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Science captain help -- Level 50 and still a newb
sinadia
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
Hello! My name is Ayzari and I logged in to play with duty officer missions way too much. *Hi Ayzari!*
I found it difficult when I was 'levelling' up to find info about Science captains beyond 'science is gimped'.
So I found some random plan and followed it for allocating skill points and have since lost the forum post that accompanied it.
Help me degimp myself?
This is my current build:
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=ayzaricurrent_0
Yes, I have skill points unspent. I'm ok with buying a respec, or 'fixing' my current setup by spending my leftover points.
About me:
--Shoot me, I like the Dyson ship. It looks nice! I will at some point buy a fancy ship from the Zen store that's either the Dyson pack or the Vesta (because, come on, Vesta)
--I love ground combat. My current kit has Exothermic Induction Field, Sonic Pulse, Stasis Field, Triage, Vascular Regenerator. I'm thinking I'd rather have Hyperonic Radiation instead of EIF because EIF is a static pile of ground yuck vs. a regular AE. I plan to make a more medic oriented kit but would love suggestions. Plus I like dual pistols and sniper rifles...
--I like Gravity Wells. Big voids of doom, yay! I have a blue Grav Scientist (aftershock wells) and will upgrade that one when I can afford to. My ship has 2 Graviton Generators, 1 Particle Gen, 1 Shield Refrequencer as the Science consoles. Engi consoles are the EPS flow regulator, Tacs are +phaser damage as most of my weapons are phaser type.
--I am underutilizing my torps and totally do not have a torp setup in my gear (Which is not very good thus why I didn't bother putting it in the build planner).
--I play casually with a couple friends. I don't really want to min/max because I generally don't enjoy that, at the same time I don't want to be a complete dead weight if I choose to join PUGs for various marks.
--I'm working on Dyson and Nukara rep currently.
Other thoughts:
--I would probably be best off with a respec and switching points in projectiles --> energy weapons. I could probably pull all points from Attack Patterns and put elsewhere.
Thanks in advance, sorry for the long post but hopefully the formatting makes it readable.
I found it difficult when I was 'levelling' up to find info about Science captains beyond 'science is gimped'.
So I found some random plan and followed it for allocating skill points and have since lost the forum post that accompanied it.Help me degimp myself?
This is my current build:
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=ayzaricurrent_0
Yes, I have skill points unspent. I'm ok with buying a respec, or 'fixing' my current setup by spending my leftover points.
About me:
--Shoot me, I like the Dyson ship. It looks nice! I will at some point buy a fancy ship from the Zen store that's either the Dyson pack or the Vesta (because, come on, Vesta)
--I love ground combat. My current kit has Exothermic Induction Field, Sonic Pulse, Stasis Field, Triage, Vascular Regenerator. I'm thinking I'd rather have Hyperonic Radiation instead of EIF because EIF is a static pile of ground yuck vs. a regular AE. I plan to make a more medic oriented kit but would love suggestions. Plus I like dual pistols and sniper rifles...
--I like Gravity Wells. Big voids of doom, yay! I have a blue Grav Scientist (aftershock wells) and will upgrade that one when I can afford to. My ship has 2 Graviton Generators, 1 Particle Gen, 1 Shield Refrequencer as the Science consoles. Engi consoles are the EPS flow regulator, Tacs are +phaser damage as most of my weapons are phaser type.
--I am underutilizing my torps and totally do not have a torp setup in my gear (Which is not very good thus why I didn't bother putting it in the build planner).
--I play casually with a couple friends. I don't really want to min/max because I generally don't enjoy that, at the same time I don't want to be a complete dead weight if I choose to join PUGs for various marks.
--I'm working on Dyson and Nukara rep currently.
Other thoughts:
--I would probably be best off with a respec and switching points in projectiles --> energy weapons. I could probably pull all points from Attack Patterns and put elsewhere.
Thanks in advance, sorry for the long post but hopefully the formatting makes it readable.
Post edited by sinadia on
0
Comments
The Lt. Level Tyken's Rift- do they really do anything good? Don't you run into cooldown conflicts all the time? For Ensign and Lt. slots, I think the best science choices are the defensive skills (Hazard Emitters, Science Team, Transfer Shield Strength) plus perhaps tractor beam.
Good offene (including crowd control) powers are better suited for Lt.Cmdr and Cmdr slots, where I currently have good experiences with Gravity Well and Tractor Beam Repulsors, but Photonic Shockwave isn't too shabby, either, I think.
It used to be that shield drain builds (Tachyon Beam III, Chargerd Particule Burst III, Photonic Shockwave) worked good, but at least in PvP this doesn't seem to be as great anymore, probably due to more innate resistances to these skills. In PvE, it was a bit of a mixed bag - it takes away shields, but the real strength of these powers that regular shield damage reduction didn't protect from it, and player shields aren't that tough without it - NPCs live mostly on pure shield points and hull points, not on resistances.
Grav well is fun. If anything, i would dump particle gen for more graviton consoles to make the grav bigger.
I do avoid tyken's when i run GW (which is all the time) due to shared deflector cooldown.
Torpedo boat is my favorite way to go with sci. Less energy for weapons means more for aux. RR transphasics, breen clusters, breen set... all "free", in case expense is an issue. Photons are powerful now due to undine and dyson sets, though.
For ground, i run the tachyon cone thing, sonic pulse, exothermic or hyperonic... plus med tricorder & dylovene. I melee a lot. Sometimes i slot the sparkly nanite health monitor instead of med tricorder. It depends on if i want to carry med hypos.
Running around the voth battlezone, i can grab/hold aggro on the vrexes even without using Aggression or any threat. I could do more medic, but why? Maybe in a non-gimp group it would be worth my while, i guess. Just dps away like everyone else, especially since tac and eng can slot some sort of heals for themselves without dumping all offense on a kit.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
you are most definately much faster an excellent escort or cruiser captain than an excellent sci ship captain.
Also don't feel obligated to use sci ships simply because you are a sci captain. It is my impression that if you like Grav well, as do i, an escort or destroyer with a ltd cmdr sci is enough to be much more effective and faster at killing NPCs than any sci ship available to feds.
the dyson ship is already close, but if i were in your place i would primarely use it in its escort form with grav well 1 "only" and equip it with DHC.
there are builds out there for those ships, all you need to do is google them. Look into them, master the synergys like AP omega and grav well + scatter volley and you'll be a pro in no time. Then you can take a look at refining and building onto that base knowledge to get a competitive sci vessel.
Yeah, you can go with GW1, TorpSpread3 and CannonScatter3, and blow away groups of npcs easily enough. But with the Dyson, you can get GW3, quick change to tac mode and get the scatter3 active.
I've...never actually used Tactical mode on my Dyson. I'll muck around with that, and switch up my boff abilities.
Any specific captain skills to get / avoid? I have a respec token that I'm going to sit on for a bit as I improve my flying and try out some different boff skill combinations.
Thanks again
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=basetemplateskill_0
The above is what I put down by default for all of my ships (ignore Ground skills as that was just filler). That leaves 91500 points to allot for more specific builds on your ships. Obviously things like if you don't use torpedoes then don't put points into Projectile skills and if you run any type of power drain (Plasmonic Leech or Siphon if Science captain) then put points into Flow Capacitors.
For your Dyson I'd look at putting at least 6 ranks in Particle and Grav, Energy Weapons & Special, Weapons Training, Flow Cap and some ranks into Aux and Weapon.
When I first started playing a Sci I used this guide to help me. I also used this guide.
As to what skills you want to invest in, look at your playstyle and what abilities you play with. If you use GW alot then think of investing in Graviton Generators and perhaps Particle Generators. I suggest investing in flow caps.
After playing and ignoring my Aux for so long I reversed my gameplay and then focused on my Aux. That means I now run with full Aux, minimized weapons power, and use kinetic weapons.
If you like your Dyson ship look at what the Secondary Deflector gives you and build around that. The shield transfer mechanic is actually very nice, and I find that using a few of the listed drain abilities on the Secondary Deflector coupled with 4-5 flow caps consoles can drop a shield segment fairly quickly on smaller to mid size enemies. This lets more of my torpedoes hit a bare hull.
Have fun figuring out what works for you.
Gravity Well and Tykens Rift are both extremely helpful in PvE content. You will also want 1-2 copies of Tactical Team I and Transfer Shield Strength II. As others have said, don't bother putting more than 6 ranks into any skill area. The only areas I personally put 9 ranks is Starship Weapons Training, Starship Hull Repair, and Starship Shield Emitters. All three of those are cheap Tier I skills that improve base stats. There is nothing else so important that you need more than 6 ranks in a skill. I also wouldn't bother putting anything in Starship Threat Control, Starship Stealth, Starship Energy Weapons Specialization, or Starship Projectile Weapon Specialization. The bonuses are extremely small and hardly worth it.
You only need 3 ranks of Starship Hull Plating and Starship Armor Reinforcements if you can get your hands on a Neutronium Alloy console or two. Starship Batteries isn't all that helpful unless you are an engineer. Starship Subsystem Repair isn't needed at all on Federation Starships because Human bridge officers grant +20 to Starship Subsystem Repair each.
As far as bridge officer abilities go; try to use science abilities with similar functionalists in order to make it easier to stack science consoles to improve their performance. Shield drain abilities are pretty weak right now, but healing, crowd control/shield bypassing damage, and energy drain/subsystem disable abilities all work rather well. I've previously made a detailed explanation about Science ability combinations here if you are interested: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=16869451&postcount=5
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
That analysis of science skills /combos has been really helpful too.