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Deflector & 2ndary Deflector - need recommends

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  • redrum2#3381 redrum2 Member Posts: 16 Arc User
    Roger that. Ill make sure to do some experimentation. I been using the borg duty officers as well. a 36 and a 46. One cools down engineering and temporal and another cools down sci and temporal. I also have a 20 for armor pen and exotic damage.
  • smi3thsmi3th Member Posts: 211 Arc User
    edited July 2020
    A lot of interesting stuff in this thread.
    protoneous wrote: »
    . I'm using a Deteriorating Secondary Deflector that deals radiation damage when a debuff or drain is used. This is why boff abilities such as Tachyon Beam, Charged Particle Burst, or Destabilized Resonance Beam are used... to trigger or proc the secondary deflector. When triggered the damage dealt can be significant.

    I'm curious here... if this is for a gravwell build why wouldn't you use the inhibiting deflector which procs off of gravwell? Is the damage better? Is it worth dedicating an extra boff ability to trigger the proc?

    Charged particle burst requires you to get pretty close... wouldn't Tyken's rift be better?

    I started running a megawell build recently and I was amazed at how well it did. I got the T6 multi-mission explorer bundle and so I am running all three special consoles. The build didn't have anything fancy; most of the weapons are just generic beams and actually a couple of them right now are the standard issue ones that came with the ship because I haven't bothered to upgrade them. I use Aux batteries which are cheap.

    But the gravwell combined with that radiation pulse cone console power just destroys mobs of stuff.

    The temporal specialty seemed to work wonders.

    For my science consoles I am using the dyson sphere rep consoles and having four of them all giving a 20% chance to deal X EPG when I use an EPG or Shield Drain ability is just great. Gravwell is EPG... Tractor beam becomes a shield drain ability if you have the tractor beam Doff which then triggers the consoles. Scramble sensors triggers my inhibiting deflector so that becomes an EPG ability so it works too. I am looking to get the Jem'Hadar set because the antiproton sweep will be yet another source of area shield drain and therefore

    The ship has fighters but they seem to be kind of an afterthought really.

    I admit I am still an amateur at this kind of build but it is already great even with a bunch of green and blue Mk XII stuff.

    ===General Gravwell questions===

    1. My main problem right now is that often I trigger way too much aggro, and if there are tougher ships in the gravwell they last long enough to focus fire on me. On "Best Served Cold" if I am the first one to go after the big fleet at the start I often get killed right away. So how do I make my ship a bit more survivable? Scramble Sensors I really like but the "ball" that you shoot with that moves really slowly.

    2. The big issue with relying on gravwell is the cooldown. Should I be slotting both gravwell I and III? Would that help? I think they have a shared cooldown. How else can I reduce the cooldown for that? The same goes for the special consoles, though I expect it is less likely to have a way to reduce those cooldowns.

    3. If a mob of Chidyat Swarmers are in front of me I can hit them with the gravwell and wipe out tons of them. But once I get a bunch behind me I am in trouble. How does a gravwell build deal with that, where the enemy is behind you and too nimble to get your gravwell on them? So far I usually just trigger Evasive maneuvers and try to outrun them.

    Edit: 4. While we're at it, I notice a lot of people talking about torpedoes. Are there specific torpedoes that are easy to get which you would recommend? What about torpedoes that will cause the dyson consoles to proc? Right now the only torp I have is the Nausicaan one which has a chance to hold an enemy. I'm not sure if it works but if the hold is considered a control power then that should proc my inhibiting deflector which would then proc my dyson consoles.

    Edit: 5. Does the Tetryon proc count as "shield drain" for the purposes of the Dyson console proc? Is there any particular energy type that creates a combo with this build?

    Thanks

    Post edited by smi3th on
  • foxrockssocksfoxrockssocks Member Posts: 2,482 Arc User
    smi3th wrote: »
    A lot of interesting stuff in this thread.
    protoneous wrote: »
    . I'm using a Deteriorating Secondary Deflector that deals radiation damage when a debuff or drain is used. This is why boff abilities such as Tachyon Beam, Charged Particle Burst, or Destabilized Resonance Beam are used... to trigger or proc the secondary deflector. When triggered the damage dealt can be significant.

    I'm curious here... if this is for a gravwell build why wouldn't you use the inhibiting deflector which procs off of gravwell? Is the damage better? Is it worth dedicating an extra boff ability to trigger the proc?

    It really depends on your BOFF powers. Yes grav well procs inhibiting. Are you using other control powers too or do you have space for several things to proc the deteriorating deflector instead? You could proc the inhibiting once in 40s or the deteriorating 2-3 times in that same stretch, or vice versa. So you go with the one that fits your build best.
    Charged particle burst requires you to get pretty close... wouldn't Tyken's rift be better?

    Maybe. Tykens shares a system cooldown with grav well, so you can't use it any time you want when tossing out grav wells. CPB does not. Of course if you have improved grav well trait, you can have both grav well and tykens running at the same time, after the shared CD of course. Again, it depends how you want to do things, what tradeoffs you are willing to make.
    I started running a megawell build recently and I was amazed at how well it did. I got the T6 multi-mission explorer bundle and so I am running all three special consoles. The build didn't have anything fancy; most of the weapons are just generic beams and actually a couple of them right now are the standard issue ones that came with the ship because I haven't bothered to upgrade them. I use Aux batteries which are cheap.

    But the gravwell combined with that radiation pulse cone console power just destroys mobs of stuff.

    Those are pretty good consoles for moar space magic, I can agree. It is still opportunity cost at play, what consoles aren't you slotting to use them?
    The temporal specialty seemed to work wonders.

    For my science consoles I am using the dyson sphere rep consoles and having four of them all giving a 20% chance to deal X EPG when I use an EPG or Shield Drain ability is just great. Gravwell is EPG... Tractor beam becomes a shield drain ability if you have the tractor beam Doff which then triggers the consoles. Scramble sensors triggers my inhibiting deflector so that becomes an EPG ability so it works too. I am looking to get the Jem'Hadar set because the antiproton sweep will be yet another source of area shield drain and therefore

    I'm not sure that is how those console work. Procs tend to specifically work with your own BOFF powers not every random thing that can do similar things, and especially not other procs. I would not bet on it working the way you think it does, but some controlled testing can help you figure that out.
    The ship has fighters but they seem to be kind of an afterthought really.

    I find fighters die too easily for me to care about them. Try to get something tougher maybe. Danubes are a lot sturdier than other Fed fighters.
    I admit I am still an amateur at this kind of build but it is already great even with a bunch of green and blue Mk XII stuff.

    ===General Gravwell questions===

    1. My main problem right now is that often I trigger way too much aggro, and if there are tougher ships in the gravwell they last long enough to focus fire on me. On "Best Served Cold" if I am the first one to go after the big fleet at the start I often get killed right away. So how do I make my ship a bit more survivable? Scramble Sensors I really like but the "ball" that you shoot with that moves really slowly.

    Well, you kinda answer that with the first statement. First get some better gear and look at anything that improves shield resistance/hardness, as a science ship's specialty is big shields. But you're also going to need some damage resistance, possibly engineering consoles. Trellium D plating from Ragnarok, I think, is a fairly nice all around defensive console. You also want to not sit still and get your speed up for the free defense bonus. This is the big issue, of course, grav well gets all the aggro right on you, and you need to be able to manage it for the build to work.
    2. The big issue with relying on gravwell is the cooldown. Should I be slotting both gravwell I and III? Would that help? I think they have a shared cooldown. How else can I reduce the cooldown for that? The same goes for the special consoles, though I expect it is less likely to have a way to reduce those cooldowns.

    No. Only one grav well. Shared CD is 40s I believe, so its pointless to use two. The best you can do is either the trait improved grav well, or use photonic officer. For consoles there is a specific personal trait, unconventional systems I think it is that would work well, but I'm not certain if it works for the multimission science consoles.
    3. If a mob of Chidyat Swarmers are in front of me I can hit them with the gravwell and wipe out tons of them. But once I get a bunch behind me I am in trouble. How does a gravwell build deal with that, where the enemy is behind you and too nimble to get your gravwell on them? So far I usually just trigger Evasive maneuvers and try to outrun them.

    You know you can go in reverse, right? Reverse thrust and evasive should put you right behind them quickly. Alternatively drop your well on something in front of you. Of course you also could simply turn into them so you can look at improving your turn rate.
    Edit: 4. While we're at it, I notice a lot of people talking about torpedoes. Are there specific torpedoes that are easy to get which you would recommend? What about torpedoes that will cause the dyson consoles to proc? Right now the only torp I have is the Nausicaan one which has a chance to hold an enemy. I'm not sure if it works but if the hold is considered a control power then that should proc my inhibiting deflector which would then proc my dyson consoles.

    Again, the nausicaan torp hold probably doesn't proc anything being a proc itself. The two main torps you want to look at are the dyson rep torp and the crafted particle emission plasma torp which both do exotic damage. There are a lot of interesting torpedoes and figuring out which one to use is always difficult, but those two should be starters for you. You'll want to use torpedo spreads of course.
    Edit: 5. Does the Tetryon proc count as "shield drain" for the purposes of the Dyson console proc? Is there any particular energy type that creates a combo with this build?

    Thanks


    Again, not likely. What energy type you use depends on the sets you want to use. Go look at the wiki and look at the various sets. Polaron have a few sets that work well for science builds, but none are strictly necessary. And if you're doing a high aux build anyway you may not even care about energy weapons and mix them just for set bonuses. Of course the multimission ships have their aux cannons in specific flavors which can be fun too.
  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,984 Arc User
    smi3th wrote: »
    My main problem right now is that often I trigger way too much aggro, and if there are tougher ships in the gravwell they last long enough to focus fire on me. On "Best Served Cold" if I am the first one to go after the big fleet at the start I often get killed right away. So how do I make my ship a bit more survivable?

    Aside from those traits @westmetals suggested above (awesome post btw) and gradually improving your gear, telling the whole gang of bad guys to frack off all at once can be a really interesting experience, even more so if nobody else is generating much threat. It can be handy to have a boff ability like A2Sif handy to restore some hp and get your damage resistance up. It scales with aux power as well.
  • strathkinstrathkin Member Posts: 2,666 Bug Hunter
    I like the Bajor Defense Deflector especially for true SCI builds, definitely a great suggestion here made by a few above.
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  • smi3thsmi3th Member Posts: 211 Arc User
    edited August 2020
    I appreciate all the feedback, guys.
    protoneous wrote: »
    . I'm using a Deteriorating Secondary Deflector that deals radiation damage when a debuff or drain is used...

    You know, I think I got thrown by the in-game tool text which says it works when a debuff is used, and doesn't explain what constitutes a "debuff." I actually wouldn't have thought that would include drain abilities if you hadn't mentioned it... I figured that meant things like reducing a ship's damage resistance, stuff like that. By the same logic, control abilities could arguably be called debuffs as well since they limit movement and sometimes attacks.

    So, yeah, reworking that to use the Deteriorating now.

    Shame Tyken's Rift shares a cooldown with grav well. Destabilized Resonance Beam looks like the one to use to trigger the proc as it is AoE and has a 10 km range. I'll have to go and play the story mission where you get that.

    Tachyon beam is a staple of mine usually but it only hits one ship. Or is there a way to get it to hit others?

    Also I notice there is a starship trait that makes Charged Particle Burst trigger secondary bursts, which would theoretically improve your overall AoE. Do people use that one? Or is it not as good as it sounds?
    I find fighters die too easily for me to care about them. Try to get something tougher maybe. Danubes are a lot sturdier than other Fed fighters.

    The ships I am running this build on have Danubes (Fed) or Gorn Heavy Fighters (KDF). Based on how effective Engineering Team is at healing them, they seem to have about 5x as many HP as the smaller fighters which is nice.

    I am not really sure if there is anything I should be doing to optimize them. Sometimes I forget to summon them entirely.
    First get some better gear and look at anything that improves shield resistance/hardness, as a science ship's specialty is big shields. But you're also going to need some damage resistance, possibly engineering consoles. Trellium D plating from Ragnarok, I think, is a fairly nice all around defensive console.

    Yeah I have some fairly standard engineering consoles, but nothing fancy. The ship has only two engi console slots. I'll look into the trellium D thing. What would increase shield hardness?
    No. Only one grav well. Shared CD is 40s I believe, so its pointless to use two.

    Yeah I tried it out as an experiment and having GW I as a secondary gives you about 5 extra seconds where you can hit that second gravwell. Now, 5 seconds can be a long time in a space fight, but you are getting a gravwell that is only 1/2 the power of the one you would get if you manage to wait another 5 seconds.

    If you are willing to burn a Lt. Commander spot for GW 1 then you might as well use photonic officer I guess

    I'll have to look at those traits.
    The two main torps you want to look at are the dyson rep torp and the crafted particle emission plasma torp which both do exotic damage.

    Yeah, okay I'll look at those. Does the radiation from Withering Torpedoes (from Terran Rep) use your Exotic bonuses?
    westmetals wrote: »
    For survivability (resistances, regen, etc.), I use Context is for Kings, Enlightened, Repair Crews (personal traits), History Will Remember, Honored Dead (starship traits), and Auxiliary Power Configuration - Defense (Nukara rep trait). I also have an EPFE console, which one of its benefits is a +shield capacity stat.

    Yeah, just looked at the Nukara traits and they sill be fairly easy to get.

    What is an EPFE console?

    Thanks for all the help.
  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,984 Arc User
    edited August 2020
    smi3th wrote: »
    I appreciate all the feedback, guys.

    Shame Tyken's Rift shares a cooldown with grav well. Destabilized Resonance Beam looks like the one to use to trigger the proc as it is AoE and has a 10 km range. I'll have to go and play the story mission where you get that.

    It's well worth playing the mission Blood of the Ancients to get the DSR recipe.

    There are Deflector Officer doffs of the 'deflector recharge variant' that can, if say two of them proc, allow you to throw a Tykens Rift on top of a gravity well. I don't believe they're entirely appropriate for the type of a science build I depicted on the first page of the thread though (full epg/control/torp) unless you have the room but could be used in other builds.
    I find fighters die too easily for me to care about them. ... I am not really sure if there is anything I should be doing to optimize them.

    You can use the three coordination protocols in the Admiral portion of your skill tree which would be great for a carrier build. I try to include these points whenever I can in my own skill tree's as they buff your team mates as well as pets. In a full epg/control/torp build there may be better use for these 3 points though as pets will only be a small part of your damage so it's a bit of a personal choice.
    I have some fairly standard engineering consoles, but nothing fancy. The ship has only two engi console slots. I'll look into the trellium D thing. What would increase shield hardness?

    The Trellium D is a great engineering console but doesn't increase shield hardness. I usually have one point each into shield regen and shield hardness as part of my skill tree. You could use a Conductive RCS Accelerator. The Control X variant is relatively inexpensive and it's an engineering console.
    Does the radiation from Withering Torpedoes (from Terran Rep) use your Exotic bonuses?

    Those use a Non-Exotic Radiation sources so aren't buffed by your exotic damage bonuses as far as I know - see section 4.4.1 in the link.
    Post edited by protoneous on
  • foxrockssocksfoxrockssocks Member Posts: 2,482 Arc User
    smi3th wrote: »
    Tachyon beam is a staple of mine usually but it only hits one ship. Or is there a way to get it to hit others?

    Also I notice there is a starship trait that makes Charged Particle Burst trigger secondary bursts, which would theoretically improve your overall AoE. Do people use that one? Or is it not as good as it sounds?

    There is a trait for tach beam, tachyon dispersal, that gives it an AOE component but I don't think it makes it trigger the secondary deflector. I'd say its still a worthwhile trait if you have a slot you don't know what to do with.

    The CPB trait is not remotely as good as advertised, however for proccing your secondary deflector you don't need the trait, CPB does that on its own.
    Yeah I have some fairly standard engineering consoles, but nothing fancy. The ship has only two engi console slots. I'll look into the trellium D thing. What would increase shield hardness?

    Shield hardness is fairly hard to get. The wiki page is very incomplete on it too. The best console for it is hands down the Voth power subcore, and from my own experience, that thing can let even the Kor BOP do some serious shield tanking, but that was from a recent event so you may not have it. The conductive RCS proc will give you some, many set shields have some though some need to be upgraded to UR or gold to get it, and a small handful of traits offer it. You will probably get most of it from the skill tree.

    For shields you probably want to highly consider the temporal reputation set anyway for the 2 piece bonus, and the shields for that set do have some innate resistance to energy damage. The Iconian rep shields are another good mention, as are quantum phase shields with the 2 piece bonus, though I don't think it is worth having to use combat impulse engines if you use another deflector.


  • redrum2#3381 redrum2 Member Posts: 16 Arc User
    I also have been looking to address the survival issues. My issue is certainly high DPS beam or cannon builds. Survival while trying to maintain enough damage to kill has been a challenge. Right now, my fighting setup stats for the gravity well after i hit support configuration is.33 repel and 2880 kinetic damage.
    I HAVE to do science abilities in order to heal. That said..i need to make sure my science and engineering abilities are cooled down to the upmost. There are a few consoles that add +50 engineering readiness and science readiness. I am using Borg duty officers for cooldown on engineering and temporal abilities and another for Science and temporal. I am thinking i need a escape console............maybe a wormhole or Elachi phase in/out console or obfuscation.
  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,984 Arc User
    I don't know exactly what to suggest but sure know what you're talking about. There certainly can be times when you're doing well and taking a lot of threat as a result. The times when you're creating and taking more threat than your team mates seems to be the real test.

    Some reputation gear sets and consoles could be considered restorative or 'anti-explode', as well as certain standard space and reputation traits and some commonly used space trait genetic re-sequencers and exchange available starship traits that can firm things up by way of getting your damage resist up, increasing the effectiveness of your heals, or restoring hull.

    Repair Crews and Honored Dead come to mind as two common ones found on the exchange.

    Boff abilities, especially A2Sif and RSP, seem very handy. If Romulan or KDF a DPRM is very cheap as compared to Fed. There's also the protomatter console from the Lukari event ship if you have it.

    There may be a few doffs that are applicable as well. One which extends the length of RSP and another that restores hull when using attack pattern beta.

    It's really a step by step process. When I first started the science build on page one of this thread there was a certain map I was having difficulty with on advanced during the times the entire map was being gravity welled and threat wasn't being shared. The last step was supposed to be trying a re-sequencer for a space trait called pseudo-submission. I never got to give it a try as the final build seemed adequate after gradually fine tuning things and practice.

    I'd look to reviewing bridge officer abilities, active duty space doffs, standard space and reputation traits, and some commonly used genetic re-sequencers and space traits from the exchange.

    Having certain heals key bound or even the DPRM on a mouse button so you can use them "right now" also seemed to help.
  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,984 Arc User
    westmetals wrote: »
    You do not need something fancy. You just need to get out of range.

    ^ lol and this as well. It's even free.

    While there's no dishonor in a brief tactical retreat, you've just gotten the attention of every bad guy on the map... all ready to unleash unspeakable evil on the known universe.

    Squaring off against these folks and trying to make them all explode before you do can make for good entertainment.

    It's like holding up a sign that says 'challenge accepted'.
  • foxrockssocksfoxrockssocks Member Posts: 2,482 Arc User
    Another thing to consider is how you approach enemies. Like player ships, enemy ships have torps in front and rear. Massed torpedo spreads are some of the deadliest NPC attacks in my experience, especially when they spawn in a group at the same time. So how to avoid that? Be on their sides.
  • redrum2#3381 redrum2 Member Posts: 16 Arc User
    In regard to survival.......instead of being evasive, why not just have thru the roof resists and damage mitigation. Like the console that makes duplicates of your ship while giving you +100 resistance for 30 seconds??Or the one from the Damosh that makes you immune as long as your duplicate is alive.
  • vetteguy904vetteguy904 Member Posts: 3,857 Arc User
    If you are still having problems with ships staying alive in your well, I put the delta 3 pc, beam, neutronic torp and gel pac on. with EPG as high as it is the Iso cannon hits hard enough to kill anything in the well.
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  • vetteguy904vetteguy904 Member Posts: 3,857 Arc User
    a well built megawell ship is by far the most fun thing I have flown. if I join a TFO, I will usually type "Fear my science-y Powers"
    the enemy seems to ignore it then they die.
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  • redrum2#3381 redrum2 Member Posts: 16 Arc User
    Update on the science build guys. Currently it is kicking butt. I had to switch ships though...the Deamosh is working well. Alot of cheese to survive but it does. Looking at potentially a drain build next.
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