It can, but it forces you to use the Lt. Commander Eng slot for A2B2, which in turn forces the hard choice of RSP vs. DEM for the Commander slot. The T5 D'deridex does the same.
The Fleet version doesnt.
Use just the Cmd/eng and the Lt/ eng.
Some people been asking bout keybinds and A2B. Some people are right to ask, and their teeth must be itchin.
I'm going to assume you know how to bind, and get right down to the magic. Some people will say you don't need keybinds for an A2B build. Do you know what bind stands for? Busey's Itch Nailed Down.
2 binds, Maintenance and Alpha.
Pick a key you like. Go on, I'll wait. Get a nice one. Can't decide? Got a mouse wheel? Take your throttle off of q and e and put it on there. Nice little e. Can't even say it without showing your teeth.
So your Maintenance key, not spacebar or whatever you've got distribute shields and maybe fire energy weapons bound to, it's gonna get a row from your ui tray with a high number, one you can't see. You're going to bind at least the first four slots of your chosen tray to that key. Let's say I picked e and row 6. Every time I press e it activates the first available thing in row 6 and if I keep spamming it I'll eventually activate everything in the row. Into that row goes A2B, A2B, EPTx, EPTx. This key will now be your new best friend (so pick a nice one you can reach while steering). You'll actually hit this more often than your spacebar in order to maintain constant uptime on the EPTx's. So in CnH while you're capping a point you will still be spamming because even though you don't see them thar be Lymuv's. Even in STFs while traveling between HP bags you will still be cycling.
But why? Well let's say you line them up with EPTS first thinking that you can just hit it when the time comes. But let's say you just hit spacebar, or another ability, or you hit your Maintenance key twice instead of once. Chances of getting EPTS are 50/50. Also, do you want to activate EPTW and wait 15 seconds before hardening your shields? You know who does want you to do that? Lymuv. Cycle them. Still not enough? APO. DEM. Keep cycling if only to cool these down.
Pick another key you like, try to act casual and gloss over the fact that it wasn't your first choice. It's still going to get a lot of action. Same bind, different row, 4 or maybe 6 slots. Here goes your Alpha buffs.
Tac Team is not an Alpha buff. Do not put TT on a bind. You will get timed.
EPTW is not an Alpha buff because the bonus is for the duration so it should be maintained as mentioned above to avoid a hole in EPTS.
FOMM is not an Alpha buff because it must be inserted selectively between TT's, so do be a gentleman when inserting and don't mash your FOMM like a mouthbreather.
NI is an Alpha buff.
DEM is an Alpha buff, but Marion DEM doesn't go on my bar because I want to make sure it goes absolutely last.
Sensor Scan might be an Alpha buff if you're dedicating an Aux Battery use to it. 18+ seconds on the battery will last long enough that you can trigger it then start spamming the Alpha key. YMMV greatly on this one.
Aux Batteries might go in the Alpha row if you took the Nukara rep. I wouldn't though.
BO and HYT are not Alpha buffs. If you're this far into your tech doff addiction you know exactly how much time the A2B activation takes off of these two. In a perfect situation you will trigger BO or HYT ahead of time so that the first A2B activation after your Alpha strike will bring them back up. Stop. Reread that last sentence. Now add, preferably as you're picking a new target and avoiding a warp core explosion.
If you're stacking BO2/BO3 they go in your Maintenance row.
Fleet Support can go in Maintenance.
GDF is your call.
One more thing. Go to that rearrange HUD option and grab yourself another row, I like a vertical row to the far right, away from everything. Set this to your Alpha row, just so you can see what's available.
I don't put heals on a spam keybind on any build, but especially not on A2B builds which cycle Aux.
Your Maintenance cycle never stops. It's the entire point of the build. It is constantly working on things like APO. You should know without looking whether you have Aux available or not. If you don't know what I mean by that, you're not cycling like Busey wants you to.
Your Maintenance cycle never stops. It's the entire point of the build. It is constantly working on things like APO. You should know without looking whether you have Aux available or not. If you don't know what I mean by that, you're not cycling like Busey wants you to.
Far be it from me to argue with someone so experienced, not to mention handsome, but I don't think you've completely thought through how you actually operate. I'm pretty sure you do take your spammer off the Maintenance keys at times, and not just to dig in in your nose.
Sometimes it's a choice between maybe creating a few seconds of downtime in the Maintenance cycle in order to get an A2B activation immediately after, say, a DEM activation for cd or a BO for power levels. Or, something is at horizontal with 2 seconds left. A2B can't help it until it finishes and you activate it again. So maybe that 3 seconds is something to wait for.
Also, and this may be my imagination or my connection speed, but I feel like activations can step on each others' toes. I want to be able to activate my Alpha buffs while making a left turn to follow a target without worrying that one buff is going to get dropped because A2B was bound to my WASD.
Also also, sometimes you are going to lay off the Maintenance cycle to let Aux recover for healing or cloaking or tractor beam, or even let Aux recover just so you can kill it completely right before a TBR.
I guess I've got to give this all a great big YMMV since clearly mine did after taking a second to really think about it.
Yeah, but, sometimes you do want to delay the A2B activation for a second.
Far be it from me to argue with someone so experienced, not to mention handsome, but I don't think you've completely thought through how you actually operate. I'm pretty sure you do take your spammer off the Maintenance keys at times, and not just to dig in in your nose.
Sometimes it's a choice between maybe creating a few seconds of downtime in the Maintenance cycle in order to get an A2B activation immediately after, say, a DEM activation for cd or a BO for power levels. Or, something is at horizontal with 2 seconds left. A2B can't help it until it finishes and you activate it again. So maybe that 3 seconds is something to wait for.
Also, and this may be my imagination or my connection speed, but I feel like activations can step on each others' toes. I want to be able to activate my Alpha buffs while making a left turn to follow a target without worrying that one buff is going to get dropped because A2B was bound to my WASD.
Also also, sometimes you are going to lay off the Maintenance cycle to let Aux recover for healing or cloaking or tractor beam, or even let Aux recover just so you can kill it completely right before a TBR.
I guess I've got to give this all a great big YMMV since clearly mine did after taking a second to really think about it.
I think you're doing a bang up job, and it does provide the perspective from a "doing it on my own" sort of viewpoint.
With even just 1 or 2 friends on the team to cover certain deficiencies (for example, a pocket healer) - you are suddenly freed from such concerns and constraints.*
Yet that doesn't take away from any of what's been posted before.
*It also opens up new build options, imagine a build where you don't take more than a single science ability (or even 0 science abilities) at all - and focus it all on A2B powered offense.
That's what made my A2B JHHEC work with
CMD TAC: TT 1 > BO 2 > CRF 2 > APO 3
LTC ENG: EPTS 1 > A2B 1 > DEM 2
LT ENG: EPTW or E 1 > A2B 1
LT ENG: ET 1 > RSP 1
ENS SCI: HE 1
I only took the ENS SCI because I had to, otherwise it would have been a Tac ensign with BO 1.
The benefit is that I get both DEM and RSP on an Escort layout with CMD Tac, while the Sci guys cover TB and heals with their 125 Aux power and graviton spec.
my 2 AtB steamy is great on a team with healers watching its back. APO3, CRF2, and BO3/HY3 every ~15 seconds. with room for AtD filling in between APO3, and TS1 and CSV1 for times when i need AOE. only got HE1, EPtS1 and EPtE1 though to keep me alive, support is invaluable.
Anyone have advice on which warp core to pair with an A2B config? I'm leaning towards one of one of the Fleet Advanced cores with the [E->A] modifier. My thinking is that any power diverted to Aux would then be evenly redistributed to S/W/E as part of the A2B cycle. That, and I'm hoping to mitigate the "empty aux tank" phenomenon (4/5 of my tray powers go "dark" for several seconds) I keep running into in combat.
I need some expert input here...advice and comments appreciated!
I found out that in my testing, I have the least aux offline (in both occurance as duration) with an overcharged core with efficient mod and power setting of aux at 15.
I found out that in my testing, I have the least aux offline (in both occurance as duration) with an overcharged core with efficient mod and power setting of aux at 15.
Sadly, it doesn't look like there are any overcharged cores available at Fleet level - just "Hyper-Charged" or "Reinforced" (whatever those mean).
So you run aux at 15? And that helps to avoid aux-offline? What is your effective aux level after passives, etc.? Are you running the Leech as well?
I tested it without leach (because I was not shooting).
I think it has to do with at low power levels, the addition of power of a warpcore is higher. Add in the efficient mod for a bigger effect. So after activating AtoB, power levels drop, but extra "efficient" power due to the lower base power prevents dropping to 0. Usually Im just above 5, and the offline duration is less than a second. For some strange reason this worked the best with minimum aux settings, whereas I would expect the biggest compensation for "efficiency" when dropping low from a high base power.
All this why and how is not totally clear to me, and I was hoping that more people had experimented a bit because Im sure there is even a better option than I suggest.....
OMG not you too with the foot pedals, it's bad enough I had Jorf on vent proselytizing about it. :P (J/K, actually the kinect joke was born when Jorf started talking about the foot pedals on TS)
OMG not you too with the foot pedals, it's bad enough I had Jorf on vent proselytizing about it. :P (J/K, actually the kinect joke was born when Jorf started talking about the foot pedals on TS)
These two on the other hand are undeniably interesting.
I also looked it up, and that omnimouse looks indeed very interesting
regarding the foot pedals. Not for healing, but it may be nice for throttle (next is a steering wheel..........)
Yeah, but, sometimes you do want to delay the A2B activation for a second.
Far be it from me to argue with someone so experienced, not to mention handsome, but I don't think you've completely thought through how you actually operate. I'm pretty sure you do take your spammer off the Maintenance keys at times, and not just to dig in in your nose.
Sometimes it's a choice between maybe creating a few seconds of downtime in the Maintenance cycle in order to get an A2B activation immediately after, say, a DEM activation for cd or a BO for power levels. Or, something is at horizontal with 2 seconds left. A2B can't help it until it finishes and you activate it again. So maybe that 3 seconds is something to wait for.
Also, and this may be my imagination or my connection speed, but I feel like activations can step on each others' toes. I want to be able to activate my Alpha buffs while making a left turn to follow a target without worrying that one buff is going to get dropped because A2B was bound to my WASD.
Also also, sometimes you are going to lay off the Maintenance cycle to let Aux recover for healing or cloaking or tractor beam, or even let Aux recover just so you can kill it completely right before a TBR.
I guess I've got to give this all a great big YMMV since clearly mine did after taking a second to really think about it.
Bleh i got too much other stuff to micromanage at this point on my tvaro, hands down to you though.
But from all my own experiences it was pretty much enough with either 2x aux2bats, 3 or 2 maintenance purps or 1x aux2 bat and 3x maintenance purps to keep everything rolling quite consistently.
EptX 2 times pretty much always a 1/2 sec delay between em and my rsp,dem were always on or close to global
Oh well I pretty much excluded aux2bat from my rommy now because of too much drawbacks.
Comments
The Fleet version doesnt.
Use just the Cmd/eng and the Lt/ eng.
EPTS1 A2B1 A2B2 DEM3 or whatever.
EPTS1
R.I.P
I'm going to assume you know how to bind, and get right down to the magic. Some people will say you don't need keybinds for an A2B build. Do you know what bind stands for? Busey's Itch Nailed Down.
2 binds, Maintenance and Alpha.
Pick a key you like. Go on, I'll wait. Get a nice one. Can't decide? Got a mouse wheel? Take your throttle off of q and e and put it on there. Nice little e. Can't even say it without showing your teeth.
So your Maintenance key, not spacebar or whatever you've got distribute shields and maybe fire energy weapons bound to, it's gonna get a row from your ui tray with a high number, one you can't see. You're going to bind at least the first four slots of your chosen tray to that key. Let's say I picked e and row 6. Every time I press e it activates the first available thing in row 6 and if I keep spamming it I'll eventually activate everything in the row. Into that row goes A2B, A2B, EPTx, EPTx. This key will now be your new best friend (so pick a nice one you can reach while steering). You'll actually hit this more often than your spacebar in order to maintain constant uptime on the EPTx's. So in CnH while you're capping a point you will still be spamming because even though you don't see them thar be Lymuv's. Even in STFs while traveling between HP bags you will still be cycling.
But why? Well let's say you line them up with EPTS first thinking that you can just hit it when the time comes. But let's say you just hit spacebar, or another ability, or you hit your Maintenance key twice instead of once. Chances of getting EPTS are 50/50. Also, do you want to activate EPTW and wait 15 seconds before hardening your shields? You know who does want you to do that? Lymuv. Cycle them. Still not enough? APO. DEM. Keep cycling if only to cool these down.
Pick another key you like, try to act casual and gloss over the fact that it wasn't your first choice. It's still going to get a lot of action. Same bind, different row, 4 or maybe 6 slots. Here goes your Alpha buffs.
Tac Team is not an Alpha buff. Do not put TT on a bind. You will get timed.
EPTW is not an Alpha buff because the bonus is for the duration so it should be maintained as mentioned above to avoid a hole in EPTS.
FOMM is not an Alpha buff because it must be inserted selectively between TT's, so do be a gentleman when inserting and don't mash your FOMM like a mouthbreather.
NI is an Alpha buff.
DEM is an Alpha buff, but Marion DEM doesn't go on my bar because I want to make sure it goes absolutely last.
Sensor Scan might be an Alpha buff if you're dedicating an Aux Battery use to it. 18+ seconds on the battery will last long enough that you can trigger it then start spamming the Alpha key. YMMV greatly on this one.
Aux Batteries might go in the Alpha row if you took the Nukara rep. I wouldn't though.
BO and HYT are not Alpha buffs. If you're this far into your tech doff addiction you know exactly how much time the A2B activation takes off of these two. In a perfect situation you will trigger BO or HYT ahead of time so that the first A2B activation after your Alpha strike will bring them back up. Stop. Reread that last sentence. Now add, preferably as you're picking a new target and avoiding a warp core explosion.
If you're stacking BO2/BO3 they go in your Maintenance row.
Fleet Support can go in Maintenance.
GDF is your call.
One more thing. Go to that rearrange HUD option and grab yourself another row, I like a vertical row to the far right, away from everything. Set this to your Alpha row, just so you can see what's available.
I don't put heals on a spam keybind on any build, but especially not on A2B builds which cycle Aux.
Your Maintenance cycle never stops. It's the entire point of the build. It is constantly working on things like APO. You should know without looking whether you have Aux available or not. If you don't know what I mean by that, you're not cycling like Busey wants you to.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8289771&postcount=601
but this one is very well explained, and should make you feel silly for not using keybinds. at the very least, Busey would not approve
I have now attached a microsoft kinect to my crotch and I distribute shields by thrusting in the appropriate direction.
I'm not sure where I will bind A2B, possibly to my occasionally jittery knee but I'm afraid it's not consistent enough.
I hope this has the busey seal of approval.
Sometimes it's a choice between maybe creating a few seconds of downtime in the Maintenance cycle in order to get an A2B activation immediately after, say, a DEM activation for cd or a BO for power levels. Or, something is at horizontal with 2 seconds left. A2B can't help it until it finishes and you activate it again. So maybe that 3 seconds is something to wait for.
Also, and this may be my imagination or my connection speed, but I feel like activations can step on each others' toes. I want to be able to activate my Alpha buffs while making a left turn to follow a target without worrying that one buff is going to get dropped because A2B was bound to my WASD.
Also also, sometimes you are going to lay off the Maintenance cycle to let Aux recover for healing or cloaking or tractor beam, or even let Aux recover just so you can kill it completely right before a TBR.
I guess I've got to give this all a great big YMMV since clearly mine did after taking a second to really think about it.
I think you're doing a bang up job, and it does provide the perspective from a "doing it on my own" sort of viewpoint.
With even just 1 or 2 friends on the team to cover certain deficiencies (for example, a pocket healer) - you are suddenly freed from such concerns and constraints.*
Yet that doesn't take away from any of what's been posted before.
*It also opens up new build options, imagine a build where you don't take more than a single science ability (or even 0 science abilities) at all - and focus it all on A2B powered offense.
That's what made my A2B JHHEC work with
CMD TAC: TT 1 > BO 2 > CRF 2 > APO 3
LTC ENG: EPTS 1 > A2B 1 > DEM 2
LT ENG: EPTW or E 1 > A2B 1
LT ENG: ET 1 > RSP 1
ENS SCI: HE 1
I only took the ENS SCI because I had to, otherwise it would have been a Tac ensign with BO 1.
The benefit is that I get both DEM and RSP on an Escort layout with CMD Tac, while the Sci guys cover TB and heals with their 125 Aux power and graviton spec.
http://www.gamingmouse.com/gaming/fragpedal/quad/
http://www.gamingmouse.com/gaming/r2-omnimouse/
http://www.piengineering.com/xkeys.php
I need some expert input here...advice and comments appreciated!
RCK
@rudiefix Feds: Rudiefix / Thron / Opa
@rudiefix KDFs: Lill / Xifeidur / Dehr / Ugly
@rudiefix Roms (KDF alligned): Chicita
Sadly, it doesn't look like there are any overcharged cores available at Fleet level - just "Hyper-Charged" or "Reinforced" (whatever those mean).
So you run aux at 15? And that helps to avoid aux-offline? What is your effective aux level after passives, etc.? Are you running the Leech as well?
RCK
I think it has to do with at low power levels, the addition of power of a warpcore is higher. Add in the efficient mod for a bigger effect. So after activating AtoB, power levels drop, but extra "efficient" power due to the lower base power prevents dropping to 0. Usually Im just above 5, and the offline duration is less than a second. For some strange reason this worked the best with minimum aux settings, whereas I would expect the biggest compensation for "efficiency" when dropping low from a high base power.
All this why and how is not totally clear to me, and I was hoping that more people had experimented a bit because Im sure there is even a better option than I suggest.....
@rudiefix Feds: Rudiefix / Thron / Opa
@rudiefix KDFs: Lill / Xifeidur / Dehr / Ugly
@rudiefix Roms (KDF alligned): Chicita
OMG not you too with the foot pedals, it's bad enough I had Jorf on vent proselytizing about it. :P (J/K, actually the kinect joke was born when Jorf started talking about the foot pedals on TS)
These two on the other hand are undeniably interesting.
I also looked it up, and that omnimouse looks indeed very interesting
regarding the foot pedals. Not for healing, but it may be nice for throttle (next is a steering wheel..........)
@rudiefix Feds: Rudiefix / Thron / Opa
@rudiefix KDFs: Lill / Xifeidur / Dehr / Ugly
@rudiefix Roms (KDF alligned): Chicita
Actually the guy in our fleet (who is a drummer, so he's used to using his feet like this) bought those specifically for healing.
I believe the plan was to use each one to target a different team mate and free his hands up a bit.;)
Bleh i got too much other stuff to micromanage at this point on my tvaro, hands down to you though.
But from all my own experiences it was pretty much enough with either 2x aux2bats, 3 or 2 maintenance purps or 1x aux2 bat and 3x maintenance purps to keep everything rolling quite consistently.
EptX 2 times pretty much always a 1/2 sec delay between em and my rsp,dem were always on or close to global
Oh well I pretty much excluded aux2bat from my rommy now because of too much drawbacks.
Cmdr Tac: TT1 / APD1 / CRF2 / APO3
Ens Tac: TT1
Lt Uni / Eng: EPtEng1 / AtB1
Lt Eng: EPtS1 / DEM1
Lt Cmdr Sci: ST1 / TSS2 / HE3
2xpurple Tech doffs / 2xpurple Attack Pattern doffs / 1xpurple Shiled Distribution doff
Eng Cons: Enhanced RCS MK XII Ultra rare + all resist / Plamonic Leech
Sci Cons: Assimilated Module / Tachyokinetic Converter / ZPEC
Tac Cons: 5x purple MK XII Disruptor Induction Coil
Weapons: 3x purple MK XII DHC Nanite Disruptors (accx3) / purple MK XII DBB (accx3)
2x purple MK XII Turrets (accx3) / KCB
Def: Borg MK XII
Eng: Borg MK XII
Sh: Elite Fleet Res - Adapt / ResB / Cap
Dev: Red Matter / Subspace Field Modulator
What do you guys think??
Why mount a DBB? You don't have any beam skills.