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A collection of unresolved newb questions
pavel
Member Posts: 42 Arc User
Though I've been playing over a month now, still a newb in many ways. I've tried researching answers to my myriad questions as much as possible to avoid excessively pestering all the helpful folks here. These are questions for which I have found no answers at all, or have found contradictory answers (likely due to various changes in the game). If some of these questions reflect silly newb naivete, by all means, giggle at my expense; but I certainly welcome any insights.
1. Active Duty Ground Doffs - do the doff benefits apply to an entire Away Team, or just the captain / your character? For example, say my character is an Engineer and I have a Tac Boff on my Away Team. If I have an Assault Squad Duty Officer on active duty, will that the benefit the doff provides for reduced recharge time on grenade skills apply to my Tac Boff, or is the slotted Doff being wasted since my Engineer Captain does not use grenades?
2. Another Doff question - is there a hidden mechanic that prevents some doffs from being eligible for assignments despite having the correct traits? A specific reoccurring example are doff assignments that require one doff with the Photonic trait. I have a Vulcan Entertainment Hologram doff with this trait, yet she is never listed as being an option available for the assignment.
3a. Shared Cooldowns - I have read several conflicting arguments about having multiple Emergency Power to Weapons abilities slotted, that while one is on cooldown, the other takes affect; but I have tried monitoring this and it seems the shared cooldown versus the uptime of the ability... well, I'm not seeing the benefit of having both Ep2W II and III slotted vs just spamming III as often as possible. I also use Emergency Power to Shields and rotating between that and Weapons makes sense because the shared cooldown is less than Ep2W's uptime. But with Ep2W the cooldown is far less than its uptime, so why not just have one Ep2W slotted? Am I making any sense?
3b. Sci Shared Cooldowns - I am slowly building a secondary character into a sci / space magic build, but it seems like most of the abilities that would deal exotic damage have a shared cooldown - Gravity Well and Viral Matrix, for example. Is there an obvious way around this I'm missing? Any suggestions for effective EPG sci builds that do not involve buying a half dozen ships right away just to get their traits and consoles?
4. Gorn - why is it when I buy a Very Rare / purple Gorn boff on the Exchange I instead receive a Rare / blue boff? The first time this happened I just assumed it was a matter of me not paying close attention when clicking buttons. This has happened on multiple occasions now - buying Purple Boffs on the Exchange and receiving Blues, but only with Gorn. Never happens with any other race. Is there something particular about Gorn? I've noticed that my Gorn boffs, regardless of being blue or purple both have three regular traits and only one superior trait, as opposed to two superior traits that other boffs get.
5. Upgrading - Might anyone recommend a good page for reading about Upgrading. The STO wiki certainly has some invaluable information, but I'm getting near the stage where I may want to start upgrading soon and it's rather intimidating still. I don't want to waste precious materials and I'm hearing all sorts of info about how some R&D materials are worthless, even if they sound good; others are must haves. How do different formulas work for upgrading an item from XII to XV and upgrading to Epic? Can they be done simultaneously or will that be futile? Those sorts of lingering concerns.
Eek, I'm sure I have a couple more questions, but this became TL;DR fast! LOL
1. Active Duty Ground Doffs - do the doff benefits apply to an entire Away Team, or just the captain / your character? For example, say my character is an Engineer and I have a Tac Boff on my Away Team. If I have an Assault Squad Duty Officer on active duty, will that the benefit the doff provides for reduced recharge time on grenade skills apply to my Tac Boff, or is the slotted Doff being wasted since my Engineer Captain does not use grenades?
2. Another Doff question - is there a hidden mechanic that prevents some doffs from being eligible for assignments despite having the correct traits? A specific reoccurring example are doff assignments that require one doff with the Photonic trait. I have a Vulcan Entertainment Hologram doff with this trait, yet she is never listed as being an option available for the assignment.
3a. Shared Cooldowns - I have read several conflicting arguments about having multiple Emergency Power to Weapons abilities slotted, that while one is on cooldown, the other takes affect; but I have tried monitoring this and it seems the shared cooldown versus the uptime of the ability... well, I'm not seeing the benefit of having both Ep2W II and III slotted vs just spamming III as often as possible. I also use Emergency Power to Shields and rotating between that and Weapons makes sense because the shared cooldown is less than Ep2W's uptime. But with Ep2W the cooldown is far less than its uptime, so why not just have one Ep2W slotted? Am I making any sense?
3b. Sci Shared Cooldowns - I am slowly building a secondary character into a sci / space magic build, but it seems like most of the abilities that would deal exotic damage have a shared cooldown - Gravity Well and Viral Matrix, for example. Is there an obvious way around this I'm missing? Any suggestions for effective EPG sci builds that do not involve buying a half dozen ships right away just to get their traits and consoles?
4. Gorn - why is it when I buy a Very Rare / purple Gorn boff on the Exchange I instead receive a Rare / blue boff? The first time this happened I just assumed it was a matter of me not paying close attention when clicking buttons. This has happened on multiple occasions now - buying Purple Boffs on the Exchange and receiving Blues, but only with Gorn. Never happens with any other race. Is there something particular about Gorn? I've noticed that my Gorn boffs, regardless of being blue or purple both have three regular traits and only one superior trait, as opposed to two superior traits that other boffs get.
5. Upgrading - Might anyone recommend a good page for reading about Upgrading. The STO wiki certainly has some invaluable information, but I'm getting near the stage where I may want to start upgrading soon and it's rather intimidating still. I don't want to waste precious materials and I'm hearing all sorts of info about how some R&D materials are worthless, even if they sound good; others are must haves. How do different formulas work for upgrading an item from XII to XV and upgrading to Epic? Can they be done simultaneously or will that be futile? Those sorts of lingering concerns.
Eek, I'm sure I have a couple more questions, but this became TL;DR fast! LOL
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2. Look at the DOff job requirements for the mission in question. A Very Rare Warp Theorist would make a not-very-good choice for a Botanical Survey Team. If Quality and Traits were the only things which mattered we'd all have about fifteen or so DOffs who do everything. You can set your First Officer to make recommendations for who should or should not go on a DOff mission.
3. Lots of gear and Abilities throughout the game have shared cooldowns. Not just Science things. Look into doing things which reduce the cooldown timers on the Abilities you like to use to manage activating them closer together.
4. This is yet another in an endless series of Unanticipated Features of STO. I no longer try to buy Gorn BOffs off the Exchange because of this. I suppose someday Cryptic will finally get around to fixing this. As far as to when it will happen, I'm guessing the projected timeline for this repair is about six months after this game sunsets, lol.
5. Phoenix Universal Upgrades, from the Dilithium Store, are your friend. The Dilithium cost is upfront and you know exactly what you are getting. I normally buy them in lots of 100 and place the unused ones in my Account bank for later use.
Welcome to STO, BTW. I'm glad you're here. I can just barely remember the excitement and thrill I experienced when I was new to the game. My memories of back then are always viewed through rose-colored glasses. These days, I login primarily to spend quality time with members of Stonewall Gaming Network. Of which I'm very proud to be a member. I hope what I've posted here helps out. And thank you for allowing me to do something nice for a fellow STO player.
Thank you so much for both the warm welcome and the helpful advice. It's nice to know that the Gorn experience isn't mine alone. And those Phoenix Packs sound great, if like you said, it reduces the RNG of other upgrading options. As for Emergency Power to Weapons: is it okay to only slot it once, or is it worth slotting twice?
It starting to amuse me to no end that no one seems to have a definitive answer to #1. I didn't think it would be one that stumps
Definitely enjoying the experience of flying some fun ships around. My Trek nostalgia has kicked into overdrive. Sounds like you're part of a friendly community that keeps you returning, and that's always wonderful to hear about in an mmo or multiplayer game.
The benefit of 2x EPtW is having increased weapons power and damage up all the time. One of each EP (weapons & shields) without cooldown reduction would have each up only half the time. It may not mean as much doing missions on normal difficulty but for TFO's it can make a big difference. Even better would be EPtW and EPtE with an Emergency Conn hologram doff from a Phoenix box to reset evasive maneuvers... with cooldown reduction in place like Photonic Officer 2 or Aux2Batt.
Really all that's needed is a science ship and a mix of storyline and reputation gear. Gravity well --> exotic torpedo --> other science abilities including something that procs your secondary deflector --> Photonic Officer 2 for cooldown reduction. The fancy traits and consoles list usually seen isn't really needed to have fun. For "other" try Very Cold in Space, Tykens Rift, Charged Particle Burst, Destabilized Resonance Beam. It can take a bit to get used to timing things.
Thank you very much for the added information. Nice to have the issue of Active Ground Doffs settled. That issue was really troubling when trying to experiment with Away Team builds.
LOL I'm still not sure about EP2W. My main character currently has EP2W II, EP2W III, and EP2 Shields all slotted, the latter also serving as an "oh TRIBBLE" button. I'm having fun with the character and it seems to be doing okay (on Normal difficulty), My active Space Doffs include a mix of Technicians, Warp Core Eng, and Damage Control Eng. So is that a reasonable mix of my Boff Engineer abilities, or is there room to drop the EP2W for something that adds variety.
And if I may... I forgot #6 - I've received several Elite Marks as random drops from leveling my Reputations. They're in my inventory, but are not registered in the Reputation menus as a 'currency' for buying Rep gear. As an example, I have six Isomorphic Injections in my inventory, but when I look at the 8473 Counter-Command Reputation menu, it says there that I have 0. Why the discrepancy and will I be able to use the Elite Marks I've accumulated?
I'd use EPtW x2 if not using any cooldown reduction, EPtW III + EPtoYourChoice1 with cooldown reduction.
Some fine print regarding cooldown reduction is here in a previous thread.
Where do you keep your Elite Marks?
As for the Elite marks, to experiment with what might need trouble shooting, I've kept them in my inventory on some characters, and placed them in the bank for other characters. In either case, they do not register on the Reps Tables.
Other abilities such as Aux2SIF mentioned above are a better fit for Photonic Officer 2 as it needs auxiliary power to work well and share a cool down with A2B.
Using the Klingon recruit ship from the other thread as an example there's no need to double up on boff abilities with cooldown reduction (CDR) in place...
Before CDR, 2 copies of most things needed -
After CDR using A2B -
Best Served Cold is a filler ability only in the first photo. All other supporting tactical abilities and EPtW need to be doubled up.
Cannon Rapid Fire is used as an alternate single target firing mode in the second photo and can be replaced with something else i.e. a torpedo firing mode skill. Everything would be close to it's minimum cooldown via A2B.
Hmm...a lot to consider for how to adapt these things to my ships and their seating. Learning curve ahead! LOL
Thanks again, guys.
It's not fancy. It's just the STO Academy Skill Planner combined with the photo hosting service from this forum. I think newer players are having a tough time visualizing what goes where so images might help.
https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/
There's two more possible layouts for cooldown reduction. Photonic Officer 2 (PO2) only, and PO2 + A2B1. I don't play on console but if longer chains of boff abilities are awkward you might want to try PO2 only (shown below) if supported on the ship you're flying as it's all you really need.
Emergency Power to Weapons -> Firing Mode boff ability -> Attack Pattern -> Tactical Team -> Photonic Officer 2
The overall message being delivered about cooldown reduction is that without it the uptime of your bridge officer abilities is only a small portion of what it could be. This results in a commensurate loss in both damage dealt and survivability.
OP, along the way, you will make mistakes with both your build and your playstyle. These are not fatal, only frustrating. We all wanted to be good five seconds ago when we were new to the game as well, lol. There is some good advice in this thread offered by people waay smarter than I am about STO. Using it makes this game a lot more fun.
My advice is far more general than specific. I'm not really hip to what gear makes up the current meta build. I suggest the 'wingman' concept. When you enter a TFO, pick a player to follow. Move when and where this player moves. Shoot at whatever this player shoots at. Mostly, observe what they're doing to successfuly complete the mission. It is what I did all those years ago to "git gud". Still not there yet but moving in that direction. It is why I have a Galaxy class named, USS Kettenhunde, lmao.
finsches123
You might be onto something. It's definitely not the case of the doff already being in use. I double checked that. But in the case of the Vulcan Holographic Entertainer, while the assignment looked to only call for the photonic trait, there might have been some non-civilian requirement.
Westmetals
Thanks very much for the line-up of Eng boff skills based on different seating arrangements. Gives me a perfect picture of how to adapt to different ships for beam builds, etc.
Protoneous
You are a font of information! LOL, you're probably right about dumping too many questions in one thread. At the time, I was worried about spamming too many threads at once, but in retrospect... PO2 is less viable for my main toons, who are Eng heavy, for some reason, but perfect for the two secondary toons I'm slowly building. I'm looking forward to experimenting with it. On console we cannot link abilities to auto execute in sequence from one click. It's still disorienting for me to constantly open the ability wheels mid-battle for those abilities that aren't set to auto execute under conditions, but I'm slowly getting there.
Thunderfoot
Your suggestions are just as much appreciated. Sometimes general guidelines are great, because it gives a person parameters to theory craft their own builds, and that is the great thrill. My issue is not that I expect to be immediately awesome at the game (I generally suck at games and made my peace with it LOL); it's that I want to understand the mechanics of how things work.
On that note, I've partially found additional information on #6. While the main page for Reputation tables shows that I have zero Elite Marks for every Rep category, when I click under each category's option to trade in marks, those pages show the correct total number of my Elite Marks. So I'm assuming this issue is just a glitch.