Where to?

neveahscottis

Where to?

I am unable to progress through the Cardassian Struggle series of missions after having previously finished the Romulan Mystery story arc. There is a HUGE leap of difficulty between the two, and I find myself surprised since I just got myself a much better ship than I had beforehand, and that it is also only the next arc to take place chronologically. I feel that a Tier 4 or 5 token ship performed much better during the Romulan arc than my T6 Fleet in the Cardassian. It's like I got weaker.

The mission I am having difficulty with in particular is Jabberwocky, particularly with the vessels I encounter after crossing into the mirror universe in the Badlands. That being said, I noticed the increase in difficulty as soon as I got into combat during the first mission in the arc. Even my ground team was taking more damage and dishing out less than usual. The same could be applied to my toon. But it is definitely more noticeable in space battles. Heck, the friendly ship in earlier missions killed them a lot faster and pretty much did the work for me.

Is there something I'm missing here? I barely put a dent into them, yet they murder me rather quickly. I am spamming my healing and damage mitigation abilities non-stop as well as anti-resistance and damage boosting abilities to make it easier to damage foes.

I also tried searching for a walkthrough for this mission but it doesn't seem anyone else has had this problem, at least with this particular mission. One video did show the user take a lot of damage, but they were also able to dish out just as much. It looked A LOT easier for them, and quicker too.

Is it a bug? What is the problem?

Another thing to note is that I am now level 65. Whereas the last time I was doing missions, I may have been in either my 50s or just crossed 60; I do not recall exactly. Does the issue involve scaling? Does the system need work? Do I simply need better gear for my level? If so, I was under the impression that I could acquire the gear through misssions ...but I can't even beat them with the gear that I have. So how am I supposed to upgrade? Assuming, of course, this is the source of the problem.

I would also like to mention that I am a healer. I do not expect to be dealing as much damage as a DPS, but even for a healer I was dealing way too little. More importantly, as I am sure I would be the focus during PvP, I naturally focused on defensives when upgrading my character. There is just no real reason as far as I know for me to have been taking so much damage so quickly, especially in a story mission.

Thanks!

protoneous

If I recall correctly a lot of the ships in the mission use feedback pulse so you have to be more careful... using anything but kinetic or science abilities when they're using FBP will just get you killed. Meeting Mirror Leeta's fleet is one of the tougher boss fights as well.

neveahscottis

So STO pretty much endgame? Because a new player can get to 65 within the first week; I had experience points thrown at me like candy. How are they supposed to know all this?

protoneous

neveahscottis#2116 wrote: »

I am unable to progress through the Cardassian Struggle series of missions after having previously finished the Romulan Mystery story arc.[...]

Is there something I'm missing here? I barely put a dent into them, yet they murder me rather quickly.[...]

Is it a bug? What is the problem?

Another thing to note is that I am now level 65. Whereas the last time I was doing missions, I may have been in either my 50s or just crossed 60; I do not recall exactly. Does the issue involve scaling? Does the system need work? Do I simply need better gear for my level? [...]

I would also like to mention that I am a healer. I do not expect to be dealing as much damage as a DPS, but even for a healer I was dealing way too little.

More importantly, as I am sure I would be the focus during PvP, I naturally focused on defensives when upgrading my character. There is just no real reason as far as I know for me to have been taking so much damage so quickly, especially in a story mission.

In addition to this being one of the tougher early boss fights and having feedback pulse used by the enemy npc's which means basically you just blow yourself up by firing energy weapons at them when active there's a few other things that come to mind based upon your comments and some common issues from other posters and fleet mates recently having difficulties.

1. The mark or your gear. Blue Mk 12 gear can be used to fill in cheaply until you progress to get other better gear and sets from missions and mission replay as well as other sources. At level 65 all that gear you used to get to 50 isn't going to cut it. Yes, things do bite back harder due to scaling after level 50.
2. You're a healer. A timely good heal whether playing ground or space is always appreciated but don't be role limited especially when this game seems to understand damage better. During missions there's nobody to heal but yourself. This can be the case doing the queues as well where a full healer role could even get you an afk penalty. Consider keeping your canon role in your head for a bit and re-balancing your approach for efficiency's stake to killing the bad guys more effectively.
3. Back to roles again. A lot of the earlier missions seem very much like the TV shows to me at least. This is good. One thing I've seen both in the forums and within my fleet though is players that get too caught up in RP to the extent that it affects their game play success. This isn't playing "Battleship" so active and timely activation of abilities is needed. Using more than 1 or 2 torpedoes or using mines usually just decreases your damage unless you have a very specific build which I don't think you do or you would be able to progress.
4. The selection of your gear. Stick to one energy type. Use energy specific tactical consoles not the generic beam or cannon consoles. Aside from tac consoles that buff your weapons don't stack multiples of other types of consoles (i.e. neutronium eng consoles) due to diminishing returns. An exception might be people in science ships stacking control, drain, or epg consoles.
5. Your spec. If you create an account at the link provided and fill out your spec tree and boff abilities and then post a link to your build this can be very helpful. This link provides a framework with some of the more essential areas covered with plenty of points left over to do everything from heavy science to a 26 point tactical ultimate. I prefer a balanced build for newer toons myself. Framework Skill Points
6. Back to feedback pulse. When the bad guys sparkle click on empty space to de-select them as a target and stop firing. Look for their tag that indicates they're using the ability and try to remember which type of ships are using it. If you have your weapons set to auto-fire, consider right clicking them so they aren't green and firing them manually. Things that do indirect damage can still be used (abilities that don't involve direct energy damage)... tykens rift, tachyon beam, gravity well, and torpedos with a secondary effect i.e. plasma.

Like all things there's a learning curve and you will do better with practice and experimentation. STO can provide a lot of fun and entertainment so keep at it

davefenestrator

Also make sure you did not change the difficulty level for story missions to Elite at some point.

If your ship has Lt. Cdr. science, Gravity Well 1 + torp spread is an easy bit of space magic to mess up a group of enemies, especially if you have a special torp with an AOE effect. A fairly cheap one on the Exchange if you're still working on reputations is the Particle Emission Plasma torp.

antonine3258

Is it the Mirror ships causing some problems? Some of them have some very devastating kinetic special abilities, and they tend to use more self-repair abilities (engineering team, power to shields) than some other groups.