= 44th State of the Fleet, May 2017 =

Greetings Fleet !

Because there are so many questions, it’s a few days early, but here is your May 44th Fleet Review.

It’s been slowly approaching like an unstoppable big bad scary Borg Tac Cube, and it has finally arrived – the big space mechanic nerf rebalance is now up and running with the official launch of Season 13.
After the usual after-launch quick patches we all know and love, the dust is settling and we can breathe easy again and get used to the new reality. I will adress the changes first, and comment on Season 13 with links to youtubes after.

How will the space rebalance effect you ? Long story short; you do less damage and NPC’s do a bit more.

If you are a casual player just enjoying Episodes on Normal, it will not effect you that much. Though you may notice that NPC baddies may be a bit meaner and tougher.
If you are a more regular player joining STFs on Advanced and investing more heavily in your ships, consoles and builds, you wil notice a drop in your power levels and you may blow up more often on maps you didn’t do so before.
If you are a serious min-maxer, who previously did between 75K-100K DPS with all gold-plated Epic kit, you’re in for a rude awakening. You will have to respec your skill trees and make serious changes to your current builds to regain those Top Gun stats.

I’ll defer to Snipey47a‘s 12-min youtube (see this if nothing else) or this Reddit link for a true in-depth math-supported write-up, so I’ll just mention the take-away notes:

The ‘meta’, or most effective and efficient starship build in STO, has for years been the same. You needed to use beams with Fire at Will, have the Iconian 4-piece space set, equip the Plasmonic Leech Console and equip as many of the Plasma Generating Science consoles from the Embassy as you could. With just these you would basically be set and done, regardless your career or if you flew an escort, cruiser or carrier.

Well, no more. I won’t bother you with the math here (see aforementioned Reddit link), but power formulas have been changed/reset. The high (low?) notes you should be aware of:

The very juicy Embassy +Plasma generating Science consoles that did extra devastating plasma damage have been nerfed to uselesness, period. Just don’t bother spending fleet marks and dilithium on them anymore.

The Iconian Resistance Space set no longer stacks total team damage and is capped at one buff max, instead of the previous 5x. So when you are teamed up, having just one captain with the full set gives the same damage bonus as a fully equipped 5-player team.
The full 4pc Iconian set as is, is still a good set to have, but min-maxers may want to look at other combinations (see below).

The Plasmonic Leech has been nerfed and no longer gives the huge extra energy boost to the point it is no longer an absolute ‘must have’ console, but a ‘nice to have for Romulans’ one, due to the Roms innate power-starved Singularity cores.
Even nerfed there is no other console that gives such an extra power boost, even if it is just a fraction of what it was (testament to its previously Over-Powered status).

In general you will noticed an overall increase in power drain (usage) on your ship, making your weapons energy drop faster (read: do less damage) and your shields weaker due to the faster power drain(s).

So what should you equip, generally speaking ?

Purely damage wise, Dual heavy Cannons + Cannon Scatter Volley2 are better than Beams + FAW2.
BFAW still works on cruisers, but should no longer be preferred on cannon-able ships. Ignore the new ACC penalty for FAW that some are concerned (‘forum flaming’) about, as it is not an issue in PVE.
Remember that in general for cannons Tactical Vulnerability Exploiters are best, for beam builds use Locators.

For all energy weapons CrtD / Dmg modifiers are still best, with Dmg for Tac captains, CrtD preferred for Engineer and Science captains. Ideal weapon mod combination still is (CrtD)x3 or (Dmg)x3 with (Pen).

Coalition Disruptors are still considered the absolute best when in a team, Antiproton still preferred as alround damage dealers. Disruptors (the various non-coalition flavors) still a solid choice.
Keep an eye out for Polarons; with the change/rebalance to drain/energy mechanics they may move up in ranking (edit: they don’t).
Even (Shock! Horror!) Tetryon weapons may slowly crawl out from the deep pit of despair – but they are still considered sub-optimal unless you have a very specialist drain/kinetic damage build.

Instead of the full Iconian space set, good alternatives are –
the Nukara Reputation Strikeforce Tech 2-piece bonus (+2.5% weapon damage),
the Romulan (reputation) Prototype Engine (+26.2 Starship Weapon Amplification) and
the Counter-Command deflector (+Accuracy, +Energy, +Projectile weapons.

The Iconian Warp Core upgraded with AMP Mod is still viable and the Iconian shield continues to be considered best in game due to its disable debuff (The disable debuff got nerfed itself and this, in addition to some other nerfs, the Iconian 4pc is no longer considered a ‘must have’ anymore).

For science consoles, having an EPS console (or one with the EPS mod like the crafted EPS or the Fleet Mine Neutronium Armor w/EPS will help in refilling your power fuel tank faster, meaning stronger shields and better weapons. A DrainX console will help with reducing you power loss from attacking enemies since the DrainX mod works both ways. Universal (Lobi) consoles are a good filler for non-science specialists.

Speaking of DrainX, Tykens Rift has a massively increased power drain, and especially in PVP will become ‘a thing’. With enough DrainX consoles (from our Fleet research Lab) you will be able to shut down NPCs in PVE as well.

Grav Well has reduced damage potential, but its pull has increased a little. The popular combination of Grav Well+Subspace Vortex is less effective but still viable.

Gravimetric Torpedo. Oh my. Cryptic finally fixed it, and then some. This one may become the new Gravity Well by its own as it does tremendous damage when properly boosted by enough Particle generator consoles/skills/traits.

Although all torpedoes received an upgrade, in the end energy weapons still do more damage.

Mines. (Big Sigh…) They still suck canal water (read: too slow, damage too low) so don’t even bother.

Pets Rock ! They are tougher, smarter and hit harder. Especially the Elite Romulan Scorpions (Rom Rep) have massively improved, with faster torpedoes and nicer cannon animations. Overall the frigate-class pets are eye-watering; just sit back and watch the show. Carriers and Escort carriers are back with a vengeance !

Our Commodore Stompar has been endlessly laboring on tribble checking stats and builds, doing the number crunching I’m too lazy for.
He dropped from 140K DPS pre-S13 to a nerve-wracking 40K (!) and has been slowly climbing back to 100K DPS. Take advantage of his hard work ! See his build-tube here.

In a nut shell: Cryptic introduced a space mechanic rebalance that will effect especially the high-DPS crowd, and it killed the reigning ‘meta’ in the process. This is forcing us to adapt and actually think of other build combinations. This can be a good thing, as we will soon see more differences in ships and effects instead of the copy-paste builds we’ve known for too long now.

Season 13 has launched and by now most of you (should) have played the new Featured Episode, and overall it is very well received as a good follow-on in the new Tzenkethi arc.
Funny thing, as an avid gamer the first ground map felt very familiar, looking a lot like all those other FPS maps I used to prowl. Let us know what you think.
Hint: visit all back-alleys for an accolade.

The new Season 13 queues Core Assault (Walkthrough) and Binary Circuit (Walkthrough) look interesting and fun. Check these walkthroughs if you haven’t done them yet. These missions are simple, but you need to know what to do or you and your team will struggle.

Fleet news ! You may have noticed that the fleet staff has introduced a new ribbon system for everyone. A Huge Thanks to Commodore Paradoxical who initiated it and our resident Miracle Worker Admiral Palcioz who made it all work beautifully. Outstanding work guys !

Yours truly provided the colorful ribbons and will continue to generally mess around behind the scenes; we’re about 90% done and we will be updating all of your files. We’re slowly updating +400 accounts with the active ones first, so answer/post something to see which ribbons you have – let us know if you think we missed one, or if you have an idea for some activity/skill that needs to be rewarded.
We will introduce more ribbons in the future which you can win by either contributing to this website (posting/answering, joining events) and in-game activity. A full ribbon-list with their descriptions will be up soon^(tm).

A new Search for Soolin will be posted soon, and don’t forget the April’s fools contest. (Video !)

And finally a quick Poll about (in-game) fleet notices, let us know your preferred notices:

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You will earn an extra Poll Star ribbon just for answering !

Exchange hunt – Be on the look-out for these, they are expensive but worth it:
Trait – A good day to die – (6-7 mil ec) tac trait; hit GDF at any HP for a massive damage dealing boost, a ‘must have’ for tacs.
Console – Dynamic power redistribution console / hull ionization (Rom). Feds need to buy the ship.

Picture of the Month – Anganysamavu’s Gekli hunt
Youtube of the month – SOB opening 1,024 lockboxes

Zen rate: 300.

Calendar:
April – May 18: Featured Episode – Mirrors and Smoke
May 4 – May 8: Dilithium Weekend
May 18 – May 22: Bonus Marks Weekend

Previous State of the Fleet – April.

That’s it captains ! Any questions or comments, let us know.
See you, out there. 🙂

Marcase