Working within thematic limitations

[Lhivera]

Good news: I finally have a working Windows machine. And holy shit, the Mac client (which was basically the Windows client wrapped in a Cider emulation layer) was terrible. Everything looks totally different now.

Bad news: now that everything looks totally different, I’m reconsidering my build, because it looks very different in action than I thought it did! And unfortunately, none of the weapon types I’m thinking of using have omni beams — except one, and it has only one, and would still require some mismatched beams in other slots.

So, say I wanted to put some turrets in a couple of aft slots to deal with these aesthetic issues. Ignoring the fact that this is going to be suboptimal, how would you make the best of it? Which abilities would you use to try to get the most out of all the weapons? Assume you’re working primarily in your forward arc with science abilities and DBBs, rather than broadsiding.

[Marcase]

Grats on the Windows machine 🙂 now, everyone: “one of us. One of us…”

Not sure which type of wpns exactly you want to use, but just use beams aft if you want to stick with DBBs in front. Basically a beam aft does more dmg than a turret, as aft beams benefit from FAW or BO. Turrets will require CSV etc and you don’t have room for that.

"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."

[Lhivera]

The weapon candidates are:
Andorian phasers and quantum phase
Herald AP (this would definitely be all beams)
Coalition disruptors and resonant disruptor (really like how this looks and sounds, but major candidate for aft turrets)

And last but not least — brace yourself…

Chronometric polaron beam
Chronometric polaron omni beam
Heavy chronometric polaron turret
Experimental proton weapon

There’s a crazy mix of set bonuses involved in that setup. I’m currently using it with a regular polaron omni beam in place of the turret, the Krenim torp, the gravimetric torp (set bonus!), and the temporal disruption device aft (set bonus!) but that one mismatched beam looks terrible.

[Marcase]

I use Andorian (Fleet CrtD) Phasers with the Quantum setup which I find to combine the ‘best of both worlds’ for my main Fed Andorian. Love the sound of the Andy Phasers. The torp I like and the Quantum Destabilizing beam is boosted by PartGens which again combines nicely with my Sci main.

Coalition disruptors are getting some serious attention from the top tier DPS leaguers – a single Coalition Dis build can tremendously boost regular Disruptor team-mates and melt cubes in seconds. Since they’re so hard to get with the right Mods their prices are insane.
So kudos if you can get a nice set of those.

There is nothing wrong with using Beam Arrays / Dual Beam Banks *and* turrets aft, just that it’s less DPS efficient. However, if that’s not a real issue for you, you should just stick with your chosen theme and run with it, beams, turrets, torps, mines whatever. 😀

The only way to boost both beams and turrets simultaneously is using things like Kemocite weaponry, (craftable) Energy Amplifier / weapon batteries etc, anything that boosts (base) weapon power since you usually don’t have the Boff space to buff both.

That’s not to say it is impossible; escorts often use 3x DHCs (CSV) and a DBB (BO3) front and turrets aft. The DBB is used for a well-timed DPS spike for the finishing kill. Very effective.

It all depends on the ship you have and Boff stations available.
With a full DBB + turret build I’d probably use a Beam Overload 3 and a copy of CSV – the turrets+CSV more to pull aggro and clear pets/large torps than damage.

"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."

[Jalification]

Welcome to the PC world! I’m a massive fan of thematic builds aswell! So I did a lot of research already.

Best option for combination of turrets, beams and cannons is Surgical Strikes on Intel Ships. Eclipse is an amazing cruiser for this! Surgical Strikes (unlike other abilities) doesn’t look at the type of energy weapon, but rather improves all energy weapons at the same time. It reduces fire speed of all weapons, but increases accuracy (you really never miss), doubles damage output and puts crit chance up to 32% if you have Surgical Strikes III. You basicly become a massive Crit Based ship. Antiprotons work best on paper for this setup, but really any gun with enough CrtD would do the job.

Now what kind of weapons do you want? I would suggest the following setups;

– Terran Disruptors and their photon torpedos. They all look Red and they deal really decent damage. Their project weapons even deal 200% damage when your target reaches full hul.

– Counter-Command can boost their radiation and speed debuff proc to 4.5%. This can deal decent damage as well; so if you like a lot of green, this is your way to go. On top of it, you can choose phasers and disruptors as damage type. Also their radiation torpedos look green.

– Nukara Tetryon Beams, it is funny, it is blue, and if you combine it with some mission based weapons (blue as well), then you have the option to have 2 omni beams in the back. If you combine all the equipment (including Nukara, shield, deflector and engine) you have a potential beast that deals a lot of base damage with 3 abilities that chain tetryon damage to all near targets, creating a massive alpha strike.

– Andorian or Old style Phasers (blue) + Quantum Technologies with amazing shield drain gives you a nice flowcapacitors setup with potential good shield drain.

– Full Antiproton + Kinetic beam and you got pure red stuff (downside is that it is expensive).

– Basic Phasers, a lot of options and bonus weapons from fed ships are all focused on Phaser
– Basic Disruptors, same as above but for klingon.

Thats what I all can think off.

[Damix]

I have 5x Herald Antiproton Beam Array Mk XI and one Mk VI [CrtD] [Dmg]x2 that I can mail you if you want to try upgrading them.

Hm, good idea Jalif, I’ll try beam+cannons polaron SS build on my main. Do Chronometric weapons get [CrtX] on Ultra Rare?

[Lhivera]

I should have clarified: I’m in an Annorax. So I’m working with 4 fore weapons, 3 aft, frigate pets with coalition disruptors, and a spinal mount weapon that does AP damage. So that gives the disruptors and AP weapons a bit of an advantage, since the former synergizes with the pets and the latter with the spinal mount.

I’ve also got a decent set of UR-to-epic beams for each of these.

Coalition Disruptors: [crtd]x2 [dmg]x2
Herald AP: [crtd] [dmg]x3
Andorian Phasers: fleet [dmg] version
Chronometric Polaron: all upgraded to UR, which has a fixed [dmg] mod

And finally, I like to have at least one torpedo equipped.

I played around with various combinations last night, and hit on one that feels and looks good:
– Herald AP DBB front
– Herald AP beam front
– Experimental Proton Weapon front
– Gravimetric torp front
– 3x Herald AP beam aft

The EPW isn’t especially strong, but it consumes only 5 power, the console is universal, and the three-piece set bonus adds +10% crtd to all weapons plus 10% crth to the torpedo. I’m considering shifting it aft, for more Herald AP proc chances, but it looks awfully good up front. The grav torp is of course a very fun sci torp.

My favored Coalition Disruptor build is:
– 2x Coalition Disruptor DBB front
– Resonant Disruptor Beam front
– Resonant Transphasic Torp front
– 3x Coalition Disruptor Beam aft

The Resonant set adds some AOE damage resistance debuff procs (it essentially applies the standard Disruptor debuff to every target in range when it procs, which is frequently with the torpedo). It also adds a very nice weapon cycle haste cooldown. This setup lacks punch, however. Replacing two of the aft beams with turrets would add some single-target damage in the forward arc, at the cost of weaker FAW. However, I need to upgrade any turrets I add.

And finally, the Chronometric Polaron build was:
– Chronometric Polaron beam front
– Experimental Proton Weapon front
– Gravimetric Torp front
– Krenim Torp front
– Chronometric Omni Beam aft
– Polaron Omni Beam aft (blech!)
– Temporal Disruption Device aft

So there are three set bonuses in play here. The chronometric set bonuses add a +energy/exotic damage cooldown, with a rather long 30 second duration, and double the proc chance on the krenim torp to 50% — plus a damage increase to all torpedoes. The EPW/gravimetric set boosts crit damage and crit chance on the torp. And the TDD, plus the console it goes with, significantly increase the damage of the Krenim torp (and should I fly past a target, it’s a big bomb to drop on them).

The twin torps up front quickly stack and maintain the Supercharged Weapons buff. Of the three, builds, this is the strongest…but ugh, that polaron omni beam. I could just replace it with the heavy turret…but inexplicably, that turret’s energy is distinctly green, despite the fact that the chronometric DHC matches the beams. I might try it anyway.

[CodeWarrior316]

Welcome to the Windoze world! You seem to have put far more effort into how things look and sound rather than effectiveness, so I can’t help but wonder… why bother? I’m sure Marcase has a bunch of ideas for you and I haven’t bothered with any of that of late so I will just shut up lol.

[Damix]

Choice of his weapon mods show he actually is going for effectiveness but balancing it with visual appeal. I’m also doing it on my main sci because I fully switched to Tetryons to match the ship theme and I’m still getting good dps out of it. Blue beam and white ship skin looks really, really good to me (Paradox class).

Which color is Experimental Proton’s beam? They could be paired with Heralds (both violet?) and supported with +Beam consoles, which also boost the Proton’s proc (correct me if I’m wrong). Ok, this is a bit crazy ^^

My choice would be Polaron mix as it is new and I still haven’t tried Chronometric pieces. I even got some Vaadwaur DBBs but haven’t upgraded during THE weekend.

[Lhivera]

Hm, let me see if I can explain this. It has to do with my approach to RPGs in general. I’ll use WOW as an example, because I played it this way for a long time.

For me, the primary consideration, the way I get the most enjoyment, in an RPG, is to play to character concept. Typical raiders in WOW don’t think of their characters as fictional people inhabiting a fictional world; they think of them as reconfigurable weapons platforms, to be altered and optimized for maximum effectiveness in any given situation.

I don’t play that way. My Frost Mage is not a Frost Mage because Frost happens to be effective at this particular moment; she’s a Frost Mage because she was born with an aptitude for it, and spent her life training for it. Think about the meaning of the word “talent” — skills may be learned, but talent is innate. She could learn the skill required to throw a fireball, but she would never be as good at it as she was at throwing a frostbolt.

Technically, in a the-game-allows-it sense, I could reconfigure her to forget all her special Frost ability and suddenly develop an aptitude for Fire. But if you think of an RPG as a fictional world, that’s really retconning your character, and retcons suck. They’re sometimes unavoidable, but they suck.

So — no respecs for my character. But that doesn’t mean she’s just purely focused on appearance, because within the constraints imposed by staying permanently within Frost spec, it’s still possible to try to be the best possible Frost Mage you can be. It’s still possible to learn and optimize a rotation, to understand what sort of gear best supports that rotation and other aspects of your playstyle, and so forth. So as you’re moving through a raid dungeon, all else being equal, you may be weak relative to someone who respecs to Fire if an encounter favors Fire — but when you come to an encounter that favors Frost, you’ll be stronger, even if that person switches to Frost, because you’re more specialized for it.

In general, I favor a design that allows for a “Jack of all trades” playstyle, but requires a tradeoff between versatility and specialization. I also this makes for more complex and interesting play in a raid environment. Back in Vanilla and BC, I was in a server-first raid guild that was friendly to people who didn’t want to change specs. Part of the challenge we dealt with was figuring out the fights and phases and tasks that a given spec was strong or weak on, and how to use them in complementary ways. There were times, for instance, when Fire was best suited for a quick 5-10 second kill of an add, while Frost was best suited for a 45-second mid-encounter vulnerability phase, and strategy had to take that into account. Much more interesting, for me, than for everyone just to swap into the most effective spec for every situation — which essentially renders weaknesses meaningless.

Now, STO doesn’t have the strict class and spec distinctions that WOW does, so I tend to go with visual design to develop the character concept. But as in WOW, I do want to maximize performance within the (self-imposed) constraints of the concept. Hence, this thread!

[Jalification]

Same here m8!

I’m all about the surgical strikes and Beamoverload. I’ve learned from eve-online (a game I played 8 years on the heavy PVP side) that focus target is essential. FAW feels to me as something very chaotic. I’m all about, how fast you can take down a single target, the less damage output all the npc’s have togheter, therefore creating more time for you and your friends to survive. – It sounds logical to me (and I’m a vulcan characther), it is indeed all about characther specialization.

Sure, numbers say that FAW does more damage, but I also look at how just crunch numbers as high as possible. I got with my 3x BO DOFFS the ability to negate shield, less numbers to bite through. Thing is, it won’t record in a Parser. I don’t reach epic dps levels yet, but I’m convinced that I will reach one day that magical number where other people will say; “and you are doing that with a BO setup?”.

It is all about having a great team aswell, supporting eachother etc. It is in my nature to listen to past experiances and I’m pretty stubborn when it is about specific way of playing. I’ve proven myself over and over again, that ones you put your mind to it, you will surpass expectations.

PS: I do know that I ones in a while have to use FAW to get DPS, in order to get the gear that I want. It doesn’t chance my goal. Not long ago I ran a team with Marcase and a few others, and I managed to get almost 34k dps for the first time becuase of teamplay and proper equipment of my friends (iconian reps and such), but I’m convinced other setups are possible as well, such as heavy torpedo teams (if a lot of torpedo bug related stuff gets fixed).

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