THE "Balanced Budget Build" for Season 11.5

autumnturning

This is something I'm looking at as the "ONE" build you can ultimately fall back onto with pretty much any and every character as a sort of universal cookie cutter. It maximizes the breadth of enhancement, by putting something into everything, thereby yielding a functionally Profession Agnostic skills build.

Balanced Budget Build
http://aesica.net/sto/?a=eNpjmGRoYABGhjAGkAUD6CIGCGQAAoa4EFivrgEEoNPxMMsMDSAkSDVMEggASJ8cTg$$

This is a 17/17/12 arrangement, primarily because Tactical is the one tree that can be "skimped" on without sacrificing viability (which I consider different from trying to top the Leaderboard). This build offers something for ANY ship you might want to fly ... whether that be an Engineering, Science or Tactical heavy BOff seating ... without making absurd compromises that will lock you into flying only a certain "type" of ship because any other choices are sub-optimal. Granted, it won't make you the top of the heap in Tanking, Support or even DPS, but if you aren't aiming for the screaming edge of specialization, this makes for a really good compromise setup that will work with anything and everything out there.

The 17/17/12 allocation means that there's only one Space Skill that you won't be able to make Training Manuals for ... Aceton Beam III (engineering), Viral Matrix III (science) or Torpedo Spread III (tactical). Both Aceton Beam III and Viral Matrix III show up on WAY TOO MANY Bridge Officers to ever become rare, so supplies for those Training Manuals can hardly be considered constrained. Considering the number of DPS Pushers out there, I doubt there will be a shortage of people capable of selling those Manuals on the Exchange any time soon (except in cases of artificial scarcity enforced by Ebil Marketeers™). Besides, you can always rerun the Facility 4028 Mission in the Dominion Episodes to get a Jem'Hadar BOff as a reward who can be converted into a Torpedo Spread III Training Manual ... so again, not really a scarcity concern when it comes to obtaining. This 17/17/12 allocation thus yields a relative "selfish sufficiency" for being able to create Training Manuals for your Bridge Officers on your account (and everyone else's).

So, to be clear, this is an Anti-Specialist type of build meant to be useful for any Profession in any Ship of any Faction. It yields the broadest possible range of skill buffs in such a way as to ensure it partakes of "little bit of everything" simply because the first skill point in every tree yields the most returns (except for Shield Mastery at Admiral level). This gives the build maximum flexibility while also returning "decent" performance in every single area ... allowing you to switch between a variety of ships and playstyles, at whim, with confidence.

If you want a Role Specialist build (DPS, Tank, Support, etc.) oriented around a specific role in a specific ship, then the Balanced Budget Build is "not for you" ...

/em D'k_Tahg

adamkafei

That's really sci heavy and doesn't carry enough of anything else, save for a power and hanger overdose. You'd be far better off to drop hanger stuff, core efficiency, damage control, shield regeneration and readiness skills to spread points throughout the more basic stuff like hull and shield repair and healing along with the damage components of the tactical tree.

Dropping the science side effects also wouldn't hurt from a jack of all trades point of view but this is really spread too thin and doesn't have enough in build foundation skills.

autumnturning

Coordination Protocols buff all Teammates and Summoned Allies (ie. Photonic Fleet, Nimbus Call, Fleet Support III, etc.). If you're playing a Massively Single Player Online Roleplaying Game, I can see why those wouldn't appeal to you.

I did a cross comparison of Shield Regeneration vs Shield Restoration with multiple respecs on Tribble, and found that the former outdid the latter by at least 3:2 in terms of healing shields via Science Team at cooldown. Shield Regeneration is seriously underrated by the conventional wisdom at this time. In fact, Shield Regeneration is BETTER for Shields that natively have low regeneration (such as Resilient and Covariant), since it adds so much "more" to their regeneration (comparatively).

With Damage Control, I was also finding that the passive heal bonus could push the equivalent of an Engineering Team I heal from 40 to 30 to 25 seconds in combat and that rearranging in other configurations was largely a wash when it came to sources of SELF healing for Hull (over time). Yes, having more Hull Restoration meant bigger SPIKE heals to hull, but when looked at over time, while in combat, the difference largely disappeared in terms of which was more advantageous for aggregate HPS (hull per second) OVERALL. I was even looking at it in terms of Engineering Team I plus Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field I plus Damage Control 1, with the two BOff Skills averaged out to yield healing per second for their animation plus cooldown times and doing the same for passive Hull healing ... and it still came out pretty darn balanced. The differential was like less than 1000 hull over 60 seconds in some configurations, and that was using the IN COMBAT numbers. Out of combat, Damage Control wins over Hull Restoration hands down/game over ... so on balance going for a split investment made more sense to me. Your mileage may vary (obviously).