Casual Player Returning

sharpfangjr

I've been away from the game for a lengthy amount of time now. I'm looking for build suggestions for ship and away teams. I'm not -that- interested in meta at the moment. I'd just like suggestions for reasonably obtainable gear and skills through reputation, the exchange, and quests. I currently want to shy away from z-store items and high tier equipment and ships from fleets. I just like to play around with missions, alerts, etc. As far as particular ships, I don't really have a preference.

mustrumridcully0

If you want to avoid C-Store stuff, be sure to do the Winter Event (which is still a bit off) to get a Tier 6 ship.

If you want it easy, take an Escort or Cruiser, and equip as many beams as you can, get them to Mark XIV as fast as possible, and use Beam Fire At Will, Emergency Power to Shields and Weapons, Tactical Team, hazard Emitters and Science Team.
If you have a ship that can be upgraded, try to get an upgrade token on the Exchange.

I believe the Iconian reputation set is now generally recommended.

Aside from the dilithium cost for upgrading gear and for the reputation gear, an effective build that leads you through every combat in the game isn't hard to get. It gets time consuming and expensive if you want to max out your build to do Advanced or Elite Queued content

gavinruneblade

Also play through the iconian war and the new temporal arc. there are great mission reward gear sets and unique items in those arcs.

in general, avoid the "ultimate" abilities in the skill trees. do not take them or build toward them they are traps. instead get the good stuff from each branch. also, do not assume "i am a tac captain so i will only take tactical skills" etc. all captains and all ships will have benefits from all skill paths.

in the spec tree, intel is great for flanking damage, if you get behind enemies (usually need a fast ship or a cloak) it is great.

pilot has some damage and lots of survival.

command has team buffs, and an exp boost.

strategy has personal buffs, enemy debuffs, and i have heard makes a great secondary. i have not tried it much yet myself. working on one now though.

temporal is currently the top damage specialization, very popular primary for both ground and space.

commando is a tanky ground option.

sharpfangjr

Thanks for the advice. Is there anywhere to find some current ship and away team builds?

gavinruneblade

https://m.reddit.com/r/stobuilds is the best place for that.

But also here on the official forums in the builds & powers subforum there are some good builds:

http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/categories/builds-powers-and-game-mechanics

sharpfangjr

Thanks. I'll check it out.

sharpfangjr

After going through all my characters, I've found one with a T6 ship - the Breen Rezreth Dreadnought Cruiser. I completely forgot I had it. It's on a tac captain.

gavinruneblade

the rezreth is an account-wide unlock. you should have it on all characters. look on the reputation page, events tab in the store.

sharpfangjr

Oh, ok. I'll do that. Know of any cheap builds to get me started? I found 80k build, but there's a lot I don't have readily available. Thinking about just starting a new character. I have so much to relearn and plenty of new stuff to learn.