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T5U/T6 Cruiser for a Fed Tactical Captain
ygrez
Member Posts: 21 Arc User
Been thinking of getting a cruiser for my Fed Tactical captain for a while. Now that T5U and T6 ships are available and adding a bunch of new console configurations, any tips on which ones would make nice beam boats?
(Not interested in lockbox or lobi ships.)
(Not interested in lockbox or lobi ships.)
Post edited by ygrez on
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Onstead of a pointless com engineering you can use that slot for surgical strikes and get moar crit on your beams, so you can replace that faw with an engineering intel slot and use a better thing for your tacslots. . .
the eclipse rocks.
The Guardian is a pretty decent T6 Cruiser. Easy transition if you're used to the Assault Cruiser Refit, as you could pretty much copy/paste your ACR build onto her.
Avenger-U
Oddy-U (Tac, or sci, but T5-Uing hands advantage Tac)
Second best.
FACR-U
FAHCR-U
FSCR-U
Guardian
Non optimal, but still viable.
Every other Fed Cruiser.
The Oddy is best only at being a giant waste of space.
I'd throw a Guardian and a Fleet Ambassador up there before I throw an Oddy.
In which case you don't know how to build one, it is a 30k plus DPS ship. Particularly Tac Oddy-U, which equals an Avenger in the Tac department if you are running 8 beams.
Its only downside is turn rate, and turn rate doesn't matter to beam boats as long as it has some.
Eclipse if you just like some over the top Intel destruction.
Anything else, long term, is just an outdated ship.
And an Ambassador can be far more survivable while maintaining a more consistent high DPS.
And the Guardian blows both away by being able to do both ship's schticks at the same time.
Balanced by the fact the T6 Scim is yet to be released - Guardian or Eclipse may well be wastes of money compared to what is coming.
Remember Legacy of Romulus.
Absolutely. But the OP is interested in today's Fed beamboats.
Amby - Absolute DPS doesn't match an Oddy's though, you are a Lt. Cm. Tac Boff slot down. (I had forgotten it had a Lt. Uni, so it also deserves a mention in the Second Best group, TY for reminding me)
Guardian - Isn't as good at DPS as either Oddy or Amby, and it suffers the FACR's flaws, without it's advantages. (unless FACR Lt. Uni is set to Sci, but even then the Guardian is a Tac console down.)
Boff wise its like the op offspring of the Ambassador and Excelsior. LTC Tac and Sci. Great hp, and an amazing T5 ship mastery trait too.
Lt intel hybrid slot gives some added flexibility too.
The only downside to a Guardian is it desnt have a 4th tac console. However, Fleet Guardian is just around the corner so there is an excellent chance thatll be rectified too, along with even more HP on top of its already huge hp total.
Its ship console is pretty great too. Great resistance and a tasty damage and exotic damage boost, making your grav wells even better.
IMO, the Guardian is the best fed cruiser there is at the moment. Fleet Guardian will only widen the gap.
Plus lets face it: she's very, very pretty.
Then please fill out my dissertation survey on feline attachment, it'd be a massive help (-:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/87XKSGH
Actually, it very much isn't the best - Very good, yes. Most Flexible, yes. Best, nope. That goes to the Avenger. (for now)
It is a FACR-U with fixed Uni Lt. and Grav Well - as such, it has all the problems a Sci-Uni FACR-U has, but without it's advantages, as a Fleet Guardian is almost certain to get a 5th Eng console, as it most befits the idea Cryptic intend for the Guardian, unlike another Tac or Sci console.
I wouldn't say pretty, but it does look like a Starfleet ship once you sort its visuals.
I honestly don't understand you. What was the point of your post? You're bringing up the Scimitar, an option that absolutely wasn't on the table, and then chastising me for what? For not doing what you did? Basically going off topic and dragging in the Romulans plus speculation?
So here, avoid conjecture ie;may well be wastes of money compared to what is coming.
Discuss what's on the table.
And another thing I'm not sure on. He asked for 'nice beam boat' without a lot of clarification. And granted i didn't give much either. You seem to be using the yardstick of a 30k DPS FAW boat in outdated content. How does using yesterdays yardstick help today?
ANY Fed cruiser you can buy NOW, will be outdated compared to current and future versions of the Eclipse or Guardian. And really, without Intel they functionally are outdated as of right now. The gap will just widen.
Yes, its obvious that neither one of those ships are 5 tac console DPS beasts, and there certainly may be 5 tac console DPS beasts coming down the pike. But that wasn't the question we were given.
Here's why I think it's a nice beam boat.
I brought up the Scim as a reference to Legacy of Romulus - Everyone got the OP goodies, only to find out there was an even more OP goodie coming. It was in no way intended as advice, but a warning.
It was not a suggestion, just me assuming you would understand what I meant by Remember Legacy of Romulus - same thing here, first few ships are released and bought, then we will start seeing the OP stuff. Right now is a very bad time to be buying any T5 or T6 full stop.
The question was best current Starfleet Cruiser beam boat, and the answer is still Avenger - what may or may not come to pass in the future is why the OP shouldn't move beyond a Mirror Heavy Cruiser Retrofit or Mirror/Prime Assault Cruisers right now, as they can cope with Advanced queues built well enough and are cheap enough you don't care about them being defunct.
Agreed, it is the most flexible ship Starfleet Fedside -trouble is, flexibility counts for little when PvE content is a DPS race, and PvP has so few people doing it that it is almost negligible...
I've always used escorts on my fed tactical, but I've been using the ar'kif on my rom which is pretty similar. And since I've wanted to try out cruisers for a while now, decided the arrival of a new tier was the best time to do it.
Thanks for the advice everyone. Think I'll start out with a free cruiser to test the waters before I decide on what to get. (but that guardian cruiser really looks awesome
Eclipse, because running a perma aux2bat/overcharge build, complemented by surgical strikes.
Surgical strikes II adds 30% accuracy and crit chance. That means if you optimize the rest of the build for crit severity you can land a lot of monster crits for those 10 seconds.
Overcharge is an awesome thing to pop right before throwing down a BO.
The Eclipse has a ltcom tac, com engineer/intel, lt com engineer, lt sci/intel and ensign universal.
You can easily cover all your bases with this, the ship supports dual cannons, is nimble enough for pve usage (but stil lworks better asa beam boat) and ultimatly is th safe, non niche choice.
The Guardian is bascially just a slightly beefed cruiser, it does nothing new or "better". The Eclipse will not be king of the stats but it fits every captain profession and is highly adaptable to play styles.
Oh, and having a Engineer/intel as main is AWESOME because how many good commander engineering abilities are there really?
No, you do not want to trade in your commander or lt commander tac or science slots, you want to trade in the engineer slots. THIS is why the eclipse is best, you do not lose your most valuable slots.
The server hasn't let me play much with the Upgraded ships and new ones yet, so I'm still mostly thinking in pre-DR terms for now. I am really looking forward to taking my Upgraded Tac Odyssey out for a spin, but can't say much about her as of yet - except that turn/inertia is still important for broadsiders: Every second where your narrow broadside arc isn't focused on the enemy is a second at half DPS (not that I take DPS too seriously as a metric, but you know what I mean).
The Avenger is a great cannon boat but what makes her the best beam boat in your view? Are you thinking more DBBs rather than BAs? Dunno, I like the power of the awesome broadside, so didn't find the Avenger that great (though a ton of fun!) - especially when the enemy has got aft of your broadside arc (especially especially if it's using a tractor etc on you too) and you've only got three weapons to fire at it.
I have all of the Fed Cruisers, fly almost nothing else, and have to agree with t'other gent that the Fleet Ambassador outshoots any other of 'em. [Though the Galaxy Dread can dish out more damage in some circumstances, but isn't really the beamboat that the OP was asking about.]
Being able to have five Tac BOFF spots (whilst sacrificing no important Eng abilities and having superior Sci at the same time), spread across three - count 'em!
*Shrug*, I really tested this to heck and back, since there wasn't much left in the game that I actually enjoyed: Take each Cruiser, try different builds, time how quickly you average clearing Carraya and SB234, tweak, repeat etc. Ol' Dependable (Flambo) with a Polaron build consistently came out tops vs ships (Gal Dread slightly having the edge vs the Starbase, especially if using Elite Scorps).
Lol, I will say though, that to get the Flambo to be that good is extremely expensive and a labour of love: if the OP's after 'awesome right out of the box' then he's probably better off ignoring what I've written here.:)
Well, with all the turn rate boosts floating around, you can mostly overcome the lack of turn. Still makes a difference, but not as much of a difference as it did.
Avenger - better turn and lower crew than Oddy. Both can do 3xSRO with 6 Tac Boff slots, so superior to Fleet Amby's 3 SRO and 5 Tac boff slots.
The FACR-U can do 3xSRO with 6 Tac slots, but that means no Sci, so its second grade.
Of Course, Intel Abilities do mean the Eclipse is now the best, as SS1/SS3 combo instantly renders BFAW useless in today's beamboat meta.
For me, the LtCom Sci spot is worth far more than a sixth Tac ability (and it ultimately translates into doing more damage to the enemy), since I only need five and exactly five... but we all value things differently.
Thinking in new DR terms, it'll no doubt change: Mastery abilities beef up some ships, so they can afford to take more liberties with their previous survivability and funnel that into damage dealing [which is why I've been excited about the Tac Odyssey ever since it was revealed that she'd get a fourth Tac console... I always found the Odysseys a bit too flimsy compared to what I was used to, especially if I maxed out their Tac BOFF slots]. Some get increased Crit chance, so the likes of my Galaxy Dread may well eclipse my Flambo.
And yeah, I've only taken my Eclipse out for a bit of a spin, between server troubles and her severe power tray scrambling bug affliction; but I can already tell that she's pretty awesome - especially since I favour Crit builds. She doesn't look half bad either with a bit of customisation magic [unlike the Guardian from most angles... baaaad proportions IMO... shame about that].
Personally I think all boffs stations should be universal frankly.
The way I would do it is all stations can use any boff type, but each station has a type to which it is most suited. Meaning using the right boff type would give a slight buff to recharge times (or globals in that station?), but using the "wrong" type would give a minor penalty to CDs in that station.
I've been saying this for years now.
Plus I need to think of an apt Imperial Russian Navy name (that fits within the character limit) for her - I've already used all the good ones on my other ships. It's an RP thing for this character.
Which leads to: I'd love BOFF slots to be universals too. This is my first [and most likely last] MMO, and it's sad that the vast opportunity (say, compared to Morrowind) for world building, exploration and character development is so missing - they've done forgot the 'RPG' bit at the end of 'MMORPG'. I'd love universal BOFF slots, universal ship skins (so my not too nice looking Flambo build could wear a gorgeous Excelsior costume) along broad type of ship lines, and the ability to design and build your own ST ships from a box o' bits (like an improved version of the ship builder in GalCivII).
But yeah....
Oh... oh... I know, "Tsushima".
BCW.
Well, TBF, if you are at the point of worrying about details like this you are probably over specced for the content anyway.
No idea on that one apart from browsing Wikipedia until you find one you like...
Absolutely. The sad part is they do so well at Character and Boff freedom (Tovan Khev aside, and he does bring the house crashing down) that the fact ships are so limited is an immense annoyance.
Ok, every T5, FT5, T5-U, FT5-U, T6, FT6 ship is viable for PvE content still, the DPS requirement isn't that high, but it is damned boring doing DPS. Especially when it is not more difficult, it just takes longer otherwise. (I will stand by my comment that taking a low DPS build into STFs now is trolling your team)
Before DR, you could roll whatever you liked in STO, everything worked; T1 ships could do ESTFs. Ok, that is also a... terribly low state for supposedly the hardest PvE content in STO, and so the content has been adjusted to prevent that happening, as not even sarcasmdetector and co
could TRIBBLE 15k DPS out of a T1 ship...
The thing is, being named Star Trek Online, it should be ships are just skins, the actual build runnable should be completely free. (except stuff like turn rate or crew, stuff that is actually a ship restriction)
The fact you now need to perform to some arbitrary number on a DPS parser in order to get stuff that should be awarded from Normal queues is a major annoyance - I don't mind Advanced and Elite being buffed, they needed and still need a buff, Elite should be at least doubled again, but Normal should drop 50 Marks, 480 Dil, 1 Rep Special Item, 1 Advanced Qeue Material Pack, with a
real chance of extra on the latter two - Advanced and Elite just drop multiples of that, with even higher chance.
Is someone doing only 3k DPS in today's STO bad? Absolutely. That doesn't mean they should have no option but going into Advanced or Elite Queues where they are a wasted slot on the team and only there to be carried to get access to stuff that should be available to everyone.
They ought to be able to get the stuff from Normal where I can run a Ionic Turbulence based build for the sheer hilariousness of it - Dance, Borg Cube, dance...
Nah, too restricting. If someone wants to run a current Kumari with Uni set to Tac* build on a Galaxy Class they should be able to, not face an artificial impediment to it.
* This is not a good idea, just pointed out for making a point.