Shield capacity or regeneration?

scottybro1970

Ive been stocking up on shield regen instead of capacity. Both are vital but l am under the impression that regen is actually better to have in large quantities. Am l right?

mustrumridcully0

In my experience, regeneration is easily drowned out by shield healing powers, and shield capacity ,shield hardness and shield restoration are better investments.

mustrumridcully0

This reddit thread migh be interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/4emh8o/shield_regen_vs_hardness/

Looks like regeneration isn't as bad as I remembered. (And I am afraid the online skill calculators I found still use old descriptions for the skill that were only used for a while on Tribble and are not the final version.)
The regeneration bonus you gain from the skill is a percentage off your base shield capacity, it's basically seperate from the innate regeneration your shields have.

That means the higher the capacity of your shields is, the more you'll get out of the regeneration skill. As I understand, only the base capacity for the shields matter, not other sources of capacity.

The last time I checked the calculation for hardness vs capacity, it suggested that you should split points evenly across the two to get the most out of them. (particularly important if you don't want to max them, which you probably don't need to.)



For reference, the current rules for these skills:

• Starship Shield Restoration: +0.5% (active) shield healing; Skill Tree Picks: Shield Restoration (Improved, Advanced)
• Starship Shield Capacity: +0.3% shield hit points; Skill Tree Picks: Shield Capacity (Improved, Advanced)
• Starship Shield Regeneration:+0.1% maximum shield capacity regeneration/6 seconds; Skill Tree Picks: Shield Regeneration (Improved, Advanced)
• Starship Shield Hardness: +0.2% shield resistance; Skill Tree Pick: Shield Hardness (Improved, Advanced)

Base Skill Bonus: +50; Improved +35 (+85 total); Advanced +15 (+100 Total)

orondis

scottybro1970#1342 wrote: »

Ive been stocking up on shield regen instead of capacity. Both are vital but l am under the impression that regen is actually better to have in large quantities. Am l right?

Shield capacity helps resist spike damage, aswell as drains (which doesn't care about shield hardness).
Shield regen helps resist smaller persistent damage. It also helps vs kinetic since a small slither of a shield facing will pretty much nullify a torp.

Regen is probably the most useful in a Borg STF since all those shield drains will make it hard to keep your shields up.

Otherwise I'd focus more on shield capacity, with some points spent in regen. It really depends on what shield your going to use and how you play. If you generally have high shield power and are using a regen shield, I can certainly see the benefit in speccing in shield regen.

Just remember that passive shield regen is per 6 seconds, which is a long time when focused by a Borg gate.

lordsteve1

My view is that shield capacity and shield restoration are the better skills to go for.

Higher cap helps with spike damage as mentioned before. Higher restoration skill means your shield heals are better.

Now in my experience the native regen rate of ANY shield can be very easily overwhelmed with incoming damage, especially once you get onto advance and elite content. It's just not worth it in my opinion. Better to have a good skill to heal your shields when you want to with something like TSS, ST etc.

kyle223cat

I'd rather invest more heavily in things that actually restore your shields, so I like maximizing shield healing and regeneration. Shield hardness comes next and shield capacity is last. If you have a super high capacity but no heals and little regeneration, once your shields are gone they aren't gonna be coming back.

markhawkman

IIRC Native shield regen gets boosted by EPtS but maybe not the shield regen skill.