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Do you Mix & Match career and space skill paths? Or careers and ship types?
smi3th
Member Posts: 211 Arc User
in The Academy
What I mean by that is that the space skills are divided up into Engineering / Science / Tactical , and if you want Frenzy you need to put most of your points into one category. Is it ever a good idea to put your main skill points into a field other than the career you chose? Like a tactical guy putting most of his points into engineering or science?
Question 2: How about not bothering with Frenzy and just spreading out your points over all three categories?
Question 3: What about flying a ship that does not match your career, like an engineer flying escorts?
Thanks in advance.
Question 2: How about not bothering with Frenzy and just spreading out your points over all three categories?
Question 3: What about flying a ship that does not match your career, like an engineer flying escorts?
Thanks in advance.
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Is it a good idea? Would you do it to match the intended type of ship you intend to fly?
The engineer is best at managing power levels and taking a beating, whilst supporting the team with survivability and doing quite solid damage meanwhile.
The science is best at manipulating/disabling/debuffing enemies whilst buffing/supporting the team. They're really good at canceling large crowds of mobs and enabling explorative playstyles.
There is plenty of variation and you can make any captain work in any type ship or type of playstyle, at the cost of some performance.
Personally I don't find the ultimates worth it, so very few of my characters have them. Science ship characters typically go hard on the science tree, while most are a mix of skills, usually heavier on tactical, but some wade more into science than others for their build theme.
The key to remember with skills is the smaller return with more point investment. Skills typically give something like 50/35/15 for each point invested. So while 100 of a skill is great, maybe 85 is plenty, or even 50, because that point you save for the last 15 can get you 50 in another skill instead. Think about it like this, with 3 skill points you can have 150 total points of skills, 135, or just 100. I see it a lot in peoples builds that get shared here, they end up maxing out many of their skills which is usually not the best return on skill point investment at all.
Captain careers and ship type, meanwhile have always been mix and match. There hasn't really ever been a reason to line up tacs in escorts, engies in cruisers, and scis in sci ships. They all work in any ship just fine, just look at what the captain powers actually do and how you can make them work.
The only thing you really need to consider is your build theme. If I want to have a character running drain powers on an escort, obviously I need some science skills, especially the drain skills. But escorts are a weapon heavy ship, so a strong investment in tactical skills is likely, but then maybe I want it to be a tougher escort, so a heavier investment in engineering skills is part of the plan.
It is a balancing act, and the key is to look at what you want to do and what you don't want to do, as well as what you feel you need after playing around in the ship. If it blows up a lot, maybe you need some more points in the engineering tree, or in the science shields, and yes that may well mean sacrificing some damage output by taking a few skill points from the tactical tree.
I tend to use the DPS League method which is not popular around here so take it with a grain of salt. That method is basically this.. you'll have an easier time if you maximize your points to make you deal the most damage possible without being totally fragile at the same time.
You can find a point by point description of all the skill points here.
You can find the recommended skill trees here.
If you're not intending to do Elite Queues at any point and aren't going further then advanced, then do what you want. If you don't care about the numbers, you're not trying to maximize.. you just want to be able to play and have a 'descent' character.. then the advice you have been given will work just fine.
If you want to squeeze the most out of your character and/or you intend to do harder content down the line.. I would recommend using the league suggested trees, or a very close variation. You don't have to use it exactly, like all league sources it's a suggestion that's designed to be used as a guideline. My skill tree is 1 or 2 points different, but basically this is what I use and it works quite well. The ground template is slightly out of date, most people use the one I use in my Template here. Just click on Skills and then Ground from the top menu.
Good luck in whatever path you decide to follow.
These days, I find I actually tend to prefer to lean into science more than tactical - especially for Engineers. The Tactical and Engineering skilltrees tend to focus mostly on increasing raw stats, while science lines often introduce new mechanics and synergies(turning your drains and controls into exotic damage sources - like making the "Intrusive Energy Redirection" Engineering Captain Power into an Exotic Damage 'Death Aura', for example). It also gives you access to the fairly-rare-to-raise stat of shield hardness.
For most people, I'd generally suggest avoiding going for the deep/ultimate actives; you usually have to cut corners to specialize that far and you will feel/have to compensate for the weaknesses as a result. They're fine if you know what you're getting yourself into, but the builds for them are fairly inflexible. The only things I find Frenzy impactful for is elite content and soloing battlezone bosses/dreadnoughts - a single target debuff isn't really relevant for most other situations. The engineering Ultimate generally comes at too high of a cost for what it does - you have to sacrifice a lot of weapon and space magic damage to get it.
If you spec for the ship you are flying, do you stick with the one ship or do you respec when you switch ships? Obviously if you want to earn starship traits from maxing out your starship experience then you will go through several ships.
I use the same spec for all energy builds regardless of profession. The only time I would change it is if I was going to an exotic build or integrate torps.
Re-specs cost Zen, I just set one generic template and go with that. Re-spec also makes you re-slot all your personal ground and space traits.. just not something I want to do often. Easier to just have a basic template that works for everything like the one I suggested. Slot it and forget it.
Most ships that I thought would require at mixed skill tree usually have enough console room to make up differences perhaps in combination with a different deflector or space set, and possibly a change in primary specialization.
Food for thought...
This is my thoughts as well. How I spec regardless of the character, tends to be tac focused anyway. I look at the abilities, like Gravity Well as an example. If I am going to use that on my tac flying science ships, then I will probably stick to science ships or my Prometheus build that works well with Gravity Well. Focus on the bridge officer powers you want on your ships you plan on switching between to help you decide what slight variations you might need or want.
Personally, that's why I have alts. I build different characters to fit certain playstyles - which their builds reflect. I have multiple ships I switch between on some of them, but they're typically a similar playstyle so a different a skilltree isn't required.
I would never respec just to earn ship traits. That's crazy. These days, it takes maybe a few patrols if you're really not skilled well for the ship, which is definitely not worth burning a respec token. It feels like it takes longer to outfit the ship you want the trait from than to actually earn the trait.
Personally I have a lot of alts for different ships/themes/playstyles/whatever. Generally, if you have a character skilled for a science ship, they will work in any science ship build unless you went for a really niche build. And if you want to put them in an escort, they may not do as much weapons damage, but if the ship has the science slots to spare, they can be an interesting hybrid, strongly augmenting the weapons with whatever science magic the escort puts out. Tac and engineering skills tend to be more universally useful and work well whatever ship you're in.
the only ones who fly thier class ships are the engineers
It had a little bit of everything, I converted it as close as I can get to the current skill tree.
It gives me a little bit of everything.