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A returnin player after 3 years with some..... um questions
nwflamewalker
Member Posts: 11 Arc User
Welcome, I am returning after a three year stent from STO. After some great great help from support I was able to recover my account and pick up where I left off. Whiel some of the nuances of the game are different, DoFF's The New crafting system (Which I am really upset about as I could make any schematic prior to leaving), and the new zones, i really one have one question
I am an engineer currently with a Guaridan Cruiser, I had almost 20k Zen saved up from my subscription. Prior to leaving ship battles were not to terribly difficult, i could take on multiple ships of my level or just above. However now I am finding that it is taking me minutes to destroy a ship, where it used to be less than 30 seconds. Granted I am in a cruiser and not an escort. I found this odd and then checked some of the ships I was fighting and found most at level 55 have almost 150k hit points.
This blew my mind and I could not understand if it was like that in the past or I really needed to upgrade my weapons. Currently using Pashor X's as at the time I left X's were top tier. Just curious really if someone could point me in the direction of an updated Engineer's guide. And is it me or has the game become alot more grindy than in the past?
I am an engineer currently with a Guaridan Cruiser, I had almost 20k Zen saved up from my subscription. Prior to leaving ship battles were not to terribly difficult, i could take on multiple ships of my level or just above. However now I am finding that it is taking me minutes to destroy a ship, where it used to be less than 30 seconds. Granted I am in a cruiser and not an escort. I found this odd and then checked some of the ships I was fighting and found most at level 55 have almost 150k hit points.
This blew my mind and I could not understand if it was like that in the past or I really needed to upgrade my weapons. Currently using Pashor X's as at the time I left X's were top tier. Just curious really if someone could point me in the direction of an updated Engineer's guide. And is it me or has the game become alot more grindy than in the past?
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Same goes with crafting too. minimum of level 15 there.
No, you don't. You'll do just fine with Mk XIIs as long as your build is solid.
On that note, you will want to go to the /r/stobuilds wiki and look at the guides there.
having to upgrade past mk12 is NOT needed unless your trying to get on some DPS leaderboard. the game has become so alt unfriendly that only one of my toons is maxed with max gear. all the rest have nothing upgraded. and they can do the exact same content as the one with all the upgraded stuff.
So, yeah 'bout that gear of your's. Mk X, probably pruple, huh?
Since october the new top has been Mk XIV very rare, ultra rare and epic and that's pretty much what the damage sponges we face now were made for.
FYI some mobs in episodes on elite difficulty have like 1 milion HP, not kidding.
Oh, and of course the massive powercreep cryptic is actively encouraging with toys like the scimitar, the "new" patrol escort, intel stuff like surgical strikes III, beam overload with 100% crit rate but without any downsides like draining more weapon power and the list goes on and on and on and.......I think you get what I mean.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Since we're at signatuers we should probably mention that "delta rising is the best expansion ever and players love it".;)
Okay, seriously now. OP, you wouldn't believe how much sh*tstorms happened because of the stuff that came in 2014 alone. Just look a few months back in the forum, it will be mind-boggling.
Use the current event to get upgrade modules for the items they do not have dil cost.
For the upgrades you need to get level 15 in the R&D school to get Superior Tech Upgrade ore
buy for the exchange and they are not to cheap (now you can run 3 research project in one school).
Whit the new tire 6 ships now you need to pick 4 starship traits to slot i recommend to get the Phantom Intel Escort for the trait but you need to level the ship mastery to level 5 to get it. This will remove the need for aux 2 bat builds.
You do need Mk 14 items if you run Elit but for a normal Mk12 is ok.
I recommend to start whit ground is a lot easier that space and you have only 4 items to upgrade.
You do need a good kit check the fleet stores (embassy and spire) and for the power to slot they are some good one from the lock boxes who are mk12 very rare.
AAA and for the big changes are the Specialization pick the ones you need but you can have only 1 primary active and 1 second active at all times but you can level them all.
For the officer taring read this one.
Upgrading gear should NOT be the first priority.
More often than not, with the adjustments in the bridge officer abilities that have been applied by the devs over the last year or two, making some adjustments to BO abilities is often going to make a noticeable and immediate improvement with the least amount of expense. Upgrading gear will certainly help, but it is very costly to do so. It is much more reasonable to examine BO abilities first for improvements first before tackling the expense of gear.
Please use the skill planner tool at STO Academy to create a virtual copy of your ship, setup and any other details you can provide so the community can respond with helpful advice.
I am still trying to grasp the new traits, for my character as well as the DOFF's and the new crating system. Currently knocking out the 6k one for beam weapons in 2 slots so I can get it to level 5 to open up 2 more slots. That will take time
But that you all, currently i am using Anti Proton Weapons Purp X, thought it was phaswer but its AP. I am not an excort kinda guy, I liked my Eng Cruiser combo because back in teh day i could take a beating and still do decent amount of damage. But now I am just barely making it through.
I will post my build in a bit
Thanks again
Weapon power at cap + override subsystem safeties (one of the new intel skills) + beam fire at will = great.;)
Mark XIV gear is not really required for regular content, though of course it's neat.
You can probably get some gear already from the Exchange, if you can't acquire reputation or fleet gear, and it will take some time before you can craft wepaons for yourself.
Also very advisable is to check if your bridge officer layout is still solid. Generally speaking, with Beam Fire At Will, Emergency to Weapon Power and perhaps a Directed Energy Modulation you can already yield very good damage.
I was refering to an ultimate goal. Been playing this game over 2-3 years now.
Well, time marches on and all that.. lol.
First, the game is only as grindy as you make it. You can *choose* to spend 10 hours every day doing a single mission over and over and over. Or you can do a variety of things. There is some grind, but the hard core grinds are all entirely self inflicted, and many of the ones you probably *should* do to develop a character (dil, ec, rep, and so on) are easily short circuited to be short grinds, a few min/ day (might take a month to get to that point, but its worth it if you are gonna play the game a lot).
As for engineers.. and damage...
damage is thru the roof, is probably the best way to put it. You too can get there, but you are way behind the curve, and so these mobs are going to seem very difficult to you for a while.
Some ideas on what to do:
1) do your anniversary grind. Get the ship -- its an engineer's cruiser and a tank, but you should earn it if for no other reason to get the ship's trait (youll learn what that is later, for now, just work on getting the ship).
2) save your zen. There are things worth buying, but get back into the game first, so you can spend it wisely.
3) free your mind. "Cruiser" does not mean much. It mostly means 4/4 weapons and crappy turn rate. There are high - damage "cruisers". There are even a couple of almost sci ship cruisers. A pretty high dps "cruiser" that can be had for EC is the recent t6 lockbox "benthan". Or you could just fly a tactical ship, escort or raider or whatnot... an engineer can keep those things alive in PVE easily while dedicating most of the officer space to damage. Anyone can fly any ship. Engineers in escorts are quite popular and fun...
4) decide what you want to do. Its possible to make any ship do enough dps to kill pve targets, eps solo content etc. If you want to rebuild your tank to get enough damage from it, ask for help here. But its a LOT easier to grab a more tactical ship if your goal is damage. Making it work in tanks is more work and more money (virtual money/resources).
5) check your settings. Did you last play on advanced or elite solo in your settings? Put it back to normal for now if you did.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=ryujinjakka_5833
Here are the reasons for the dps creep.
1. Captain Specialization
Focus on Intelligence officer first to get space flanking and training your Boffs in OSS III and Surgical Strikes III. Then pilot for Pedal to the medal captains traits. You will learn the flanks on ISA pretty quickly so you get a big boost to DPS. This requires a ton of grinding in Argala fleet action. No way to get around this sorry.
2. Ship Traits.
The Good ones are Reciprocity from the Phanton. Need to buy a Phanton from the 20k Zen sorry can't get around it. Pedal to the medal, Desperate repairs from your guardian, and The the Intelligence One. If you have the cash go for Supremacy. You may want to buy the Delta pack. It was worth for me, but I paid $80 for it on Black Friday during a cryptic deal.
3. Captain Traits.
Fluid Cocoon, Inspirational Leader, Anchor (Not many know about this one, but I have already stocked up.), The Xindi traits. (They are in the build above.)
4. Upgraded Gear.
This is not as big of a deal as most people make out. I have seen guys do 50k dps with XII blues. But. You want CrtDx4 or CRTx4 [Pen] weapons. Beam arrays or Dual Beam arrays work the best.
5. Crafting.
Get Captains traits such as beam barrage when reaching level 15 in the crafting.
6. Plasma Doping.
Get +Beam generic spire tac consoles and Embassey Consoles. Can ad between 8k to 30k depending on proc rate.
7. Play with better players.
Get your dps up to at least 10k and start playing on the 10k DPS channel and work you way up from there. A ton of knowledgable players.
Again Welcome back, now start grinding in Argala to get your captain's specialization back
What has happened to me on two computer systems is after a time the client starts crashing after being installed. (weeks/months/depends on when it starts) Keep an eye on your log files if it starts happening, you might get lucky and see why. Once you learn to avoid client bugs then have fun playing the game. :rolleyes:
Sci + Eng Captains are now a minority in STO (5-year-anniversary-infographic) and this has a reason - DPS - all the endgame is currently about. Now even EPISODE 204 OF PRIORITY ONE PODCAST wastes time on this matter.
Your eng captain will have a harder time to keep up with the dps rat race. with enough Zen, you are probably able to skip some grind and timegates.
Holy Grail of Gamification is Addiction | 5 Ways to Accomplisch | and the Psychology of Freemium
Yeah, this nice P2W instruction makes it easier ^^
Holy Grail of Gamification is Addiction | 5 Ways to Accomplisch | and the Psychology of Freemium
With the level cap increase from 50 to 60 when the Delta Rising Expansion (DR) was leased came increased HP for enemies as well as the damage they can do. Very Rare (purple) Mk XII gear was the best, but now gear gets up to Mk XIV and the best quality is now Epic (gold). The difference in damage going from Mk XII to Mk XIII is greater than from Mk XI to Mk XII. Going to Mk XIV is even greater. You should still get Very Rare gear since they are not too expensive. Ultra Rare is better but more expensive and is not an absolute must unless you decide to attempt the "new" elite STFs. For the most part Epic is not need especially since the stat difference between Ultra Rare and Epic is very small for the excessive price you pay.
STFs and other queued missions have become a bit harder on normal, that is understandable since better gear is available and there is a level cap increase with new T6 ships available that have better hull strength. However, the new Advanced and new Elite missions are a lot harder than normal. Advanced is more difficult than the "old" elite everyone was used to prior to the release of DR. The new Elite is truly difficult because you are simply attack HP sponges. Both Advanced and Elite also have time limits for "optionals" that are not really optionals at all. Fail them and you fail the mission... it's not hard to fail.
Just for fun, my level 60 Fed Engineering toon flies a Guardian with Retro Phasers Mk XI and only uncommon (green) Phaser Relay Mk XII. I gives me time to craft my own gear and level them up to Mk XIV and hopefully ultra rare quality. I haven't received a single complaint or snide remark in normal STF.
Speaking of STFs and other queued missions... players have basically abandoned them... DR kinda killed their popularity. Wait times can be a bit long...
Anywaste... have fun.
That's very interesting. I too recently come back to STO. I last played around March 2014. Back then I used to play the Big Dig (Daily) a lot as part of my daily dilithium grind. Now the queue is constantly empty! Maybe it was the wrong time in the day but looking at the queues the ones that were busy a year and a half ago are now full of tumbleweed!!
Of course I need to upgrade also as I'm still on blue MK XIs!!!! Although I don't play STFs, my main character is level 52 and I even haven't played the Breen storyline yet so the Dyson and DR storylines are a way off for me at the moment.
Anyway welcome back.
the sfts do not give enough XP reward. Most players do not need the rep gear (already did that). Mark turnin was nerfed so don't need to collect marks for dil weekend. Advanced STF has instant fail conditions that cause too many failed runs and normal mode is too easy and too unrewarding to bother with. The mobs were made more difficult but the rewards were reduced. So the Qs are emptyish.
But *most* of the stfs DO actually run every 5 or 10 min or so. A few not so much, but roughly 1/2 or so of them are still playable if you don't mind a short wait.
And some fleets run them as a fleet without using the public Qs. Might look for a group to run with.
I'm a new returnee as well. What I see instead of the pve queues are battleground runs instead. With cooldown timers of about 3 minutes, and you can just stay in the zone, you can easily grind up reputation marks in an amazingly quick time.
Lets take the older Nukara and Defera setup, where you're all generally running around doing solo stuff, occassional groups, for your own individual marks. Since the newer battlegrounds are basically zone capture things there's no need to group up, you just run around with the other people doing the same stuff to clear the zone, and everyone gets marks. You can't really 'solo' some of the space zones-of-control in an efficient matter, but you've usually got a small squad to 'the whole map' helping you out.
Unfortunately there are still gates. It doesn't matter if you suddenly realize you've got 1200 whatever marks, you still have to grind to unlock and dilithium (which has its own gate due to refining) limits your return. It can be frustrating.
Also for Voth ground zone, watch out for leechers. They basically hang around the 'boss' zones and wait for everyone else to unlock the map, and then just kill the boss, usually before some of the guys that unlocked the map get a chance to run back to kill the boss. Sadly the only real way to combat that is to kinda leech yourself, so when the battle map is like at 98% ready, you start running for one of the boss zones.
This might be a really dump question, as I keep hearing about these battlezones, where do I need to go to get involved with these battlezones? Thanks
Since you're at full (old) level, you just need to start up the dyson sphere missions. Located in Tau Dewa sector (same area holding New Romulus) near the regulus sector side of the map, its like the borg transwarp gate, but in this case a dyson sphere related iconian gate.
So you can't get to them via queues, you have to fly to their zone (which you reach via that dyson sphere stuff)
I don't know about the game, I know I'm less grindy than 3 years ago. Remember when STFs first game out? I ground those bad boys to dust to get my borg gear. Whole days doing nothing but logging on and running through the STFs over and over and over. For like 6 hours at a stretch, for it seemed like months to earn enough EDCs. Got my borg stuff and haven't traded it out since.
In the missions tab, you will find them under "Solanae Dyson Sphere".
It starts with "Sphere of Influence". Afterwards, there are a few mission that introduce you to the Dyson Sphere content (but are not really story missions). I think they can't be skipped. That would be Circles within Circles, Supply Woes, The Contest Zone, The Omega Standoff and Tower Control. (Despite the number of missions, it's a much shorter affair than Sphere of Influence). This mission sequence will eventually allow you to visit the Dyson Ground Battle Zone (in fact, "The Omega Standoff" already lets you do that and explains the mechanics.
The next story mission is "A Step Between Stars". If you completed that, you get another short intro mission ("Fluidic Destruction") that introduces you to the Space Battle Zone in the Dyson Sphere.
The final mission in that arc (for now) is "Surface Tension". Afterwards is the Delta Rising content.
--- Regarding missions:
THe Romulan Mystery and the Borg Advance arcs have seen a lot of mission revamps. If you're looking for story with XP, you should consider also playing those.
Then you know that, if OP is literally taking minutes to kill an NPC with 150K hull, having Mk XIV gear won't help much. Build theory/knowledge that's relevant to the current game is what's required. Telling OP to upgrade before understanding the basics is putting the cart before the horse.
BTW, OP, I don't mean that as an insult to you. The game has changed, and (as you've discovered!) the new high levels ask much more of you than before. DPS is more important now than ever. The good news is, cruisers have lots of new tools that make them viable for DPS if you build them properly; that's why I suggested /r/stobuilds for advice.
But no, upgrading to Mk XIV epics is not necessary -- unless, like stuart1965 said, you just want a long-term goal to work for. If so, more power to you!