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Plasma vs Har'pheng Torpedos
ambassadormolari
Member Posts: 709 Arc User
So, as the above title reads, which type of torpedo do you prefer-- plasmas/heavy plasmas, or har'phengs? (Or some other variety, which you can feel free to mention). I'm torn between the two right now for my Hegh'ta Heavy BOP. On the one hand, I really like the debuffng/gradual damage effect of the Har'pheng, but the raw kaboom provided by plasma torps is also quite nice.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by ambassadormolari on
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Are you using doffs?
Do you care about damage or just want to have fun?
Plasmas have no global cool down, so doffs will continue to bring it down. Har peng has a global cool down of 15 secs, the plasma will do more damage by the time the second one fires
Har'peng are the fastest torp and the radiation damage proc is pretty cool
Plasmas are slower but you will fire more plus they are affected by high yield and torp spread
Plasmas has my vote
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
I haven't checked this in some time but I thought the Harg'peng had a 10s global cooldown. Irrelevant if you only run 1.
All other Torpedoes have a 1.5s global cooldown.
High Yield Plama are great if they hit, but they are slow and shootable.
If I ask you a question it is not an insult but a genuine attempt to understand why.
When I insult you I won't be discreet about it, I will be precise and to the point stupid.
My character Tsin'xing
So, my vote is for Hargh'Peng.
I do use the Romulan Hyper-Plasma on the aft, however.
But...
what if you don't use torpedo abilities? I prefer the Hargh'Peng for one reason: it penetrates shields with its dot and secondary explosion. When you pass an enemy you fired upon and got a torpedo in the rear you will hit the OPPOSITE side of its shields, usually rendering a rear mounted torp fairly ineffective. The Hargh'Peng is different. It will take the damage trough the shields from the opposite side, making it a premieer choice for rear armament.
As an added bonus I can equip a better beam ability for my standard weapons like the shield or engine drain or I can have a secondary beam overload. When I'm using my photonic shockwave build I often offset this with a FAW EPTAux FBP combination which seems to work very well.
If I ask you a question it is not an insult but a genuine attempt to understand why.
When I insult you I won't be discreet about it, I will be precise and to the point stupid.
A nice thing with Hargh'pengs are that they hit reasonably hard without using torpedo buffs. The radiation dot & explosion are great benefits. The drawback is that there are no mods on these weapons, like the all important [Acc] mod. Regardless, for a SCI vessel & Cruiser that barely have space for TAC BOFFs, Hargh'peng Torps are a nice fit. Also, their global CD is 10 seconds.
I'm a bit surprised and miffed that there isn't an Advanced or Elite Fleet version.
When you begin your grind at elite level, few serious grinders use it, and lets be honest - you're going to be grinding alot.
20-40 lvl: Plasma in general has been my favourite for rear-firing torpedoes. The plasma burn proc is nice early on as it will take down your opponent's shields. Forward firing I lean more to Quantum's both for their rate of fire and damage.
Later in development access to better grade XII, and ultimately OMEGA and Romulan versions are significantly better both in terms of loadout (preloaded) and damage.
I lean more to OMEGA in terms of personal choice.
My character Tsin'xing
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Hargh%27peng
It benefits from Warhead Yield Chamber (which a lot of torpedo boats use if they run different types, like myself). It also benefits from Rule 62 and gets a boost from the 2-piece KHG set.
If you are running a ship with one torp tube in the front, I think the weapon of choice right now is the omega torpedo. The clip-fire is a godsend, and with even just one purple projectile officer, it can be fired near endlessly. The only downside is when activating a torpedo upgrade, firing puts it on a default 8 second cooldown. So you wouldn't want more than one torp upgrade ability otherwise your rate of fire is actually drastically impeded.
When it comes to standard plasma torpedos, like other standard weapons, the rate of fire is low compared to energy weapons, so running one tube does sacrifice some dps. However having projectile officer doffs helps, getting three purples is ideal, and if you are willing to run two tubes it does well to increase the rate of fire. In general though unless you are making a build with torpedos as the primary source of damage, omegas are far superior, as both have direct hull burn but the omega with its faster rate of fire lets you get multiple stacks much more quickly. if you ARE using torps as the primary damage dealer and running multiple plasma torp tubes, you can get them firing one per second anyways, and bypass the 8 second cooldown the omega gets from torp buffs- rendering regular plasmas superior in that case.
For the rommie experimental, it is a fun little toy, as you can actually let out a pretty constant stream of torpedos with the afore mentioned doffs. However the actual damage is not -that- much higher than regular torpedos, owing most of the boost to the fact that it launches three at a time. but it does have a good chance of stacking multiple layers of hull burn, which like all plasmas does bypass shields quite nicely.
An effective combination, if going with a torp-based build, is to have the experimental torp along with two or three plasma torps, and two copies of either spread or high yield. heh I call it the 'heavy bomber' build when i run high yield 3 and 2 in tandem with the experimental.
As for the 'peng, I find it of no use to run more than one on a ship because the normal cooldoqn is 15 seconds, and the global is 10 seconds. so you only increase your fire rate by a third. because of this I use a similar technique with it as I would for the breen cluster (which is also a good burst damage weapon) or a tric torp. That is to load it in a rear weapon slot on my ship so i can use the front weapons to deal constant damage, then pop evasives or omega, or an engine battery to whip around, drop a shot out the rear, then come back about to resume normal firing. This is especially effective on ships with a high turn rate as you can take full advantage of the weapon and still have a minimal loss of fire rate during the cooldown.
*edit*
The Omega torpedo was repaired in the latest patch, and the clip function is working again so it is no longer -as- effective as a single-tube weapon. However, despite the update I feel my advice still stands as it still allows for burst firing, and having projectile doffs still increases the regeneration rate of the clip. However the 8 second default cooldown still applies on use of any torpedo upgrade so you will only want to run one (ideally spread 3 or High yield 3 to make most use of it). A quick tactic is to fire off the clip until it is down to the last torpedo, then to activate the torp upgrade of choice and fire. the 8 second cooldown then doesn't matter as the clip has to regenerate anyways and the break in firing allows a shot or two to come back- maximising damage by making full use of the clip.
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