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What weapon sets are people using when they seriously slaughter the Borg during red alerts?
littlesarbonn
Member Posts: 486 Arc User
I've tried building up my ship captains with some pretty powerful ships, and they do semi-okay in missions, but they're nowhere near as awesome as some people I've seen. The other night, went into a Borg Red Alert, and there was a ship that literally slaughtered Borg cubes like a knife through butter. Almost instantaneous slaughter.
And this isn't the first time I've seen this. I have yet to come even close to being able to do that kind of damage, and believe me, I've tried.
So, those who know, what exactly are they using to do this? The old, well, go to a site that shows you good builds and you'll know is a nonstarter cause I've done that, and still, nowhere near the amount of damage these guys are putting out. Without someone turning this into a flame fest, what are these captains doing (and using) that is doing this sort of damage?
And this isn't the first time I've seen this. I have yet to come even close to being able to do that kind of damage, and believe me, I've tried.
So, those who know, what exactly are they using to do this? The old, well, go to a site that shows you good builds and you'll know is a nonstarter cause I've done that, and still, nowhere near the amount of damage these guys are putting out. Without someone turning this into a flame fest, what are these captains doing (and using) that is doing this sort of damage?
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
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The most important thing though: a coherent build for whatever you want to play. Mixing stuff without a plan or certain thresholts of specific stats in mind, won't ever end well. If you really want to do damage though, it's gonna be expensive and very time intensive depending on what you already have and what still needs to be unlocked etc.
Also high uptime on your active abilities and buffs is also something very high on the "important" list of things when it comes to dps. but that's always a tad different depending on ship/setup etc and should be planned ahead when deciding on a ship/seating loadout etc.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
Well as crit consoles goes:
Tac: Vulnerability locators 2% crit chance+ 37% [at mk15 epic - relatively cheap to get really] (or more now? for each of them, thier damage bonus stacks, so that's what should be in your tactical console slots at all time. The more the better. You can go with Exploiters IF you hit about 30% Without the locators (usually only possible as a romulan - maybe with vanguard jem'hadar once the trait is fixed)
Universal: Omega Rep (Assimilated) + Quantum Entaglement (Mission: Butterfly - Iconian War), Tachyokinetic and bioneural infusion consoles (Both 200 Lobi Each) are the most important "must have" ones for any crit build really. There are variations but this is what you should initially get (except the lobi ones, they're for min-maxing and can cost you around 500 million each depending on how many keys it takes for you to get to 200 lobi).
And yeah, what coldnapalm said above, he knows most likely way more about the whole thing than i do.
The quoted reply is the answer to littlesarbonn's question.
STO is more about synergy then anything else. You chose how you want to deal with the enemy then put everything into that method.
Hear is how I do it with my main (Fed, Science in Science Ship)
Lets use Cure Space Advanced as the example, as we are talking about Poping Borg cubes.
I use full power to my auxiliary subsystem, and gear that gives me Bonuses to CtrlX, EpG and Exotic Damage. I use traits to reduce the cool down on science and tactical abilities and to boost exotic damage and critical damage.
For weapons I use the Chronometer Calculations Set (for its bonus to exotic damage ability), the two piece Protonic Arsenal set (for crit chance bonus) and a Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo for the exotic damage clouds it creates.
When the mission starts I hit emergency power to engines and evasive to get me to one of the cubes as quickly as possible without draining subsystem power. On the way I hit healing abilities which, thanks to research lab consoles, give me a boost to exotic damage, and I hit other damage boosting buffs.
When I get in range I plop a 24km gravity well on one of the nanite probes directly under the cube. I add subspace vortex, torpedo spread, destabilizing resonance beam and either ionic turbulence or chronometric inversion field depending upon what science ship I am flying.
The probes, the cube and the birds of pray all die. Some times the cube dies before the probes do. From the start of the mission, to the death of the cube and everything under it takes maybe 20 seconds if I don't mess up my piloting, if i don't suffer from interface lag and if no one else heads to the cube I chose.
If I didn't include travel and buffing time then the the time to pop everything would be better, as it would be if i used a tactical captain or a romulan.
So any way, you asked how its done. Thats how I do it, and more or less how many other science ship captains do it. How the Beam, Cannon and Torpedo enthusiast captains do it I will leave for them to explain.
A console that increases your critical hit chance or severity.
The tactical consoles from the spire are best in slot crit consoles for many conventional builds. There are also some universal consoles that can boost your crit, some are reputation rewards like the assimilated module, some are from the lobi store, like to tachyokinetic converter, and some are mission rewards like the temporal disentanglement suite.
It's a mix of not only the gear on your ship, but how and when you use it. It's not just about slotting powerful gear, it's managing power levels, using your abilities in a logical rotation and placement of your ship.
The first thing I would suggest, is let us know what type of ship you want to build into your ultimate borg slayer. Once we know what ship you intend to use, we can start to nail down a build. After that, we can go over exactly how to use it.
Once you get the hang of it, you'll be surprised how quickly you can take things like Borg down. I have a Romulan in a T6 Mogai that can literally destroy 2 cubes close together before the decloaking animation completely finishes. It's great!
I'd also add that "piloting" plays a huge part. Not only flying the ships, but the order and timing of how you push the clickies makes a big difference. Knowing that distribute shields interrupts the firing cycle or that you push FAW after EPtW can have a huge impact on damage output.
The reality is that a large number (not all, but many) of high dps folks use keybinds, I'd guess.
JVDC does really well against them too.
The monkeys that carry the valuable highly-opinionated players throughout content.
Here you go, I filled out all of my space stuff for you (Equipment, DOffs, BOffs, Captain Skills and Traits):
https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/dd6b6ae2400096ed5683ce690c880b33
Romulan Tac - Anti-proton [dmg]x3[pen], fleet crit consoles, crystal AP torpedo
Everyone else - Disruptor [CrtD]x3[pen], fleet crit consoles, nausican disruptor torp + weapon + console, terran disruptor
- Beam fire at will, torp spread, kemo weapons are a must. (cannon scatter if your in to cannons)
- Be sure to have one or two tactical teams slotted as well as science team, emerg pow shields, and hull heals especially hazard emitters for dot removal.
- Attack patterns if you can slot em. Beta works, delta for some defense I think? Omega to get out of tight spots.
My character Tsin'xing
Red Matter Capacitor - available from Phoenix, boosts all power levels, but has loooooong cooldown.
Battery Exotic Particle Flood - to boost exotic damage, or many of the other specialised batteries from R&D
Deuterium Surplus - available from the Alhena daily, a nearly forgotten daily available at the very bottom of the Beta quadrant. The Deuterium Surplus is a consumable device that in effect gives you a second Evasive Maneuvers. You can get four of these per day, just remember to drive around to each of the deuterium tanks after all the True Way baddies are dead. There are three tanks and the rude Ferenghi (is that redundant?) will give you one.
There are many other useful things to put in device slots, but these three are my favourites on Science builds.
You also need to pay attention to your choice of Active Space DOFFs.
As far as information, Lucho posted this thread on CtrlX, with a title trolling an angry comment by a certain dev who shall remain nameless. When building a Sci ship, it's easy to get so obsessed with EPG that we forget CtrlX, yet CtrlX is needed to make that GW3 truly deadly, among other things.
Lastly, this thread here, though long out of date, is still the best & most comprehensive summary available (TTBOMK) of math and damage categories. An understanding of those categories can be most useful, given the effect of Diminishing Returns. And it never hurts to understand just how the damage math works.
Reducing the damage resistance of your opponents goes a LONG way in increasing the amount of your damage. Attack Pattern Beta 3 with Romulan engines and attack pattern training can easily make the difference between killing an enemy in a single salvo or taking 3+ firing cycles to kill. Disruptors naturally have this effect baked into them, and there are a myriad of ways to lower resistances further - both for hull and shields. If you're wondering: yes, resistances can go negative, and it's why it makes such a large impact.
Critical damage is pretty straightforward. You crit, you do several times more damage; it quickly balloons higher the further you raise your 'severity'.
If you're not at full power every time your weapons fire, you're not doing full damage. There are few ways to completely avoid this with energy weapons, but everything you can do to both cut power drain, speed up replenishment, and build an 'overcap' reserve of weapon energy all adds up. ("Space Magic" and Kinetic builds dump power in Aux instead, but they don't really have to worry about power drain like conventional energy weapon builds do.)
Beyond that, there is also cooldown reduction(self explanatory) and damage amplification(which is why Tactical Captains are the heavy-handed favorites - they get so many native damage multipliers that things quickly and easily snowball to absurd numbers). Damage Amplification is honestly a pretty indepth and frankly convoluted subject(there are multiple "Categories" and stacking variations that range from everything including captain abilities, space traits, starship traits, reptuation traits, consoles, set bonuses, bridge officers, and the list goes on and on and on). It's also, in my subjective opinion, the root of all the scaling issues this game has at the 'end game' - if you want to break the game, this is what you 'abuse' to do so.
Additionally, there are two other ways to further reduce your time-to-kill, but they don't really come into effect on pure energy weapon ships very often: Slows and Drains. These methods don't directly increase your actual damage, but they do indirectly effect how quickly you(and everyone you're flying with) can blow things up.
Defense Rating is the single most effective way to mitigate damage and a lot of Defense Rating comes simply from movement(which is why "speed-tanking" is so powerful). Immobilizing an enemy cuts down their defense rating and allows you to fully hit them with all the raw damage you're packing. Beyond simple tractor beams/tractor mines, disabling the sensors(range) of most NPCs will cause them to stop dead in their tracks, effectively immobilizing them until they are able to acquire a target. The "Subspace Integration Circuit" Universal Console is a prime example of an AoE Mobility/Perception/Defense stripping application of this method.
By proxy, sufficiently powerful drain builds can not only immobilize foes(thus removing their defense), it can even shut down their shields entirely, allowing you to completely bypass any shielding(and the resistances of said shielding). This can easily halve(or more) the 'effective health' of most enemies before firing a single shot. Even if you don't have a drain build strong enough to disable systems, reducing the power level of an opponents' shields can make a substantial impact on the effectiveness of their shield's ability to mitigate damage - while potentially weakening their damage output/increasing your survivability at the same time.
I'm assuming you're using a normal energy build (so not an exotic, torpedo or drain build etc.)
First: the already mentioned Spire consoles. Get some of these, they are not cheap in terms of fleet credits, but they are cheap to upgrade - and generally speaking it's always a good thing to start by upgrading your tac consoles, now that I mention it, followed by your weapons.
Fill your Tactical console slots with these, preferably of the same, single weapon type you have chosen.
Second: Get set bonuses. There are many of these. The Dyson arc contains a warp core + omni antiproton beam that further boost antiproton damage. The Bajoran set boosts plasma, disruptor and phaser damage, as do several consoles that can be found on the exchange (https://sto.gamepedia.com/Synergistic_Retrofitting_Set). The items themselves aren't that amazing, but the passive boost definitely is.
For disruptor, you can (or should I say: should) also take a loot at the first episode in the Lukari arc, Echoes of light. The set reward from that episode consists of a console which boosts disruptor damage, while the 3-piece bonus also gives a significant amount of hull penetration and more disruptor damage.
Third: get more consoles that boost damage. For antiproton, search the exchange for 'polymorphic probe array', it boosts AP damage. If you did the Breach event, that console also boosts AP damage and if you have access to the Phoenix store, the Crystalline console that's in there also gives a nice bonus to AP.
For disruptor, take a look at Echoes of light and the aforementioned stuff.
For plasma: search the exhange for 'plasma wave'.
For phaser, there's an useful console in the mission 'Sunrise', while the aforementioned consoles from the Synergistic Retrofitting Set do the same.
Important note: place these consoles in your Science or Engineering console slots, not in your tactical slots. The more damage boosts you put on your ship, the better but reserve the tactical slots for the Spire consoles as they're the best overall.
Fourth: get the necessary skills. This is a bit more difficult as there are more options here, but generally speaking you'll want to make sure that Tactical team is always (or almost always) active. If you have the Reciprocity trait, that should help. If you don't, then a Conn doff officer may be useful. But I would try to get Reciprocity, and perhaps All hands on Deck. Being able to use your captain abilities more often should in itself already boost your DPS but it also helps in that you can slot more different abilities because you'll need less copies of each single ability (so only one tactical team for instance, instead of two to guarantee you get the max up-time).
By the time you have done these things, your performance should already be a lot better. Most of these things can be done without spending too many resources. Some of the consoles I have mentioned are either free from episodes, or a few days of Admiralty should help you get the needed EC. The only thing that can be quite expensive, is upgrading your weapons - unless a Phoenix event is coming soon, but there's no way to be sure of that.
Quick Recap of the current DPS Space Meta.
And whatever you do.. never..ever take build advice from anyone in Zone chat at ESD. The bad advice thrown around there is mind boggling. That's just a quick path to an expensive and sub optimal build.
ESD Zone is not your friend.
The Lukari console from the anniversary ship is another very viable option for an emergency heal
Message me in-game (@tm706) for help
1st Alpha Quadrant Fleet
Not that the Samsar console is bad, it isn't.. but the Protomater Field Projector heals the entire team.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
(3 piece)
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Entoiled_Technology_Set
(2 pieces, beam and console)
https://sto.gamepedia.com/House_Martok_Skirmisher_Configuration
(Beam array or cannon depending on your weapon choice)
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Terran_Task_Force_Munitions
That will give you a good boost with Disruptor damage.