What can a science captain who mains an escort do about shield-penetration and shield-drain?

shark58

Hello, I thought out my build a little before getting back into this game, and only now at level 44 do I realize that investing ship perk points into nothing but tactical things and shields is an awful idea. I finally feel comfortable around enemy ships with tachyon beams because I have a few equipped items that give drain expertise, but then I encountered a Breen ship with transphasic torpedoes while alone in a Deep Space Encounter and got seriously owned. This is likely because I have invested too little into hull-related skills and want to use a ship with a low hull capacity, meaning actions which make my shields pointless are devastating to me.

I still want to get enough tactical perks in the ship skill tree to get Focused Frenzy in hopes that getting Frenzied Reactions can lower the cooldowns of my BOFF abilities significantly enough to allow me to use abilities such as Engineering Team more often, but I am unsure if that idea or any other options are viable enough to actually make me less squishy. Have you found Focused Frenzy with Frenzied Reactions to have defensive potential? Would drain expertise perks still be favorable over hull-related perks in future situations? What other things do you recommend doing to improve how much my hull can take? Can I still get away with using my Tholian Meshweaver Escort regularly?

Sorry if that was a little confusing. Hopefully you know what all of those perks and abilities are. I mainly just want to hear what people who know this game a little better than I do have to day before I dig myself deeper.

foxrockssocks

In an escort type ship, unless you're using drain BOFF powers as part of your strategy, and thus finding reason to further buff it with consoles, you're never going to have enough to strongly counter shield drains, and even if you are using drain, resisting drains is still iffy, in an escort because you probably need to be approaching 300 drain to get some good resistance effects. While it may not be a realistic option in STFs where you have many spheres draining you at once, at least in solo play, you should use something like evasive maneuvers along with just general positioning with your ship to get out of a tachyon beam. Now that said I also wouldn't advise a big zero in drain either, as just like control, a single point helps, though primarily with power drains.

As for hull, if you ignored hull/engineering skills, your engineering team isn't going to be a lot of help as you have too little hull to offer a buffer and your engineering team heals too little to fix what is broken at a reliable rate. It would help if you share your build so we know what you were trying to do and have an idea of just how bad it may or may not be.

I would say as you've found, you've probably made things a lot harder on yourself by focusing so heavy on damage to the exclusion of hull and shields on a ship with already weak hull and shields, but its hard to know just what to do not knowing what exactly you've done.

Focused Frenzy is honestly terrible for defensive use. It is a 2 minute CD ability that only affects a single target and you get nothing once that target is dead.

For some basic advice, I'd grab two neutronium consoles and put them into your engineering slots, on the assumption you have ignored basic resistances too. Those alone will make a dramatic difference in hull survivability. Your shields probably aren't going to be that useful against a tachyon beam or other drains, but outside drains an escort can do fairly well with shields if you build it that way. But to stick on toughening up your survivability, you can also add the 2 piece Sol defense set from Midnight. Another option is either the Iconian Rep set or the Discovery Rep set. If you don't already have those things on your ship, you should notice a big difference in survivability.

shark58

Thank you for the advice. I doubt it is really too interesting, but here are my skills: https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/9fbc3a1b8eb0d68e65b174558544aef9

I am definitely going to spend a few points in hull capacity and plating as well as check out the sets you mentioned.

Unknown

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protoneous

shark58#8212 wrote: »

...here are my skills: https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/9fbc3a1b8eb0d68e65b174558544aef9

I am definitely going to spend a few points in hull capacity and plating as well as check out the sets you mentioned.

Hi,

Am not sure what you're trying to achieve with your science toon skill tree but you've missed 3 points into long range targeting sensors, a lot of power level related points (about 4), and have most likely overdone things with 3 points into shield restoration, shield capacity, and shield hardness.

3 points into any of the lieutenant skills is rarely if ever necessary aside from energy weapons and projectile training. 2 points could be used for a very solid support/sci/specialty build, with 1 point often doing just fine.

For some perspective here's a look at the parts of the skill tree that form the framework of many PvE builds - Link

Also check out these two skill trees. One is a full 27 point tac ultimate with the second being full science/epg/torp. Some advice given to me that seems to have passed the test of time (and trial and error) is to use or at least lean heavily towards one or the other. Of course you're the Captain so you may have something unique in mind.

27 point Tac Ultimate

Full Science

foxrockssocks

Looking over the skills you listed, one of your problems is obvious and we already knew about it, no points in hull capacity and 3 in shield capacity. Keep in mind the skill tree generally gives you the majority of the skill value with the first skill. They either give 50 or 60 to that skill with a single skill point, so with 2 skill points you can have 60 to two skills or 85 to one. That calculus is up to you to decide which is more valuable, of course, but some things like hull capacity and restoration are well work at least a single point. Also very valuable are a point into the ship power granting skills.

The other thing I found odd here is you haven't actually got any points in drain expertise, which means you have zero resistance to tachyon beams. I think you mistake shield hardness for a tachyon beam resistance, but that is not what that skill does. Shield hardness is actually pretty useful for a shield tanking build, but only against standard energy weapons, not against tachyon beams. Whether you want to go with 3 points in it is another question, though.

I also personally see very little value in the ultimates, as chasing them tends to leave some big holes in a build, but that is your choice.

Now your skill planner says level 44 on it, so I presume you have some skill points left to earn, so you can put them into some other places. Of course this also means the sets I suggested are out of reach for a while yet. However, this tells me there is another problem here. Namely if you're level 44 and having a lot of trouble, it isn't your skill tree that is the issue because while the game is getting into its actual difficulty levels, its still not there yet because as you may be aware, you don't have much access to set gear or fleet gear, and the game is balanced with that in mind.

You're probably most needing to improve your piloting and BOFF power usage skills, as a player. Your ship is very tac heavy, so your BOFF skills to help you survive need to be considered carefully. I don't know what BOFF skills you are using, or what exact problems you're having, besides apparently losing your shields to tachyon beams. I'd look at using attack pattern delta or attack pattern omega in your regular rotation at the least, and a tac team or two. Your eng and sci BOFFs probably chiefly need to be focused on healing. Of course if you don't have any points to give you power levels, your aux power may be so low that it doesn't help your healing options that use aux power. But again, I think general piloting may be more of what you want to focus on, certainly in maneuvering to get out of tachyon beams in that 4s they last, and getting your ship into position on the side or rear of enemy ships, as well as using your existing BOFF powers more effectively.