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Eclipse or Phantom?
aveimperator
Member Posts: 319 Arc User
I believe those are the names of the Intel Cruiser and Intel Escort, respectively. I'm a long-time player of the game, but I stopped playing STO shortly after the Undine invasion update. I have normally played cruisers and carriers, because they're the closest I could get to battleships.
However, I also have enjoyed such ships as the Akira and the Avenger. I've always preferred beams to cannons, but from what I've been reading, there are new BOFF powers like Override Safeties and Surgical Strikes that make mixing beams and cannons no longer a disastrous taboo, however, I have no idea what these abilities actually DO.
My question for the community is thus: I can only afford one of these T6 ships. Which one should I get? I'm normally a cruiser pilot, but I'm a bit on the fence about the appearance of the Eclipse. The Phantom is a slick little beast and I can't deny the Heavy Phaser Lance looks appealing. What are peoples' experiences with these ships and if I could only get one, which one would you recommend?
(Yes, I know the whole "depends on your playstyle" argument. I'm looking for firmer analysis of the ships)
Thank you!
However, I also have enjoyed such ships as the Akira and the Avenger. I've always preferred beams to cannons, but from what I've been reading, there are new BOFF powers like Override Safeties and Surgical Strikes that make mixing beams and cannons no longer a disastrous taboo, however, I have no idea what these abilities actually DO.
My question for the community is thus: I can only afford one of these T6 ships. Which one should I get? I'm normally a cruiser pilot, but I'm a bit on the fence about the appearance of the Eclipse. The Phantom is a slick little beast and I can't deny the Heavy Phaser Lance looks appealing. What are peoples' experiences with these ships and if I could only get one, which one would you recommend?
(Yes, I know the whole "depends on your playstyle" argument. I'm looking for firmer analysis of the ships)
Thank you!
Post edited by aveimperator on
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Comments
Check what others say also, but do not underestimate the Qib/Eclipse. These things can become a more offensive Escort than the majority of Escorts out there.
Or you can do the obvious ENG heavy build like that of any Cmdr/LtCdr ENG Cruiser. But it still has a LtCdr TAC station.
In short, the Intel Battlecruisers let you do far more than what most ships let you do short of a All-Universal KDF Bird of Prey and the Temporal Ships.
It doesn't matter. Any captain type can fit perfectly into any ship type. The strengths they bring enhance the ship, that is all.
I'll second this. The Phantom with the Reciprocity trait it comes with allows you to have excellent uptime on Tac skills plus the benefit of Intel skills, complete with the ability to mirror the Bug's resilient Eng layout, plus add on a LtCom Eng skill (I use it for DEM2) is a really, really good combination.
Toss in an integrated cloak on top of that just for lulz.
But here's my frequency, so hail me maybe?
This has been my experience with the Eclipse as well. The fact that you can run high rank intel skills without giving up anything significant (commander eng skills are largely a waste IMO) makes it quite powerful. Now that I've gotten into the Eclipse, I don't think I can ever go back to traditional cruisers. Although the Eclipse could be set up like one if that's your thing. The flexibility it has in supporting different builds is pretty crazy.
Mine Trap Supporter
Phantom: You will get the most dps out of the ship.. but its fragile in high end content. This ship is what the Defient should of been. I built mine around a single A2B and BOFF and captain skill reductions. Using ensign evade target lock to break tractors and commander Surgical Strikes instead of omega I have increased my dps out put on single target a ton. The down side of course is you do not have the staying power to trade blows in elite content.
Eclipse: Not near as much dps.. but a ton more durable. Not saying the dps is bad. Just not near as high as the Phantom. Its durability more then makes up for it. Allowing the Eclipse to hang in there and trade blow much longer.
You really need to decide do you want staying power or strike power. Each have there use's. As far as being a eng captain all that does is make staying power greater no mater what ship you are using. Longer dps up time is good no mater if in the Phantom or the Eclipse.
OSS gives a power boost to all subsytems (that allows you to way exceed the power caps) that gradually drops off over 20 secs - then takes a random subsytem offline very briefly (not the 4 secs that the tooltip says, IME), which can be insta-restored with ET. OSSI (+30), OSSII (+40).
SS gives a 10 sec boost to both Acc and crit chance. SSI (+20% to both), SSII (+30% to both).
[Re PvE only....]
Both ships are unbelievably sweet, but if you're mostly a Cruiser pilot (especially if you're a broadside orbiter), like me, the Eclipse will probably feel the most right to you. The little things like her turning in a nice and steady arc as you broadside, rather than the Phantom's flipping round her axis, and whatnot.
If you have a build where you need a certain set of consoles to make it work, the Phantom's Phaser Lance takes up a console slot. You also get the two extra Tac Consoles with the Phantom, which obviously have to be filled with weapon boosting consoles, so you might find that you don't have enough slots left over for your Must Have other consoles.
Similarly, I'm happier to trade in four Eng BOFF abilities for Intel ones (with the Eclipse) than I am to trade in the Tac hybrid slots on the Phantom for Intel ones.
I'm a crit hound, so find the Eclipse's +15 crit severity Mastery buff (at Tier 2, no less) synergises better with the chained SS Acc and crit chance boost, than the Phantom's Mastery buffs do (Acc and then crit chance IIRC - you don't really need even more of the same with SS).
I'm also a ship power hound, so miss the Eclipse's WSE when flying my Phantom.
And the Eclipse scrubs up nice in white/pale grey btw, with the Tron lines nuked. Also looks good with J'H shield visuals enabled, if Polarons are your thing.
Just to give you a few things to consider. FWIW, the Fleet Ambassador was my passion before DR but I loved all the Fed Cruisers, and some Escorts, too. My Eclipse has the full-on tray reversion bug every time I transition from a ground map, so I have to reset ~40 buttons every time. My Phantom does not and most of my older ships don't have the bug anywhere near as bad. I've Mastered my Eclipse but haven't Mastered any of my other ships - and I really want that Phantom Trait! I'm also a massive build tweaker and tinkerer, who loves to change ships all the time.
Despite all that, when I'm stood in ESD, wondering what ship I should take out for my daily spin... I find myself nearly always choosing my Eclipse... and if I don't, I usually wish I had and then end up flying back to get her.:)
I know that that's totally subjective, but it might give you some ideas. Happy flying with whatever you choose.
To say it can be powerful is an understatement. You have a cruiser with the HP's or some of the biggest ships in game almost together with a fairly decent turn rate and still a Lt. Cmdr tac slot. Plus you can effectively fill the Cmdr hybrid and Lt. hybrid slots with even more tac orientated abilities to make one very offensive ship.
I know those hybrid slots are not strictly tactical, but most of the intel abilities lean strongly in that direction and are clearly offensive.
Plus with the ship mastery package you can make the ship almost unkillable and give it a huge critD boost as well.
And the only thing that has kept me from rerolling my Eng to Sci or Tac is all the STF masteries. I don't think I can bear the long slog of getting all those reps back up to T5
The only issue I can see is that from my experience a lot of DR enemies like to outflank you and having most of your weapons in a fwd. arc would make it hard to combat this. You can get 360 firing with turrets but your DPS is much lower outside of your main arc.
However by having access to intel abilities that buff both cannons and beams you can now run a fairly effective ship using both weapon types. Surgical strikes for example will buff any type of energy output so unless you are specifically using abilities for certain weapons you'll probably manage fine i think.
I've just loaded the tac slots with attack patterns and then all the other offensive abilities come from the intel slots.
I've not tried this yet but i'm currently working up some Dil to afford some more fleet weapons to kit it out with enough 4 x DHCs and 4 x turrets, or try a combo of DHCs with omni-directional beam and turrets aft.
Has anyone posting in this thread have any actual parses to back up the damage claims? If so please post them.
Anyway. Escort or Cruiser isn't an issue as far as 'losing out' on "valuable tactical abilities'. Not quite how that works. Essentially if you want to do damage you use SS because it quite simply rocks. Then you can continue to use torpedoes or attack patterns as you wish.
The weakness of the Sci Intel ship isn't so much that giving up Sci abilities sucks, its that the second Intel station is tactical, and it's only Lt. Not much wiggle room there unless you plan on giving up Tactical Team. In PVP that's questionable. And well sorta handy anytime you fight the Borg.
Agreed that top level Eng abilities are never missed. The eclipse is easily the winner in the "if you can't figure this out, play hello kitty online' category. The Scryer and the Phantom take a bit more than just waking up.
Both ships can fit a very nice DCE/Aux2ID doff build. Great for engineers.
It actually does matter what captain is in what ship. It just happens that although tac may be great in anything, engineers not so much. But engineers work great with these ships because the boff station layout allows for that particular build.
The Eclipse turns well enough for any weapons. But with surgical strikes I actually never felt lame broadsiding.
Phantom
Eclipse
Two copies of Surgical Strikes cycling + APA + APB + APO = point it at something and it dies after almost a single volley.
It can easily solo a borg cube on normal and kill it in seconds, each volley I was shooting knocked around 30-50% of their HP's off
You get much slower firing with that method but the results are pretty spectacular.
Only issue I encountered is that my ship is now too fast moving for the slow & steady shooting that you use and I was overshooting a lot of targets and having to double back on then. Basically doing staffing runs over the bigger targets and killing them after a couple of runs.
Against lighter things like probes just the turrets running on surgical strikes kills them fairly quickly.
I use the phantom for easy content and when solo. I love the lance and built around it with phaser support and such. My highest crit so far is 283k and I was actually missing fomm- I imagine once I unlock flanking bonuses in int spec and upgrade everything I'll probably break 300k easily.
The eclipse I prefer for harder content since it has better innate defenses and only gives up 2 tac slots (I bet fleet version will get a 4th tac slot) for all that extra survival while also having more weapons, lower weapon cost to fire, and same BOFF layout.
The only reason to use the phantom is if you want to use the lance for a crazy spike attack that applies vuln instantly.
I run my phantom with a mix of 2 DBB and 2 DHC up front and 2pc bio set for phaser bonus dmg with a kcb. No need for acc or crtH so go all crtD on weapons.
The eclipse runs 2 arrays and 2 DBB up front, 2 arrays and 360 beam + kcb. This allows a nice punch on the forward arc while retaining slightly diminished broadside capabilit. It opens up a differnt piloting style where you can stay broadsiding for defense and do slight turns towards target to unload DBB that are queued. Once you get the hang, all arrays will be in firing cycle, slight turn towards target to unload DBB then right back to broadside with very little time lost firing arrays. It's quite effective and I use that same piloting style + weapons load out on my phantom.
The Eclipse has a base 11 Turn rate, that's quite a bit more than the Avenger. And that's without A2D or even using the Cruiser Command for increased turns. Only KDF's Qib Intel & K'T'Inga Battlecruisers have the same turn rate, and only the Risian Cruiser has better turn rates of all Cruisers and Battlecruisers in game.
The Eclipse is more than capable of presenting easily whatever weapons you put on her. Hell, I outfitted her with DHCs because it handles EXACTLY like a KDF Battlecruiser would.
Odd.. says 10 base turn for me that would make 1 turn more then the Avengers 9 turn.
Even so though I would do DBB's or wide angle DHC's if you can afford it. Just a quality of life issue. Makes it more easy to maneuver and keep weapons on target.
With enough +turn consoles as well as delta rep has a +25% turn and speed trait at tier 3 using any weapon will be effective on a Eclipse so I wouldn't worry about it.