Just kidding, I am having some problems in Fed vs Fed PvP as well, so no need to get the cheese ready, since no whining here. This is basicly a sequel to my other thread in the Engineering Forums, but this one was more based towards my PvE concerns.
Anyways, been playing PvP since a couple of days and it is frustrating to say at least. I'm flying a Star Cruiser, specced to do quite some healing/tanking, but it feels like a papership. Sometimes a single BoP decloakes and rushes me within a matter of seconds. Maybe I get the wrong idea, but I always thought my Cruiser would be able to pack some more punch before it blows up. Right now, most times I can counter the Klingon decloaking Alpha-Strike rather well.... even if I have to use the RSP mace - which is something I don't like, because I am not a fan of this skill. Yet I think it is a bit extreme that my ship often comes out half-dead after this alpha strike.
To give you some more ideas, I'll now try to explain my playing a bit:
The BoP decloakes, unleashes its rain of fire upon my ship. Immediatly I am activating
Transfer Shield Strength I to give backup to my shields. During the same time, I'll hit
Attack Pattern: Delta to increase my damage resistance. Depending on the damage I just recieved, I'll also use
Hazard Emitters, if the attack was really bad, I'm even forced to use my first
Engineering Team.
Meanwhile Phasers start firing. During the fight I keep hitting Balance Shields to keep my facings as intact as possible.
Now the dancing begins: Since I am running rather low Weapon Energy, my damage is mostly not enough to really threaten the BoP or even a tougher enemy. So I am concentrating on defense. If shields are getting hammered too much, I keep using TSS or activate
Rotate Shield Frequency to trying to keep them up. Everytime they brake down (which happens rather fast) I'll fire off any damage resistence skills like
Brace for Impact or APD.
Since they are usually eating on my hull, I keep pumping HE, ET and my trusty AtSIF III to respair the holes in my ship.
If the hull is only slightly damaged, I usually do some HE, it heals the light damage and also prevents some more damage thanks to its HoT ability. If the damage gets worse, but not too worse or HE has worn off, ASIF III comes into play - the healing ability is not too great but it also boosts the damage resistence. ET III mostly comes into play when things get nasty: My hull drops lower than 60% or even worse.
Miracle Worker is something I keep stored for a "last stand" ability, since it basicly almost completely restores my shields and a good part of my hull. Thanks to the huge cooldown, it is virtually unusable for anything else.
RSP is used when my hull healings are all on cooldown or if I simply see no other choice to survive. Once activated, I'll try as hard as possible to get my hull back to the highest setting - unfortunatly without much use: Most of the time the enemies win and I get killed by cooldowns. This indicates to me that either the enemy force is too strong or my rotation is faulty.
What bugs me is the inconsitence of my enounters:
Yesterday I had a >5 minute fight against another BoP - he basicly couldn't kill me, because I countered his strikes rather well. But I couldn't kill him either, since I had to dump so much of my energy into defensive systems, that he could easily heal my damage off. The fight only got ended by the Ker'rat reset timer.
Also in Ker'rat yesterday I was sucessfully fighting of two BoPs and one Klingon cruiser and some NPCs for a very long time, situation was the same: They had a hard time taking me out, I couldn't deal with them anyways. But this time my Cruiser actually felt like a Cruiser and not some sort of papermodel ship. It was very fun and encouraging to play, even the Klingon attackers said afterwards it was a great fight.
But just today I couldn't even withstand a single BoP, though I haven't really done anything different than yesterday. Also my survivability in groups wasn't outstanding. In general my Cruiser feels more like a fragile Escort than a armored, large Cruiser.
Now I'm seeing some cruisers (Longina was one of them) who get attacked by a couple of cubes and Klingon ships and they stay alive - it often looks they are about to blow up but they keep on fighting - and they keep even destroying either the cubes or manage to fight off a Klingon ship. I wish I could do that, but I simply can't - and I have no clue what's wrong here. I am to 90& sure the problem sits right infront of this keyboard.
To round everything up, I'll link you my build here:
Click me
The Commander Engineer ability would be
Auxiliary to Structural III.
I was thinking about replacing the
Extend Shields I with another RSP copy or maybe even AtSIF I, but I am not sure if the later one is really worth it, especially since AtSIF III is already on a rather short 15 sec CD. Am I wrong or is Extend Shield a rather weak ability anyways?
Now I was also thinking about ditching the
Star Cruiser Captain skill, instead go with 9 points into
Starship Hull Repair and 7 points into
Auxiliary Performance. But since my respec tokens are gone and I can only afford one more respec... I'm really careful here and I somehow doubt this step would be the solution.
The other stuff on my ship are pasted here:
Ship Weapons Front:
1x Quantum Torpedo Launcher Mk X (Acc) (CrtH) (CrtD)
3x Phaser Beam Array Mk X (Acc)
Ship Weapons Aft:
1x Quantum Torpedo Launcher Mk X (Acc) (CrtH) (CrtD)
3x Phaser Beam Array Mk x(Acc)
*Note: All consoles are the green (uncommon) variants:
Engineer Consoles
1x Auxiliary +6
1x Auxiliary +6
2x SIF Generator Mk X
Science Consoles:
3x Halon System Mk X
Tactical Consoles:
2x Phaser Relay Mk X
Also my energy ratings:
- Weapons: 105/100
- Shields: 56/30
- Engines: 43/25
- Auxiliary: 69/45
or a more defensive one:
- Weapons: 66/60
- Shields: 71/50
- Engines: 43/25
- Auxiliary: 84/65
Best greetings,
Faeron / Teslanar
Comments
Also, what dalnar said. Bird of Preys hate that.
1) RSP 3 is basically the same as RSP1 - you might want to get something better in your Commander Eng slot. I recommend Aux to SIF3 if you can find/afford it - but again, there are better cruiser players out there who might have better advice.
2) Try fitting in an Emergency to Shields - they increased the shield resistance buff on it (and it stacks with Transfer Shields) Maybe replace one of your Emergency to Aux?
3) The Lt level "Maintenance" engineering skills don't increase your power level - just the abilities listed on those skills...so you basically don't need Engine Maintenance or Shield Maintenance unless you're using Emergency to Engines or Emergency to Shields.
4) However, the "Efficiency" and "Performance" skills do increase your power level. Even if you don't do much damage I'd still recommend Weapon Efficiency.
5) Similar to #3, Starship Deflectors and Starship Emitters don't affect any abilities you currently have. (Transfer Shields and Hazard Emitters are affected by the Captain level deflector/hazard skills you already have).
Hmmm that's it for now. Experienced cruiser captains feel free to correct me. Maybe I'll post again when someone else comes up with more ideas. Hope that helps a bit
if you're having trouble killing someone go into 100 weapons power, alternating nadion inversion and EPS power boost to keep your weapons power as high as possible.
with shield resistances though; consider using your rotate shield frequency at the same time that you use TSS1, because there are no diminishing returns on shield resists (its getting changed soon, but you might as well as capitalize on it) the more resistance you put into the shields the exponentially harder it gets to kill them.
And I just derailed my train of thought, so I'll give you more advice when I figure out what I was going to say >_<
Also, you've got two hazard emitters. You might wanna get rid of the ensign level one for pretty much anything else, they don't really chain well in my experience. Polarize hull's gonna work well with your existing consoles, and provide some resistance. Tractor Beam like dalnar said is rough on BoPs or any cannon user really. Science team would clear subnucleonic beam.
Uhhh can we get a confirmation on this? We're talking about the Lt level skills - not the Captain.
Emergency Power to Shields 2 and 3 work well for resistance. Shield Maintenance affects Emergency Power to Shields, Rotate Shield Frequency, and Reverse Shield Polarity.
I prefer two versions of Engineering Team 1 to one of Engineering Team 3. You can use them every 15 seconds for a good hull heal. Engine Maintenance is a contributing factor to Engineering Team.
I would also suggest using Polarize Hull and Hazard Emitters instead of two versions of Hazard Emitters. Polarize Hull will give you good hull resistance, and both HE and PH are improved by points in Starship Emitters and Starship Hazard System.
Try them out and see which ones you like. Tribble is a good way to try out some changes without spending real Merits and BoFF points.
A single BOP will pound you, thats why you have escorts.
Well, maybe one of my problem is I am too much of a Trekkie and less of a player here. I've yet to see a larger ship in the shows in desperade need to ram a Bird of Prey in order to deal with it. But I guess this is a game after all. I just can't get around thinking that a Cruiser is getting outpowered by such a ship.
Of course player skill matters, I had real trouble later on with a pack of two BoP, always hunting in a pack, those were really annoying, basicly crushing everything in sight within a matter of seconds.
1) I can't select ASIF III in the planner, but actually I am using this ability as my Commander BO skill, not RSP III.
2) I was also thinking about that, that would at least be an additional help to keep the shields up, which for me is a real pain at the moment. But that again would lower my efficency with HE, ASIF III and TSS I
What about replacing Extend Shields I with EPtS II?
3+5)Are you sure about that? If I select the "Engineering Team" ability within my skills window, it says the Lt. Engine Maintanance ability boosts ET. Shield Maintanance boosts Rotate Shield Frequency as well as RSP and Extend Shields. The Deflector skills are said to improve my Transfer Shield Strength.
I was thinking about skilling the way you did: Ditch the T5 Captain Skill and instead go with 9 points Hull Repair and 7 points Auxiliary Performance. But I'm going to wait for Season 2 to do that, maybe even test it a bit on Tribble.
I feel like I am loosing too much (self-)healing power, even against a single target if I boost my weapons power too much. But I second the opnion about NI and EPS, in the heat of the battle I often forget about these skills.
That is a great idea, actually I'll rewrite my keybind for that, so TSS and RSF get fired together. To bad RSF has such a long CD.
Hope you can get that train back on track
Is this really a good idea? I mean both have a 45 sec CD and share a 30 sec CD, which actually means I can use HE every 30 seconds. Also HE gives a damage resistence bonus too, including a HoT. I'm going to check out how much more resistence Polarize Hull would deliver.
Oh yeah about Science Team: I don't like ST because it shares Cooldown with Engineering Team. I mean ET III heals for 12k-13 points roguhly, depending on my consoles.
I am still thinking - as already said - about replacing Extend Shields I with EPtS II. That of course would limit my support role more, but at least it helps me keeping the shields up.
Two versions of ET I? Currently I am using two ET III versions, which also allow me for an effective 15 second CD on ET. Of course I could replace the III versions, but 1st. they are harder to reskill if I want them back on those BOs and 2nd. I am not sure if the replacement skills would be worth the trade offs - any comments?
Actually not there, I am not in a fleet anymore, nor I have any companions who do PvP and fly Escorts. The rare occassions of flying and protecting an Escort suffered badly by the matter of fact that we were both pretty much newbies in terms of PvP and got owned badly everytime.
Also I am looking for ways and especially tipps on how to survive longer and better, not really on how to deal more damage.
Okay, next I'll try to switch out the HE I with Polarize Hull and see what it gives. Thanks again for the input so far.
Not sure what you mean by "Emergency Team." Do you mean Emergency to Engines?
Also, it's my understanding that Deflectors, Deflector Dish, and Deflector Field are all different regarding boosting certain abilities. Transfer Shield Strength is specifically Deflector Field. Additionally, Hazard Emitters is the Hazard system, not Emitters like the name suggests.
Oh and I overlooked the fact that you have RSF and ES for the Shield Maintenance
Sorry, I meant Engineering Team.
Are you certain about that? If you open up your skills window, to the upper right you can select every ability you and your BOs have and see directly which skills boosts it. According to this, Hazzard Emitters gets boosted by the Emitters skill. That would make sence, since Hazard Emitters gets more improved when using a higher +Emitter score (Consoles, Deflector) on your ship.
Take a look at these shots:
http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=skillshmov.jpg
http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=skillshmag.jpg
Yes, I also think that I might at least sometimes use too much AUX power. But putting four +6 Weapon Power is not the solution I guess. Remember I'm trying to play the support/tank/healer role, not the DPS role here. I want to survive as long as possible and keep future teammates alive as long as possible. Dropping those Engi consoles would lead to a rather large loss in terms of healing ability.
It's not a no-brainer, but I generally found using two hazard emitters to be frustrating. Polarize Hull shares the same skills as HE, gets around the HE self cooldown (though it shares a system cooldown), gives similar resistance, and counters tractor/repulsors. However, it doesn't affect teammates and doesn't repair hull at all. You also kind of have to engage it aggressively to avoid interfering with hazard emitter's system cooldown. YMMV.
Tractor beam, as mentioned previously, is also a good skill to negate your enemies' maneuverability and assist your teammates damage potential. I'd recommend trying both of these skills and seeing if you're getting more mileage out of them. If not, stick with your two hazard emitters. ^_^
I believe your screenshot, however. Even though my skill window won't show it, I have some extra honor so I'll respec and check
I trained it anyway and the values on the tooltip didn't change but....
I believe the heal-per-tic is higher now despite my bugs, but it could just be in my head. I'll try it out for awhile and see if I continue to notice a difference. Eventually I'll respec back and record the exact numbers to the digit
You miiggght wanna try a different bridge officer before respecing. That sounds kind of glitchy. To be clear, you're only seeing "Deflector Field" as the skill improving transfer shield strength?
I have plenty of other bugs, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of them.
Oh and I have like 100k honor so I don't mind respecing for the sake of science (pun intended).
http://yfrog.com/gihasj this is how it looks for me?
Oh and Teslanar, the Ensign "Starship Engineering Training" and Lieutenant "Starship Engine Maintenance" both correctly show that they buff Engineering Team
*edit* I noticed your "Starship Engineering Traning" doesn't buff your Engineering Team 3. Mine says it buffs Eng Team 2...
Sorry for the double-post there.
Don't get a second copy of Auxiliary to SIF... it will be completely redundant and worthless. Aux to SIF only has a 15 second cooldown, the same as its global cooldown.
As a cruiser, you have to make a choice. Do you want to be a good damage dealer, a mediocre damage dealer/healer, or a good healer? Faithborn listed some very good advice about Nadion Inversion. If you need to push out some damage, you can punch in a Weapon Battery and hit Nadion Inversion. I do this frequently with my Battle Cruiser, it's equipped with Beam Overload 1. Combinations of Weapons Battery, EPS Flow Transfer, and Nadion Inversion will allow you to pack a punch, especially with Beam Overload 1 and a Dual Beam Bank in the front, when you need it. I like to do this to open up a shield facing for my team mates or to add the finishing touches to a kill.
I don't run two copies of RSP and my survivability is extremely good. The trick is not to spam your heals on yourself, but to apply just enough self-healing to weather to onslaught and to keep as much team healing as possible in reserve.
Another alternative, which is what I do with my Battle Cruiser, is run a high amount of Engine power and equip Hyper Impulse Engines. This will boost your defense score naturally due to your speed; you can even load up Emergency Power (Engines) and hit that plus Evasive Maneuvers to get out of dodge if the heat is coming down too heavy. This is a good tactic when you get Alpha Striked by the enemy team; let them unleash their high damage cooldowns on you and just fly away, wasting their effort and turning the advantage against them.
I will admit, though.. Battle Cruisers are more naturally fit for being speedy than Federation Cruisers, so your mileage may very-- but its something you may want to try out. If you don't want to use Emergency Power (Engines), an Engine Battery is a solid alternative.
if your running 100 aux your heals heal significantly more than they do at 76 aux. while that may not sound good on paper, it takes significantly longer to crack someone being healed at 100 aux than it does for 76 aux.
you can get 100 aux with:
50 base
efficient engines + cruiser
9/9 starship warp core training
9/9 starship auxiliary efficiency
7/9 starship auxiliary performance (at this point you should have 76 aux power)
Emergency power to aux 1 (will give you +24 when fully trained)
At 50 base Aux, do you run the rest on shields?
75/50/25/50.
With that you can still produce ample dps when you're using eps power transfer and nadion inversion on yourself. Although, its not the optimal use for EPS power transfer.
Yes, I noticed the same yesterday. The ASIF III cooldown is simply way too short to actually use another copy of it.
I know I have to make a choice, but I rather become a good healer/tank instead of dealing much damage. The ideas with the additional Engi skills and/or weapon batteries are good ones and I will definatly consider that. I'd also like to give Beam Overload another go, but so far I am not sure how it will work out. So far I am not really convinced about my Quantum Torps anyway.
As of now, I'll stick with one copy of RSP. I simply don't like it and it will be changed anyways. The idea of basicly having a no-brainer "invincible" button is simply odd and I am not the one who like to overuse it.
Somewhere else I heard about the trick to equip cruisers with Hyper-Impulse drives, so you can outrun Escorts when things get nasty. I could bind a macro with "Use Engine Battery, fire Evasive Manouvers" (and maybe "Switch to full engine power") as a run away thing. Thanks to my Hyper-Impulse engine I should be able to outrun any decloaking attack. This is something I'll definatly try out later today!
Btw, is this the reason I see so many healer builds putting full points into "Engine Performance"? Because I never saw any use of it. It doesn't boost any vital skills, I'm running mostly low-power for engines so it doesn't heavily effect my power settings. From what I understood, "Performance" skills will boost your power at higher settings (+50 or +75?) only, not on lower settings.
Yes, that is what I noticed too, running Aux at 100 or above gives you an amazing boost in terms of healing. HE II alone heals for more than 19k, means it regenerates literally 40% your hull within 30 seconds, not to mention the huge boost in terms of damage resistence. That is one of the reasons why I'm using two EPtA copies at the moment.
Do you still use the Efficient Impulse-Engine in PvP? I got always told it is very good for PvE, but in terms of PvE it is too slow, you get outrunned and turning is worse with it - so I should rather stick with a decent Mk X engine.
I'll also give your power setting a shot later on. So far I get with it:
Weapons: 80/75
Shields: 71/50
Engines: 43/25
Aux: 76/50
That is with 2x +6 Aux Power consoles. Strange, EPtA I only gives +22 for me and the skill window says it doesn't get boosted by Auxiliary Performance skill.
Here is an updated build I created, but I haven't applied it on live yet, will give it a go on Tribble first:
Changed build for Faeron
Commander Engineering skill: Auxiliary to SIF III
Basicly I drew all points from the T5 Captain skill and reapplied them into T5 Aux Performance and Hull Repair. Then I took away all points from T2 and T4 Deflectors and reskilled them into T3 / T4 Cruiser Captain to keep my hull at a decent level. Problem is my Transfer Shield Strength suffers a lot
Subsystem Repair got ditched to favour Engine Performance - but why? I have seen this in so many builds. I always thought Subsystem Repair would boost Engineering Team and Miracle Worker - but looking at it again it boosts no ability at all. So what is the deal with Engine Performance?
In terms of BO skills decided to give DeadlyShoes comment a go and I think it is reasonable to try Tactical Team I to clean up tactical debuffs from my ship. Yet I'm thinking of using Beam Overload I in combination with a Dual Phaser Beam Bank in front might help. So many choices....
Science got the HE I exchanged with Polarize Hull I for better Damage Resistence. At the above mentioned power settings PH I gives a whopping 54% DR in comparision with 20% of HE I. But that also means a team support ability got ditched.
Engi didn't got changed much. I wanted to get rid of Extend Shields I and exchange it with EPtS II, but then I would have three EPtXXX skills. Ditching an EPtA I skill would be good - but with what? Another ET copy would be ineffecient, Boarding Party I should be bad too.
So I kept ES I and just replaced an EPtA I with an EPtS I to increase my shielding. Also I wouldn't like the idea about ditching ES I in favour of another RSP I as said earlier above.
Any comments?
In a short conclusion: Instead of constantly try to heal against incomming damage, I'll try to learn to stacking and chaining resistences more. That applies to both shields and hull. Also I'll give the "runaway" strategy a closer look, even if I can't get out of firing range completely, Cannons won't hit as hard on a long distance as they do on close range - so it definatly boosts my defense.
Performance skills give a flat bonus to power, it does not vary on power setting. Efficiency does, you get more from efficiency with low power levels.
Personally I run my assault cruiser's engines at the minimum setting. But because I maxed out engine efficiency and performance, and have the efficient Borg BO, I actually have enough power to get more speed from hyper impulse engines than combat impulse engines. And of course if I put even more power to engines, the gap widens further.
You won't outrun an escort that also uses hyper impulse engines and switches power to engines. They are faster ships, but you should be able to survive the alpha and make them waste much of it with your higher evasion rate as you put range between you. Of course it means you are then out of the fight, out of position to heal your team.
Efficient engines are terrible, they are too slow. You can't keep up at full impulse which makes you a very easy target if you need to respawn in arena maps, and you are easily caught flying around other maps. You'll be slower at normal speed too, meaning you can't run well with EM, and you evade less normally.
As for EPtA, that skill and all the EPtX skills are boosted by the relevant maintenance and efficiency skills.
And a general comment on the thread, I think your problem comes down to a serious neglect of your shields. EPtS is very valuable and useful for keeping yourself alive. If your only shield defense is RSF and TSS 1, well I'm not surprised at all that you're blowing up fast. Shield resistances ARE hull resistances. Any damage you take to the shields is not going to your hull, especially kinetic damage.
Personally I would dump EPtA entirely and use 2x EPtS. I'd also get TSS 2 instead of TSS 1. Aux is overrated. Yes it makes you have bigger numbers on your heals, but you take less damage that requires the use of hull heals if you have stronger shields. And hull resistances have very big diminishing returns. Aux is nice for someone who has a team designed to be complimentary so they can support each other. But for a PUGger, you need more shields, because no one else is going to help you there.
Of course depending on how the shield resistance change works out, it may completely destroy shields as viable for tanking at all.
Thanks for the read.
but you get 3 +5 energy consoles out of it. You're not an escort that needs speed to survive.