Any good builds for Kor bird-of-prey?

sharpfangjr

I'm planning on leveling a new captain and thought I'd use the promotional ship that levels with the captain. Any builds that are sturdy and do decent damage? I just don't like leveling a glass cannon. Another question: Beams or cannons?

Edit: I mixed up B'Rotlh and the Kor.

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protoneous

sharpfangjr#5006 wrote: »

I'm planning on leveling a new captain and thought I'd use the promotional ship that levels with the captain. Any builds that are sturdy and do decent damage? I just don't like leveling a glass cannon. Another question: Beams or cannons?

Edit: I mixed up B'Rotlh and the Kor.

I levelled my 2255 recruit using the promotional ship with cannons. I found that cannons do a good job at ambush kills with their high spike damage and are also very 'canon' for a Bird of Prey. It's a fun ship to level with (and comes with a great starship mastery trait for cannons) and seems to work just fine for end game advanced TFO's. The Kor and the c-store version of the promo ship M'Chla Pilot BoP also work.

I don't consider the ship a glass cannon but it does take some getting used to flying with less hull - this is part of being a recruit. At the current build point using crafted weapons, mission rewards, and some fleet and early reputation gear it's a pleasure to fly. I've tried to push the damage part of things as much as possible as BoP's seem to be good at their role of getting things over and done with quickly.

While levelling up I did add two conn officers for tactical team cool down and two damage control engineers for EPtX cool down relatively early. Also an emergency conn officer to have EPtE reset evasive maneuvers. I got rid of the torpedo and went all disruptor cannons and turrets as soon as my level allowed for a copy each of cannon scatter volley / rapid fire. Attack pattern beta x2 was added next. The tactical ability Best Served Cold from the winter event store seems to be a good economical filler for tactical boff spots.

To avoid active duty doff costs while leveling there's enough room to double up tactical team and emergency power to weapons. I did use a single key to execute a tray of my tactical boff abilities and weapons power as per this video. It just makes things so much easier to not have click on EPtW > CSV > APB > BSC > TT repeatedly to allow for focusing on piloting. You can even 'pre-buff' quickly just before leaving cloak! Watching and applying lessons in the video may will change your game so much you'll be amazed!

Some items shown in the linked spec are yet to come with reputation advances so will mention what worked for me while leveling, what's still in use, and what's still to come -

The boff layout I used ended up staying Cmdr Tac, LtC Tac, LtC Eng, Lt Sci pretty much throughout levelling and into doing TFO's and events. The LtC Eng now includes EPtE1, A2SIF1, and EPtW3 but was 2x EPtW while levelling. The Lt Sci uses PH1 and HE2 but was HE1 and ST2 while leveling. Am still using Best Served Cold as a filler for tactical ensign and LtC slots with doffed TT1, 2x APB 1, and CSV2 and 3.

Front weapons - currently crafted dual heavy cannons with one dual cannon and Disruptor Quad Cannons. Will be adding one Terran Task Force reputation disruptor cannon in the #1 weapons slot and replacing the crafted dual cannon with a crafted wide angle DHC from the exchange.

Space Set - Quantum Phase mission reward shields and engine are still working fine. A crafted Mk II Deuterium W->A got me to end game. W ->E would be fine. It's since been upgraded to a Fleet Elite Plasma-Integrated Warp Core that adds some power transfer rate into the mix. Deflector was any positron deflector until adding the QP mission deflector for the 3 piece damage clickie. It's been replaced by a Colony Intervention deflector array for the added CrtH and tactical stats both which really seem to make a noticeable difference. The 2 piece Discovery rep shield and core are en route once they becomes available.

Rear Weapons - Was 2x crafted disruptor turrets. One has been replaced with an early reputation heavy bio-molecular turret.

Engineering Consoles - DPRM (can be replaced with the mission reward Trellium-D Plating), mission reward console House Martok Defensive Config Engineering Console, repution Hydrodynamics Compensator for 2 pc with turret.

Science Consoles - mission reward Nausicaan Siphon Capacitor, mission reward Temporal Disentanglement Suite

Tactical Consoles - all energy specific disruptor induction coils, now using fleet spire locator consoles. Will add the Discovery rep tactical console when it become available.

Good filler consoles - mission reward Reinforced Armaments Engineering Console, Priors World Elite Defense Satellite.

Starship traits - emergency weapons cycle and withering barrage seem to be the important ones. Am also trying the trait from the event Khitomer Alliance Battlecruiser just out of curiosity.

Skill Tree - I'd go all in for both the ground and space skill tree's. It goes with the theme of ending arguments early to avoid prolonged battles. This doesn't mean squishy! There's one space skill point yet to be allocated and it's likely to go to a second point in shield hardness. Seems the second point I usually put in impulse expertise may not be needed in a ship that already turns fast. Season to taste but try and keep 27 points into tactical. Focused build > all purpose build in my experience.

Build includes ground as well with the thematic melee weapon being used to greatest effect being the Dual Nanopulse Mek'leths. A superb melee weapon for many advanced TFO's and missions if you like to move fast. I'd keep your choice of a ranged weapon handy also but melee combat in STO provides very fast and effective combat with practice. There's going to be a few changes to the ground setup once more reputation items are available.

Space and ground build for my 2255 kdf recruit.

It's a work in progress but has been a lot of fun right from the start.

foxrockssocks

The Kor is able to be a lot of things, and the BOP used to be a way for the KDF to do science effectively until secondary deflectors came into the game. It can still run GW3 if you care to, but science DPS is going to lack without the secondary deflector. It is also one of the most fragile T6 ships in the game.

It is a ship that is probably best setup as a cannon boat, and there's plenty of advice for that already. To make it tougher, though, if you have the Voth Power Subcore console, that is fantastic for making your shields last longer. Personally I like a turn rate console on every ship, if not two, but the Kor doesn't need even one, so you can use armor consoles or HP consoles like the Martok console from Brushfire and the Trellium D from Ragnarok.

Flanking is what gives the ship most of its pew pew power, so you also want some maneuverability. You might want more turn rate anyway, battle cloak can easily work for that, but more than that, you want speed. Emergency power to engines is highly worth considering alongside EPTW to get you behind your target. This can be a problem, though, in STFs, as most teams don't care about flanking which can leave you beating on the rear shields of a boss while the team is burning through the front, so consider that when deciding how to attack.

Finally, to touch again on the flexibility of the BOP, it is the most adaptive ship in the game. If you want a tac commander, you can have one. If you find five minutes later you need a sci commander, you can just swap your BOFFs as soon as you can drop out of combat. Set them up with that in mind and explore the possibilities.

protoneous

Photos of the build described above at current level of progress -

protoneous

Here's an update on the build pictured and linked above that's applicable to the 2255 recruitment BoP, Kor Bird of Prey, and the recruit ship's Z-store cousin the M'Chla Pilot Bird of Prey that now includes some Tier 5 reputation items, a few more specialization point earned and other changes mentioned as well as one unplanned change.

The change that wasn't exactly planned was switching the mix of storyline, crafted, and fleet gear pictured above to the Temer Alliance Raider. The improvement in performance was immediately noticeable

The combination of extra hull, an extra forward weapon, a couple of console slots, and better hull and shield modifiers with only a small loss in turn rate seems to really help with respect to durability and the ability to do damage.

Some additional specialization points earned and put into Intel's flanking bonus (Tier 3 - Space) in combination with raider flanking made flanking attacks noticeably stronger. Strategist had already been completed as a secondary specialization.

The 5/1 weapons layout allowed for retaining the reputation turret in the rear and the addition of an extra dual heavy cannon in front. The increased console space was used for an extra tactical console and one filler console mentioned above - the Reinforced Armaments Engineering Console mission reward for extra hull capacity, healing and power transfer rate.

Completing Tier 5 reputations and adding newly available reputation gear mentioned in the build link above seems to make a good ship even better (no matter which you choose to captain) with even more hull and resulting CrtH via Tyler's Duality, a far higher hull regen rate, as well as engines that allow for faster movement around the map in a predictable manner, on top of having an emergency conn officer already equipped.

Space reputation traits being used are - Precision, Advanced Targeting Systems, Tyler's Duality, Auxiliary Power Config Offence, and Energy Refrequencer.

Even though this is a space build thread the ground portion of it for 2255 kdf recruits has stayed pretty well the same with the only change being swapping the mission awarded Physical Augmentation Utility Armor to Burnham's CQC Environmental Suit that should be the only armor needed for pretty well everything for a long time to come as it allows for operating in a vacuum and also boosts physical damage.