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Useful science abilities?
tardes13
Member Posts: 167 Arc User
For some reason, my science toon feels underpowered and my science bridge officers often useless (on all my toons).
What I'm looking for is abilities that help you fight more PvE enemies at the same time. That speaking generally, or speciffically the borg ...
This is the situation I find most challenging, since I often get surrounded.
With the exception of gravity well 3 which I like, the few abilities I have tried don't seem to give me much benefit (tractor, aceton, tachyon).
This started as a space question, but I guess I have same problem on the ground ...
As a note, I prefer offensive abilities.
What I'm looking for is abilities that help you fight more PvE enemies at the same time. That speaking generally, or speciffically the borg ...
This is the situation I find most challenging, since I often get surrounded.
With the exception of gravity well 3 which I like, the few abilities I have tried don't seem to give me much benefit (tractor, aceton, tachyon).
This started as a space question, but I guess I have same problem on the ground ...
As a note, I prefer offensive abilities.
Post edited by tardes13 on
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If you feel your ship is under performing, throw you build on the forums, you lr boffs could be out of whack
As for ground?
Get a gambling device. Maco phaser rifle and the Dyson gun...you will tear everything apart
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
This is a common problem among men over age 40... I would consult your doctor. Perhaps you suffer from low blood pressure, or you have problems performing in front of others... There are medications for these kinds of things that will help you achieve happiness and pleasure for many more years to come...
... Sorry, I couldn't resist...
CM
Well actually, if he wants to deal effective damage on the Ground with a Science officer; I'd suggest using the full Omega set, a Physicist kit, 3x Geologist duty officer (cooldown reduction on Hyperonic Radiation/Exothermic Induction Field), a Romulan Plasma Split Beam Rifle Mk XII [CritX]x2, a Biochemist duty officer (Hypo cooldown reduction), and a Research Lab Scientist (chance to confuse with Neural Neutralizer). Lastly, I'd keep a Fleet Advanced Tetryon Pulsewave Assault Mk XII [Dmg]x3 [CritX] around as a backup weapon for things like Elite Ground STFs. For devices, I'd use the Shard of Possibilities, Large Hypos, Large Power Cells, and Frosted Boots. The gambling device may be swapped in, the buff used, and then deslotted.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
When using tykens rift, try to apply a tractor beam on the target, since tykens rift, as gravity well deal more damage the closer to the target. The difference is, ships can get away from the tykens rift, but its better than the gravity well using against the enemy shields.
And of course, you need to maximize your particle generators skills and graviton skills, to maximize the power of gravity well and tr. As well, using consoles for that effect.
Jam sensors its a great skill as well, but it is pure defensive. Tractor beam repulsors is another great one, but again, its a defensive skill. But almost 75% of the skills you will find, as a science captain will be defensive ones.
If you like tractor beam, then slot a tractor beam officer, which will add a nice shield drain. Check sto wiki for duty officer abilities. There are quite many interesting doff, which greatly improve the performance of science skills and skills in general.
On ground, if you use the physicist kit, then slot a geologist, that gives a chance to cause a spatial anomaly (a ground gravity well). This is great fun. Use also tricorder scan a lot to weaken the resistances of the enemies. If you don't need the biochemist for the cooldown reduction of hypos, then slot the biochemist that adds a resistance debuff to many skills. This works with electrogravitic field, exothermic field etc.
Have also a look at traits. In space "conservation of energy" improves damage of gravity well and others. On ground, the "creative" trait improves the damage dealt by kit powers.
Ever thought about switching ships?
At least in space, most of the skills in your space tray do come from your boffs, rather than your character. There is no rule that you have to use a "pure" science ship on your science char.
Try one of the mirror escorts, which are dirt-cheap on the exchange, or get one of the free, dyson science-destroyers that will be available as of tomorrow. Perhaps they'll be more fun to play, if you prefer offensive capabilities.
Especially the Geologists with the chance to cause the Spatial Anomaly are LOTS of fun - regrettably You need two, better three very rare ones to make this viable and they can be rather expensive on the Exchange - even worse for Klingons.
Taskforce 47 Falkenwacht (Federation) / Greifenreiter (KDF)
(at) deianirrah
Free Gear and where to get it
Note: Hopefully the fix for this doff goes in with the season 8.5 patch. Right now only works with ES and Tachyon Beam in Tribble only.
Also I'd mention, the drain sci abilities are getting extra shield drain with the new set coming out for the Solane Destroyer.
Not really. These doffs are extremely expensive for KDFs. I have slotted 1 common one of these on my KDF sci and I can still see the anomaly appearing quite often. Chance is 4% I think, but applies per enemy I believe). Thus, if you hit a group of enemies, the chance is not too bad.
Very rare one are also quite expensive on FED side, but 2 rare ones will do perfectly fine.
TBR with DOff might not be the best, as it pulls everything at you, so that they pound on you at even closer ranges than before. In solo play, "standard" TBR would be better for you...
The utility of tractor beam is not the damage it does, it's the fact that the single target you hit with TB gets dropped to zero speed and therefore -15 defense (increasing what damage your guns do)...
Same with Energy Syphon, it's more a "single target degrader" more than a "mass damage spell"...
Scramble Sensors is another good to great trick to have, GW + SS = pile of enemies shooting at themselves blowing up their own shields so GW can do the higher damage amounts. Not too useful against KA probes or nanites before the generators go, but still... :P
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
If you need more power in all systems, this one is essential.
All those science abilities feel a bit meh, without a good boost to them.
As others have said, GW3 is your friend.
However, the Tykens rifts/energy siphon combo is wonderful provided you spec into flow caps properly.
Even better if you can pick up a plasmonic leech from the exchange.
Finally, power levels. How are you specced into aux?
Because, again, a lack of aux power can reduce the effectiveness of sci powers greatly.
Erm, having high aux power in a science ship is essential. Its like running an escort without cannons or at low speed... maybe thats the problem.
Im guessing he will need to respec the science skills..
i know that an early error I made was to put all my power into weps and settle for an aux around 50%
Far better to lose 10% off the power and redirect to aux. You'll notice a slight drop in DPS, but those science powers will start doing their job.
As a rule of thumb, get into orbit somewhere and readjust weapon power so that, with bonuses, its around 100. Lock that level, then max out aux as far as it will go. Finally, reduce engine to minimum and boost shields as far as they'll go.
That will put your power levels into a position more suited for science as a starting poiont and you can tweak as you go along.
Finally, when speccing, do not ignore the engineering skills that boost power. More power to go around gives you more flexibility.
GW is a must have IMHO. It does a number of things all at once, and is both offensive and defensive. However, for it to work well, you should have grav & particle and aux power all high. What all does it do? It pulls all the ships together, for aoe. It destroys projectiles and fighters and other pests. It traps ships, keeping an entire group out of the fight for a while if you just leave them to stew in the anomaly and go fight the other wave. It does good kinetic damage, so it abuses structures, but is not your best attack on shields.
The shield drain of tachyon is weak, but its still worth several volleys of your guns... eps on the borg where drain all 4 sides of a sphere makes rotating shield facings less annoying. Here again, to use it well, flow caps and aux power are important. The difference between a beam with 130 power and 75 power is significant. I am not sure this is a must have skill, as it seems relatively weak, but it is offensive and every little bit helps.
Energy siphon. Not exactly an offensive ability, but depending on your ship and officer layout, this can, when applied to a boss or tougher enemy, keep your weapon power high which means more dps.
Photonic officer: again, not directly offensive, but it brings you offensive officer skills back online faster, which again, with some ships and layouts, may be worthwhile to boost your weapon dps.
Ty's rift: I prefer GW but this is a powerful skill and worth using as others have said.
Other things to consider.... if have tried a mix of the above (not just my thoughts but everyone's) with appropriate captain spec (points in the related boosting skills) and high aux power, and still feel the result is underwhelming, consider a sciscort? That is, find an escort with a ltcmdr sci seat or universal ltcmdr seat and blast stuff with your weapons, letting science skills become support rather than a primary focus.
GROUND:
DOFFs (Geologist, Biochemist, Research lab sci.)
Physicist kit
Gambling device
Shard of Possibilities
SPACE:
- Gravity Well (+DOFFs) + Scramble sensors
- Tyken rift + Energy siphon (isn't an issue here the cooldown sharing with GW ? )
- Photonic officer
- Tractor beam repulsors (maybe)
- Tractor beam
Nobody has listed Hazard emitters, but I heard it's also good for the repair thingy.
SKILLS
- Auxiliary performance
- Graviton generators
- Particle generators
- Countermeasure systems
- Flow capacitators
- Particle generators
Sofar, I kind of put to many skills into weapon/shields/hull.
A question would be what level would I want for the above skills ? A good level is 6 (green and yellow) ?
Also, what skills are unimportant for science officers ?
*********
And like I said, I'm worrying about the shared cooldown of Tyken / GW. Somebody said to combine them both ? How does that work, if they share cooldown ?
As a note, on the ground, I use generally miniguns and the piercing beam rifles, which are also quite effective and versatile. More specifically - pulsewave for close range and blast assault for single bosses).
And yes, like everybody else, working towards the Dyson ships.
I use both Grav Well and Rift, and I don't find that I have too much of an issue. Usually, it's just a case of using one or the other. You can help circumvent the crazy cooldown of the two (WHY are they on the same cooldown... UGH) by using the Temporal Warfare set on a Temporal Science Vessel or a Temporal Destroyer.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
I believe there's a doff that reduces the Cd on deflector powers as well.
However, I think there's a legitimate argument for going with either GW or TR, but not both.
Inevitably you'll run into shared cool down issues, and a minor area of concern is shared deflector cooldown.
For myself i find things run smoother, and I have more room for changing tactics, when I go with say two copies of GW OR TR but not one of each.
Essentially, GW is the big bad boy of crowd control, TR is its little brother with an energy drain effect added.
"Nobody has listed Hazard emitters, but I heard it's also good for the repair thingy."
I'd argue that if you only have room for one science power, this is it. Hull repair over time isn't awful. However, it removes DoT effects very handily, its essentially your science-parry power.
Once again though, I'd stress that speccing in to science powers is crucial. Many of their effects are strongly influenced by speccing in, as well as aux power.
I use 2 or 3 doffs to provide another chance to create another GW. Well, its really funny to see 2 , even 3 GWs at the same (dunno if this is a bug but i swear i saw 2 extra GWs in a few ocasions) time and the poor ship (or ships) flying in circles without any control at all lol.
Tyken's rift is the definitive skill to drop the target's shields, so even if you cant use it at the same time as GW, as i said, you can apply the TK and by the time its effects are over, you can use the GW.
Im still learning, but i tell you, if you can get both , the TK and GW (always try to get GWIII if you can, instead of TKIII) you should try.
I never put more than 6 levels into skill points (except hull, shields, weapons) as the difference in minimal and expensive. Remember, you can try it all on tribble for free, no need to buy respecs on holodeck to experiment.
First of all you need to accept the fact that Cryptic purposely made science into a nearly useless class. The game is fully dps-centric and science is not a dps dealer.
In PVE, most sci abilities are not worth using.
Subsystem attacks don't work (except shield subsystem 3) because the npcs are designed to be massive hitpoint sponges and npcs have near instant-fix abilities of said subsystems.
Power drains hardly works on NPCs thanks to their massive resists to it plus the fact they get ten times the power players do... a full power drain kitted fleet carrier just can't power drain shut down an enemy ship faster than it would take to simply destroy it with weapons.
Jam/Scrambles have the same functional effect at zero sci capt skill, tier 1 boff ability as they do at full capt skill + boff ability 3. In all honesty, only battlecloak ships like kdf raiders and some romulan ships benefit from this.
Shield drains are so weak even at full skill+ '3' level boff skill do less than a simple well placed energy weapon shot.
damage abilities are very weak considering the high amount of capt skill points, ship gear and ship energy allocation required to use them.
Gravity well for example, delivers damage only if the ship remains in the very center of the vortex the whole time. even the weakest npc ship will fly out of the center under normal engine power and take barely 20% of the damage it takes in the center for most of the duration of the well.
The only abilities science has that are effective are the healing and tractor/repulsor abilities.
In conclusion, to do damage as a sci (or just cripple a target with sci) requires nearly 300% more expenditure of capt points than a tactical needs to use all weapons equally and gain an absurd dps output. Given the multiple-stat requirement of sci abilities, your ship cannot focus on more than one stat (compared to tacticals having a console that boosts all energy or kinetic damage weapons)...so you cant drain (flow cap stat) and deal damage (particle&graviton stats) because you literally need to put 4 consoles of one stat to boost either high enough to be of competent use.
Currently the only thing you can really do with sci to 'deal damage' is to focus on gravity well and carry tractor beam. Tractor target, grav well it so its stuck in the middle..and fire an engine subsytem attack at it before the tractor wears off..... and if you're in a nebula you can toss them a warp plasma inside the grav well.
In fact, warp plasma+grav well damage will do damage equivalent to a mediocre escort in the same time frame.
apart from bosses, no NPC escapes a properly dropped GW3. They may not take full damage (they manage to yo-yo out of the well about 1/2 a km before bouncing back in), but that was never the point -- the point is to lump them in a pile for the cannon scatter attacks and to have them kill each other with death explosion chain reactions. The damage part of GW is incidental: I would use it if it did NO damage. But a GW 2 from a tac ship with 30 aux power and no consoles.... is about useless.
Many support skills have fallen behind due to dps/brute force tactics, that is true. Most of what you say is true and makes perfect sense, but the examples you give seem to indicate trying to use sci skills without consoles, aux power, etc to feed them. Full power sci skills are still potent and useful, but dps and brute force overshadows that. Tach beam for example ... yea, a good blast of your weapons does as much, but you get both, you can fire tach beam while your weapons are blasting, so its like a free weapon hit now and then. In the grand scheme, its not much when in a top dps ship or group.
You hit the nail on the head at the end: a sci ship can really only specialize in one or 2 skills. I picked GW, as it just seems to be very useful in groups, again, just for the aoe pile.
warp plasma I think of as an eng skill, but its absolutely a winner with GW or without. Unfortunately for me it is also terribly hard to deploy in a carrier :P
Not really. The GW pull-in effect happens only once, after a couple of seconds of the GW being active. The pull in strength of this well is almost completely determined by AUX power. Graviton skill (the stat thats supposed to affect it) doesnt do much to it. I know this as a fact since my torpedo b'rel tac captain (= runs full aux and engine power only) has ZERO particle and graviton and uses it from cloak (with full aux) and it pulls them in and holds them as strongly as my fed sci captain's GW with full aux, max graviton and particle skills (and graviton console!).
Damage of the Gwell is also not affected that much by particle skills. Once again, AUX is the bulk of it.
Now, figure out why Gwell was turned into what it is now. As you said, it aids in WEAPON damage (bunch them up) with minimal yet cream-on-top damage add-on and chain explosion damage (and since the Gwell itself isnt causing the death of any ship)... it means once again its just weapon-damage supporting ability.
Pre-F2P the Gravity well did strong damage to any ship it pulled in. It did hull damage equivalent to a high yield torp 1 every 3 tics. Now it does even less than a single unbuffed torpedo the entire time it is active. Pre-F2P there were only 3 ways to escape the well: full power to engines (and crawl slowly out), evasive maneuver (and slingshot out) or Polarize Hull (disabled the tractor effect). Now however, you just fly out with a slight speed debuff (similar to a chroniton torp proc) after the well pulls you in...or use any TACTICAL ability with speed debuff immunity (omega),etc,etc.
Tach beam needs AUX to do anything. You can't really mix high weapon damage and tachyon beam shield drain unless you have both wep and aux at 75 and the other power settings at 25. Even if you did, its dumb compared to simply putting full power to weapons since they'll strip more shield than 75 wep with 75 aux (and consoles) tachyon beam.
To give you an idea, pre-f2p tachyon beam at full aux and full flow cap skill plus consoles would literally strip the ship out of shield unless it was some boss or super-shield tanked ship (aka another science ship). Note that pre-f2p tac team did not autobalance shields and the tachyon beam sucked only the shield facing the beam was hitting.
(would be nice if it returned to that eh? Make tachyon beam drain just one shield and prevent shield re balancing while active.)
Thats because Gwell is the ONLY skill left that barely functions..and it functions only to help tactical ships (mostly) do massive multi-ship damage by bunching them up.
The Prometheus class escort with its science stations and the birds of prey with full universal setups use gravity well better than sci ships ...because they got the dps to 'really' use the Gwell.
warp plasma is an engineer skill. I just mentioned it because combining it with gwell is the only way the Nebula sci ship can deal decent to low damage without its weapons.
I wish I still had me video recordings of my pre-f2p Nebula. In PvP duels escorts and cruisers had a hard time getting its shields down because it could shield tank and I kept disabling their weapons when i needed time to heal... and their engines before I tossed a Gwell at them...and used the tachyon beam to remove their shields every time they let me turn my nose at them. My beam arrays were just there for subsystem attacks and my torpedoes would seek to hit the unshielded facings... and I'd only fire the torpedoes when I could tractor them after the tachyon stripped the shield facing.
Funny thing was, the torpedoes to bare hull rarely did the bulk of the damage...the grav well did.
Another build was the drain build..back then when the power insulator skill was 1:1 effective to flow caps (not 1 pnt in flow caps being 1/20th as effective as 1 pnt in power insulators as it is now) the only way to counter a drain-shutdown sci ship was to stay out of range or actually have power insulator skill trained up plus a console or two.... people had to THINK and fight the science ship in ways to defeat it rather than the current 'rush in guns/torps blazing pew pew boom' TRIBBLE gameplay meta that we have now.
It took a sci ship about 5 minutes to take down one escort or cruiser (10 vs other sci ship) on average. It was chess game. Escorts were known to take a ship down in 1 minute if they did their attack run right (focusing one shield facing..no autobalance shields in tac team back then!) and cruisers usually took 3 minutes average (12+ vs another cruiser) because they just tanked and tossed out high dps with their beam arrays in broadside.
I am not sure about the pull in only happening once though, it seems to be on a timer. The NPC ships pull away then go right back in, over and over, most of the time. /shrug it works for what I need, anyway, whatever the mechanic.
I do not even have a true tach beam, but the supplemental one from the JH XII set. It does an aoe 4-5k shield strip on the GW victims. Not much, but its 'free' (apart from sub-par shield 'cost').
I like playing Science. Maybe it's because the game takes longer as science doesn't have great dps like tactical does. That said, some episodes, I felt, were taking me too long to finish.
This is what I have found works for me:
Gravity Well 3 is awesome! I tried not to use it at first because I wanted to be different than other players. Well, it's pretty cool to have a big black hole open up and watch ships get pulled into the center. I would keep using it just for the animation, lol.
Anyway, between sensor analysis, conservation of energy, sensor scan 3 and attack pattern Delta, my gw3 kicks butt. While all that is going on, I prepare thy1 and launch a huge plasma torpedo. If that didn't finish the job. I keep firing my plasma torps and use tbr1.
Between gw, tbr and plasma torpedos, I find I never have to worry about enemies shields. GW and tbr do a good job of going through them and the heavy plasma torp helps do the rest. Ships explode fairly quickly for me now. If the ships didn't explode after that, I start my second run.
I know I'm not at end game but this is working for me right now and I'm going to stick with at least to Rear Admiral, if not longer.
Edit: Oh yeah, sometimes I throw a tractor beam in there before the heavy plasma torp lands.
Lol. So wrong.
im literally tired of destroying groups of ships that are flying around the gravity well trying to escape with no success. And with doffs with chance to spot another GW, ive seen 3 gravity wells around my targets and i was just sitting with the engines off watching how they die xD. Of course, you always need to do some damage to the ships trapped in the gravity well, but if the GW III is maximized with consoles, skills, aux power, etc, it really hurts. Very bad.
And with TK II ( didnt have the chance to get TK III) ive seen enemy ships literally with no shields for the duration of the TK, in fact, i would say that TK makes killing ships faster than GW, since you can shot at your target basically with no shields at all. I agree that if the target is not moving, the effects are more noticeable, but GW and TK are AoE weapons, so their DoT is applied in a very small scale, but it is there , trust me.