after a looooong absence I have returned to STO and just hit FA.
I bought me a nice little ship, did some searching and found a setup that seems to work for me (12k DPS on ISA right awayon first try). I have a pretty good idea how to improve my ship gear-wise. What I still have no clue about is the DOFF system and which DOFFs are good for what. Is there a contemporary and comprenhensive guide that I can look into? I don't seem to find any.
thanks,
QB
Edit:
I currently have
3 Technician [SP] Recharge time on bridge officer abilities reduced
1 Conn Officer [SP] Chance for +Accuracy, +Perception for Tactical Team
on an beam FAW escort
what would be the effect of
[SP] Chance to reduce the time to recharge when using beam special attacks
I have now found out that the Technician DOFFs I use are worthless to me.
I am now leaning towards 3 beam engergy weapons officers and 3 conn officers with attack pattern specialty?
anyone want to comment on that choice for a beam escort?
Reducing the cool down of fire at will means, in theory, you only need one copy of the power. On am escort this is rarely an issue as you have plenty of tactical power slots and can double up without difficulty.
Consider the variant that buffs shields when you use fire at will instead.
There is also a unique shield distribution officer from the delta operations bundle that heals you as you shoot.
I'm a fan of maintenance engineers and damage control engineers. heal offer time on aux to sif s nice so is the guy who buffs batteries.
There is Marion dulmirr, not as godly as in the past, but still handy (reduce weapon drain after using directed energy modulation). But Marion is very expensive.
Warp core engineers are great, both the reduce cool down of emergency power abilities and buff all power levels on emergency power. They are critical to dragon/drake builds that keep both emergency shields and emergency weapon buffs active 100% of the time.
And if you use gravity well to gather up your enemies a gravimetric scientist is wonderful.
Personally I'd replace those three technicians with warp core engineers and/or damage control engineers.
They don't do anything to help combat, but I often run an astrometric scientist for the bonus rnd materials since its free money. If I don't run that guy I absolutely run the one that reduces transwarp cooldowns.
What most people do is run some combination to keep their Emergency Power To X skills reduced so they have both skills pretty much always active (Weapons and Shields usually). The most straightforward way of doing this is Damage Control Engineer officers, who when they proc cut the cooldown from 45 to 31.5 seconds for a power with a duration of 30 seconds, and with 3 DCEs and 2 powers you get up to 6 chances to proc every 30 seconds. Its not exactly 100% uptime and every once in a while you get no procs and have to wait an extra 15 seconds, but its close enough for this game (heck, with purples you can get by with just a pair and still have a success rate approaching 90%) and gives you effectively always-boosted weapons and always-hardened shields.
Added bonus, if your Engineering CXP is Tier4 from doffing, you can even get one of your DCEs for cheap by replicating an Emergency Engineering Hologram and save another 10 million. Also, KDF characters get a DCE as one of their possible rewards for Engineering 4, so its one of those times Klingons get the cheaper option in doffing.
As for the rest of your ship, while not sure what else you're running, but other options include a special Cardassian conn officer named Zemok that reduces the cooldown on attack patterns (but he's crazy expensive), other Conn Officers that reduce the cooldown on Tactical Team, Maintenance Engineers to reduce the cooldown on Engineering Team, or Development Lab scientists for cooldown reduction on Sci Team. Anything more specific than that, people would need to know what you're flying.
I am flying a fleet intel escort with a setup derived from hilbertguide PvEscort setup.
I made a few modifications and it's working rather nicely for me.
concerning Doffs I now have
1 +acc +perception to tac team
2 lower cd on tac team
2 lower cd on beam special
1 + ship power when using emergency power abilities
this is not perfect but my performance already improved since i threw out the 3 doffs that did not do anything for me. the doffs in playce are all green and blue, so still potential there as well
Technicians are only useful if you run Aux2Bat, otherwise they have no effect. Look for the special DOff's that give boosts to powers you use all the time.
There are also some special DOff's that give specific boosts, such as TRIBBLE Temporary Hitpoints whenever an Attack Pattern is used, this can be a real life saver (does NOT proc with the Tac Captains Attack Patter nAlpha though)
Don't get stuck on just one DOff type = 1 buff, certain DOff's have several varieties of similar buff's.
Also you can look on the exchange for DOff's, sometimes the price of purple (very rare) DOff's is excessive, but on many occasions the blue (rare) version is way cheaper, yet only slightly less effective.
I have now found out that the Technician DOFFs I use are worthless to me.
I am now leaning towards 3 beam engergy weapons officers and 3 conn officers with attack pattern specialty?
anyone want to comment on that choice for a beam escort?
Very, very unnecessary.
An escort should have 6 Tac slots already - that's enough for 2xTac Team, 2xAttack Pattern, 2xBeam Attack skill.
As you'd have two FAW or BO already, there's no need for EWO DOffs.
Three Conn DOffs that reduce Attack Pattern cooldown (Zemok) is very excessive, you only need 1 to sync 1xAttack Pattern Omega and 1xAttack Pattern Beta to 2xFAW's cooldowns.
If you're talking about the ones that reduce Tac Team cooldown, they should be unnecessary since (as I previously mentioned) you already have 2xTac Team. There is potential here in grabbing two purple Conn DOffs to reduce Tac Team's cooldown to the minimum of 15s, which allows you to free up a seat for Kemocite Laced Weaponary - but that skill costs something like ~50 mil EC.
An escort should have 6 Tac slots already - that's enough for 2xTac Team, 2xAttack Pattern, 2xBeam Attack skill.
As you'd have two FAW or BO already, there's no need for EWO DOffs.
Three Conn DOffs that reduce Attack Pattern cooldown (Zemok) is very excessive, you only need 1 to sync 1xAttack Pattern Omega and 1xAttack Pattern Beta to 2xFAW's cooldowns.
If you're talking about the ones that reduce Tac Team cooldown, they should be unnecessary since (as I previously mentioned) you already have 2xTac Team. There is potential here in grabbing two purple Conn DOffs to reduce Tac Team's cooldown to the minimum of 15s, which allows you to free up a seat for Kemocite Laced Weaponary - but that skill costs something like ~50 mil EC.
credits are not an issue. I am a returning player, not a new one, I have all currencies in abundance. what does that kemocite skill do and how else is it acquired?
credits are not an issue. I am a returning player, not a new one, I have all currencies in abundance. what does that kemocite skill do and how else is it acquired?
Kemocite is an Ens/Lt/LCdr Tac skill from the lockbox westmetals mentioned. It's not too easy to attain, you have to get the BOff skill box from the lockbox, then Kemo 1/2/3 are 3 of the 9 possibilities (there's also Sci and Eng skills) from that box.
It adds a 10% chance for energy weapons (100% for projectiles) to add Radiation damage in a 1km radius as well as inflict a Damage Resistance debuff. Its duration is 10s, its cooldown is 30s, its duplicate ability cooldown is 15s. It does not share cooldowns with attack abilities or attack patterns.
It's actually more expensive the lower tier you go, because it finally makes a 3rd ensign Tac slot useful.
Comments
I am now leaning towards 3 beam engergy weapons officers and 3 conn officers with attack pattern specialty?
anyone want to comment on that choice for a beam escort?
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Duty_officer
Reducing the cool down of fire at will means, in theory, you only need one copy of the power. On am escort this is rarely an issue as you have plenty of tactical power slots and can double up without difficulty.
Consider the variant that buffs shields when you use fire at will instead.
There is also a unique shield distribution officer from the delta operations bundle that heals you as you shoot.
I'm a fan of maintenance engineers and damage control engineers. heal offer time on aux to sif s nice so is the guy who buffs batteries.
There is Marion dulmirr, not as godly as in the past, but still handy (reduce weapon drain after using directed energy modulation). But Marion is very expensive.
Warp core engineers are great, both the reduce cool down of emergency power abilities and buff all power levels on emergency power. They are critical to dragon/drake builds that keep both emergency shields and emergency weapon buffs active 100% of the time.
And if you use gravity well to gather up your enemies a gravimetric scientist is wonderful.
Personally I'd replace those three technicians with warp core engineers and/or damage control engineers.
They don't do anything to help combat, but I often run an astrometric scientist for the bonus rnd materials since its free money. If I don't run that guy I absolutely run the one that reduces transwarp cooldowns.
Added bonus, if your Engineering CXP is Tier4 from doffing, you can even get one of your DCEs for cheap by replicating an Emergency Engineering Hologram and save another 10 million. Also, KDF characters get a DCE as one of their possible rewards for Engineering 4, so its one of those times Klingons get the cheaper option in doffing.
As for the rest of your ship, while not sure what else you're running, but other options include a special Cardassian conn officer named Zemok that reduces the cooldown on attack patterns (but he's crazy expensive), other Conn Officers that reduce the cooldown on Tactical Team, Maintenance Engineers to reduce the cooldown on Engineering Team, or Development Lab scientists for cooldown reduction on Sci Team. Anything more specific than that, people would need to know what you're flying.
I made a few modifications and it's working rather nicely for me.
concerning Doffs I now have
1 +acc +perception to tac team
2 lower cd on tac team
2 lower cd on beam special
1 + ship power when using emergency power abilities
this is not perfect but my performance already improved since i threw out the 3 doffs that did not do anything for me. the doffs in playce are all green and blue, so still potential there as well
There are also some special DOff's that give specific boosts, such as TRIBBLE Temporary Hitpoints whenever an Attack Pattern is used, this can be a real life saver (does NOT proc with the Tac Captains Attack Patter nAlpha though)
Don't get stuck on just one DOff type = 1 buff, certain DOff's have several varieties of similar buff's.
Also you can look on the exchange for DOff's, sometimes the price of purple (very rare) DOff's is excessive, but on many occasions the blue (rare) version is way cheaper, yet only slightly less effective.
Very, very unnecessary.
An escort should have 6 Tac slots already - that's enough for 2xTac Team, 2xAttack Pattern, 2xBeam Attack skill.
As you'd have two FAW or BO already, there's no need for EWO DOffs.
Three Conn DOffs that reduce Attack Pattern cooldown (Zemok) is very excessive, you only need 1 to sync 1xAttack Pattern Omega and 1xAttack Pattern Beta to 2xFAW's cooldowns.
If you're talking about the ones that reduce Tac Team cooldown, they should be unnecessary since (as I previously mentioned) you already have 2xTac Team. There is potential here in grabbing two purple Conn DOffs to reduce Tac Team's cooldown to the minimum of 15s, which allows you to free up a seat for Kemocite Laced Weaponary - but that skill costs something like ~50 mil EC.
credits are not an issue. I am a returning player, not a new one, I have all currencies in abundance. what does that kemocite skill do and how else is it acquired?
Kemocite is an Ens/Lt/LCdr Tac skill from the lockbox westmetals mentioned. It's not too easy to attain, you have to get the BOff skill box from the lockbox, then Kemo 1/2/3 are 3 of the 9 possibilities (there's also Sci and Eng skills) from that box.
It adds a 10% chance for energy weapons (100% for projectiles) to add Radiation damage in a 1km radius as well as inflict a Damage Resistance debuff. Its duration is 10s, its cooldown is 30s, its duplicate ability cooldown is 15s. It does not share cooldowns with attack abilities or attack patterns.
It's actually more expensive the lower tier you go, because it finally makes a 3rd ensign Tac slot useful.