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Useful Science BOff Skills
arkatdt
Member Posts: 91 Arc User
I was reading through another thread and can across this:
I did not want to hijack the other person thread with a question about that statement. I am currently working on a Science Officer in a Science ship that will be a torpedo build. I currently at L31 and I am using the Tachyon Beam.
So far I have found it to be useful in the PVE missions that I am running, however, I am running a mix of beams and torpedoes, so I have the something else to take down the shields before I fire the torpedo. In my final build, I will not have that.
My question is are there any good Science abilities for stripping shields? Or are all of them inadequate?
Anyways, i'd say swap out Tachion beam. It's useless. About the crappiest BOFF ability around. I'd recommend either Hazard Emitters, Polarize Hull or Transfer shield strength depending on what enemy you're fighting.
I did not want to hijack the other person thread with a question about that statement. I am currently working on a Science Officer in a Science ship that will be a torpedo build. I currently at L31 and I am using the Tachyon Beam.
So far I have found it to be useful in the PVE missions that I am running, however, I am running a mix of beams and torpedoes, so I have the something else to take down the shields before I fire the torpedo. In my final build, I will not have that.
My question is are there any good Science abilities for stripping shields? Or are all of them inadequate?
Post edited by arkatdt on
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Unfortunately to make it workable you need high aux power and a full rack of flow capacitor consoles in your science slots. Mix it with energy syphon, Tykens rift and subsystem targeting, and use deflector officers to reduce the cool down on all three.
With low aux and no flow caps its pointless, but that's the state most people first try it in.
No matter how much shield draining I stack, I can take them off faster by just shooting the target. PVP, folks resist drains very well for the most part, clearing debuffs and recovering quickly. PVE, by the time the shields are gone, you could have just shot the stupid thing.
That does not mean it does not work, it just means that building a drainer that is better than shooting the shields off is a difficult build that has so far eluded me.
Lots of things work better at lower levels, an unrelated problem of scaling. If it seems to be working for you right now, use it and have fun, but be aware that it may begin to fall short as you level. A prime example of this is all torpedoes and mines ... they are extremely nasty at level 10-20, without a thing to support them. At 50, using every trick in the book to enhance them, the same build is far less effective than it was at 20. Same is true for tachy beam... its fine at 10-20 with no aux power and no consoles or flow caps or anything else. Its marginal at 50 even with all the right support for it.
Try the C-Store Dyson destroyer with 5 sci consoles equipped with the Solanae 2nd deflector. Max those flow caps, use the Obelisk Warp core, and just for the heck of it, try Tachyon Beam 3 while your Aux is at 135.
Noroblad already said it, the most effective way to deshield a target is to just shoot it with energy weapons. Shields absorb 90% of the damage until they are gone, so if your tooltip says 1k damage then you are doing 900 damage to shield health with every pulse. Nothing else comes anywhere close to that.
Tachyon Beam has another useful property, which is that it will activeate the Deflector DOFF, for 25% chance to reduce the cooldown on all other affected abilities by half. So if you are running Tykens Rift and Grav Well, you can hit Tachyon Beam every 30 seconds and try to cut the cooldown. And while you are doing that, you are getting some shield drains. One of them is free, drains or CD reduction, pick whichever you want to justify.
By itself, not much use.
Excuse me for that statement. It's an opinion, not a fact. If you can make something good out of it, you deserve my respect.
In fact the real problem is IMO that in PvE the fact that it effects only a single target makes it kinda useless.
In PvP high drain resists through PowIns do.
That's what i think. If you can make it work, great job. But i think other powers - especially the heals are more valuable off the science section.
No need to apologize for the statement. Opinions are fine and I respect them. Most of what goes on around here is opinion anyway.
Like I said, I am planning an almost all torpedo build for a fleet RSV using the GW3 and TR2. I was looking at something to strip away the shield if possible. I can always depend on others to use their energy weapons to strip away the shields and then fire the torpedoes. There many places in ICE where the objects are not shielded, so the torpedo damage will go straight to the target. I am just seeing what I can do to help myself.
Dude, no need to get offended... :rolleyes: First of all, you don't really need anything more than HE1, its cleanse is more important than its hull heal. Aux to SIF is far better just because of its 15 second CD or even ET which gives you another cleanse, the same with ST. ET and ST are completely viable now too now that they no longer share CDs.
I mothballed my science ship and went Tal Shiar Adapted Battle Cruiser. With this I can get all of the benefits of a Science ship and the durability of a Cruiser, not to mention 2 more weapon slots. In fact I think all Fed Science Officers should look at it, the Tholian Carrier or the Science Oddy.
The recluse for sure. It's one hell of a flexible boat, what with it having the cmdr uni. The elite mesh weavers are great too.
I never found tachyon beam to be that great. It's okay with a big investment in it. I think it's a second string power at best.
another option is to go with the romula plasma torpedo the omega torpedo and the harg'peng
Science isn't about what you need, its about what you enjoy. If we limited ourselves to doing things in only the most efficient way then 90% of us would be romulans in scemitars and 10% of us would be romulans in recluse (to provide the APB3 spam which allows the 90% to output the most damage).
Science brings some abilities that are specialized such as healing and crowd control. I can imagine where those skills are necessary for the success of a group mission. Being needed and helping the group's success can be its own reward.
I haven't tried Plasma Torpedoes yet. I switched from Transphasics to Photons on my battle cruiser. The AMACO set +the Dyson Set really jumps up the damage. Plus using the CDR uni as a TAC CDR I get TS 3 and DPB 3. It packs a punch with SA stacked and is so much more durable than my vesta. You'll need some +turn consoles though.
I am only using the Risa LC for now and put all my SCI Fed Ships away. 5 weapons on Fwd (dual ap gives you a that extra 5. I use more torpedo's though based on higher DPS. The Rapid Launcher Trans they still have 40% shield buster if you use high yield level 2 with full level 3 torpedo' spread can really do some damage and launch more than 6x torpedo's. Bio-head torpedo is nice got one not purple but next to it still does a lot more damage for a photon. I switch to photon XI rare or XII. high DPS I can get.
Dooms-day ha-torpedo level XI purple weapon is very good to use one fw and one aft. Need two like 8K damage if they fire one and two at the same time when your turn your ship around. As for turning RCS 35% or max is 40% (cost a lot for that though)
G-Photon one trying to grind for it on Fed side. ROM has Bio-replacement Disrupter photon torpedo, got 4x of those but only use two. There is a mission on ROM side to do get them. Alter-Mind Control one.
Time will only tell!
I used to be in the camp that says tachyon beam is useless, but I tried out the new DOff that gives you a chance to completely drop the enemy's closest shield facing with tachyon beam and WOW ... it's nice.
It's only a chance to completely drop the shield facing, but it procs fairly frequently and it DOES make a difference in how quickly you can take out your enemy.
It's not an "I win button" or something that completely changes the game, but with this DOff the tachyon beam finally works like I suspect players WANT a tachyon beam to work ... to drop the enemy's shield long enough to do some damage.
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
Exactly. I take perverse pleasure in trying to push dps on my Sci boats as far as possible, which isn't very far at all, but it keeps me busy.
By comparison, my Tac in an Escort is a snoozefest to build and play (except for having to keep forward aligned, but that's more of a chore than anything else).
I cashed in some extra dilithium for zen/keys today so I could open some lock boxes and ended up with an extra "Mokimro" (the Xindi DOff who gives you a 20% chance to drop the enemy's shield facing with tachyon beam). Just for laughs I decided to try and see if he stacks ... and he does!
That's two 20% chances (not the same as a 40% chance but still TWO chances) to completely drop the enemy's shield facing every time you use your tachyon beam.
Tachyon beam is now my favorite science ability after gravity well.
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
I noticed that it doesn't seem to affect the Undine that much, other than pissing them off. But it works okay against most other NPCs.
I usually save it for tight formations of enemy vessels, like Breen raiders (with that annoying tractor beam spam) or Birds of Prey, to name a couple of examples.
Like mentioned in a psot above you can use it to trigger the cd reduction from the deflector doff, cause it is one of the sci sklils with the shortest cd.
The second reason is, that it you get a shield leech heal with it from the second deflector (the one you got from the sci destroyer you were able to get from the Episode). You also get that heal when you are using tykens or energy syphons, but it scales better with tachyon beam.
Third reason is, that it helps to to keep the shields down from regenerating(asuming no skills are used). Helps when you want to bring in a nice hy grav torp or something, direct to the hull instead of hitting the shield that just regenerated the moment before you hit the target.
But ok, to be fair, on my fed sci ships i don`t use it. Maybe i will when we also get secondary deflectors for them.
U.S.S. Helios -Vesta Class / R.R.W. Dark Science - Dyson Surveillance Science Destroyer
U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit
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