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Which Bridge Offcier space-abilities are worth taking, and which are useless?
hydraface
Member Posts: 41 Arc User
Hello all
There's a wide array of abilities that you can assign to your Bridge Officers to enhance your abilities in space and on the ground. As with anything in a game like this, some of those skills are situational, some are universally useful, some are never useful and it's not always possible to tell which is which just from the printed description.
I have some favourites, I can see the effects of Gravity Well, I know Tac Team is a life saver, Engineering team always does the trick. But for most other skills, it can seem hard to guage just how useful these abilities are, for example, Tyken's Rift: I know what it does, I use it but just how useful is the power drain, does it REALLY make that much difference to your opponent's combat effectiveness?
So what's everyone's opinions on the (space) BOFF abilities? Which tactical, Engineering and science abilities do folks recon are must-haves and which are best left remaining un-used?
There's a wide array of abilities that you can assign to your Bridge Officers to enhance your abilities in space and on the ground. As with anything in a game like this, some of those skills are situational, some are universally useful, some are never useful and it's not always possible to tell which is which just from the printed description.
I have some favourites, I can see the effects of Gravity Well, I know Tac Team is a life saver, Engineering team always does the trick. But for most other skills, it can seem hard to guage just how useful these abilities are, for example, Tyken's Rift: I know what it does, I use it but just how useful is the power drain, does it REALLY make that much difference to your opponent's combat effectiveness?
So what's everyone's opinions on the (space) BOFF abilities? Which tactical, Engineering and science abilities do folks recon are must-haves and which are best left remaining un-used?
Post edited by hydraface on
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Eng:
Aceton Beam
Boarding Party
Sci:
Charged Particle Burst
Photonic Shockwave
Mask Energy Sig (if you want a cloak, get a cloak)
Tac:
Dispersal Pattern Alpha (Beta is better)
Intel:
All of them.
...#LLAP...
Rather than going over each space boff ability and explaining to you what is good for what do this instead. Let us know what ship this is for, what kind of content the ship will be doing (pvp/pve/borg/dyson/undine), if you wanted the ship to have a specific purpose like CC, healer, power drainer, straight dps, and what weapons or gear sets your prefer.
Yes, the Intel boff, the one you get from the missions, I looked over his skills, but you couldn't use any of the science skills with him, so I send the fat boy to the trash, where he belongs.
What do you mean you "cant use any of the science skills with him"?
I have mine from the mission reward and i have his space trained up in science boff abilities and i sat him in my Vesta Cdr Science station. His science abilities show up and they are useable on the boff bar but not his intel abilities. I dont have an intel ship though so i dont know if both sci and intel skills are useable when he is sitting in an intel boff station.
So I am indeed a Romulan Scientist (Fed Aligned), and I'm currently flying a Tulwar with Dominion Polaron or Thron-infused Beam Arrays fore and aft, plus two powerful Quantum torpedo launchers one front, one back.
Console wise, I have the full Scimitar 3-set, plus Tachyokinetic Converter, Assimilated Console, Nukara Particle Converter, Zero-Point console, Hydrodynamic Compensator and, for now, and RCS accelerator and Polaron damage boosting console (all top of the line). Jem'Hadar Deflector and Impulse Engines for the yummy Polaron Damage Boost and Dialectic Oscillating shield.
I've picked this layout because I enjoy using beam arrays; I find it more fun than the 'drive at the, strafe and fly-by' of escorts which I've used with other characters. I also like being able to rotate shield facing, I find it a good way to stay alive. I also enjoy the 'toys' (Cloaking, cloaked barrage, hangers) and I cackle with glee everytime I use Gravimetric Well 1.
Ability wise, I use I also Use Tyken's Rift 1, Hazard Emmiters 1 and 2, and Tachyon Beam 1 and of course Gravimetric Well 1 for science, TAc-Team 1, Beam Overload Beam overload 2, Attack Pattern Delta and Omega 2 ('cos I can't teach much else at that level). For Engineering abilities, Eng two lots of Engineering team 1 and Reverse Shield Polarity 1 (Which is an incredible power)
When battling, I usually either use a battery or just chuck full power to auxili before using a science power before switching back to assigning full power to weapons.
The confusion comes from not being able to really SEE the effects of the like of Tykens Rift or the Proc offered up by Polaron weapons. I, again, cackle with glee at the thought of sapping the bad-guys power levels with Tykens and POlaron but does it REALLY make that much difference to a ships combat effectiveness in both PvE and PvP. After all, the effect of weapons like Anti-Proton are more obvious and quantifiable than the effects of polaron, or abilities like Beam Fire-at-Will have a much more tangible, verifiable effect than those of Polaron.
So if anyone has any tips to offer on which BOFF abilities might help me along, (or if there's anything I could really do to generally improve my build), that'd be great, but again, that advice about which skills tend to be great in most circumstances, and which are rarely or never useful ('Cos I do change my characters up every now and again) that would be great!
If you want to build a science Tulwar you need to bite the bullet and get rid of a lot of those universal consoles. Use the best particle generator science consoles you can get your hands on. You have 5 science console slots, you should put them to good use. Maybe try something like in the link below. Weapons and tac consoles are whatever you want it to be, i also filled out the skill tree if you needed help with that.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=stonewbtulwar_0
It is heavy on shield healing it looks like. TSS, ST and RSP and your only hull heals are ET and HE1. You get GW1, TR and ES...i took out tachyon beam because it is kinda weak vs npcs. Now you probably already know what GW does, pulls people in and deals kinetic damage. Tykens Rift doesnt pull people, drains all power levels and it also deals kinetic damage. Now what you would do is use GW1 to pull stuff in, When you activate GW it puts TR on a 15second shared CD. So GW pull, then once TR comes off of its 15sec shared CD you pop it on the pack as well. Now even though TR doesnt have a pull it drains all power, including engine power. A ship with zero engine power isnt moving. Its weapon power and shields are also neutralized temporarily so if you are getting focused by the pack you just hit with GW popping a TR on them should decrease your incoming damage a tiny bit. You know that TR drains all power...all you have to do is think to yourself "how am i affected when i lose power in a subsystem?". Next time you are in Khitomer space pop Tykens Rift on the slow probes and you will see them gradually coming to a halt. That one is easy, the other one like reduced weapon power you just know because when your weapon power is low you do less damage. So its the same thing when done to NPCs.
Transfer Shield Strength is a small shield heal and a shield heal over time (HoT) and science team is a big shield heal. Science Team also clears science debuffs from you while TSS reduces damage to your shields. Now you could run two ST or two TSS but when you run duplicates then you end up having the shared CD issue. Two science team means you can pop one every 15 seconds and TSS i think the shared CD timer is 30 seconds.
Attack Pattern Omega gives you your tractor beam immunity and i believe it buffs the damage done by your tac AND science boff abilities. Tac team you will want to save for emergency shield distro. Engineering team is you big hull heal and it clears out engineering debuffs. RSP you already know is another shield heal cooldown. Hazard Emitters is a hull heal over time, but it also cleanses certain debuffs like plasma fires or Borg Shield Neutralizer which if left uncleansed can drain all of your shields. I threw Energy Siphon on there as well but you can substitute that out for another ability if you want.
Adding some armour? seems like a good idea. And I have never experiemented with just maxing out the science abilities to see just how harsh I can make them, so that's certainly worth a go and see how it works for me.
Thanks for the advice Stonewbie, it's good stuff.
I would disagree all of the Intel powers are useless. Specifically the one that transports a torpedo directly to the enemy ship. For ships with high shields this bypasses that issue completely it's axtually very useful.