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How to Maximize Your Healing Like a 14 Year Old Minmaxer
kyle223cat
Member Posts: 584 Arc User
I decided to make this guide in order to help people maximize their healing, whether it's by making a full healer or just healing in general. This was inspired by @lucho80 's drain and control expertise discussions. I find that you rarely find discussions about healing and/or other defensive mechanics so I thought I'd change things up a bit. Although healers are hardly needed in most PvE missions, 
I'm hoping to see that change eventually so that I'll be able to bring my healer into PvE instead of just PvP and Ker'rat. Hope you guys find this at least interesting, though I don't expect everyone to suddenly say "I'm gonna make a healer now." 
So let's get started:
Traits:
Starship Traits:
Personal Traits:
Reputation Traits:
Sets and Other Gear:
Sets:
Other Set Pieces:
Consoles:
Duty Officers:
Bridge Officer Abilities:
Specializations: Typically I like using Pilot Primary and Strategist Secondary. However, you can use Temporal Operative as primary (for the large heal) or Command Officer as primary.
Skills:
Now, this list isn't THE BEST things to use. It's more of a variety of things that are considered good for healing/defense. Let me know if you think I left anything out, or if you have any other ideas.
EDIT: Updated for space balance pass (3-18-2017)
I'm hoping to see that change eventually so that I'll be able to bring my healer into PvE instead of just PvP and Ker'rat. Hope you guys find this at least interesting, though I don't expect everyone to suddenly say "I'm gonna make a healer now." So let's get started:Traits:
Starship Traits:
- Desperate Repairs (Guardian Cruiser): Gives a massive hull and shield heal after receiving three critical hits. The magnitude of the hull and shield heal can be increased by anything that boosts your incoming healing, such as the passive Show of Force in the Strategist Specialization Tree.
- Synergistic Restoration (Quas Flight-Deck Cruiser): Any incoming shield healing triggers a hull heal over time for five seconds. This trait is extremely powerful, as it basically adds a hull heal over time to all shield heals.
- Radiant Nanite Cloud (Dauntless Science Vessel): Bridge Officer and Captain hull heal abilities apply an additional 50% of their healing over four seconds in a 3 km radius. This trait is very good, and it used to be even better since it previously applied to ALL hull heals (although was 25% instead of 50%). So, every hull heal you had including traits and other passives could theoretically heal allies but for some reason it was nerfed and now only applies to Captain and Bridge Officer abilities.
- Non-Linear Progression (Temporal Operative): When moving in reverse, increases your hull and shield repair rates and removes the usual power drain from moving in reverse. The constant healing from this trait is absolutely amazing and the only thing bad about using this trait is that you look a little weird moving in reverse all the time.
- Invincible (Zahl Heavy Cruiser): Makes you undefeatable when reduced to low hull and boosts incoming hull and shield healing for eight seconds. This is deemed a must have in PvP by many people nowadays. I recommend it even for healers now as there is a plethora of high damage abilities available (or worse, shield-penetrating high damage abilities) that can bring you down to zero faster than even most passives can react.
- Ablative Field Projector (Pathfinder Science Vessel): Grants a small amount of temporal HP to the target of your shield heals. This trait is good for minimizing incoming damage to the target since the temporary hp will absorb a portion of the damage hitting the target.
- Temporal Insight (Delta Recruit Event): Grants a short duration immunity on use of any hull heal.
- Battle Ready (Eclipse Intel Cruiser): Grants a boost to defense and damage resistance on activation of any engineering bridge officer ability. This trait works on about any ship, and at full stacks it is like an additional neutronium alloy.
- Shield Overload (Sagittarius Temporal Cruiser): Grants a massive damage resistance and shield hardness boost on activation of Emergency Power to Shields. However, this boost decreases over time, but it is still one of the most powerful defensive starship traits.
- Council of Thought (Olean Heavy Escort Carrier): Boosts damage resistance and defense when surrounded by up to 10 allies. Just a good all around trait for a healer, assuming your team will stay near you.
- Repair Mode: This trait basically combines Ablative Shell, the console from the Temporal Cruiser, and Improved Brace For Impact into one trait. It's extremely powerful, but the ship it comes with is super expensive.
Personal Traits:
- Ablative Shell: After taking damage, gain a rapid hull heal over time and damage resistance boost.
- Secret Command Codes: When affected by any control ability, gain a boost to control resistance, damage resistance, and a hull heal over time.
- Biotech Patch: Boosts hull healing by 20%.
- Expedient Repairs: The target of your heals gains damage resistance and damage and you get a cooldown reduction to all of your heals.
- Techie: Grants a boost to your hull healing and hull regeneration skills.
- Give Your All: Grants 20% "dodge" on use of any engineering ability.
- Inelastic Collisions: On use of any shield heals, grants 99% shield hardness for 1.5 seconds to the target.
- Fleet Technician/Fleet Physicist: Adds a hull/shield heal over time to Engineering/Science Fleet.
- Nanite Repair Matrix: Hull heal when reduced to 50% hull.
- Failsafe Scrambler: Area placate when reduced to low hull.
- Pattern Recognition: Boosts shield hardness and defense by 6% (at 4 stacks).
- Imposing Presence: Boosts hull healing by 7.5% and threat generation by 25%.
- Shield Frequency Analyst: Boosts shield healing by 15%.
- Inspirational Leader: Chance to boost most skills on use of any bridge officer ability (includes the healing skills).
- Coalition Starship Tactics: I recommend only using this for defensive purposes on an engineer, which grants the engineer constant shield regeneration which is boosted by other members of the team.
Reputation Traits:
- Active Hull Hardening: Grants a scaling damage resistance boost based on your hull percentage.
- Advanced Hull Reinforcement: Grants a solid boost to damage resistance.
- Nanoprobe Field Generator: Grants 25% shield hardness (at 5 stacks).
- Auxiliary Power Configuration - Defense: Boosts hull and shield cap and damage resistance based on your auxiliary power level.
- Destabilizing Phase Array: Grants a quick immunity when critically hit.
- Superior Shield Repair: Grants increased shield regeneration (is one of those older rep traits that could probably use a boost).
- Hull-Repairing Nanites: Grants increased hull regeneration (is another one of those older rep traits that could probably use a boost).
- Automated Protomatter Conduits: Grants large boost to hull and shield regeneration when critically hit (is better than both defensive borg reputation traits combined).
- Evasive Tactics: When affected by a control ability, gain immunity to control effects for a brief period.
Sets and Other Gear:
Sets:
- Assimilated Set: Old but still useful in my opinion. The two piece set bonus has held up well over the years, whereas the three piece set bonus could probably use a bit of a boost. For now, you can replace the shield with the Dyson shield, which performs better.
- Kobali Set: The king of healing sets currently. The four piece set bonus alone makes it worth using. The deflector boosts hull and shield healing, the engine provides a cooldown reduction to healing abilities (based on engine power), the warp core (rare) boosts hull healing even more and has the massive area shield heal, and the shield provides a boost to incoming hull healing.
- Sol Defense Set: A poor man's Kobali, of sorts. The full set provides a massive area of effect hull heal, which is nice. The deflector is similar to kobali's as well as the shield.
- Lukari Set: Better than Sol Defense, but worse than Kobali. Great for people who don't have access to the Samsar.
Other Set Pieces:
- Romulan Covariant Shield: Has a super high base shield capacity AND it can get up to 50% more due to it's special proc.
- Elite Fleet Resilient Shield: This is probably the single most resilient shield in the game still in terms of shield hardness.
- Temporal Defense Regenerative Shield: This is similar to the Dyson Shield, but instead of a quick heal it gets a scaling shield regeneration buff based on your shield percent.
- Iconian Shield: Similar to the Elite Fleet Shield, but with less resistances and the cool debuff remover and shield restart passive.
Consoles:
- Enhanced Neutronium Alloys [HullHeal]: +25 all damage resistance and +18.8 Hull Repair
- SIF Generators: +37.5 Hull Repair
- Conductive RCS Accelerator [HullHeal] or [ShieldHeal]
- Exotic Particle Field Exciter [HullHeal] or [ShieldHeal]
- Sustained Radiant Field: +25% all healing
- Regenerative Integrity: Massive hull heal and +26% hull healing
- Timeline Stabilizer: Passive 15% cooldown reduction to science abilities and can reduce the cooldown on captain abilities
- Hull/Shield Repairing Embassy Consoles: These consoles are great post-space balance patch. I recommend filling your science slots with either all hull variants or all shield variants to either maximize your self shield healing or your self hull healing as you take damage.
- Bounty Hunter's Friend: Boosts energy damage resistance and shield healing. The three piece set bonus is great for shield heals.
- Nanite-Reinforced Circuitry: Boosts passive hull regeneration rate.
- Temporally-Shielded Datacore: Great against science spam (or when using it).
- Protomatter Field Projector: Massive area boost to hull and shield regeneration. Passive boosts all healing
Duty Officers:
- Maintenance Engineers: Increases healing skills when using Emergency Power to Auxiliary.
- Damage Control Engineers: Chance to add hull heals over time to Auxiliary Power to the Structural Integrity Field.
- Warp Core Engineer: Chance to remove all debuffs on use of any EP2x ability.
Bridge Officer Abilities:
- Emergency Power to Shields: Probably the most widely useful of all the EP2x abilities; provides a burst shield heal as well as a boost to shield power and shield hardness.
- Engineering Team: Large hull heal. A must have.
- Auxiliary Power to the Structural Integrity Field: Moderate hull heal but also boosts damage resistance.
- Science Team: Large shield heal, more useful nowadays as a science debuff remover.
- Transfer Shield Strength: Burst shield heal and heal over time as well as shield hardness boost.
- Tactical Team: Everyone knows how useful this is, constantly distributes shields.
- Hazard Emitters: My favorite hull heal boff ability, solid heal over time.
- Polarize Hull: Well known for it's large all damage resistance boost.
- Attack Pattern Omega and Delta: Both are useful on defensive builds, with APD being great because you can apply it to allies.
- Extend Shields: Not super great anymore, but still useful if you have room.
- Reverse Shield Polarity: In the event of you actually needing shields, this is still great to get them back up to 100%.
- Overload Integrity Field: Is related to Radiant Nanite Cloud, but you HAVE to use the heals on yourself for them to apply to others.
Specializations: Typically I like using Pilot Primary and Strategist Secondary. However, you can use Temporal Operative as primary (for the large heal) or Command Officer as primary.
Skills:
- Engineering: Max Hull Restoration, Hull Capacity, Hull Regeneration, Damage Resistance, Defensive Power, EPS, and Warp Core Efficiency
- Science: Max Shield Restoration, Shield Capacity, Shield Regeneration, Shield Hardness, Scientific Readiness, Shield Mastery, EPG, ControlX, and 2/3 DrainX
- Tactical: None
Now, this list isn't THE BEST things to use. It's more of a variety of things that are considered good for healing/defense. Let me know if you think I left anything out, or if you have any other ideas.
EDIT: Updated for space balance pass (3-18-2017)
Post edited by kyle223cat on
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RCK - a.k.a. "Evul Jacob"
Rouge Sto Wiki Editor.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yeah honestly, drainers are my biggest nemesis.
Depends on who's shooting me when I'm fully drained. If it's temporal builds, I might as well self destruct. Entropic Redistribution is tough enough to tank at full power.
Awesome! I would love to see more people try out being a healer. I think a lot of people discount it as a build they would like to try because they assume that because you aren't an offensive type of build, it's going to be boring. Trust me, being a healer is a lot of fun.
Jacob hahaha. Thanks for the moral support.
Now that I think of, I might make the guide "how to maximize your partgens like a 14 year old minmaxer" but, unfortunately, I am busy on other games and maybe a little behind in terms of meta so ... I'll pass this task to someone else.
By the way, Lyle, if you want to come where healing REALLY matters, you know where to come and you won't have to grind for ages ;-)
To add clarification to this entry: the reason this was changed was for server performance reasons. When used with Energy Refrequencer, Regenerative Integrity Field, or otherwise activated a significant number of times per second, Radiant Nanite Cloud could account for upwards of 30% of combat actions occurring on the entire map. This is why it was changed to only be activated to Bridge Officer/Captain abilities, and the healing amount was increased to compensate for this - doing so cut down the number of times that Radiant Nanite Cloud would activate in a run by upwards of 90% in some extreme cases, which made it that much cheaper on the server.
@crypticspartan#0627
Thanks for the clarification, not sure why I didn't put that together.
Also I have three semi-quick questions, if you ever get the chance to respond.
1. Currently there are a few heals that trigger when critically hit, two I can think of are emergency secondary shielding (rom t4 rep trait) and desperate repairs. A few people have said something that caught my attention. I did some testing and it seems to be true, which is that many times you receive 3 crits (or one in the case of the rep trait) and the heal applies while you're at full health. Is there any possibility of changing the way this works to being like "When reduced to 50% hull (or 50% overall shields), trigger desperate repairs?" I feel like that would make them more reliable and go more with the words "desperate" and "emergency" in the names.
2. The Hull and Shield Repairing Embassy consoles each have a 10 second cooldown, which I realized is global to all Hull and Shield Repairing Embassy consoles, respectively. So if you wanted to stack 5 of the hull repairing consoles on a science ship, the most the hull heal proc could happen is once every 10 seconds, no matter how many consoles you slot (same with the shield variants). Obviously you can't have no cooldown on these consoles like with the plasma explosion variants, but could the cooldown be changed to 10 seconds per console instead of global to all consoles? So after one console procs, it goes on cooldown but the other 4 can still proc. This would make stacking more than one much more useful.
3. On the subject of Shield Hardness, I'm a bit confused about it's relation to Shield Penetration. Does increasing your Shield Hardness prevent less damage from bypassing your shields? Meaning, if you had 65% Shield Hardness, incoming damage would have it's portion of shield bypassing damage reduced by 65%? (Sorry, I know the wording is awkward there, can't figure out how better to say it) Or, is there no relation between these two mechanics at all? I've heard different answers, so I'd like to hear it from the person who actually knows a lot about these things.
If you get to respond to these, I'll be very grateful, but if you don't I'll understand that as well.
Shield Hardness is another term for "Shield Resistance". It decreases the damage your shields take, but does not affect any damage that is not directed to your shields. It does not interact with Shield Penetration at all.
If someone activates an ability that ignores shields, or has stacked enough buffs to have 100% Shield Penetration for an attack, neither your shields nor stats specific to your shields (such as Shield Resistance) will influence the damage since it does not interact with your shields.
Shield Resistance stacks multiplicatively up to a hardcap of 75%. There are some mechanics that reduce damage to shields that are outside of the Shield Resistance cap, but none of these are activatable buffs that players can use to my knowledge. Resilient Shields' "5% Absorption" means that your shields reduce all energy damage they take by 5%; this is not shield resistance, this is a separate reduction that occurs. Some NPC's, notably the Tzenkethi, use a similar mechanic. The 75% reduction of kinetic and physical damage to shields is similarly an independent multiplier.
What that additionally means, that seems to be unclear, is that the shield mechanic where shields take 75% reduced physical and kinetic damage only affects damage that goes to your shields. If you fire a torpedo at a target that would do 1000 damage if it hit bare hull with no resistances, and your attack has 50% bleedthrough, 500 damage will hit the target's hull and is only affected by the target's hull resistance, and the 500 that goes to the target's shields is then affected by only the 75% reduction and the target's shield resistance. If a target has one shield hitpoint, that does not reduce the kinetic damage you do to that target's hull by 75%.
@crypticspartan#0627
Thanks for the easy to understand explanation, you really know your stuff!
In your opening you mention you were inspired by @lucho80 's drain and control expertise discussions... Do you (or anyone reading this) have a link to that discussion? I'd love to read it as well...
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Thanks!
Drain Discussion: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1227795/how-to-maximize-your-drain-skill-like-a-14-year-old-minmaxer/p1
Control Discussion: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1227777/how-to-maximize-your-control-skill-like-a-14-year-old-minmaxer/p1
Wonderful information, thank you very much
Thank you. I need to know how things work for my job, and if I cannot explain it well I cannot write accurate and clear tooltips, so I appreciate the positive feedback.
Beyond that, I do not believe the Team Fortress console is doing what you believe it is. It takes your shields' default bleedthrough to 0%. This does not mean that shield-bypassing damage does not bypass your shields. It sets your shields' default bleedthrough to 0%, instead of the 5% or 10% that it is. However, the attack's extra bleedthrough, such as 50% on abilities such as Gravity Well or a weapon with an extra 50% from a trait such as Self-Modulating Fire, will still apply. This will shift at least some damage from hull to shields of any attack that is not completely shield-bypassing, but it will not make your shields completely block damage to hull. It is a counter to shield-bypassing damage, but not an incredibly significant one.
That stinks, so things like entropic redistribution will still bypass your shields even with team fortress up.
Thanks so much!
Out of curiosity, are the switches and levers there internally for an ability that would let you deplete your own shields to gain an equivalent hull heal? Possibly drawing specifically from a shield arc that just got bypassed? So we could passively/automatically or reactively say "uh, yeah, no you don't!" to the vast array of shield bypassing effects out there?
Honestly, I've a bit shocked how often you see "with 100% shield bypass" on effects that just don't need it to still be relevant in combat. e.g. I just put 3/3 of the Silent Enemy set on a Sheshar and those haywire reflects... I get it that Elachi weapons can proc a shield bypass but sometimes it's just gratuitous...
Thank you!
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
The Elachi are the ultimate energy damage reflection trolls in the game.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Lol, I mean with player builds. Yeah, the stuff you shoot at in-game is easy.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1