Returning player confused by new skill system

zero2362

Life has kept me away from STO since January and the first thing I see when I return is that skills are completly different. I know exactly what im doing with the old system but im having a hard time figuring out how to spec with this new one. Can anyone give me some tips on must have skills and such.

The real problem is that i use a veriaty of ships weapons and power setups. I like to be versatile even if that means im not getting the maximum performance out of any one ship or strategy. I frequently use beams, cannons, and exotic/drain boats with the odd torp here or there so getting a good balance is tricky

lan451

I'm the same in that I play a variety of ships on a single character. The best approach I found was to only put 2 points into a tree instead of the full 3 with a few exceptions. It let me go for a "good enough" generalized build rather than specializing in one area. The only ones I maxed out were control, exotic particle gens, and long range sensors. I'd take a screen for you but the game is down at the moment.

The only one I'd say is an absolute must have is the long range sensors. It basically eliminates the damage drop off from weapons. Cannon drop off was normalized with beams when the revamp happened so when you add that with the long range sensors it pretty much fixes all the problems cannons used to have. Your beams will benefit as well. This skill will benefit nearly every ship you fly. Sci boats and torp boats won't get much if anything out of it, but beam boats and cannon boats regardless of the build you use on them will.

zero2362

any skills I should avoid

nebfab

zero2362 wrote: »

any skills I should avoid

Well, one thing about the new system is that there are far fewer dead-end skills. In a kind of build you're after, I'd probably skip Drain Infection, the other similar skill in the control tree, and armour plating, and would invest only 1 pick in Damage Control and shield regen (cdr-level skills that only improve passive regen) because without any picks at all in them your base regen is actually lower than it used to be.

Everything else has its advantages and drawbacks, so it's more difficult to tell there. STOAcademy has updated their build planner with new skills so you can try different things there, and there's also Tribble.

lan451

I typically avoid the skills that decrease cooldowns on the bottom row. Between doffs and doubling up on powers you can get most of your powers on low enough cooldowns or possibly on global cooldown that those skills don't make a difference IMO. I felt like those were traps and that my points where best spent elsewhere.

nebfab

lan451 wrote: »

I typically avoid the skills that decrease cooldowns on the bottom row. Between doffs and doubling up on powers you can get most of your powers on low enough cooldowns or possibly on global cooldown that those skills don't make a difference IMO. I felt like those were traps and that my points where best spent elsewhere.

Sci one can be useful for exotic builds -- you can't duplicate GW3. Tac can be useful if you insist on flying a ship that has very limited tac seating...

But eng one is indeed probably best avoided in almost any basically sane build.

antonine3258

Long-range targeting is often considered worth dipping in for three points for (the diminishing returns is similar to the old system, with each point giving less of a bonus as invested). More boost for hull and shield repair is, given how systems currently work, probably worth more than capacity, for instance.

jaguarskx

For someone who flies different types of ships, the best thing to do is not spend more than 2 points in a specific skill tree since you only get 46 space points to distribute. Skills that can be avoided are:

Drain Infection - Drain abilities can cause some electrical damage to the ship, but not enough to justify spending a point.

Damage Control - This affects the passive hull repair rate of the ship. It is not necessary for Fed captains since human Boffs have the Leadership trait which improves passive hull repair and this trait stacks when you multiple active human Boffs on the bridge. For the KDF and RRF maybe it is worth spending 1 point if you do not know what to do with it.

Shield Regeneration - This affects how quickly the shields passively regenerates. In the grand scheme of things it's not necessary especially if you have multiple Boff shield heal abilities slotted.

Full Impulse Energy Shunt (FIES)- Typically when you fly at full impulse all power is devoted to engines except for 5 points in each of the other subsystems. This means if you are flying into combat at full throttle, your energy weapons will do the absolute minimum damage. Allocating one point in FIES will mean that power levels will only drop down to 25 so energy weapons does more minimum damage when coming out of full impulse and you can eventual recover full power more quickly. This can be offset by the use of Weapon Batteries and Emergency Power To Weapons which makes FIES less important.

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If you were to spend 3 points in any of the abilities, then I would say Long Range Target Sensors (LRTS) would be it... unless you fly a torpedo ship. At maximum weapon range the damage done by energy weapons is reduced by 50%. Each point allocated to LRTS decreases the damage loss by 10%. That means with 3 points allocated to LRTS when you are at maximum range the damage loss is only 20% compared to 50% with nothing allocated to this ability.

All of the other abilities are worth 1 or 2 point depending on what you want to prioritize. The "Readiness" abilities are all worth putting in one point to lower cooldowns on Boff abilities. However, if you have consoles or ship traits that lowers the cooldown period, then these are less important abilities.