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Coming up on end game and question about ship weapons
druidish
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
in The Academy
I have gotten to lvl 59 and just finished the last mission in the Iconian story line (Iconian ships were a pain in the butt, that solar ray BS)
I have used dual heavy cannons, 1 torpedo launcher and turrets on my escort since about lvl 51. When I first got them I had a hard time with the low firing arc of the turrets, but was able to work it out. I chose phaser as my damage type (lack of funds), but the *phew phew phew* is getting on my nerves and seems to be slow in whittling down shields and hulls.
What is a good all around damage type to use?
I have used dual heavy cannons, 1 torpedo launcher and turrets on my escort since about lvl 51. When I first got them I had a hard time with the low firing arc of the turrets, but was able to work it out. I chose phaser as my damage type (lack of funds), but the *phew phew phew* is getting on my nerves and seems to be slow in whittling down shields and hulls.
What is a good all around damage type to use?
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Answers
If money is no object then something like AP Dmg x3 + Pen. But if you are a min-maxer you should probably switch to beams and using BFAW. As a tac captain, preferably with a crew of Superior Romulan Operatives.
You could do all that, or just use the damage type that looks nice / sounds nice, and level it up to mark XIV.
If you actually are there then I would strongly recommend the energy types or weapons with the procs that actually yield something very good like critical severity, damage resistance debuff and what not. But if you are not there yet then the two types that are very cheap and also free to boost later on would be Phasers (Quantum Phase Set) and Polarons weapons (Chronometric Set).
The key to overcoming that "pew pew pew" is not the energy type itself but rather finding ways to boost damage output directly and indirectly. This encompasses boosting damage (Pedal to the Medal starship trait) as well as critical chance and severity via personal and starship traits. This also includes the indirect by reducing cooldowns via traits (Reciprocity and Peak Efficiency etc.) and DOFFs as well as increasing power (Plasmonic Leech, drain expertise consoles and deflectors etc.) as well as reducing that power drain (Command - Weapon Proficiency and Emergency Power to Weapons etc.).
Different energy weapon types can have special abilities that typical has a 2.5% chance to "proc" or activate. Examples are as follows:
- Phasers = 2.5% chance to disable a subsystem.
- Disruptors = 2.5% chance to reduce damage resistance against disruptors by 20%.
- Plasma = 2.5% chance to cause plasma burn damage
- Tetryon = 2.5% chance to cause shield drain
- Polaron = 2.5% chance to cause subsystem drain
The one energy weapon type that does not have a 2.5% proc is Antiproton. Instead of a "special ability" which only has a 2.5% of activating, it causes up to +20% critical damage (a.k.a. Crtical Severity) when you score a critical hit (a.k.a. Critical Chance). That is what makes them popular. As long as you score a critical hit you are going to do extra critical damage.
What this means is that an Antiproton weapon with [CrtD]x4 would effectively act like a [CrtD]x5 weapon unlike all other weapons which would simply be [CrtD]x4. So basically said antiproton weapon can do up to 100% critical damage while all other weapon types will only do up to 80% critical damage with the [CrtD]x4 mods. Therefore, Antiproton DHC Mk XII [CRTD]x4 can cause up to 1,000 point of damage (assuming the base max damage is 500), while all other DHC Mk XII [CrtD]x4 weapons will only cause up to 900 points of damage.
Without any type of bonuses / consoles / weapon modifiers / traits all ships can cause 50% Critical Severity and have an innate 2.5% Critical Chance. Players who spend a lot of time, resources and who join a fleet can boost their Critical Chance to above 35% with various types of consoles. But for the "average" player who do not want to join a fleet and grind for fleet consoles, getting Critical Chance to 8% is pretty easy and get it up to around 16% is possible with some effort.
Regardless if Critical Chance is 8%, 16% or 35% that is still higher than the default 2.5% chance that the special ability of an energy weapon type will get activated.
A lot of people craft antiproton weapons and upgrade them. This generally makes them plentiful on the Exchange and less expensive to purchase compared to other weapon types. Many people seek to craft and upgrade the "perfect" weapon (referring to the modifiers). Currently the most desired weapon modifier combos are [CrtD]x3 [Pen] and [CrtD]x4. The [Pen] mod allows the weapon to ignore 10 points of armor.
Personally, I only have 1 of my 10 captains use antiproton weapons. I might transition another 1 or 2 captains over to that energy weapon type, but that will probably be sometime next year.
Switching to DBB means that you can replace the turrets with an Omni-Direction Beam Array to take better advantage of Fire At Will / Beam Overload. However, you can only install one ODBA of a specific energy damage type on your ship. You can instead ODBAs of other energy damage types, but they would not get any damage bonuses from tactical consoles geared for a specific energy damage type. ODBA's are craftable items and can be purchased from the Exchange.
The exception to the "only one ODBA for each energy damage type" are the following which can also be used with the crafted version.
- Antiproton - There's the Ancient Antiproton ODBA from Spheres of Influence
- Polaron - There's the Chronometric Polaron ODBA from Time and Tide
- Tetryon - There mission that rewards some type of Tetryon ODBA that I cannot remember.
Note: You cannot use a crafted Phaser ODBA and the Agony Phaser ODBA at the same time. This has been confirmed by one of the devs and it is intended.
Do you not mean the 45 degree arc of DHC's?
Quad Cannons - 45
Dual Heavy Cannons - 45
Dual Cannons - 45
Cannons - 180
Turrets - 360
Dual Beam Banks are 90 degrees and might be easier if you are finding keeping targets lined up difficult. With all the omni-beams about these days it's easy to have all round shooting with almost any set-up.
This is my current build, decided to stick it out with phasers. The consoles may not be the correct MK level, but the weapons are.
Where should I go to upgrade/replace first?
Was mentioned in chat to upgrade the weapons, but yeah that went over my head and I was lost, yet again.
but asking the wrong question about dmg type ( they shouldnt matter at all )
I think you are looking for ways/tactis to deal with NPC while farming for better gears.
so try find a ship with Lt Cmr Science bof station , if you feel you lack of dps or piloting skills
1) use CC or science ability Gravity Well 1 to trap a large group and give you time to aim
2) use canon shatner volley, beans fire at will or potato spread, aoe attack will kill the smaller npc ships.
3) watch tiny ships exploding and turn into tiny bombs dealing damage to larger ships
(fleet) consoles mk X are fairly cheap than any other fleet weapons or tac consoles or other stuffs...
it should spice up all your pew pew untill you've decided how to deal dmg and using which build.
It has always worked for me.
So, a few "did you actually plug in the power cord?" questions... Are you sure you set your weapon power to 100? Do you actually use those buffs? (And contrary to certain vocal opinions, there's nothing wrong or dumb about spacebar bind... If it's used intelligently.) Are you in the Delta quadrant? Vaadwaur are bad news even for somewhat better buids. ADD: And are you sure your difficulty is set to noprmal?
Stuff I'd add/replace: Plain chroniton torp -> Quantum Phase torp (and a full Sunrise set, for that matter) One of the neutroniums -> EPS regulator, the second one -> Assimilated Module, third one -> Zero point energy conduit (both are rep consoles, but as space rep stuff goes, fairly cheap) Sci consoles -> embassy MK X plasma-generating consoles, upgraded (upgrading consoles is usually cheap) one of the turrets -Kinetic beam (Omega rep) Obelisk core -> Elite fleet plasma-integrated core, or if you can't get it, any plasma-integrated core ( (see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_DmKQjWrcQ) a good explanation of why EPS and drain resists are important. It might be a bit dated as far as very very top meta stuff goes, but for this build it works.)
How to upgrade gear: http://sto.gamepedia.com/Gear_Upgrade_System It's an expensive undertaking, whatever kind of an upgrade you use. I'd advice to try a beam build first, and firmly decide on the damage type before really putting serious effort into that. Upgraded guns are very much worth it, though and would be high on my priority list.
Deluxe stuff you want at some point, but can do without in the meantime: Plain beam consoles -> Vulnerability locators (LOTS of fleet cred and dilithium) some item to help with power levels (Leech is "cheap" now, but it's still probably way out of your budget. MACO shield is another alternative, requires some rep grind and 34K dil and isn't as good, but it's good enough) and a rep set (which one depends on your other gear)
My weapon power is at 125/100 when I start a fight, but drops down to about 70/100 during sometimes. Was informed this was a subsystem taken off line and use my buffs to clear, or wait it out. I tried to set up the spacebar keybind to cycle my buffs, but didnt work, so I manually trigger them. I always try to have them up, but fighting Vaadwaur Im usually scrambling to keep my hull healed. That solar beam thing just annoys me.
I'll look into starting a beam build. For crafting stuff Ive just been doing the 20 hour boost daily. Figured thats the fastest way to get up there. Will google more about it and try to figure it out.
Yeah, I meant 45 degrees. Thanks for the correction.
Spacebar bind... Which one did you use? Hilbert's guide (http://hilbertguide.com/) although very out of date on some details (and mainly about PvP) has very detailed instructions on how to do it. Binds are a bit finicky, so be sure to do exactly what the guide says (and place it into the correct "Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live" folder, where it's exactly depends on your OS.) In that bind spacebar also fires torps and re-distributes shields, there are good reasons to avoid that so you may try replacing this instead: ADD: tray numbering in binds starts with 0, not 1, and there's a good reason all the "TrayExecByTray"s are duplicated in the reverse order. Finicky, as I said.
With Vaadwaur... The key is to get out of their cannon barrage, - as soon as little blue targets start appearing around you, you really want to be somewhere else, but you probably figured that one out.
Theoretically you don't need to craft anything to use upgrades, (and crafted upgrades aren't the best) but having at least lvl 15 crafting in as many schools as possible is a good idea.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Engineering_-_EPS_Flow_Regulator
Yeah, the problem with flying escorts (or in my case Bird of Preys) and using DHC is the limited firing arc. Although you can install a single Wide Arc Dual Heavy Cannon with a 90 degree firing arc on any ship that can use cannons. When you get swarmed you basically need to keep a watchful eye on your hull.
Flying a beam build is definitely easier than a DHC build, but there is no way in hell I am going to install beams on my BoPs.
This is your problem - a drop from 125 to 70 is effectively half the damage or so.