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captainobvious09
Member Posts: 182 Arc User
I just came back to the game after a year or so away....
What does one do with a science officer these days? It seems like all the science powers have been nerfed into oblivion, how do you do damage in a science ship? What is the best role for the most common elite ship missions?
Note: at this point I have a Recon(Luna) and the Nebula refit.
Any ideas or builds would be appreciated.
What does one do with a science officer these days? It seems like all the science powers have been nerfed into oblivion, how do you do damage in a science ship? What is the best role for the most common elite ship missions?
Note: at this point I have a Recon(Luna) and the Nebula refit.
Any ideas or builds would be appreciated.
Post edited by captainobvious09 on
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One looks at the PvP forums for a few of the last remaining functional science builds I'm afraid
Offensively science is useless. Any science ability that did damage or disabled/drained is utterly useless now.
Heals still work. Of course they have to, otherwise how do escorts get any benefit from their sole little science stations?
Crowd control and sensor attacks are completely broken. They 'work' in the sense that the effect does happen..but it vanishes the instant the target takes ONE hit so... its pointless to use.
and yes, every science stat has been nerfed in effectiveness per point spent either via a direct reduction of the effect or by a ridiculously increased effectiveness of the skillboxes that counter science.
Aka, 1 point in power insulators counters 9 points in flow capacitors. Siphon/Tyken just dont drain anymore.
Special note is that siphon is still good to GAIN power but not to drain it.
Science in PvP....can still do very well. I run a pure sci/sci in the Arenas, and I like to think I'm at least competent. My build basically centers around Viral Matrix (doffed) as the main force, along with Eject Warp Plasma (but I don't think your ships can manage this....or can the Nebula?)
A new handy piece of kit is Scramble Sensors combined with the new doff that increases ability cooldown when you hit people with it. I haven't tried it myself, but it is extremely irritating when I get hit by it.
Oh, and timing the classic Tractor Beam with APO going down is a must.
If you still want to run power drains though, you're going to have to build entirely for it, and even then you won't do very well.
Unfortunately the above post is correct. Science is...not in a good place right now. Don't even bother trying to do damage with sci skills.
I finally gave in and got the Vesta and it makes playing science bearable again. Mainly because of cannons, pets, and the Vesta death ray console. Notice that none of those things have anything to do with science. Oh well. That's just how it is sadly.
Mine Trap Supporter
then the borg must have 60 points in flow caps, because even at 6 PI, i'm still getting my shields ripped apart by their tachyon beams
#LegalizeAwoo
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An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Well apparently, particle physics are the only powers that actually work properly. I used to think they nerfed them all and did some more research however it is just as bad as you say when 75% of science abilities are completely useless and what's worse is none of them are canon. sybnuc actually does not disable, altho most particle abilities have good use gravity wells don't actually hold anything in place all ships just fly right thru them, deflector abilities like tachyon pulse simply are a tickle to the shields even with full spec and 4 flow cap consoles, Tyken's rift should shut down engine power entirely, photonic officer is completely useless, For some reason Charged Particle burst is a sensor skill methinks they are trying to hard to make these systems effect the agonizingly slow sensor analysis because this system should be a particle ability easily, the only skills to improve feedback pulse are tactical skills which shouldn't affect any science skills at all and is part of the problem (and the two skills which affect FBP are only learnable by tactical captains), Energy Siphon and target subsystem hardly drains anything anymore because people's gearsets and mandatory cookie cutter spec requires that everyone have maxed out defenses from such things (there's no real penalty for choosing a defense against science skills in the skill trait trees everyone can get them without any drawbacks).
Not to mention the problems with the weapons. Everyone must have temporal shielding now because chroniton torps do not pass thru shields, to do anything you have to have cannons and when you get the ships that have cannons on them you basically have to turn your ship into an all energy weapon cannon vehicle, so basically you might as well be playing a tactical captain at this point, not to mention to do anything with beams you have to use plasma because that's really the only way you're going to damage your opponent, go ahead check out these forums every single beam build here and on the skill builder site that has any success are all romulan plasma builds.
So yeah they have alot of work to do if they want to balance this game. I'd personally suggest they make the abilities canon it would be a great start in the rebuilding of the balance of this game and would ensure that these science skills work as they did in the shows.
Fly next to the Enterprise when doing Tau Dewa patrols. Notice it's Torp Spread Quantums hitting for 130k, it's Gravity Well that nothing can escape from, an effective Tractor Beam and Tricobalt launcher.
Not to mention it has 320k hull.
Looks perfectly canon to me.
To the OP: Science has it's place but it has certainly been nerfed from before. They're potent in PvP and can do decent damage in PvE still, though it's more through weapon damage than ability damage now.
I have no interest in this debate, tho.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
You can also contact me in-game. My handle is the same as my forum name. I'll be more than happy to give you links to some of my builds or help you create a new one.
You forget the borg have what we have on steroids that have been given steroids and then the borg have more steroids... and... well yeah...
Well, at least this lets me pretend to be useful.
Oh you mean they're tactical captains flying sci ships? Nothing else makes some offensive abilities be functional beyond 9 skill points in graviton/particle, using 125 aux and preferably debuffing hull and (ironically!) using a snare ability to prevent ships from leaving the *snicker* 'gravity' well.
They don't and neither do they help the players ships with the GW3 or they would have worked on my ship that had 4 consoles and maxed traits just for that purpose.
Something is definitely wrong with the "everything is working perfectly" crowd that continuously come here to the forums and spread nonsense because I've personally spent alot of in game currency over the past two months testing these various powers myself to try to determine which ones work and which don't anymore. There's plenty more about what's wrong but I decided to truncate my findings above so that my reply to the OP wasn't too long.
Edit: Wonders if cmdrskyfaller is referring to the multiple and sundry plasma builds I keep finding in these forums and on the build calculator site.
You're either trolling, or not checking your facts.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
You're missing the point. The point is that defenses being more powerful than the corresponding attacks by an order of magnitude is bad design.
Draining doesn't even work as well as it used to in PVE either. Boss type enemies, i.e. the ones that should actually require some teamwork and science support to take down, were patched to have very high resistance to power drain so that they can't be shut down anymore. I used to be able to literally turn off Donatra's shields to make a fast kill. That doesn't work now.
So I'm sitting here, thinking of giving it another go on a new character I just levelled to 50. And it's looking like the Vesta is needed to even bother.
I'm like 85% leaning towards the Vesta 3 pack. Any advice from those who have it?
How does the Atrox do? Do you fly it with full weapons power, or aux power?
The Vesta's cannons use aux instead of weapons power. That means you can run 125 aux and get max damage from the cannons as well as the full benefit from any sci skills you use. It also has a hangar bay that you can use to further specialize. Fighters for more damage, Delta Fliers for more shield drains, Danubes for tractor beam control, etc. It also comes with some nifty consoles. The death ray that it has also scales off of aux power. The universal slots on it are nice as well. It isn't going to match the damage of a tacscort (that I have seen anyway) but it makes playing science so much more bearable. Atrox I have no experience with.
Mine Trap Supporter
I'm just looking for a science ship that is fun. And so far, it seems the Vesta gets the most support on the forums.
Hmmmmmm.
Build details (slightly outdated, but close enough)
Action footage
Basically it's science but avoids all the crappy science that doesn't work. And has demon hordes at its command.
IMO, it comes down to weather or not turning an Atrox is worth an extra 1-2k DPS.
YMMV, but my Atrox whips the snot out of my Vesta. Of course, the Vesta can actually turn around in a hurry...
Edit: And when you get bored with your DPS, you can kit her out as an amazing sci tank.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
Yeah I was in the same position just a few days ago. I originally flew a Luna myself and then switched to the Intrepid Retrofit with my at the time VA token. That was before F2P launch though so I was really looking for a new ship to change things up. I would say that if you want to measure the Vesta against other carriers like the Recluse or Atrox it all depends on your playstyle rather than which ship is better. I do very well in my Vesta but I've seen some seriously mean captains in an Atrox. Ran a KASE yesterday with an Atrox captain and the two of us demolished our side of the map before the other 3 guys had taken down both of their transformers, ha!
Anyways if you want to see if you would like an Atrox, you can do what I did and go fly around in a Vo'Quv for a while. It's very similar to the Atrox except for a few modifiers I think. You can get a good feel for how it flies there. I eventually settled on the Vesta, but I had other reasons for that too. Basically I have this weird thing about having my Fed captains only flying Fed ships. Same with my Klingon, he flies only Klingon ships. But yeah, that's just my own personal issue as to why I went with the Vesta in the end lol. The other ships are perfectly fine, I'm just weird like that. :P
Mine Trap Supporter
I picked up a 3 pack of Vesta, so at this point my question is... what the heck do I do with it?
I stuck 2 aux cannons and a beam in front, and 2 turrets and a beam in the rear (beams for target sub-system, not sure how good it works though)
Running basically full aux, with tractor beam 1, tacheon beam 1, gw3, and the usual heal powers ST3, HE3, etc...
Thus far I really like it, but I need help on how to optimize it.
Does anyone have a good post on making the Vesta a beast?
This is mostly true, or you could try an all kinetic build and max out your Aux power setting.
Alternatively you can run with full power to weapons (6 beam broadsides are about what cruisers get anyway so you'd only be loosing out on the 180 torp) and make up (or even consider it extra bonus) DPS and debuffing from your sci powers.
Is it the cannons that come with the ship that use aux power or can one load any cannons in the vessel and have it draw aux power?
Does it come with just one frontal cannon? and how does the cannon compare with other X11 cannons?
Thanks in advance to anyone who answers these question. Appreciated.