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Tactical Officer Escort
gaalom
Member Posts: 531 Arc User
So something feels off with the escort tier 5, I used to be able to do any mission on elite with virtually no problems. Now I could barely bring one arc shield down on a D'deridex class warbird. Given the nerfs to speed you gained from attack pattern omega, going down fighting, and major weapons I began to wonder. In another thread someone said cruisers are now topping dps with beam weapons. Starting to wonder if cruiser is the future of sto.
Before you troll me, or claim bad, or whatever internet speak people use for that today I am not looking to change the game. Or get a change pushed through. I am just asking and looking for opinions from other long time tactical officers who spent a great deal of time flying the escort thats all.
Before you troll me, or claim bad, or whatever internet speak people use for that today I am not looking to change the game. Or get a change pushed through. I am just asking and looking for opinions from other long time tactical officers who spent a great deal of time flying the escort thats all.
Post edited by gaalom on
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This is of course an attempt at psychological manipulation. They want your feelings of impotence to lead you to throw money at T6 ships and upgrades. My suggestion, turn the difficulty to normal.
Like Fatman said they increased the NPC Hitpoints on ADV+ so just drop it down to normal In till you get some better gear.
Point blank.. Crytpic has been trying to push Escorts and Destroyers out of the game for the better part of the last year. Almost everything they have done from item and ability changes to ship releases has gone to benefit one style of game play only.. Cruisers.
There is a small measure of hope on the horizon with the upcoming Pilot Specialization ships and the rumored T6 Defiant. Right now though, it's tough and in all honesty, the best way to play an Escort right now is with Beam Weapons, not Cannons. Cannons just can't cut it anymore, you might want to try loading up with DBB's and spamming FAW. If your frontal arc starts taking too much damage, slot a beam or two with a Torpedo in your aft, spin around and unload, and get back around to face the enemy.
Personally, I still enjoy playing my Escorts but I like the extra challenge. I'll be honest though, there is no way I can do any STF's in an Escort, I don't even try. My Escorts are for Battlezones, Mission Content, Red Alerts, things like that. If I'm going to do anything remotely challenging, I have to jump into a Cruiser. Attempting the harder content in an Escort is simply suicide right now. For regular story line content though, you should be just fine.
DR was quite literally a game changer. No only did it increase the max level to 60 and introduced T6 ships, it also scaled up the difficulty level of the game when you play missions above normal. Enemies now have more hit points and also do more damage.
I do not really focus much on DPS (damage per second). Prior to the release of DR my captains can generally do 4k - 5k DPS depending on the captain and the ship. Prior to the release of DR that was more than enough to play elite STF missions as long as the other players were competent. However, after DR was released elite STF missions generally caters to players with extremely high DPS; I will guess that if you cannot do at least 40k DPS (it could be less), then don't bother playing elite STFs.
The current advanced STFs is more difficult than the old elite STFs, but they are still doable with a 5k - 7k DPS ship if everyone knows how to work as a team.
Any idea when they will start rolling out these "pilot ships" and tier 6 Defiant?
I do not necessarily have a problem with the game going cruiser, as thats been the bread and butter of star trek for years, but the escort offered a different perspective. At least in my eyes it did, it offered the perspective of the soldier sent on tactical strikes.
Like I already said, this will require some thought on where I want to go with my ships.
I had the opposite experience, maybe it's because I don't run a dedicated FAW build on my cruiser so it sucks, but when DR went live my escort's dps doubled overnight and while it dies more often than my cruiser, at least it kills things the right side of 5 minutes.
If you want to maintain DHCs I would suggest switching to focus damage while you upgrade your gear to Mk 14 and then move to AOE again when you have the killing power to bring things down.
I have done the full on offensive build using Cannons/Turrets and the killing power was pretty nice. My survivability was next to nothing, but I'll admit that part of that might have been the fact that I'm just not the best Escort Pilot out there.
I use Beams over Cannons for a couple reasons. The first is that I fly a Phantom and wish to take advantage of the Reciprocity Trait. This trait is far more effective when remaining at full throttle to increase your defense rating. Beams are more accommodating of a full throttle play style. I usually find that with Cannons, the narrow Arc and the fact that I really have to be in close to get the full effect results in me doing a lot of parking and firing. This lowers defense rating and lowers the effectiveness of Reciprocity.
The other reason is because I also fly Cruisers which can't use Cannons, and by using beams on both, it makes it so I only have to pay to upgrade one set of weapons. Honestly, I already have a full set of Mark XIV Beams and I'm too cheap to upgrade cannons as well.