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Best Ground Gear
ds9fan1982
Member Posts: 14 Arc User
What is the best combination for Ground Missions (Shield, Armor, Guns, Kit, ect)?
Post edited by ds9fan1982 on
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For example, the counter-command armor is the best armor for Bug Hunt, but that might not be the case for other STFs or missions. So the trick is to analyse what kind of enemy you're facing, the weapons he wields, and how you can counter its attacks with peak efficiency. This is why CC armor is the best against bluegills in BH, for example : they use toxic attacks, so you want to have a high resistance against toxic attacks, and then the most logical choice is the CC armor.
... or you could use an EVA suit.
There is (kind of).
Shattering Harmonics shield (~90% dodge when crouched)
Delta Armor + Gun (+1K HP)
Any other weapon of your choice, depending on mission:
- TR-116B against Borg
- Zefram shotgun against Borg
- Plasma Wide Beam rifle against the rest
Honestly I don't know why people equip anything else, barred high DPSers that will sacrifice survivability for damage, but then, those types of players know what they're doing.
And then there are missions that require an EV suit. For those you can switch the Delta Armor for the Shield. You will lose dodge but keep the HP. Or you can just keep the shield for the dodge bonus. High dodge is usually better than armor resistance, but only if you use crouch. If you don't, you should, if you value survivability.
With the above setup (plus traits and upgrades) my character has 1.2KHP, 100% dodge, 60% resistance to common damage types, and about ~40% toxic resistance. Values above will change if you pick offensive traits.
Kits rely more on playstyle than anything, but there are usually some kit modules to avoid. To name a few: Stasis Field, Fuse Armor, Weapons Malfunction, Draw Fire. Even with DOFFs benefiting them, there are usually better choices, especially now that we have Lockbox modules and unique drops from missions.
STO Screenshot Archive
Most Missions except Borg STF
I use the New Rom Gear and Kit with the Plasma Module.
Weapons - Rom Plasma Split Beam CritX*2 XII
Phased Polaron Full auto Rifle XII
TR-116B (For Elachi)
Borg STF - Full Adpted Maco with the Rom KIT
Weapons - AP Borg Split Beam Rifle XII
TR-116B
One Set is also use is the Full Jem'Hadar XII Gear, (only have it for one Toon, Tac Fed) but got it when it was Lobi upgrade.
Only variance i will do is switch shield of Rom set with Delta shield with rifle for extra HP.
I am not saying this is the best ground gear, but they work Excellent for My style of play.
The Fleet Polly armor gives me ~50% energy damage resists with ~65% kinetic and physical (I cannot stress how useful that last part is, esp against the Heralds), along with the Nanite monitor which heals the living daylights out of you when you drop low. It also gives you a nice bonus to HP. And with the Nukara shield, you gain a 20% damage resist to ALL energy types, in addition to a reduction to incoming environmental damage AND a chance for shield hardening when you take damage.
Overall it leaves me with ~900 hp (when full ground traits), ~600 shield HP, and very VERY hard to kill.
- Energy Weapons
- Grenades (Kinetic Damage)
- Melee Attacks (Physical Damage)
You'll find those kind attacks dominate what the NPCs do.
With the attacks I listed, many armor types have glaring weaknesses. I refer you to STOWiki's Body Armor page and you will see what kind of vulnerabilities the different armor types have.
This is why, for the vast majority of the game, I prefer Polyalloy styled armor. The resists cover everything that you'll generally encounter and unlike other armor types, they don't leave a glaring weakness. For example:
- Energy Dampening Armor has good Energy and decent Kinetic Resists. If you're fighting Fed, Romulan, various NPCs that only shoot and lob grenades, this armor does good. But the moment you fight something that likes to do melee, like Klingons, monsters, Voth SpecOps (have fun with them with Energy Dampening), and Species 8472, you're going to hurt very badly.
- Then you have the utiity styled armors: Recoil Compensating, Energy Harness, Integrated Targeting, Physical Augmentation, those have very weak resists in general.
Then you have Polyalloy: Very high Physical & Kinetic Resists and just enough Energy Resists to get the job done. It leave ZERO gaps in resist coverage for what you'll encounter. You have other special armors out there like Omega, Dyson, Honor Guard, MACO, Counter Command. Those are good armors because you'll see their resists encompass the 3 critical, commonly faced damage types: Energy, Physical, Kinetic. They don't leave you hanging.
The only content that I change out of my general combat gear are:
- Borg Ground STFs - For the Omega/Honor Guard/MACO/Adapted sets' weapons remodulation. However, if you rely heavily on Physical attacks like Melee and TR-116, you don't need the remodulation.
- Bug Hunt - 2 resists are what you need to worry about: Physical and Toxic. Failure to heed that, proceed at your own risk. Someone's earlier statement to bring an EVA suit to BH is not the complete truth. Not all EVA suits have Physical and Toxic Resists, not all that have those 2 resists are good in both. You'll be surprised that the Solanae EVA suits are the worst things you can bring to Bug Hunt. And it's funny to watch.
- Nukara Prime - You're forced to use EVA suits.
The last thing to alter things is the Race you play due to Racial Traits, and what other Traits you slot. These can be used to help cover resist shortcomings elsewhere. There's way more to this but Traits, Kit Modules play a big role also.
The two best shields in the game are from the reputation system. The Omega Shield and Shattering Harmonics Shield both have a base dodge of 29.1% at MK12 at Mark 14 they move up to 40% chance to dodge. If you crouch and have a gambling device your dodge will hit 100%. The problem is hardly anyone in this game crouches or aims. How hard is it to hit the C button to take less damage. You can always tell someone that know true game mechanics on the ground by if they are crouching. I have crouch and aim key bound to the same key. One thing is if you are fighting an enemy like the Voth, Klingons, or blue gills be carefull how close they get, crouching give you a -100 damage resistance to melee and physical damage.
The armor can be a little different. A lot more options here. I prefer the Advance Fleet Armor that give +80% crit damage. If you are able to to get your crit H around 25% or higher. If you have issues staying alive use the Elite armor for the free pair of nanites. The number one mistake i see players do is run around in EV suites. They are not real armor, but will protect you from damage types that normal armors don't. Keep one handy. I counter command gun and armor is good for getting your crit h up, plus 5%. While i don't use set bonuses that much, I do keep them on Boffs for easy access.
Now weapons really depend on your class, captain kit abilities, and enemy. Borg and Elachi I always keep and TR-116 around. I really prefer a split beam nice solid damage dealer with good range. If you are in close quarter I use a pulsewave. Widebeam pistols and rifles and nice. Sniper and compression pistol are awesome. A lot of players stay away from compression pistols, i dont know why, they hit hard like a pulsewave but has better range without the knockback. Weapons I would stay away from are the blast assault and mini gun. Looking at stats they look fine but the long cycles of spinning up or between shots make them not as good. I prefer at least critdx2 if possible. Unlike space weapons energy type does not matter as much. Phasers have a nice stun effect. Disruptors is just like space with a negative to DR. Tetryon is good against heavy shielded enemies, but you might as well use a Tr-116. Polaron give weapons off line/malfunction. Anti proton is always nice, but king right now might be plasma. It gets a 20% damage buff from the Imperial Navy set.
Devices are always over looked. Obviously hypos are a must have, along with shield charges. I believe in everyone have a good tribble, if they can't afford ad gambling device. Shard of Possibilities would be my next choice. They have a strong placate, always good to remove aggro from you, they do have a long cooldown. The new temporal device would be another good choice. Might even be better than the shard.
Some mistakes people do on the ground.
1. dont crouch (50% dodge)
2. dont aim (+33% damage)
3. use long cooldown items (horta)
4. use EV suites for everything
5. engineers placing toys down where they can be destroyed or stay to close to them
6. dont use abilities
7. use worthless guns, flamethrower, mingun, and blast assault
Please dont get me wrong. The mingun and blast assault does have their place and use. An engineer that plays a bunker down type game play these work great with.
Crouching is not always a good idea, since it causes all melee attacks to do double damage. You crouch against the Undine, you're punished. You crouch against certain Blue-gills, you're punished. You crouch against the Heralds... um... yeah, you won't even need the coffin, there won't be anything left of you to pick up.
So while crouching is a good thing, just remember that you still have certain enemies where it's suicide to do it.
That is what a roll is for. You crouch until player/npc gets close. Then you roll away from damage, which is 100% dodge, then you are standing.
Except with STO's recent lag and latency issues, your scenario plays out a little like this: You crouch until player/NPC gets close. You start mashing the roll function while the enemy hits you in the face with its weapon/claw/poopshovel. Your corpse rolls away 5 seconds later with 100% dodge, and then you respawn inside world geometry for some reason.
While this can be true, it has never happened to me, and i crouch everywhere. I play ground the ABC way, Always Be Crouching.
The UI lag is very bad. Been like this since DR hit. Even worse in space when I'm smashing an ability but the game takes its time to execute it. Or worse, the ability is "activated" but does nothing and goes into cooldown.