This is my old pvp defiant build. Its not 100% optimized for new gear / rep skills but its a good starting point. Keep in mind the weapon loadout and bridge officer skills. You may now want to drop the beam overload 1 for a torp high yield for more burst damage since you cant stack and double tap beam overloads anymore
[updated to a more current build]
Id run 2 attack pattern conn officers.
2 purple damage control doffs FOR SURE
and 1 more of your flavor. an evasive conn officer is a good idea for pvp.
The fleet Defiant is a great ship once you build it right. Some good advice here, but I would really recommend dropping torpedo's all together and go DHC front/Turrets rear. I have been using this ship with Tetryon for about 6 months and I'm not changing any time soon .
Energy type is more flavor. Like the other guy above me said though dropping torps isn't a bad way to go. You free up a lot of points to make you tankier, or throw them in sensors or something to be effected less by scrambles. There are a lot of places you can put those to make you tankier and more survivable. I would however make sure you max out all your energy weapon skills since you need to max out your damage.
Anti-proton can be very effective in pvp since its a spike damage weapon. Disruptors, tetryons and plasma all can put very nasty debuffs or dots on your target. Polaron CAN be very good in the right situation but I generally recommend them for science captains. Phasers can even be very good because if you proc an escorts shields during your alpha strikes he may just explode before he gets them back up again. My only concern with anti-proton is they are VERY VERY expensive. If you have access to fleet weapons then I would recommend you go that route. [acc]x2 [dmg]x2 for pvp on all your weapons if you do. [ACC] (accuracy) is everything. Unless you have a team mate that will be throwing alot of holds you need [ACC]. If you do have that team mate then crtd or crth might be a better way to go as it will crank up your damage significantly, but as a rule most people stick to [ACC]x2 or x3 for pvp.
The biggest thing is your skills, doffs and boffs should all work together to focus your build on the task you want to use it for. Take a look on the exchange at some of the purple quality doffs and see what some of them can do. Read the detailed descriptions though as the basic ones can be misleading sometimes.
My last bit of advice is to look at your buffs. Go through all your buffs that increase your damage and try to chain them. Start with the ones with the longest duration and finish with your actual attacks (beam overload, rapid fire, torp high yield etc). The idea is to buff those attacks as much as possible. Also just because a buff is off cooldown doesnt mean you should use it. Save it and chain more of them together for greater burst damage. In pve I tend to pop them as they come up or save some for certain situations like the transformers in infected elite. I want high burst damage there. But in pvp hold onto those dps buffs as much as you can to throw max damage in small windows at your target. The other thing I recommend is that you always always have emergency to shields active. Either run 2 copies (1 and 2) or run just 1 copy of it and run those 2 purple damage control doffs.
And always keep in mind... a strong pvp build will be a monster in any pve situation.
Energy type is more flavor. Like the other guy above me said though dropping torps isn't a bad way to go. You free up a lot of points to make you tankier, or throw them in sensors or something to be effected less by scrambles. There are a lot of places you can put those to make you tankier and more survivable. I would however make sure you max out all your energy weapon skills since you need to max out your damage.
Anti-proton can be very effective in pvp since its a spike damage weapon. Disruptors, tetryons and plasma all can put very nasty debuffs or dots on your target. Polaron CAN be very good in the right situation but I generally recommend them for science captains. Phasers can even be very good because if you proc an escorts shields during your alpha strikes he may just explode before he gets them back up again. My only concern with anti-proton is they are VERY VERY expensive. If you have access to fleet weapons then I would recommend you go that route. [acc]x2 [dmg]x2 for pvp on all your weapons if you do. [ACC] (accuracy) is everything. Unless you have a team mate that will be throwing alot of holds you need [ACC]. If you do have that team mate then crtd or crth might be a better way to go as it will crank up your damage significantly, but as a rule most people stick to [ACC]x2 or x3 for pvp.
The biggest thing is your skills, doffs and boffs should all work together to focus your build on the task you want to use it for. Take a look on the exchange at some of the purple quality doffs and see what some of them can do. Read the detailed descriptions though as the basic ones can be misleading sometimes.
My last bit of advice is to look at your buffs. Go through all your buffs that increase your damage and try to chain them. Start with the ones with the longest duration and finish with your actual attacks (beam overload, rapid fire, torp high yield etc). The idea is to buff those attacks as much as possible. Also just because a buff is off cooldown doesnt mean you should use it. Save it and chain more of them together for greater burst damage. In pve I tend to pop them as they come up or save some for certain situations like the transformers in infected elite. I want high burst damage there. But in pvp hold onto those dps buffs as much as you can to throw max damage in small windows at your target. The other thing I recommend is that you always always have emergency to shields active. Either run 2 copies (1 and 2) or run just 1 copy of it and run those 2 purple damage control doffs.
And always keep in mind... a strong pvp build will be a monster in any pve situation.
Thanks, I do have access to fleet weapons, our shipyard is tier IV working on V :DDDD
But I have a question, why is resilent shield better than covariant?
Make sure you have skill points correctly allocated. Makes a huge difference. Definat is a decent ship and perfectly fine for PvE. Sadly, it is seriously outclassed in PvP.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Well heres how it works. Covarients are just a giant bag of hit points. Resilients have fairly high hp but take less damage. Also less bleed through gets through to your hull. 5% instead of 10%. Also [resb] is popular for stfs and tholians. Buying both is a good idea so you can tailor your ship to your enemies damage type but that doesn't always work. My premade makes sure we run at least 2 damage types and we make sure they fall under both [ResA] and [ResB] so that people cant take advantage of one shield.
In the end though the resilient shields just absorb the damage better than the covarient. Having tons of hp but no resists will get you killed much faster than tons of resists and average hp.
Thanks, I do have access to fleet weapons, our shipyard is tier IV working on V :DDDD
But I have a question, why is resilent shield better than covariant?
You don't need fleet weapons. Blue or purple weapons with [Acc]x2/3 modifiers will do fine.
Just try to stay away from [Dmg] modifiers since they only add a VERY small amount of damage to each shot; other modifiers are far more useful.
This all depends on budget, but the higher you can get to mk xii purple the better obviously
I'm an exclusive pve player, on my fleet defiant i mount the cutting beam in place of the torp.
Torps wise I'd suggest you get fleet photon, faster on the reload and they do some decent damage, if you are going for beams a plasmionic leech and the tholian console will go a long way in managing your power levels and the tholian console helps improve beam accuracy by 10%.
The Romulan console will help with your crits and you definitely need the borg console.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Ok thanks for the tips guys, I guess my next fleet store purchase will be a resilent shield, and maybe antiproton weps?
My thoughts are on damage type is to go with how your skills are set up. The procs shouldn't be the key to your success, but you should still choose a damage type that works well with your skills. Basically:
Antiproton:
These are popular for the simple reason that the "proc" is actually just another [CrtD] mod, which should take effect far more often than any other proc that has the basic 2.5% chance. In addition, DHC's generally have a lower per shot proc rate than other weapons since they only fire 2 shots per volley, leading to less chance of getting those proc types; however, since Antiproton gets a [CrtD], they are the only damage type that gets an increase in proc damage to balance the lower rate of per shot procs applying. If you have a high Energy Weapons Specialization skill, you get even more benefit.
Disruptor:
These are very popular for two main reasons. First is the "force multiplier" effect that many folks on the PvP threads mention. Basically this means that the debuff allows the entire team to do more damage to the target, from all sources, which has a greater benefit when working together. The second reason is that there are a wide variety of variants available, which allows you to run a pseudo-rainbow ship as far as procs. The variety of debuffs you can apply this way is impressive, but does come at the cost of additional mods for your weapons. The Silent Enemy weapon/weapon/console 2-peice set bonus provides a bonus to disruptor damage, and is available through the Lobi store. To my knowledge, these get minimal benefit from your weapon skills, but can be useful regardless of skillset.
Phaser:
These are pretty much a matter of luck. The disable effect can be lethal if you get the right one at the right time (disabled Auxiliary when your target needs Hazard Emitters, for example), or can keep you from exploding at others (disabled Weapons during an Alpha, for example). Unfortunately, if you're fighting a Fed captain you are likely to get a very short duration out of it thanks to Leadership, and pretty much everyone has some Subsystem Repair and Inertial Dampeners, if not batteries and Emergency Power abilities as a counter. In theory this benefits from Subspace Decompiler skill (though I have yet to personally invest enough to see any difference), and might be good for a Science disabler.
Plasma:
These are nice for the plasma burn effect that ignores shields. You can do some hull damage as you are working your way through shields, and therefore this proc always has some effect on your target. You can get ridiculous increases to damage by combining Plasma Infusers, Romulan Singularity Harness weapon/weapon/console 2-piece, and Romulan Science consoles. This is balanced to some extent by the innate resistances of the Omega Reputation shields that many players use until they can gain access to Adaptive shields, and the burn is cleared by Hazard Emitters. The proc benefits from your weapons skills, and also (interestingly) Particle Generators w/Auxiliary power settings*.
Polaron:
The power drain proc stacks with other drains such as the Plasmonic Leech, Energy Siphon and Tyken's Rift; great for vampire builds. You can gain damage beyond the Tac consoles by running the Jem'Hadar Space Set deflector/engine/shield 2-piece bonus, and are helpful against Romulans since they usually suffer from lower power levels to start with. The down side is that it power drain is resisted by Power Insulators, which most folks will have at least 3 ranks/54 skill in thanks to constantly fighting Borg and Tholians during PvE play. They benefit from the Flow Capacitors skill, which is low-cost and usually maxed if you run the Plasmonic Leech anyway.
Tetryon:
The shield drain proc can be a great way to get through shields for a torpedo-boat, or simply against ships that constantly distribute shields since it drains every shield facing. You can gain increased damage by running the Nukara Appropriated Munitions weapon/weapon/console 2-piece set bonus. Like Polarons, however, this proc is resisted by the Power Insulators skill, and if your target already lost their shields the proc has no effect. Tetryon damage bonuses do improve the damage of the T5 Nukara Reputation ability Refracting Tetryon Cascade, but do not change the shield drain effect from the Omega Force deflector/engine/shield 2-piece set bonus Tetryon Glider. Flow Capacitors increases shield drain from the proc, as with all shield drain effects.
*This was tested by comparing power settings on characters with and without the Particle Generators skill. My character without any investment in Particle Generators did not have as high a proc damage, and power settings did not affect this proc. My character with investment in Particle Generators did see variation in proc damage based on Auxiliary power, both on plasma weapons and the Romulan Science console proc. My conclusion is that the bonus from Particle Generators is itself affected by Auxiliary power levels. This makes the MMSV's Aux DHC's look like a nice compliment to the Romulan Science consoles that add the plasma proc, assuming investment in Particle Generators as well.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Great summary. I would say disruptors have the edge over antiprotons but otherwise agree.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Great summary. I would say disruptors have the edge over antiprotons but otherwise agree.
I don't actually mean to imply that one damage type is strictly better than another; each has its benefits and costs. Phasers rely a bit too much on luck to hit the right disable at the right time for my tastes, though, and we do all tend to run a lot of responses to disable effects (Batteries, the Honor Guard/Adapted MACO engines, Emergency Power abilities, Warp Core capacitors). Still, they all have their strengths, and of course if you have a Spinal Lance, Phaser Lotus, Quantum Field Focus Controller or Wing Cannons... having your Tactical consoles increase the Phaser damage type may outweigh having a less effective proc.
Actually, you have a point about the "very popular" Antiprotons and just "popular" Disruptors I had up there originally, since the sheer number of lock box disruptors makes it much easier to get weapons with a decent number of [Acc] mods, a mainstay of PvP since shots that miss also don't do damage. I swapped the two now for the sake of clarity. Thanks
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Ok, on my cruiser, I tried a Mk XII Resilent Shield against normal borg, using 2x Plasma resist vs a Mk XII Covariant Shield [Cap]x3 and after a couple of rounds, the covariant shield seems to die less than the Resilent shield, it refuses to die and when it starts to get yellow, a emergency power to shields will get the facing side up really fast. I retrained the engineer BOFF i use on the defiant, and so he has 2 emergency power to shields and 1 reverse shield polarity.
Comments
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=vexfleetdefiant_3060
[updated to a more current build]
Id run 2 attack pattern conn officers.
2 purple damage control doffs FOR SURE
and 1 more of your flavor. an evasive conn officer is a good idea for pvp.
[SIGPIC]http://file3.guildlaunch.net/205090/DVhexishensig.jpg[/SIGPIC]
Cruisers with mk x common in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q82PqoFFxjc
Cruisers with good gear in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMnFljZD9m8
Soloing Infected Elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaEFICFx4E8&feature=youtu.be
Anti-proton can be very effective in pvp since its a spike damage weapon. Disruptors, tetryons and plasma all can put very nasty debuffs or dots on your target. Polaron CAN be very good in the right situation but I generally recommend them for science captains. Phasers can even be very good because if you proc an escorts shields during your alpha strikes he may just explode before he gets them back up again. My only concern with anti-proton is they are VERY VERY expensive. If you have access to fleet weapons then I would recommend you go that route. [acc]x2 [dmg]x2 for pvp on all your weapons if you do. [ACC] (accuracy) is everything. Unless you have a team mate that will be throwing alot of holds you need [ACC]. If you do have that team mate then crtd or crth might be a better way to go as it will crank up your damage significantly, but as a rule most people stick to [ACC]x2 or x3 for pvp.
The biggest thing is your skills, doffs and boffs should all work together to focus your build on the task you want to use it for. Take a look on the exchange at some of the purple quality doffs and see what some of them can do. Read the detailed descriptions though as the basic ones can be misleading sometimes.
My last bit of advice is to look at your buffs. Go through all your buffs that increase your damage and try to chain them. Start with the ones with the longest duration and finish with your actual attacks (beam overload, rapid fire, torp high yield etc). The idea is to buff those attacks as much as possible. Also just because a buff is off cooldown doesnt mean you should use it. Save it and chain more of them together for greater burst damage. In pve I tend to pop them as they come up or save some for certain situations like the transformers in infected elite. I want high burst damage there. But in pvp hold onto those dps buffs as much as you can to throw max damage in small windows at your target. The other thing I recommend is that you always always have emergency to shields active. Either run 2 copies (1 and 2) or run just 1 copy of it and run those 2 purple damage control doffs.
And always keep in mind... a strong pvp build will be a monster in any pve situation.
[SIGPIC]http://file3.guildlaunch.net/205090/DVhexishensig.jpg[/SIGPIC]
Cruisers with mk x common in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q82PqoFFxjc
Cruisers with good gear in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMnFljZD9m8
Soloing Infected Elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaEFICFx4E8&feature=youtu.be
Thanks, I do have access to fleet weapons, our shipyard is tier IV working on V :DDDD
But I have a question, why is resilent shield better than covariant?
- Judge Aaron Satie
In the end though the resilient shields just absorb the damage better than the covarient. Having tons of hp but no resists will get you killed much faster than tons of resists and average hp.
[SIGPIC]http://file3.guildlaunch.net/205090/DVhexishensig.jpg[/SIGPIC]
Cruisers with mk x common in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q82PqoFFxjc
Cruisers with good gear in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMnFljZD9m8
Soloing Infected Elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaEFICFx4E8&feature=youtu.be
You don't need fleet weapons. Blue or purple weapons with [Acc]x2/3 modifiers will do fine.
Just try to stay away from [Dmg] modifiers since they only add a VERY small amount of damage to each shot; other modifiers are far more useful.
This all depends on budget, but the higher you can get to mk xii purple the better obviously
Torps wise I'd suggest you get fleet photon, faster on the reload and they do some decent damage, if you are going for beams a plasmionic leech and the tholian console will go a long way in managing your power levels and the tholian console helps improve beam accuracy by 10%.
The Romulan console will help with your crits and you definitely need the borg console.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
My thoughts are on damage type is to go with how your skills are set up. The procs shouldn't be the key to your success, but you should still choose a damage type that works well with your skills. Basically:
Antiproton:
These are popular for the simple reason that the "proc" is actually just another [CrtD] mod, which should take effect far more often than any other proc that has the basic 2.5% chance. In addition, DHC's generally have a lower per shot proc rate than other weapons since they only fire 2 shots per volley, leading to less chance of getting those proc types; however, since Antiproton gets a [CrtD], they are the only damage type that gets an increase in proc damage to balance the lower rate of per shot procs applying. If you have a high Energy Weapons Specialization skill, you get even more benefit.
Disruptor:
These are very popular for two main reasons. First is the "force multiplier" effect that many folks on the PvP threads mention. Basically this means that the debuff allows the entire team to do more damage to the target, from all sources, which has a greater benefit when working together. The second reason is that there are a wide variety of variants available, which allows you to run a pseudo-rainbow ship as far as procs. The variety of debuffs you can apply this way is impressive, but does come at the cost of additional mods for your weapons. The Silent Enemy weapon/weapon/console 2-peice set bonus provides a bonus to disruptor damage, and is available through the Lobi store. To my knowledge, these get minimal benefit from your weapon skills, but can be useful regardless of skillset.
Phaser:
These are pretty much a matter of luck. The disable effect can be lethal if you get the right one at the right time (disabled Auxiliary when your target needs Hazard Emitters, for example), or can keep you from exploding at others (disabled Weapons during an Alpha, for example). Unfortunately, if you're fighting a Fed captain you are likely to get a very short duration out of it thanks to Leadership, and pretty much everyone has some Subsystem Repair and Inertial Dampeners, if not batteries and Emergency Power abilities as a counter. In theory this benefits from Subspace Decompiler skill (though I have yet to personally invest enough to see any difference), and might be good for a Science disabler.
Plasma:
These are nice for the plasma burn effect that ignores shields. You can do some hull damage as you are working your way through shields, and therefore this proc always has some effect on your target. You can get ridiculous increases to damage by combining Plasma Infusers, Romulan Singularity Harness weapon/weapon/console 2-piece, and Romulan Science consoles. This is balanced to some extent by the innate resistances of the Omega Reputation shields that many players use until they can gain access to Adaptive shields, and the burn is cleared by Hazard Emitters. The proc benefits from your weapons skills, and also (interestingly) Particle Generators w/Auxiliary power settings*.
Polaron:
The power drain proc stacks with other drains such as the Plasmonic Leech, Energy Siphon and Tyken's Rift; great for vampire builds. You can gain damage beyond the Tac consoles by running the Jem'Hadar Space Set deflector/engine/shield 2-piece bonus, and are helpful against Romulans since they usually suffer from lower power levels to start with. The down side is that it power drain is resisted by Power Insulators, which most folks will have at least 3 ranks/54 skill in thanks to constantly fighting Borg and Tholians during PvE play. They benefit from the Flow Capacitors skill, which is low-cost and usually maxed if you run the Plasmonic Leech anyway.
Tetryon:
The shield drain proc can be a great way to get through shields for a torpedo-boat, or simply against ships that constantly distribute shields since it drains every shield facing. You can gain increased damage by running the Nukara Appropriated Munitions weapon/weapon/console 2-piece set bonus. Like Polarons, however, this proc is resisted by the Power Insulators skill, and if your target already lost their shields the proc has no effect. Tetryon damage bonuses do improve the damage of the T5 Nukara Reputation ability Refracting Tetryon Cascade, but do not change the shield drain effect from the Omega Force deflector/engine/shield 2-piece set bonus Tetryon Glider. Flow Capacitors increases shield drain from the proc, as with all shield drain effects.
*This was tested by comparing power settings on characters with and without the Particle Generators skill. My character without any investment in Particle Generators did not have as high a proc damage, and power settings did not affect this proc. My character with investment in Particle Generators did see variation in proc damage based on Auxiliary power, both on plasma weapons and the Romulan Science console proc. My conclusion is that the bonus from Particle Generators is itself affected by Auxiliary power levels. This makes the MMSV's Aux DHC's look like a nice compliment to the Romulan Science consoles that add the plasma proc, assuming investment in Particle Generators as well.
- Judge Aaron Satie
I don't actually mean to imply that one damage type is strictly better than another; each has its benefits and costs. Phasers rely a bit too much on luck to hit the right disable at the right time for my tastes, though, and we do all tend to run a lot of responses to disable effects (Batteries, the Honor Guard/Adapted MACO engines, Emergency Power abilities, Warp Core capacitors). Still, they all have their strengths, and of course if you have a Spinal Lance, Phaser Lotus, Quantum Field Focus Controller or Wing Cannons... having your Tactical consoles increase the Phaser damage type may outweigh having a less effective proc.
Actually, you have a point about the "very popular" Antiprotons and just "popular" Disruptors I had up there originally, since the sheer number of lock box disruptors makes it much easier to get weapons with a decent number of [Acc] mods, a mainstay of PvP since shots that miss also don't do damage. I swapped the two now for the sake of clarity. Thanks