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Immunities and instakill, is that all that is left?
sophlogimo
Member Posts: 6,507 Arc User
in PvP Gameplay
Yeah, well, I returned to PvP this week, only to find out that it had transformed greatly, more than I thought possible. Basically, it seems that now you are either immune to all damage at precisely the right time or explode in an instant.
Is that really all that is left of tanking? Being a Pilot Primary, having collected the immunity-granting rep and ship traits, and that's basically it?
Is that really all that is left of tanking? Being a Pilot Primary, having collected the immunity-granting rep and ship traits, and that's basically it?
Remember, STO is nothing but a cosmetics game, where only the rule of cool matters. The game mechanics are intentionally out of balance, don't try to "optimize" anything, as it would just frustrate you.
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In arenas ect there are only pve heroes that cant fight without alldmg immunity (some even in 1 on 1 with agreement to not use it have no balls and brake the rules and use it as their sci ship was getting TRIBBLE).
Dont exept to get skillfull players in arenas. as most of them gets TRIBBLE 1 on 1 without alldmg immunity vs players that dont use it (and the rest are alldmg immunity/fbp spammers that have 0 their own dmg - if were talking about fed side).
You want a quality pvp with alldmg immunity banned go sign in into a league, most of the arena pve heroes are not there as they cant build a ship or fly withouth alldmg immunity, where some old experienced players that were considered one of the best for long time are playing actively there.
For tanking... get few allres consoles (specially the Sci and Eng R&D ones) so your res is not cleancable (allres as it has energy vs coalition disruptors and kinetic res vs sci garbage), get 1-2 hull healing reputation traits, and move fast (the evasive 40s cd reduce after EPTE doff helps with it alot), and you have a good dogfighter that wont get 1shot in 1 on 1 or mostly by 2 ppl even. To it help consoles like Morrigus(t6 battlecruiser) or Kobali console, Kobali 4pc (very good on dogfithers who had good spike so or so) and you have a tanky ship with good spike shot (and withouth alldmg immunity)
Then, yes, increasing your hull HP and shield HP helps a lot. Having high hull and shield regen is a good goal, but you want to have enough hull HP to survive a crit isokinetic cannon, which hits you through shields. Those usually crit for 30k-50k in the top end, so if you have more HP than that, or better than 50% kinetic resist, you'll be able to survive those hits even if you don't have any immunities.
Grab a aux2SIF placate doff off the exchange so whenever you use the skill you placate your next attacker, or slot in a jam sensors- not a lot of players running sci team these days, so it's pretty useful.
There's some internal math with iso cannon that seems to prefer targets that are at least at 60% of their max health. If they're at full, even a max crit shot won't inflict more than 20% of their maximum, unless that maximum is under 50k hull. There's some other variances there, but that's a good baseline.
Also if you aren't running it already, you want all mark XIV gear, XII won't cut it at level 60.
For defense, for example, I'm running a fleet mine monotanium console with +HullHP (ie: +SIF), and two neutroniums with +hullHP. I'm also running the Solanae deflector, at UR, which provides a substantial boost to your hull HP. Some other rep traits and skills improve that, so my sci ship has 76k hull, and 50% resists across the board, which is enough to take a lot of punishment.
Even if you're running an escort, I'd suggest picking up a [pla] particle exciter off the exchange. They're relatively cheap, and it helps against all the plasma explosion heavy builds (embassy consoles). Of course if you're doing a plasma explosion build then you need to max out those consoles instead, but other than that, survivability helps.
I run one +hull heal proc embassy sci console, the latest FE reward console, a [pla] exciter, and two of the new double + research lab sci consoles (+partigens, +shieldHP), so my HP values are all pretty strong.
There's a number of ways to boost resists beyond the basic boff powers- I use the Battle Ready trait from the eclipse intel cruiser (mostly because it's one of the few I have) and that helps boost your defense and resist values. For an escort, I'd suggest maxing out pilot and intel trees- and picking which one you prefer as primary. Boosting your defense values as high as possible, and then making your escort as fast as possible is one of the few ways to stay competitive. If you're only in range long enough to alpha, and an enemy can't keep up with you, then you have a lot of latitude to destroy them at your leisure, and though since they changed FBP to instant reflection, you'll need to be wary about that.
Something else you might care about- the dmg modifier was changed recently, to apply after all other boosts, so it's much stronger now, broadly on par with crtd weapons, and actually stronger by a fair amount for tac captains because it works well with APO/APA. If you're running a tacscort, those old dusty [acc]x2 [dmg]x2 fleet weapons might be worth upgrading to XIV.
Traitwise, I can suggest Ablative Shell, but you should stay away from any of the 'gets better the longer spent in combat' traits, as these start out weak and only benefit dogfighting players, while super speed bombing doesn't get any real benefit from them. Instead, work on maxing out some of the crafting trees if you haven't already- in particular, the engineering tree trait provides you with space dodge, which is sort of like a weapons-only immunity, when you activate certain skills. It's highly useful, but takes a while to get.
Other useful traits are Failsafe Scrambler, which placates and confuses when you get knocked below 20% hull, which can give you the time needed to escape and heal up, and then there's exotic absorption, which improves your shield strength/healing whenever you take exotic damage (which will be all the time).
For an escort, you'll want a resilient shield, or a strong regenerative one like the Dyson that can rapidly replace failed sections. Engines, well, anything super fast, but the counter command, delta, and iconian engines are all very solid. The set bonuses are generally pretty good too
Wow I was thinking of coming back but just seeing you post is enough to prevent me from looking for familiar faces on the forums much less logging in. You are one of the worst people I've ever met in an internet community and, bizarrely, one of the most vocal about how one should behave in said.
Can't help but wonder how many times Picard was immune to those pesky Klingons. *sarcasm*