Hello all! I was recently tasked with the creation of a handful of articles for STO! Within, I did my best to describe the top items within the game that I know of based on personal experience (2300 hours played) with an eye towards universality. There were some exceptions in the best races and best ground weapons just because of the lower barrier to entry for some of those things (50 lobi is pretty easy to get) but I kept things like ships as C-Store only so anyone could get them.
I'd love to hear what folks think!
https://gamersdecide.com/articles/star-trek-online-best-ground-weaponshttps://gamersdecide.com/articles/star-trek-online-best-racehttps://gamersdecide.com/articles/star-trek-online-best-careerhttps://gamersdecide.com/articles/star-trek-online-best-ship-weaponshttps://www.gamersdecide.com/articles/star-trek-online-best-ship
Comments
There are only the things which are best suited to your play style.
One example of disagreement is the Jem'Hadar, I would have considered them too niche to make the list. Sure, they do have a lot of DPS potential because of their game stats, but they are flat nothings as far as RP potential, have other odious problems, and a large part of the playerbase just do not like them at all despite the DPS-enhancing stats.
In fact, with the "Jem'Hadar faction", the devs have managed to pretty much go down the list of the worst things MMO players hate and roll them all into a faction that is both race and gender locked at the same time (they are essentially factory-made male eunuchs while statistics show that gamers overwhelmingly prefer female characters), and make it impossible to play a canon-accurate setup (all Dominion captains shown in DS9, without exception, were Vorta).
I do agree with the Lukari ground weapon being one of the best ones, but if you include event or otherwise harder to get weapons the Mirror Lukari version is superior to the Prime Lukari version (even though it is far more annoying VFX-wise). Another great ground set is the Breen one from the Winter event store.
It might be good to mention that the mek'leths are only the J'Ula ones since they have the advanced combat system with working closer moves (many readers wouldn't know that from the red color as opposed to the purple-glowing but vastly inferior Aakar variant or the Winter Event ones that have the old static combat moves).
Ships are even more subjective, but the breakdown/explanation of the reasons those ships were chosen is useful to new players anyway in what to look for when making their own ship selection.
Also, if you like the way the Gagarin is set up and want a cloak the Qugh is essentially the same ship in an uglier form but includes a full battle cloak instead of the enhanced slipstream drive so you dont have to take up console and weapon slots for the basic cloak from the Defiant.
Best Ground Weapon: "Lower Decks Phaser Cannon" a.k.a. Portable Phaser Cannon Special Issue
Best Race: Alien (Romulan faction gets easy SRO, but others can buy that as well now, and can stack much more doffing buffs)
Best Career: Tactical
Best Ship Weapons: this is something you could measure, but idk, I like Agony Phasers, the Terran Set weapons, Ba'ul Antiproton, Spiral Wave Disruptors
Best Ship: to me, right now, Bozeman Frigate (or its fleet version)