Engineer Captain Build?

amazingproton

I've been trying to find any source of up to date Engineer Career builds. I can only seem to find stuff pre 2021.

Please help direct me to a fun build... preferably one which is complete with skill selections. I am not so certain there will be one with Boffs selections. but I think the main thing is Skills and ship types to look for.

amazingproton

I've tried to use STO-Builds but several of them are dated 2015, and aren't all complete builds.

Many Engineer ships have a Tactical Career Captain.. I can't seem to find any with an Engineer Captain.

eazzie

@darkbladejk You are pretty adept at builds, can you offer any guidance.

qultuq

The MMO trinity never really worked in STO. No matter your Captain’s profession, specializing in the tactical skill tree is going to be your most effective option. That being said—Darkblade is one of the best tank-build players in the game. So if you really want an Engineer tank build he would have probably have solid advice. The other problem is most random pugs don’t really need a tank. You really want to run with a dedicated DPS team if you want to make the most of a very specialized build like that. But again, Darkblade would know better.

darkbladejk

Before getting started, I appreciate the vote of confidence in my tank ability gents, but I don't know that I would go as far as to say best in game. But I won't argue with you either

Shameless plugs and joking aside, before I actually offer anything beyond general advice, the first question I'm going to ask is, what do you like doing in games and what do you want to do? STO doesn't have the trinity of dedicated tank, dedicated healer, dedicated DPS. STO is more of a duo of Tank and DPS with the ability to heal being something anyone can have.

Any captain type can be made to survive and tank, or deal great DPS. Likewise any ship can be made to deal great damage and tank. To give you some ideas, I have tanked in an Aquarius before as tiny as that thing is. My main is also a tactical captain but can put out healing rivaling or even exceeding that of any engineer in game. Essentially your captain type determines some baseline abilities you will have and certain types of kits you will have access to on the ground, and that's about it.

The big question I would ask is what do you want to do? Do you see yourself as wanting more of a tank build to keep the threat and survive? Do you want to melt things as a DPS? Or do you want something thats sort of in the middle? I can help you with pretty much any kind of build you could want. What do you see yourself doing ideally?

amazingproton

@darkbladejk

Thank you and everyone for the replies.

So what I wanted to do as an engineer captain is typically what I normally like to play. Mostly to be able to solo and hold my own in difficult combat but something hybrid enough to work with teams for things like task force. A quintessential PVE Tank, I don't really do PVP.

Something I can carry to the end of the game and perform well in most end game content. Doesn't have to be the best of the best, an average tank would be fine.

The game has so many layers, it's hard for me to understand all of it.


Any cookie cutter build that will be viable up to end game would be fine.


Very big mahalo in advance.

darkbladejk

If you're wanting to do a tank build that I can definitely help with. So a couple of questions first. Do you have access to the Kobali Samsar, and do you have access to the Lukari Ho'kuun science vessel? These have 2 very potent consoles on them that can be used for tanking. If you don't that's fine and can be worked around.

A couple of other ships to ask about, do you have access to the Narendra and Arbiter or faction variants of them? Arbiter comes with a nice tank console and the Narendra's trait is a godsend for tanking. Once i have an idea of what you have access to I can make some more tailored recommendations. Lastly for the ships, is there a particular ship you want to turn into a tank?

Equipment wise, how much are you willing and/or able to invest? Typically when working with builds I have 3 levels I work with.

-Barbones: These builds assume a maximum EC spending limit of 2m ec and everything else is free gear from missions.
-midrange: these builds assume maximum ec spending of 30m ec and enough dilithium to max out one item. assumes everything beyond that is free.
-high end: assumes enough lobi to get 2 items but otherwise no spending limits.

Those are the generalized builds. If you want something more tailored we can do that too.

amazingproton

@darkbladejk

Ah, well okay so I guess I have to admit that my character is brand new. So I won't have access to those ships you mentioned... But i can put them on a list of ships to look for as I get closer to accessing them. I guess for now, a good Leveling Tank would be fine.. I suppose, you can show me what a good End Game Ship would look like, possibly what Space and Ground Skills were picked, and which Boffs were used with the preferred Skills they use. Essentially a photocopy of what you use now, couple of tweaks if it needs be...

And then possibly a small Leveling guide on which ship types to look for as I progress through the story. I can try to figure out the weapons and other systems as I go.

If it's not too much trouble. I really do appreciate it.

darkbladejk

one final question and I can put something together for you. What ship do you have that you would want to use currently as the base?

amazingproton

@darkbladejk oh to be honest my character is new, so I only have the 1st free ship, the one that looks like TOS Enterprise.

Most of the rest of the ships are level locked. I do have a 700 day veteran bonus so I have some of the free VIP ships. I'm not home at the moment so I can't check my drydock, but there were about 8 or 9 free ships and shuttles given to me.

I guess just as I'm leveling, a general guide on what types of ships to look for and what types of consoles, ship and ground skills, and Boff skills to train would be good. And then maybe the final end game build to be something I could save up for.

amazingproton

@darkbladejk I guess for now, do you have any recommendations that will help me level up to meet the specs of an end game ship? Resources to save or strive for, Boffs and Doffs to look for, Space and Ground Skills to pick, and the types of ships and consoles to look for until I get to the level needed for a ship you would use?

darkbladejk

If you have access to the t5 ships like the chimera you probably also have access to the t6 variants of those ships. Since you're newer I'm going to give you a barebones budget build for the Manticore t6 ship. For this budget I'm assuming you have 2m ec to spend and all other items are drops.

For now what i'm going to give you in this build link is purely free stuff you can get. This is not meant to be the final product you ever use, but a starting point we can work with for later. It's meant to give you a decent balance of survival and knockdown power. Be sure to click through the various tabs to see what it is there. I left info in the notes section so you can see where to get everything. I didn't touch the reputation system much because that will come with time and eventually you'll want to replace some of those items with things you get from rep.

https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/af2ebe57a202bcfa3ecf039595ff8c50

Please let me know if the link below doesn't work. If slots were left blank it was because the slot wasn't available, it's personal choice with what you put in there, or not enough stuff to fill some of the slots. This build also assumes that you have eventually upgraded the ship with an experimental upgrade, which thankfully you should have one of tomorrow. If you want help with ground stuff I can do that too. Hope this helps.

eazzie

@darkbladejk TY for going above and beyond

LLAP \\//

amazingproton

@darkbladejk I really appreciate what youve provided. I'll have to work on getting up to that level.. My character is less than level 10 at the moment so I don't have access to anything over the first Tier of ships, nor do I have anywhere near 2 Million EC. So it'll be a long journey to get it to that point. Getting there, i'm not sure yet what to do.

eazzie

amazingproton wrote: »

@darkbladejk I really appreciate what youve provided. I'll have to work on getting up to that level.. My character is less than level 10 at the moment so I don't have access to anything over the first Tier of ships, nor do I have anywhere near 2 Million EC. So it'll be a long journey to get it to that point. Getting there, i'm not sure yet what to do.

For inspiration to you ..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLs4MGTTXRU

Be sure (if you have Zen) to buy the increased EC level cap

darkbladejk

amazingproton wrote: »

@darkbladejk I really appreciate what youve provided. I'll have to work on getting up to that level.. My character is less than level 10 at the moment so I don't have access to anything over the first Tier of ships, nor do I have anywhere near 2 Million EC. So it'll be a long journey to get it to that point. Getting there, i'm not sure yet what to do.

While I typically assume 2m ec for barebones budgets, that one never touched the EC. it's all free stuff or things that come with the ship. If you go to the ship vendor on ESD and filter to t6, you should be able to scroll through and see the manticore. You can claim the manticore and use it to level with you.

For now as you're level 10, my recommendation would be to use all beam arrays and one torpedo. Use the torpedo on the front of your ship and make everything else a beam array. For now don't worry so much about every little detail, work on getting to 65. If you get stuck or need help, you are welcome to PM me.

amazingproton

@darkbladejk thanks I'll work on it

crazedmike

Since the question seems pretty general, I think I'm going to address perhaps the root cause which I imagine would be along the lines of "How do I get my Engineering Captain to output more damage?" I feel Engineering Captains are generally misunderstood and don't get utilized to their fullest potential (especially considering all the traits we now have at our disposal vs days gone by).

Recently, I've been able to absolutely supercharge my Engineering Captains with a simple innocuous Starship Trait: Onboard Dilithium Recrystalizer. It's a lockbox trait that's part of Infinity for a while, and the interesting thing about this trait is how it interacts with certain key functions of Engineers.

First, you'll note the ability says "Engineering ability" not SIMPLY bridge officer ability. That means it procs EVERY single time you use one of your Engineering Captain/Boff abilities (with exception to generics such as Evasive/Brace). Since you have EPS Power Transfer already, it's very very easy for Engineers to get their 3 power levels to max, allowing a +30% Category 2 damage bonus to WHATEVER build you're doing. It applies to all damage.

Interestingly enough, it also procs off of every tick of the Admiral level AoE Power drain ability. Meaning after about 4s or so you'll find your power levels completely maxed off of a single Captain ability without use of EPS transfer. If you use them sequentially, you basically get a 45s period of maximum and/or overcapped power levels.

With all this in mind, a simple addition of Intelligence Agent Attache or even something else to cooldown Captain abilities such as the Presidio trait allows you to essentially constantly keep your power levels maxed (By repeated use of a well cooled down EPS Power Transfer) as well as +30% Cat2 damage bonus to everything. Pretty much always all the time.

Sounds pretty good eh? If you add on the EPS Overload personal space trait this also enhances your EPS Power Transfer (which you are now using more frequently) and allows you to time it depending on what kind of bonus you want. With Torpedo or Science based builds you can tank your weapon power and juice Auxiliary to allow +20% Crit Severity. With the bonuses already provided by others, EPS Power Transfer arguably becomes just as if not more powerful than Attack Pattern Alpha. Nevermind the versatility of being able to give it to others if you so desire.

But condidering that with this kind of setup, you're also going to be cooling down your Rotate Shield Frequency as well as Miracle Worker, you can skimp out on so many heals on your bridge officer slots to allow you to run a more aggressive setup while still being fairly tanky.

In terms of skill selection, my general philosophy on the matter is that I'm picking the ship, then I figure out how I'm going to set it up. Once I figure out how I'm going to set it up (Boff abilities/weapons/consoles etc) then I fine tune and figure out how to min-max the skill tree to my liking. I do things a little backwards in terms of how I build my ships, since I'm usually selecting a Captain for a ship not the other way around kinda idea; But I feel if you have a vision for how you want your ship to look as it's rolling around doing it's thing you can pretty well figure out yourself what you need/don't need in the skill tree.

If your goal is specifically to tank, then always keep in mind you'll need to do a certain threshold of damage in order to draw the fire away from the true DPS hunters. A good console to use on a tank build is the old +Threat Romulan Embassy consoles (Pick your flavor for which proc you want it's more being used for the +Threat modifier). I slot a single one of those in conjunction with History Will Remember Starship Trait and that will allow your vessel to actually serve it's function and draw fire away from the heavy hitters onto you. There are many ways to setup ships and I don't know what kind of ship you're running and what kind of loadout preferences you have.

Generally speaking, I find Fire at Will boats to be the best for tanking since they draw aggro from everything in the area for one. Two, since Engineers have such strong power management they're actually able to get Fire at Will shooting to it's "peak potential" far more easily than the other two careers. I was just comparing two Inquiry builds I have setup. One is a Tactical Captain Ba'ul Antiproton Sentry setup kinda gig and the other is an Engineer setup similar to how I've described. I was suprised to find that my Engineer was able to out DPS my Tactical captain. Now granted there are certain factors when accounting for DPS differences in maps like Synth Attack, plus it's a stationary build vs mobile build so there's that to factor in as well.

But each are high end builds and my Tac averaged almost 30k DPS in the match whereas the Engineer was able to output 47k DPS. Both are Fire at Will energy builds. Once again, map was Synth Attack event where match goes for 15mins and respawns are relatively constant which are great maps to "marathon test" FAW boats on. Point being, there are ways to crank huge numbers out of Engineers but it requires a little bit more thinking in order to pull it off. I hope these give you some ideas that you can apply to your build.

P.S. If you're able to incorporate an Unconventional Systems build into it it can get really silly really quickly; And another tip if you're going to do skill tree last like I do: Make sure you hold off and do it while in regular (non-sector) space so you can see where your power levels are sitting before making Engineering tree based decisions for power management.