight. Terran Rep Core sounds like a bad choice in this type of affair.
Meanwhile, with the Iconian Rep Warp Core doesn't have that raw, generally nice Warp Core stats as the Terran Rep one. The default E->S power bonus is not generally held in high regard, only very niche builds benefit from that. Most other stats are "Meh." The Hot Restart for Weapons is awesome. Combine that with Iconian Rep Shields, your Weapon & Shield Subsystems have very good uptimes on subsystem shutdowns (Hello OSS, if you try to take weapons or shields down momentarily).
The real benefit for the Iconian Rep Core outside the Hot Restart mechanics is attaining the Set 3 & 4 Bonus. Set 3 can buff the team. Set 4 is a powerful, teamwide DPS buff for 30 seconds, a long time. It has a CD of 2 minutes though.
So OP... For me, with the choices you presented: Full 4-Pc Iconian Space Set vs 3-pc Iconian Space Set+Terran Rep Warp Core?
I'd go with the former. The 4-pc Iconian Set Bonus is used when you're ready. Or if you are running with a good team that sports this set, you can help in rotating that buff cycle (yes, there are premades that do this). This use has far more control into the player's hands than the Terran Rep's featured benefit that fizzles out when you're out of combat, or your team is done with the content just as you get the max benefit of the core.
When I play on other characters that don't have that nice Hot Restart feature of the shields and/or core, I miss that terribly.
Even if we're talking Singularity Core versions, the issue is still the same as with the Terran Rep Warp Core and that extra power bonus:
"+0-10 Subsystem Power, power levels increase over time in combat"
For the same reason I have major fault with the Warp Core version relying on constant, long duration combat, the same fault lies with the Singularity Core version.
The Iconian Rep's Singularity Core has the same merits and demerits as it's Warp Core brother. Very "Meh" stats but has the same nice Hot Restart function and still completes the very powerful Iconian Space Set's 4-piece bonus.
Again, the main issue (to me) with Terran Rep's cores is that they fizzle out when not in combat, as well as decent teams finishing content before you reap the best rewards of the Terran Rep cores.
The terran cores additional power levels build up very slowly. You loose them swiftly again when out of combat (Similar feature can also be triggered with the breen dreadnought’s trait when interested).
Other than that the cores stats don’t feel better than the ones from spire.
The ico pulse on the other hand boosts your team as well as yourself and it benefit when 4 peeps in team have it can’t be outdone by much else at the moment.
It’s it bit sad at the moment with space sets. The ico set is so incredibly good that it feels like the set of choice for everybody and every build around. Let it be 2 pice, 3 pice or 4 pice. Let it be tac, eng or sci.
Whatever crytic throws next at us it will have to be good to compare with the ico set. The terren core was an interesting item introduced by cryptic but it was just not good enough in my opinion.
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The game is easy. One core or another could stack a bit more overkill on the curbstomp train, but would you even notice? What the Iconian core gives is convenience. The weapons restart just makes disable-happy enemies that much more comfortable to fight.
I'd take the Iconian core for the weapon restart over yet another DPS boost every day.
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I actually made the decision to go with 3 pice ico + terran core on my sci toon on a sci ship.
Yes, your aux power profits as well. I’m just not smart enough to tell you if using sci abilities at high energy would help you more than sci abilities under the influence of the four piece iconian pulse. We also have OSS around which offers even more benefits as far as energy is concerned and I even saw a console which counters aux disabled conditions after 1 second if that turns out to be a problem for some. All in all if the benefit of the terran core for raw weapons performance is at question so would be the sci benefits.
Testing would be in order for me however upgrades are so traumatically expensive that I rather tend to my other 8 chars in need of stuff so...
...I agree here and advice the OP to stick with the ico.
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The Iconian Space Set in general offers very little value to Science-heavy builds. There is no bonus anywhere to Flow Caps, Graviton / Particle Generators. Not in the set bonus, not in the deflector, not in the cores.
The Terran Space Set offers one thing of interest to Science: Flow Caps. The Deflector is very high in Flow Caps and with the 2-piece bonus, you get +17.8 more. The core may help you attain just that 2-piece bonus (Deflector+Core). Statistically, both Warp/Singularity Cores from this rep offer nothing for Science in themselves.
If you're talking about the Terran Rep Core +max power and all that, again I point to you the flaw of that: That bonus is very slowly built during combat only. Depending on the crowd you roll with, you may not get the full benefit/bonus before the content is over and it's time to collect your rewards. Or you may get the full benefit/bonus but it comes so late in the instance that it's irrelevant. Even worse, you get out of combat/red alert, that bonus is GONE. There's a lot of content in the game where combat is "Off and On." You fight here, combat stops, you Full Impulse to the next part, then fight again. The Terran Core's +max power bonus is 100% useless in that.
Yeah, the power build-up of the Terran core is slow. But the 3-part set (+ Quantum Phase Converter) gives me a 'gratuitous' 194 Flow Caps: that alone significantly boosts your power level (with a mandatory Leech, of course).
Same in here...for same reasons.
Original STO beta tester.