Playing PVE - Damage/Shields

ranger19822109 · October 2014

Hi all,

first of all, sorry if this question was already asked, if you're searching for weapon or DPS you will get a lot of results

I know that there are a lot of changes done in Delta Rising and with the cap increase to lvl 60 the enemies in the PVE are getting stronger but there is one thing i do not understand:

I have Fleet Antiprotons on my ship and before Delta Rising they had enough DPS to put down a Vorcha Class Ship in the SB STF.
But now, it feels like I'm throwing sticks against remodulated-multispectral shields of the BORG.
Using that example with (or better against) the Vorcha Class ship, their shields are telling me: hey, don't you have more power, it tickles.

The other way round my shields looks like it's not capable of taking so much damage anymore (even i've upgraded it to Mk XIV).

With that ship I could play the pre-Delta rising elite STF missons, but not the advanced mission anymore.

Do/Did you have the same problem? What did you do to solve that?

hehulk · October 2014

STFs were made significantly more difficulty in Delta Rising. They're still perfectly possible to do, you just probably need to do some work to your ship to make it capable of this. If you'd care to set-up your ship and skills into this website, and then post the resulting link, I'll give you some pointers

ranger19822109 · October 2014

Here's the link to my build:
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=triangle_0

Just one note: instead of "Subspace Jumper" (Engineering Consoles) I have the "Universal Subspace Integration Circuit" installed - i could not find it in the list of available items.

Thanks a lot, really appreciate that!

ryakidrys · October 2014

Although I'm more in favor of using beam arrays, I'll give you some ideas.

1. You have 3 beam modifiers, use 1 or 2 of them when possible.
2. With so much tac BO stations, use 2 copies of tac team. Change the BO1 to TT1 and that solves response 1 and 2 in one shot.
3. When possible, pick either single target or multi target engagement setups. With torp high yield, I'll focus you toward single target. Beam overload is better with DBBs, BFAW is better with arrays. Get BO3 trained to your tac officer and use energy weapon officers that reduce beam special attacks to get some nice punches with the DBBs.
4. Cycle EPTx abilities. With only 3 engineering BO skills, you need 2 EPTx abilities and 3 damage control engineers (2 works but with noticeable gaps in defense and weapon damage output) to keep them cycling. Try EPTW1, ET2, EPTS3 in engineering. If it's a tad too tanky, swap them around for EPTS1, ET2, EPTW3.
5. Replace the hyper refracting tet DBB with another AP DBB.
6. You can do without the point defense system. Move the proton particle generator in it's place, and add another tac console.

Bridge Officer setup will look like....

TT1, APB1, BO3, APO3
TT1, THY2
THY1
EPTW1, ET2, EPTS3
HE1, ST2

Use at least 2 (I recommend 3) purple DCE's for EPTx cooldowns
2-3 purple energy weapon officers to reduce beam special attacks
If you have room for it, 1 maintenance engineer to reduce engineering team cooldown.

Give that a try.

ranger19822109 · October 2014

Very cool, thanks a lot! I will give it a try.

To be honest, I never used or selected specific DCE, I thought that they were only used for these "Assigement Missions". Thanks for the hint - althought i'm a little bit confused now, so many things to think of

The reason why I used hyper refracting TET DBB was because someone said that APs are better to hit the hull but to deactivate the shields you need TETs.
The TS1 I just used it for the Gravimetric Photon Torpedo, as there is a chance of creating a Gravimetric Rift, and this - I thought - increases with the number of torpedos.

ryakidrys · October 2014

The damage control engineers go to your active duty space roster, the same as energy weapon officers for beam special attacks.
I leveled to 50 and was doing STFs before I found out about the active duty space roster. It opens up some wonderful possibilities.

As for tetryon, the effect is really only useful under the right skill setups, so just go with AP.

Torp spread allows the torpedoes to hit multiple targets. If you use beam overload with dual beam banks, you are shooting only at one target. It's your choice, but it's usually better to go with single target or multi target setups, but not a mix of both, in PvE.

hehulk · October 2014

I see I'm a little late to the party, so I'm just going to agree with what Ryakidrys said. Beam arrays are just plain easier to keep on target, and while the weapon stats aren't as good, being able to keep firing is way more important. If you can keep those dual beam banks on target, good for you, but then your wasting the torpedo you've got fitted in the aft array.

Beyond that, you should be looking to switch out the hanger pets you've got now for elite scorpions or elite swarmers for better DPS, alongside switching the deflector our for a counter-command rep one, and switch the engines for some romulan (not reman) ones. Since doing this will toss your AMACO 2 set, and drop your tankyness somewhat, try and pick-up an elite adaptive fleet shield array. The exact type is down to you, althought I really like the resilient over the covariant because I have a hull trait that regens % of my hull per second which counter-acts the bleed.

In addition, and I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, you may have bought the wrong tact consoles. You really want crit chance, not crit damage consoles. This would free you up to focus the weapons on crit damage, which you will get way way more of from those slots than you would trying to stack crit chance. In addition to that, I don't blame you for missing it, but there's a section in that builder for the way your captain is skilled. Having that messed up can vastly reduce your damage done

ranger19822109 · October 2014

Thank you both for your hints. I will try what you said, specially the single target approach.

@hehulk:
You do not need to be sorry, I'm really thankful for all tips you (both) are telling me

You are absolutly right, my bad - but I've already upgraded them to XIII and XIV so I will keep them for a while, also because the crit chance onces need dil i do not have (because of the upgrade ...

)

Same for the AMACO 2 set. I'm using it because of the +7 CRR and +70% RTCL space set power.
And - feeling a little bit ironic at this point - I put anything I had to get a AMACO Shield Mk XIV. So I will keep this too until I've saved enough DIL again.

Thanks for the hint, I just filled out the captain skill planer, most of the points are set for shield and weapons, nothing on exotic DMG or cloak.

cmdrscarlet · October 2014

Well, you can certainly keep the CrtD consoles, you'll just need to increase your CrtH to make them more effective. I have no doubt that when you crit, you hit hard. The prevelant idea is that you "need" to increase the chance to crit in order to do the extra damage.

khamseenair · October 2014

I have noticed that shield hardening seems to have been turned up to 11. There have been several times where I've killed NPCs who's shields are still holding, just from the bleed through. I think that's a bigger part of the reason it seems to be taking longer to kill enemies, rather than just the HP increase. If I get their shields down I suddenly start doing over a thousand damage per phaser array hit, but with their shields up I've seen it go as low as '1' streaming above their ships which just baffles me, how resilient are their shields now?

cmdrscarlet · October 2014

Hmm. Solution to ^^ could be Elachi Disruptors :P

khamseenair · October 2014

cmdrscarlet wrote: »

Hmm. Solution to ^^ could be Elachi Disruptors :P

That's not a solution, I don't want to use Elachi Disruptors haha. I have my Fleet phaser beam arrays which I love far too much on my sci toon.

tgo533 · October 2014

http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=cruiserhelp_7288

Changed tac layout, changed to all 1 type as hyper tetryon doesn't do much.

Changed torp as any torp ability gives a slow reload on the omega. If you want plasma use romulan one. And bio torp hits hardest with HY3

Playing PVE - Damage/Shields

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