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Tac/cruiser build?
owl1968
Member Posts: 10 Arc User
I play or rather plan a tactical officer who flies a cruiser (mainly tanking). Now i've read so much about builds being not very good so people have to spend money to respec and such.
Any advice for player skills as well as Boff skills will be appreciated!
Any advice for player skills as well as Boff skills will be appreciated!
Post edited by owl1968 on
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I have a character like that and she's a lot of fun to play. I'm in an assault cruiser which seems to be a favorite for this style of play, but people seem to have a fair amount of success with the Dreadnaught and the Excelsior refit as well.
The basic set up I use is based on the Dragon concept that you can find if you look hard enough on the forums. The core concept is based on rotating 4 emergency power skills that boost your shield and weapons power settings. Here's my loadout:
Lt Tac: Beam Fire At Will 1, Attack Pattern Beta
Ens Tac: Tact Team (or another Fire at Will I)
Cmd Eng: EPtW 1, EPtS 2, Directed Energy Modulation 2, Auxillary to Structural III
Lt Cmd Eng: EPtW 1, EPtS 2, Eject Warp Plasma 2
Lt Sci: Hazard Emitters 1, Transfer Shield Strength 2
I'm using 6 Disruptor Beam arrays and either a Harpeng plus one more beam aft or Tricobalts 1 fore and 1 aft. You could probably get away with one Tricolbalt and an extra beam array.
Tact consoles are all disruptor boosting consoles, engineering is a mix of armour and the antimatter spread console, science are shield boosting consoles.
My basic attack strategy is to get in the middle of everything and use fire at will to get the bad guys attention. My captain has 6 ranks in the aggro skill so between Attack pattern Beta, Alpha, and 6 disruptors on 125 power I light up like a christmas tree
The disruptors, plus attack pattern beta, along with fire at will gives you a pretty strong chance to debuff quite a few bad guys which makes it easier for your teamates (and you) to finish them off quicker.
Radiation from your Harpeng along with a disruptor proc and directed shield modulation can be a devastating combo even if their shields are up.
I chose the Harpeng (or tricobalts) due to the fact that I don't get many torpedo shots off and I may as well get the biggest and meanest torpedo I can. Same thing with the tricolbalts which work well against cubes, even with their large cooldowns. I don't bother with torpedo BOff skills since they rarely get used with such a slow turning ship.
I use eject warp plasma combined with evasive maneuvers to slow down probes and nanite borg ships if they're getting too close to warp gates or generators. It's also handy for fast moving vessels that hang on your butt.
Another thing to keep in mind is to not go overboard with the hull heals if "go down fighting" is available and you have lots of targets to kill. A cruiser can function quite well at 50% hull and not be in any real danger and go down fighting will give you a large increase in firepower while it's active.
As for defense, well if you rotate EPtS and keep your shield power up then you're pretty damn tanky, use TSS to fill up your shields when required. Another secret to this build is rotating your shields all the time. You can achieve this by setting up a macro (like I do) or you can use tactical team when you're really getting pounded on. Some people run two copies of of tactical team and rotate them, but I find cruisers just don't have enough tactical slots for that kind of thing.
Auxillary to Structural is a good hull heal and I got lucky with a BOff that had Aux to Str III. Hazard emmitters are another good hull heal and they put out fires. You can also send all of your heals to someone else in need, which is nice since you'll probably need them to do the same for you when you grab all the aggro!
I save the antimatter spread console for when things get too rough and I need to cut and run. Some people use it offensively though.
Overall it's a fun and forgiving build which is actually useful for more than healing your team mates. If a group of four had two ships like this, an escort (or two), and a science vessel then you'd have no problem with any of the content in this game.
Hope to see you ingame someday!
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=251422
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=335161
This allows me to constantly spam cannon rapid fire, beam fire at will and/or torpedo spreads making full use of the temporary DPS boost afforded by APA, Fire on my Mark and Go Down Fighting. Those boosts last about 30 seconds apiece and running aux2batt means I can get off one or two more 2200DPS x 4 cannon salvoes before the buffs wear off.
Attack Pattern Alpha helps with turnrate and so does Omega set making it easier to keep both cannons and broadside beams on target.
Keeping at least 30+ speed in combat and a turnrate of 18-20 deg/sec, a tactical mirror / assault cruiser or Cheyenne fleet retrofit can be a very deadly PvE unit.
With Aux2Batt and technicians you will also not need to double up bridge officer powers and can pack a variety of support and area dominance skills without compromising survivability.
Aux2Batt/Technician builds are geared towards more experienced players who have completed various Colony Doff Chains or have managed to recruit 3 rare or better Technicians. They are kind of expensive on the exchange otherwise.
Successful builds with Aux2Batt include mirror/assault cruiser with polaron mk12 dmgx3 or antiproton anti Borg cannons, disruptor cannon Galaxy R (tankable!) and work in progress, Klingon Vor'cha plasma beam/DHC cruiser, and a technician recon science vessel (it can spam gravwells and torpedoes forever).
I also use some lesser known skills such as Emergency Power to Auxiliary which boosts area control abilities (tractor beams, etc) and provides you 30 seconds of improved hull heals.
I rarely rely on brute force shield tanking (hey, at speed 30 + 20 turnrate you pretty much dictate the fight against slower enemies) but have EPTS, RSP1, TSS2 and sometimes ST1 for shield tanking.
As above-posted Auxiliary to Structural III is a must have for a 15 second combat heal plus damage resistance.
Note, if your ship is short on engineering slots don't use Aux2Batt as, if you're unfamiliar with its cooldown and have a slow, ponderous ship like a Tactical Odyssey, it will compromise survivability. The assault whale and Galaxy R has enough engineering boff powers to get by, and the RSV is nimble enough to avoid getting shot at.
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That's alot to read but it's what i enjoy anyways. Still i just hope i will be able to understand it all since i have had little experience with MMO's to be honest!
Some say only to spend around 6 max since the 3 numbers left are in red and do not seem to do much?
So basically i should concentrate on skills that add to weapons/shield and such?
Stuff I prioritize:
You want maximum weapon damage, accuracy, shield healing, structural integrity for starters, as well as maximum shield performance.
Secondary importance for me are warp core potential and warp core efficiency.
Engine performance is also useful (tiertiary importance) as a boost to flight speed, turn rate and engine power is also useful to some degree, as the base turnrate of a cruiser is quite abysmal. But 12.5 turnrate from 6 points to engine related skills is pretty decent. I don't complain about turnrate that much esp with certain engine types and boff powers that can boost it up to 20+ in combat.
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