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Science officer expectations in STFs?
cincierta
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I'm sorry if this has been posted before, as searching the near entirety of the forums hasn't yielded the answer I was looking for.
As a science officer main, I tend to pug with randoms and find myself either dying from somehow getting all of the aggro or feeling like I'm not doing enough to support my team on ground missions. Other times I'm lucky enough to have my friends on to group up with, but it's usually not enough to fill out the 5-man requirement for STFs and Fleet Actions.
I almost always use the purple medic MK X kit, and find that other science officers I sometimes have in pugs either A) debuff,
do damage, C) try to facetank elite tactical borgs with melee. I've never seen anyone use group healing skills, and if they did, it was on themselves or other teammates that were lucky enough to be close enough to them.
Usually I try to keep Tricorder Scan and Dampening Field up on mobs and Scientific Aptitude II up on my team, along with Nanite Health Monitor on myself and whomever seems to be rushing in and stupidly kicking mobs in the shins. Unfortunately all skills have cooldown times, and team healing abilities are no exception.
I was able to get Medical Vanguard and Subspace Field traits and have those slotted in my current build. I also tend to favor the Elachi weapons as they have the chance of ignoring enemy shields or exposing them completely, making things easier for the dps in my teams to mow them down. I have tried using batteries to make things easier for pug tactical teams, especially team hypo/shields, but I realized as to how quickly I blew through several stacks of those just for 6 pug runs and said 'forget it'. Same thing with space team batteries.
In-between healing and what I can for debuffing, I usually try to do what I can for pew-pewing with single pistols on mobs, otherwise it feels like I'm not pulling my weight and making the run go more smoothly. If I don't shoot as a medic, others die, but if I do shoot things, someone dies anyway, typically me. I've also noticed not many bring in hypos/shield charges, and I almost never see sheilds/hp shoot back up after it drops for 5 seconds.
In space STFs, it also feels like I can't do anything right either.
I currently use a Caitian carrier, but it feels like I could do more, even after sending out fighters, buffing allies/debuffing mobs, and keeping my teammates healed. And still someone dies by going too far from me, or I go boom. I've noticed this happens a lot in Cure Space and Fleet Defense 5-man. AoE buff fields only go so far, and when someone dies, it feels like I'm being blamed for it.
I do have another science vessel (the one that has the aoe hull/shield regen from the cash shop, can't remember the name of it at the moment), but for some reason several random people were expecting me to kill nodes on my own with that when I came back about a month ago, and the hull strength on it was like trying to paper-tank with FFXI ninjas against black mage mobs.
As for space weapons, I've used phased polaron weapons in the past, but I'm starting to realize maybe I should try something else. All of my weapons are beam arrays since for some reason, Targetting Subsystems only works with those weapons. It won't work for anything else. I also tend to pair Gravity Well with the Elachi Subspace bomb that forces mobs weapons to go offline for 5 seconds.
Earlier today I was in Khitomer Statis: Ground and we had a science officer using melee and the purple MK X analyst kit. She easily died and I had to do everything to keep her buffed and alive, which screwed up my Nanite rotation. I asked her if she had a medic kit, and evidently she was stacked for just that one kit. She was still squishy, and not once did I see her use shield charges/hypos. I'm guessing that's what science officers are supposed to do now if there's more than one science officer in the party?
Further in the run, a tactical got on the shields, and she was screaming in caps that we had failed the optional. For someone that carried her and the rest of the team, this is pretty demoralizing to be told.
I don't wanna hang up my science hat, but...I feel frustrated. It feels like I'm absolutely useless.
Main reason I'm asking this is: as a science officer, am I doing it wrong? What are the expectations of science officers in STFs and Fleet Actions since there doesn't seem to be a checklist anywhere?
As a science officer main, I tend to pug with randoms and find myself either dying from somehow getting all of the aggro or feeling like I'm not doing enough to support my team on ground missions. Other times I'm lucky enough to have my friends on to group up with, but it's usually not enough to fill out the 5-man requirement for STFs and Fleet Actions.
I almost always use the purple medic MK X kit, and find that other science officers I sometimes have in pugs either A) debuff,
do damage, C) try to facetank elite tactical borgs with melee. I've never seen anyone use group healing skills, and if they did, it was on themselves or other teammates that were lucky enough to be close enough to them.Usually I try to keep Tricorder Scan and Dampening Field up on mobs and Scientific Aptitude II up on my team, along with Nanite Health Monitor on myself and whomever seems to be rushing in and stupidly kicking mobs in the shins. Unfortunately all skills have cooldown times, and team healing abilities are no exception.
I was able to get Medical Vanguard and Subspace Field traits and have those slotted in my current build. I also tend to favor the Elachi weapons as they have the chance of ignoring enemy shields or exposing them completely, making things easier for the dps in my teams to mow them down. I have tried using batteries to make things easier for pug tactical teams, especially team hypo/shields, but I realized as to how quickly I blew through several stacks of those just for 6 pug runs and said 'forget it'. Same thing with space team batteries.
In-between healing and what I can for debuffing, I usually try to do what I can for pew-pewing with single pistols on mobs, otherwise it feels like I'm not pulling my weight and making the run go more smoothly. If I don't shoot as a medic, others die, but if I do shoot things, someone dies anyway, typically me. I've also noticed not many bring in hypos/shield charges, and I almost never see sheilds/hp shoot back up after it drops for 5 seconds.
In space STFs, it also feels like I can't do anything right either.
I currently use a Caitian carrier, but it feels like I could do more, even after sending out fighters, buffing allies/debuffing mobs, and keeping my teammates healed. And still someone dies by going too far from me, or I go boom. I've noticed this happens a lot in Cure Space and Fleet Defense 5-man. AoE buff fields only go so far, and when someone dies, it feels like I'm being blamed for it.
I do have another science vessel (the one that has the aoe hull/shield regen from the cash shop, can't remember the name of it at the moment), but for some reason several random people were expecting me to kill nodes on my own with that when I came back about a month ago, and the hull strength on it was like trying to paper-tank with FFXI ninjas against black mage mobs.
As for space weapons, I've used phased polaron weapons in the past, but I'm starting to realize maybe I should try something else. All of my weapons are beam arrays since for some reason, Targetting Subsystems only works with those weapons. It won't work for anything else. I also tend to pair Gravity Well with the Elachi Subspace bomb that forces mobs weapons to go offline for 5 seconds.
Earlier today I was in Khitomer Statis: Ground and we had a science officer using melee and the purple MK X analyst kit. She easily died and I had to do everything to keep her buffed and alive, which screwed up my Nanite rotation. I asked her if she had a medic kit, and evidently she was stacked for just that one kit. She was still squishy, and not once did I see her use shield charges/hypos. I'm guessing that's what science officers are supposed to do now if there's more than one science officer in the party?
Further in the run, a tactical got on the shields, and she was screaming in caps that we had failed the optional. For someone that carried her and the rest of the team, this is pretty demoralizing to be told.
I don't wanna hang up my science hat, but...I feel frustrated. It feels like I'm absolutely useless.
Main reason I'm asking this is: as a science officer, am I doing it wrong? What are the expectations of science officers in STFs and Fleet Actions since there doesn't seem to be a checklist anywhere?
Post edited by cincierta on
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I stopped doing ground over a year ago, so I'd say, "Well there's your problem, you're playing ground." But from what I recall, get a pulsewave and a sniper rifle for most missions, except for the one where you should melee that one borg dude.
Now space, that I can talk about. With all the powercreep there is absolutely no need for support in PvE space missions, period. Every ship can dps, tank and buff/debuff by themselves. So my suggestion, especially in pugs, is to stop worrying about your team and worry about you. No one thinks that it's your job to keep them alive, get that out of your head.
Now for some brutal honesty, the Atrox is one of the worst ships the devs ever created. You're probably better off getting back in your captain level ship than continuing to fly that thing. Better yet, go on the exchange and pick up a mirror science vessel.
These days you're expected to do crowd control in the form of gravity well and/or tractor repulsors. And you're probably expected to put out some dps. Your best bet is to get stuff from the Breen episodes and make a transphasic torp build.
In PvE, damage is king. One of the only ways to feel like you're accomplishing something or contributing to the team is to do damage. So my science captain has been in escorts and destroyers for some time.
Final note: PvE is ruled by Tactical captains, however Science captains shine in PvP (though I'm not suggesting you try to PvP, unless you're a massochist).
Is the Mirror Science Vessel that much better than the cash shop one I have? And is there a recommended console/captain build that I could follow with that in mind? The only worry I have is that if the dps is dead, overall dps drops like a rock on mobs.
As for the transphasic torpedo build, I'll have to give that a try. And no, I have no plans for pvping.
The ONLY exception is the Crystaline entity event. If you keep your teammates (and other ships!) alive and take a few potshots at enemy ships and the entity, you're guaranteed to get 3rd place or better, which gives you bonus rewards. Not that your teammates will make it easy for you ("The game says to stop firing at the entity and get away from it? I'll CHARGE AT IT AND KEEP FIRING, BRILLIANT!!!" I swear, for a franchise that has always promoted intellect and rationality, a lot of the people who play this game can be REALLY friggin stupid!)
Now, I'm a Sci captain, too, and I fly the Fleet Nebula. I'm specced for Control and Healing, but I also have some MK12 weapons and consoles to make sure I can dish out damage. If you're in love with the Caitain Carrier, there's a Fleet version for getting T3 Spire that costs 5 Fleet modules and has a Sci Commander, Sci Lt. Commander, Eng Lt. Commander, and Tac Lt slots. With the ability to launch fighters and equip dual cannons, that should give you all the control, healing and dps you'll need!
Here again, if your only goal is to heal the team, you're pretty much playing the wrong game.
Here's a quick all purpose traspahsic build I threw together. It's not that great, but it'll get the job done. They don't have the free salonae shield yet, but that's the shield you should run (because it's free, unless you have something better). And there are better torps and gear out there, like from reputation, but those represent some major resource investment. Also, this build does not take into account doffs. If you have doffs which reduce cooldowns, boff powers can change and you can drop the multiple copies of boff powers.
So this build represents about 300k ec and a few hours time.
If you want to be medic you need to set rpg controls and know which healing ability and when better to use. Cant be a good medic with shooter controls. Sry, I don't remember doffs for medic. But I would say, medic is not needed in stf, pvp role immo.
Get MACO 2 piece, Armor and Shield, and use its shield recharge ability to restore shields quickly or before you are going to receive a lot of damage to not die.
You also want to slot Large Hypos and possibly Large Shield Charges in your device slot.
If you know how to run stf's then join PublicEliteStf channel for better experience.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 6549 (7572) Cold from the torment of the underworld.
In-game handle @Janetza
Space, I also drive a carrier. I have an AP build -- ob carrier beam & core for the damage increase, using dual beam banks. I DO heal others when I can -- its not necessary, but when my aux is ramped up (EP2A) my heals are much better than other peoples and its a friendly gesture. I drop GWs and they are fairly potent and long lasting. And apart from that I mostly blast things. I tried running tons of sci skills but they are just not necessary.
Crystal is indeed a good place for us -- long lasting and strong GW can hold all the shards off the players, *greatly* reducing the damage taken by the group.
-- The cat carrier: As I understand it, feds cannot easily get good pets (if at all??) so you are probably using fighters. The one tactical officer can't do much. Cmdr & ltcmdr sci is too much sci, unfortunately... its fun to double up GWs but just about every third tactical player has GW1 and a group does not need 3 GW dropped on every group of trash. I have tried and tried to make the double sci officer work, and have just about thrown in the towel for cmdr tac, ltcmdr sci setups instead. If you want a carrier, let me highly recommend the recluse, its pricy, but with frigate pets and flexible officer choice, its powerful. If you do not care about the carrier pets as much, maybe look for whichever fed ship (sorry, kdf player here) has the cmdr with 2 ltcmdr officer layout (and 1 less officer total) -- something like the romulan DD ship as a quick example, possibly with more weapons. You don't have to run a torp boat, but if you use energy weapons, you need good power levels. Its all I can do to run a 3/3 weapon ship with beams; if I had 4/3 I think I would have to disable one rear weapon to maintain weapon power.
Space--- Everything but CE is about pure DPS and tacs get mad when you heal them cause it messes up their GDF and engines take care of themselves. However one thing everyone loves is a GW
If we're talking pugmades from dps channels, then sure, there's no place for anything that is not capable of soloing the ISE optional, but I think long standing players and the more dedicated gamers among us are often guilty of forgetting that not everyone plays like they do. It's not a criticism, just, you know, most casual players (the vast majority of the player base) don't put out much more than 3-4k dps and can have a lot of difficulty staying alive in stfs, and on the ground, this is even more true.
As an aside, and this is a criticism directed at Cryptic, I actually find it quite sad that they have allowed a situation to arise where any group that means it's actually necessary to move your ship more than once or twice is considered 'a terrible pug'.
So...
TL/DR? I agree and disagree with the posts above.
*edit* I realise the OP was talking about ground, but i think the above is still relevant.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Personally, the sci is a better dmg-dealer than a tac, if you handle him correctly (in pve), since you debuff, and with the debuff get a damage-bonus (field researcher). And you stay alive easier than a tac. The tac on ground is merely a supporter with its teamdamage-buffs and Tactical Initiative.
Nowadays, you simply dont need healers. In good teams, everyone knows how to stay alive, and in bad teams its better to do damage then healing ppl with tribble-rifles.
Space: Fly on dmg and heal (HE, TSS) and crowd control (gravwell) the enemies. I use a vesta and a recluse, and both knock on 20k enc.dps in a fleet match, with normal pugs they rate usually 15+, while they can heal (and tank). From a dps-orientat point of few, thats more than enough for a stf (i also saw a 5k vesta easily killing the raptor spawn in cse, would do you want more? sure more dps are better, but someone like that in the team really eases the situation).
If you use attrox, try a torpedoboot approach, a friend of mine uses it like this, rating 15k+ in stf and holding north in NWS including w10 (which basically means, all sci ships can do nws now, since pets dont really do much dps in nws). Yes, the attrox comes in a very very bad layout, but if you are creative, even this ship can rock stfs and nws.
I was actually talking about both ground and space. Most of the time I bring up the queue for the fleet actions and STFs that I want to try doing, but I'm absurdly frightened that, even if playing medic, I still won't be able to support my team since I've seen so many just derp-charge and die in fights, and instantly try to respawn way behind us instead of letting someone resurrect them. I've always used shield charges and large hypos, but like I said earlier, I've hardly seen anyone, especially several tactical officers and engineers, use hypos and charges on themselves when they were about to eat dirt. And each time someone eats dirt, the respawn timer they have gets longer.
As much as I want to try the other STFs, I'm oftentimes put off by the fact that my ship and my science officer is like paper going up against a wood chipper. Especially against Armak, where one walkthrough I was reading recommended EVERYONE stick right in front of the boss' face and bumrush him. I asked one of my friends and said that was a terrible idea, or that was written before Cryptic made adjustments to him.
I also wanted to try the other borg missions again, but remembering from past experience, no one watches the ship, probes, or whatever we're supposed to be keeping an eye on, and it feels like it's my fault for the failure. I dare not attempt elite since there's so much more at stake, not to mention death = injuries which can impact your dps, and death should be avoidable. Like up against Rebecca. There doesn't seem to be an updated walkthrough for most of these missions telling what science officers should be doing.
I should have probably mentioned that I carry around and use purple MK XII gear and personal shields/space gear, and still think to myself that I must suck for dying or being unable to keep my teammates alive/pulling my weight. I'm used to playing healing/support roles in other games (I was mostly white mage and bard when I played FFXI for 5 1/2 years, and mostly played sorcerer/priest when I was playing Tera, and still do.)
As for your ship, if you can post us your build, we can help you make it more durable (and more aggressive).
Ah and for Armek, if you have at least one mine-laying engineer with you thats pretty normal now. Of course you can still have a medic-sci tank him and sniper from the corners, but the direct approach is faster (but more risky).
All you can do is do your best. Part of that means BEING the player that realizes that the group can't just dps the run to death in 10 seconds and step up --- be the guy that stops the probes in the borg ones for example. If you fail, at least you failed trying to do the right thing, rather than fail by refusing to do the right thing.
You may be surprised. I did an elite vortex and took down all the probes on my side, both side generators, and one gate with minimal help (team took out the spawned cubes and left me the generators, after the generators were down a second player helped with the gate). Pets and photonic fleet can do amazing things ...
If, however, you keep dying in them, one of the following is true:
1) you are TRIBBLE up. Perhaps you should not mash fire at will until the enemy has someone else targeted? Or some other similar "shoot me, im not the tank" failed strategy is in play? If this is the case, hold off, kill one straggler on the side until the aoe pile is established, or use GW to make the aoe pile and then let the other folks shoot a few rounds ahead of you.
2) you are not ready: the weakest npc enemy always kill you in a 1 on 1 fight. You need a better build (not exactly better gear, but better synergy with gear, ship, and officer skills, though better gear does not hurt!). As a rule of thumb, you should be able to 1 on 1 an elite borg sphere without being nearly dead after.
3) you are just dying the same as everyone else but it feels like a lot to you. That is, you die because something gets a 1000000000000 damage crit on you, and feel bad about it, but that happens to everyone now and then. If you die more than twice in one, you have a problem. Once or twice, it happens --- try to correct it, but do not worry about it.
into using DOFFs. Some offer interesting features.
Another serious matter is that you worry to much about what other people think about you or
expect from you.
You need to relax more. This is a game, try to enjoy it.
Even more, sometimes you worry that you cannot help people despite their stupid mistakes.
And even if this wasn't a game, worrying too much is usually neither required nor helpful
Ground: Wait... People still do that?
Space: My main flys a Temporal Destroyer. I specced it for grav wells, then it cranks out dps into the snared mobs. I've also noted with 2 EPtS I and RSP I, I can solo elite cubes and tank tac cubes. It doesn't get sensor analysis or subsystem targeting though. Aside from losing those two abilities, it is a good all around ship and I would recommend it if you don't mind those. Now as a sci captain, we will never in a million years out-dps a tac captain in the same ship with the same setup. But we can however deal a good amount of dps on our own.
Because if it is, that's awesome.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
Just a sidenote, if you use EptS1+EptW1 with 3 blue or better damage control engineers, you will find soloing a cube even easier.
As a medic, pistols are your best friends, ya you can't do the massive damage of an arc wave, but then your not a tact either, so no bonus's. But the refresh rate on pistols, and by extention your powers availability, is SO much higher. That 2-5 second refresh on other weapons means they can't activate their powers for that amount of time to. Pistol = .5 sec per shot with a 4 second refresh on your stun. Now STUN, stun means the enemy can't shoot, and you get to heal buff etc, same with KB. Using this pistol I can turn off 50% of the enemies damage MIN to 100% of their damage at max <with a little luck> and get in 2-3 heals besides. Add in using X for aiming and 33% damage bonus is a nice touch too.
Ya I can already hear the screaming of tac's saying my DPS (base DPS is much higher on pistols btw .. check it out) is too low compared to their weapons. And it has something of truth in it. However I can stop 50% of the enemies damage and take the time to heal 100% of ours. I say that causing death by paper cut vs 5 respawns, I win. I have pvp'd more than a few tacts, and they aren't impressed with my damage, but say "I've never seen someone heal so fast and so many times, how do you do that?" .. heh
Instead of 3 Geologists for reduction, You can also try getting the Geologists that may create a Phasic Instability - they are expensive in rare or very rare - but well worth it if You plan on doing Ground STFs regularly.
The Ophidian Cane or Shard of Possibilities may be worth getting during the next Mission Replay Event.
Immunosupport Nanite Injectors help countering the Assimilation process so keep them in mind, too.
And if You can think of nothing else, a Tribble like the Triolic Tribble can be of help as well.
With the Medic Kit, You should be able to Tank almost anything except the rare lucky shot.
Taskforce 47 Falkenwacht (Federation) / Greifenreiter (KDF)
(at) deianirrah
Free Gear and where to get it
For ground, use Physicist Kit most of the time for DPS. The Geologist Doffs have been mentioned, as Exothermic Induction Field is your bread and butter damage power, so cutting its CD is always good. Use your Sci powers to gain exposes, then use a Split Beam Rifle to exploit them. The Split Beam's alt fire has minimal delay, and will hit multiple targets so you can exploit targets even if not targetting them directly. Just wait until you manage to vape three guys with one shot, it feels great. Also, spam Tricorder Scan since it has a very short CD, debuffs the target, and has chance to expose. You only want to go onto Medic Kit if you're going to do the melee/tank strategy against Armek or Elite drones. You will be selfishly using all your heals on yourself whilst hammering the target with a sword. Please take the time to learn the melee combos if you try this.
In space, Grav Well and AoE. Make sure you maxed out your Particle Gen and Graviton Gen skills. Carry Graviton Gen consoles to get large AoE on the Grav Wells to capture large numbers of targets, carry Particle Gen consoles to trap fewer targets but deal higher damage (yay loadouts!). Once the enemies are stuck in your Wells, you/your team open up on them with AoE attacks like Fire At Will, Scatter Volley and Torp Spread. For Cure, you want to volunteer for Kang duty, for Khitomer you want to volunteer for probes. Your Wells are suited to this. Also look for the Deflector Officer doffs that cut the CD on deflector powers (like Grav Well) and the Gravimetric Scientists that have a chance to create aftershock Grav Wells.
If you want to take on the more traditional trinity roll of the support/healer, you should look into PvP. That function is much more needed there.
I main as a sci medic tank, but I have played as the other two classes too. I did not realise while playing with my sci just how useful she was - but playing as tac (particularly), only then did I see the difference having a sci medic on the team really makes. Sci medics do their damage indirectly - by ensuring the damage-dealers on the team are rarely down. Sure, you don't do that much damage yourself, but you do ensure the team as a whole does.
I use the Spire medic mk12 kit (previously used medic mk10), with the nukara crystal sword mk12 (falchion or tegolar sword are good too) and the Dyson ground set (adapted MACO is strong too, thanks to that heal it gets). Borg can't adapt to physical damage, and it bypasses shields. For range, the Dyson experimental proton rifle does good damage (turns to sniper mode versus exposed targets for massive exploit damage; otherwise does an area shot), has a decent range and is not too quickly adapted to.
I carry the physicist mk10 kit as a secondary, but usually only use it for situations such as guarding transformers in CGE and guarding the buildings on minetrap. The rest of the time I keep my medic kit on and tank up-front. If the tanking works as it should, you should not have to use your heals on other team-members very often, because you will be absorbing the damage with superior levels of damage-resist and healing (you have to specialise though).
Another advantage of sci medic is you can instantly swap to being a team-healer if needed, or if you are in a situation like HGE when there is so much incoming damage nobody can tank it. The general rule is a well-specced sci medic controlled by a good player can tank a standard single mob as seen in KAGE quite happily - problems only tend to occur when facing more than one heavy drone simultaneously. Elite drones don't tend to come together anyway. Tactical drones can occasionally pose a threat, but there have to be a lot of them (or in addition to Manus). Places to watch out are: the swarm among the backup generators in CGE (3 heavies), the larger rooms in IGE (solved by luring them out, which you need to do for the optional anyway) and the boss room in HGE (hiding behind the pillars comes recommended - however it is possible to tank Hive on normal difficulty).
It is possible to solo Armek as a sci medic tank, and I nearly solo-ed Manus on elite once, too (the room reset just before I finished her
I highly recommend the PublicEliteSTF channel, if you're confident you know the STFs and their optional objectives.
Space:
Gravity well and tractor repulsors are your friend. Many people have said it, and they're quite right. A good gravity well can slow up spheres/probes/raptors at the right moment to save a borderline optional. Control skills are also handy when floating in No Win Scenario (and I say this from having floated for a winning team in my Vesta using GW, TBR, TSS, HE, tractor beam, tachyon beam and scramble sensors as sci skills). DPS is good in many ways, but control has its place too. Control is even more powerful in PvP.
If you're not averse to z-store ships (you can always save up dilithium and exchange it), the Vesta 3-pack is the best Federation sci ship you can get, possibly with the exception of the Wells or Palisade (which are hard to get and I haven't tested, but get good reviews on the forums).
Of course, you don't have to fly a sci ship if you don't want to. There is plenty of choice out there for ships. The Breen Chel Grett is a good all-rounder (Winter Event ship).
General:
I won't dispute tac is the king of space dps. Sci, however, is the king (or queen, if you've noticed in Hive
On the ground, sci is the hands-down best tank, but can dps, debuff or control too. Eng is the best ground dps. Tac is... possibly the weakest at ground, actually, unless you count stealth super-shots in PvP. That might explain some of players' dislike of ground, because in my experience there are vastly more tac players out there than any other class. There are also vastly fewer sci
Don't give up on sci just yet. It depends on your playstyle, of course, and what you enjoy the most - but sci is a strong class, and a much scarcer team resource than tac or even eng.
Either way, good luck! Hope this helped!
U playing another game i think. Tactical the most weak??? are you high lol?
I can kill groups of mobs in 1 second with my tactical. Even elite tactical borg drones (well those takes 2 -3 seconds). If that is weak, then i think that word doesnt mean what you think.
Tactical are the strongest on ground, they can just wipe out groups of mobs without sweat. If you have high crit chance (as a lot of tacticals) its even the most funny thing in STO. And i only played 2 games on pvp but i was only the first in line with 1 or 2, and we literally stole all the kills from the other guys lol.
In pve, tacticals are far superior in terms of dps than any other class. I dont see any reason you would think the opposite. Its stupid. STO is a game that tactical builds are 80% prefered. Because it is the way it is. Damage, damage and damage + crit. Thats the way STO works. This doesnt mean science players can help A LOT in a group, using exotermic induction fields, or hyp radiation or something else, but in terms of DPS, tacticals are the kings. If you think the opposite, maybe you just played with the wrong people.
Do you have any good advice on how to achieve that, then? Usually when I play tac it's a question of knocking large chunks off healthbars, but one enemy at a time. When I see groups going down all at once, it tends to involve an eng with the neutralisation kit. I would love to be able to improve my tac to do the same.
I usually run with PublicEliteSTF teams, and sure, a team can finish off even the large mobs on IGE quite quickly - but not *that* fast. The only 1-second jobs I've seen are engineers with mines.
Tacticals certainly are the best DPS in space. On the ground, against mobs, though, I'm sure engineers have higher DPS. True, I may not have played with the right people, but I've played with quite a few.
Also, to clarify, when I talk about 'strength' and 'weakness', I'm not referring purely to DPS. I'm referring to a mixture of DPS and survivability, and a bit to adaptability too. By that definition, eng is the strongest ground class, based on mines, heals and its group buffs. Tac has second best DPS (based on my experience of engineers and mines, though), but is fragile in comparison, although offering a little control (but everybody loves security teams and the cooldown reducer, and I agree with that). Sci is the most durable, can act as debuff/control, and can eek out some area DPS with exothermic induction field etc (but still probably the weakest DPS). Note also I said tac was possibly the weakest ground class - and I add if it is, it is only just, and only in PvE. PvP is a whole other ball game: stealth one- or two-hit-kills? Ouch. Enough said.
However, if you have seen a tac do more DPS to groups of enemies then an eng with mines, I really would love to learn how. I am always seeking to better myself.
Buff -> Aim -> Pulsewave alt fire -> LOL
You can easily put down a squad of 3-4 common mobs if they're close enough to get all in one alt fire from a pulsewave. Tacs you just need to learn how to manage your damage buffs. Generally I use about two at a time while keeping pressure on groups of weaker enemies, at close range with the pulsewave. For bigger baddies like Captain-class or Battlezone bosses, I may stack up everything I've got and fully unload. Using Security Team w/Doffs (and the Shard of Possibilities if you have it) along with the Strike Team power can give you a huge DPS boost while also drawing some aggro off you. It's funny when you see somebody who has three purple Security Doffs and they all proc. It's like they're leading an entire army around
Thanks for the advice! That simple, eh? Trust me to be overcomplicating matters again, lol. My issue must be using the Adapted MACO Pulsewave and the Dyson Experimental Proton Rifle. I might have to look into getting a more ordinary pulsewave, then.
Does this go for eSTF Borg as well? Or am I better sticking to the Adapted MACO with them?
I did that yesterday in Minetrap; great fun, especially given the entire team was doing it. Yesterday was a bad day to be a salt vampire!
I used to do that on defera, i go with my stealth, i reach a group of borgs, i prepare all my buffs, i switch to my pulse wave shot 2, i deactivate the stealth, not before i use the ambush skill, i press shot 2, and voil
2 tacticals kill an elite tactical drone in 3 seconds..