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Cannons vs beams
igloodude
Member Posts: 66 Arc User
All,
I'm leveling my first fed tac, and approaching the admiral zone where my ship build actually matters.
So, I'm deciding on weapon type (probably AP) and beam vs cannon for what will end up being a fleet defiant retrofit. I vaguely recall reading that beams hold their DPS up at farther ranges than cannons, but other than that the differences are firing arc, energy consumption, and boff-skills and consoles to use for each of them. Can anyone confirm or deny the ranged fire question? I've looked through stowiki and searched this forum without success. The firing arcs and energy consumption I can pretty much factor in myself, but for boff skills and consoles can anyone summarize the pros and cons?
Thanks,
-IglooDude
I'm leveling my first fed tac, and approaching the admiral zone where my ship build actually matters.
So, I'm deciding on weapon type (probably AP) and beam vs cannon for what will end up being a fleet defiant retrofit. I vaguely recall reading that beams hold their DPS up at farther ranges than cannons, but other than that the differences are firing arc, energy consumption, and boff-skills and consoles to use for each of them. Can anyone confirm or deny the ranged fire question? I've looked through stowiki and searched this forum without success. The firing arcs and energy consumption I can pretty much factor in myself, but for boff skills and consoles can anyone summarize the pros and cons?Thanks,
-IglooDude
"B'rel is klingon for 'TRIBBLE'." -cmdrskyfaller
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TAc Officer here.
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
Cannons
Pros: DHC's and DC's have high initial base damage, while regular cannons are moderate in base damage. All cannons quickly regenerate wp after their shot cycle making them pretty efficient.
Cons: Canons are less effected when overcapping wp due to their drain mechanics vs beams. Besides regular cannons and turrets, DHC's and DC's have a very narrow arc of only 45*. Also turrets lose base damage when activating CRF, while DC's and DHC's get a damage buff (regular cannons I am unsure of). Cannons lose damage value over longer ranges vs beams (however DHC's don't seem to greatly affected vs the lower damage values of regular cannons/DC's and turrets).
Beams
Pros: DBB's have high base damage, while BA's have good base damage. Beams retain better damage value at long range in most cases than cannons. If enough effort is put into wp management, beams can become more efficient due to their drain mechanics when overcapping wp. Beams offer a versatile firing arc when compared to cannons (not turrets). Ba's used in conjunction with BFAW can make easy work of vast amount of enemies, or can be very useful to your team when used with attack patterns or just to simply strip their shields with DEM so as to allow for quicker team eliminations, or to even get rid of pesky hangar craft and HY torpedoes.
Cons: BA's without the use of wp drain management are potential wp hogs due to their lengthy cycle, however DBB's are a bit more effective to manage. Ba's offer less base dps value depicted by their lengthy shot cycle, however they can be exploited with use of proper skills and wp management.
Overall it's primarily down to what you prefer for your tastes and build, and what seems most effective to the ship you fly. This is the best information off the top of my head till I can come up with more for you.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
1.) stay with one type of weapon (cannon or beams)
2.) stay with one flavour of energy
3.) Use a build that's FUN to play
IMO (and shared elsewhere) DHC are most efficient for escorts and destroyers. Dual and single cannons are nice if you require a wider arc for firing at the cost of some damage.
Cruisers: Dual Beam Banks are the strongest damage provider of beams in general. Beam Arrays like single cannons, provide a large arc for a smaller damage potential.
Never use Dual Cannons. They are a total waste and never amount to good damage. Dual Heavy Cannons are the only Dual Cannon type you EVER need to use.
There is no need to stick only with Cannons or Beams. Dual Beam Banks up front and Turrets in the rear is great for many Cruisers with some kind of turn rate. Also one DBB can be awesome on an Escort for Beam Overload III which will kill many things and quickly knock down almost any shield facing in one shot.
Okay, for cannons vs beams, boffs...
Boffs - Cannons:
Cannon: Rapid Fire - This is the typical mainstay for dual heavy cannons, since it increases your cyclic fire rate and adds a significant damage boost. You can belt out huge amounts of damage in a short time with this ability, but it is confined to a single target, or at least the target you've selected at any given time during its duration. To get the most out of this ability, you also need to be on-target for as long as possible, so remember to slow down a tad as you're lined up, but don't stop moving if you like having a Defense bonus. The ability has a 10 sec duration, a 30 sec individual cooldown, a 15 sec global cooldown, and a 15 sec duplicate cooldown.
Cannon: Scatter Volley - This provides your cannons with the ability to hit multiple targets; you shoot in a cone AoE, with your currently selected target hit with each shot and 2 additional targets selected at random from within the cone. This means that if you are shooting at more than 3 enemies, the additional ones will take less damage than your primary target. It can be used defensively against enemies that have a fondness for dropping mines and high yield torpedoes, or for hitting groups. It doesn't have nearly the DPS boost as Cannon: Rapid Fire, though, and the difference widens as the rank of the boff ability increases, so unless you are shooting at groups it's not the best option. The ability has a 10 sec duration, a 30 sec individual cooldown, a 15 sec global cooldown, and a 15 sec duplicate cooldown.
Boffs - Beams:
Beam: Fire at Will - The current (and controversial, and often bugged in wildly varied ways) FOTM, FAW is good for clearing carrier pets, , mines and high-yield torpedoes while maintaining fire on your foes. It can also be used to give you a chance to focus on supporting teammates with other abilities, checking your surroundings, and so forth for 10 secs while the AI takes control of your beams. It changes your beams into auto-targeting mode, making you vulnerable to Feedback Pulse and Scramble Sensors, but adds a 5th pulse to your beams and also lets you hit 2 (random) targets per pulse within your firing arcs. The ability has a 10 sec duration, a 30 sec individual cooldown, a 15 sec global cooldown, and a 20 sec duplicate cooldown... which means you can only cycle FAW once every 20 secs as opposed to the cannon abilities that can be cycled or alternated every 15 secs.
Beam: Overload - Better than you'd think on a Tactical ship, worse than you'd think on the ships that are "supposed to use beams". The main perk you get out of this ability is focusing all your DPS bonus into a single shot, allowing for one heck of a damage spike to a single target. It behaves more like a torpedo ability than an energy weapon attack modifier, with a 30 sec window to trigger a single enhanced shot... great for when you need to spend as little time on-target as possible, though you suffer approximately -25 weapon power drain immediately after releasing a BO as the price for that damage spike. To properly take advantage of this power, use a Dual Beam Bank for the higher base from which the Overload adjusts, and again like the torpedo abilities you only really need one DBB to use it.The ability has a 30 sec attack window, a single shot, a 30 sec individual cooldown, a 15 sec global cooldown, and a 15 sec duplicate cooldown. There is also a doff that adds a shield penetration debuff proc.
Subsystem Targeting - This set of abilities is most commonly found among Science Vessels and many Carriers as an innate ship ability, and causes power drain to the associated subsystem with a chance to disable it. As a Tactical captain, you probably won't get a huge amount out of it since your captain powers all boost damage not drain. That said, it can be a handy debuff you can apply to a target if you want something a bit more strategic than making things go boom, though as a power drain it works far better if you have invested in the Flow Capacitors skill. Then again, making things go boom is why you play a Tac... anyway, as a boff ability it has a 30 sec attack window, a single shot, a 45 sec individual cooldown, a 15 sec global cooldown, and a 30 sec duplicate cooldown. There is also a doff available that adds a secondary subsystem disable proc.
As a side note:
Dual Heavy Cannons have a couple benefits over the other weapon types. First, they drain less power in practice... sure it says -12, but that is "when firing other weapons"; most of the time, having "plink-plink-cycle" is far less punishing on your power levels than the "plink-plink-plink-plink-cycle" of standard dual cannons, much less beams that are almost always "firing with other weapons". Second, they have an innate +10% Crit Severity simply because of the "Heavy" part, theoretically a balance to the increased power drain. The only tradeoff is when you're using per shot weapon procs rather than per volley weapon procs, since you only get two shots per cycle rather than four.
There are many reason why beams are so much better then cannons...and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are 100% wrong and don't understand upper levels of play.
If you don't care about the dps race or min/maxing. Use whatever you find enjoyable
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
However DPS does not always translate into kills. That is something that a lot of folks do not really understand. You can tickle a LOT of shield facings and get massive DPS while someone else blasts through just one shield facing and kills the target with much lower DPS.
It is a lot more important to get your damage where you want it and make the kill than it is to spread the damage all over the place.
DBB's and DHC's are the kings for this task and DHC's are the best of the two but their small arc makes them too hard for many slower vessels to use and DBB's do have their wonderful Beam Overload super punch. Which is why a great build has one DBB amongst the DHC's.
Dahminus, could you give a few of the many reasons?
As shadowwraith and breadandcircuses (in particular) have me leaning toward DHCs and turrets in back, and I'm intrigued by hasukurobi's suggestion of a single DBB for BO3 850% (I just looked it up) kill-shots.
In case I didn't say, this is for a PVE-centric general escort build. I'm not squeezing out every point of DPS or min/maxing, but neither am I launching a skittleboat, just looking to build something in the higher tier of overall "make targets explode" effectiveness. Thanks for the extremely helpful responses.
Beams do more dps in group content vs a ton of enemy -- but its spread thin, nothing dies for a while and when your escort does fire at will it can make 10 ships decide to target you...
Cannons kill one thing at a time, fast. Dead enemy do no damage and one enemy firing at you is a lot safer than 10. But your total dps is lower.
But there are no absolutes. A beam scimitar with alpha strike, cloaked barrage, and more can wipe out tons of enemy fast with fire at will --- with those buffs, it actually kills the enemy ships. A cannon guy with the same buffs can actually blow up 3 ships at a time with scatter too.
The biggest thing against cannons is the distance dps loss IMHO. In PVE groups, many bosses require you to stay back X distance or get destroyed by a cheeze special ability thing. The dps loss makes them about equal to dual beams for bosses --- which are single target fights --- which is what cannons were supposed to excel at ---- making beams just as good really for bosses in practice. You also do not want to get too close in the big groups of enemy, as you attract the attention of distant enemy by being the only guy in their range because you got closer to use cannons....
IMHO again, the cannon distance issue makes them weaker for the elite pve group efforts. They are still very nice, but their one advantage (killing the tougher guys fast) is hampered by their loss of dps at range. Combine that with the dps loss from your target going out of your narrow targeting cone, and beams begin to pull way ahead in practice for most jobs.
You can easily do BOTH. An extra set of tactical BOs costs just a few zen really, so you can have a set of cannon guys and a set of beam guys. Due to ship BO setups, you can overlap too --- for example if your overload 3 and fire at will 2 guy has tac team 1 he can be the ensign station in your cannon build on a 3 station ship, while you cannon guy might have FAW1 and do ensign duty on your beam ship.
DHCs will outdamage all weapons at ranges of 7.5km and closer, due to their inherently higher DPS. At 7.5km and further, DBBs will have more DPS than DHCs.
Beams will only have higher DPS than cannons for specific builds, not in general. Those will only have higher useful DPS (as opposed to wasted on invulnerable targets) if positioned properly (much like when using DHCs/turrets).
If you're happy zipping about and can handle the very narrow firing arc of the DHC's and enjoy getting right in the enemies face, these are they way to go and use the information others have posted in this thread about Boff abilities, ect.
If you're more comfortable flying a slower Ship, preferring to stay at arms reach, then Beam arrays and Strafing would be more suited.
If you're used to flying slow ships but want to go to a faster style of play, I'd personally recommend using single cannons first. The dps isn't as good as the DHC's but your firing arc is still quite large (180 degrees as opposed to 45 degrees).
This will give you a chance to get used to the different play style and cut down the frustration of trying to line up your targets for that kamikaze run!
Go dual cannons after for an even narrower firing arc as you perfect your play. Once you're happy with that, get the big guns :cool:
Whatever you choose though, just use cheap green or blue weapons until you decide on what direction you want to go.
Last thing you want to do is blow a load of dilithium or Fleet credits on weapons you'll never end up using!
Beta player - forum knows jack as to when I started
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I'm going to have to disagree with never using dual cannons. When you're JUST hitting the level cap, they are a good value for starting out. I can get very rare mark 12 dual cannons for 100,000 creds versus paying at least a million or more for heavies. Their damage averages out to being about the same in general until you factor in the pump up from things like rapid fire cannon abilities and procs, when the heavies tend to do a little better. Not "pay ten times as much" better for a cash strapped newly minted 50, but better enough that they're worth upgrading to gradually as you become more established. Mark 12 purple dual cannons may actually give you more dps than the similarly priced mark 10 blue heavies, for a newbie.
noroblad filled in the basics of what dahminus left out; for more info on a FAW build, the threads are nigh upon endless, largely using Aux2Batt. Heck, I even have a Risian Corvette that runs FAW simply because it's being used on a Sci that couldn't properly spike relative to a Tac. By using beams, I can zip around my target without ever leaving the 70 degree overlap arc of fore and aft beams, creating sustained damage and maintaining the increased Defense bonus that was given to the Risian Corvette; that uses Aux2Dampers rather than Aux2Batt, though.
A more traditional pure-energy Tacscort uses 3 DHC's and 1 DBB, just as hasukurobi described. That setup is meant for spike damage, and can belt out significant damage in a very short period of time. Where a FAW setup generates its DPS numbers by maintaining contact with the enemy (preferably 2 or more while FAW is active), a CRF/BO setup does all of its damage in short bursts of things exploding... then waits a bit for the next attack cycle. You end up with somewhat lower DPS over time, which makes it more important to choose when to engage and when to disengage; you want you guns lined up when your abilities drop out of cooldown, repositioning when your abilities are greyed out.
As a side note to the above, using mixed disruptors with a single Elachi DBB can be highly effective; those rare and wonderful occasions where your Elachi proc affects your BO III are rather impressive.
If you give even lighter ships a try, make sure to review thissler's link, that I sort of daisy-chain linked earlier. One thing to notice is that the real punch comes from the combo of a heavily buffed BO III->THY III, the first making the hole for the second to get through your target's shields. This can also be done with a Federation Escort, though you'll lack the decloaking bonus. This is also more successful if you actually put some skill points in Projectile Weapons.
I do want to chime in with damage type as well... for a starter build try going with Tetryons. They are the least popular damage type because the proc is only useful against shielded targets; once you've punched though the shields, the proc is useless... this is even more true when firing at the unshielded hull point punching bags you find in STFs. This is also a good thing... you can find good quality weapons and Tac consoles on the Exchange at a far more reasonable price than other weapon types. Once you've progressed some and can afford Fleet or high-end Exchange weapons, you can revisit damage type in more detail. You can also use STOwiki's Episode replay rewards list to get entry-level gear, if you are short on funds.
If that's what you're looking for then just fly what you enjoy the most. You don't need to worry about dhcs vs beams unless you're pushing for the 30, 40 and 50k dps. Any have competent build will wastly out damage 90% of pugs anyways. That said its a lot easier to get high dps with beams. Hell there are level 20 ships you can make stf ready and do 10k dps with beams.
Hey, are you following in Chekov's footsteps? LOL, "wastly". Just thought I'd inject some light-hearted picking into here.
And I agree with you, pretty much just fly & use what you decide to like. Through experimenting & experiencing, you'll find what works for you, what's ok, and what just seems "blehch" or bland to you.:cool:
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
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I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
Well yes, they are cheaper... Because most people realize they are utter junk compared to Dual Heavies. When you are just leveling up it really does not matter what you are running. Truth is, you should probably just use whatever drops at that point.
Once you are getting into your final build though it is time to stop messing around and grabbing the best gear you can.
All depends on what feels more fun for you to do, on how you decide to outfit your ship(s).
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Beam_Array
Thanks...
That's just vastly exaggerated.
I replaced one of the DHCs on two of my ships for aesthetic reasons (DCs use different hardpoints than DHCs) with DCs of the same quality and with the same mods and have parsed about 30 STFs since then.
Overall DPS stayed about the same and when directly comparing the DPS of the DHCs to the DCs, there was barely any difference of between them (on average ~-50 DPS on normal firing, -60 with RFIII). Even when only taking into account the raw damage done by both DHCs and DCs in an average ISE, for me that's less than a 1% drop in performance.
DHC's are easier to deal with on Power Management due to their lower rate of fire, they pack a higher punch when modified due to higher base damage, they hit harder under criticals (perhaps your Chance to Critical is too low but if you boost it then you will begin very much noticing this), and generate higher Spike damage than DC's.
It is important that everyone keep in mind that Damage Per Second DOES NOT EQUAL killing power. You can do a LOT of damage all over and fail to kill ANYTHING. Also because a lot of heals work as Heals per Second and these heals can be very powerful if you rely on DPS you can find heals overwhelming and negating your ability to deal damage very quickly. The damage that counts is massive Volley or Spike damage that can quickly overwhelm heals or flat-out destroy a target before it can respond in any meaningful way.
What do you hear in PvP as a gripe all the time? "So-and-So One Shotted me! Q_Q" Do you hear "So-and-So killed me with a million paper cuts! Q_Q"? Probably not because they are too easy to heal.
You can get DPS to be SO high as to be deadly in some cases but after resistances (which get boosted with almost all Heals over Time), HoT effects, passive heals, Regeneration and, defense bonuses it almost always comes back to requiring good hard spike to get the job done.
Cannons are great against hulls, but weak against shields. Beams are amazing at shields but weak against hull. Torps are great against hull for a finish...on an escort, bop or warbird, I always have a torpedo...but not in my JHEC.
It also depends on how you have allotted your skills.
Just running beams means that you will be struggling with weapons power. After a few shots, your weapon power will be down and thus your damage will suffer greatly.
Just running cannons means that you will have a narrower fire arc, slower overall kills, but never really have to worry about power.
With a mix, you get the best of both worlds.