Constantine's Escort Build Discussion

[Constantine]

As with any game I try to be the best I can be. Right now I have 1 character. A Federation Tactical officer. She does 1 thing, shoots fast and often. That said I want her ship to be able to be a DPS monster capable of surviving long enough to take down 1 or more ships in PVE. 

What I end up needing to do is run in (7k down to 2k weapons range) and do as much damage as possible on 1 or 2 shield facings before turning around and using the Impulse Capacitance Cell along with maxing impulse speed to get to 10k+ range. I reinforce shields, polarize hull, and jam sensors while targeting shields and cannon: Scatter Volley. My ship also has a point defense system but it doesnt seem to work as well as it should? If i stay in to long I get held by satellite tractors or the ship launches heavy torpedos that bleed right through my shields. 

I am going Pilot and maybe Intel for Specialization unless there are better ones. 

Here are my Captain Skills, Ship and Ship Loadout for Critique:

[Battle Lion]

if you follow the instructions in the first post of this thread
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=536

and make a sto academy link to your build, i can help you more. be sure to include power levels, boff traits and doffs slotted and personal traits.

as i can see now though, you could get rid of the target subsystems. as far as i know, they only work with beams. also draining is not useful really in this game. 

replace with two copies of tactical team 1. tac team may be one of the best powers in the game. every ship should have 1 or 2.

you have too many scatter volleys. due to cooldowns in this game, its never worth slotting more than 2 copies of any power at any rank. get yourself 2x attack pattern beta 1. 

get the highest scatter volleys you can, so 3 and 2 i think in this case. 

all this should now leave you with 1 ltcmdr tac ability free. this ship has a little too much tactical and you already have everything you need, so i'd say throw in attack pattern omega 1. now, the way the attack patterns cool down you will technically not be able to hit omega with the 2 betas cycling without interupting the cycle, but keep omega just to break tractor beams or to help your defense if you absolutely need it. 



your skill tree is actually really good! especially for someone as new to the game as you are. this is really the most confusing part for new players.

only thing i can say is driver coil is pretty useless, and you arent getting any use out of your flow caps.

if you got a plasmonic leech console (40mil + EC) then you will see some benefit. 


as for a gear set, get the iconian 4 piece. its the current hotness with builds right now. 

if that doesnt strike your fancy, you can do the nukara 2 piece (use the shield!) and a fleet core with amp. depending on what 2 pieces you use, you can either slot the romulan engines or the counter command deflector. both are great. you could even slot both those, and get a fleet shield and core for max single person dps.



replace your science skill with either hazard emitters or science team/transfer shield strength. much better to use it as a heal, especially with the low engineering seats.

definitley replace one of your emergency power to shields with weapons, then slot 3 rare damage control engineers that reduce the cool down of emergency power to ___ abilities, this is whats called a drake build and it is well used. 




see this thread for console help, starting here with engineering consoles
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=727#p3850


i'll be around later to help in more detail, right now its bed time.

[Constantine]

Thank you mucho for your help. Alot of people seem to be slotting Vulnorability Locators in Tac console slots, Enhanced Neutronium Alloy Eng Consoles. I like the Polaron Cannons but not sure about the Turrets. People are using omni-directional beams?

I know close to nothing about using Doffs instead of Boffs. or how to take advantage of Pilot Abilities.

My ship is pretty squishy though. Especially when i get torped alot.  I do well against the Tholians but sometimes Remans/Romulans, Gorn and Hirogen give me trouble due to all the Torpedoes and holds they throw on my ship. I find my crew and hull drop faster than I would like and end up having to move away until they repair then get back in it. 

I purchased a ship. Here is the Academy file for it and my Boffs and skills. I am not sure about traits, Doffs, Boffs and Space Doff/Boff abilities and how to take full advantage of them.

STO Academy link: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=constantinedps_11340

[Battle Lion]

well you should have noticed already a big change in dps and survivability. tac team increases damage, auto distributes shields AND gives a bonus to attack patterns. so make sure to activate TT before APB/APO.

you dont really need omni beams because you are a cannon build. if you realllllly wanted, you could get a dual beam bank for upfront and then swap APO for BO3. (beam overload 3). 

id recomend against taht though. 

polarons are really not the best choice, their proc is very lack luster. most people go for some flavor of phaser/disruptor, romulan plasma or antiproton. 

the aegis set was a nice upgrade, but its VERY old at this point. i mean it was basically the first gear set ever. 
end game i'd recommend what i previously said, you'll get alot more mileage out of those.


you currently have 3 emergency powers, you could either get one more, or get rid of one. 

rare quality damage control engineer duty officers....they arent cheap, but if you get 3 of them that have the ability to reduce the cool downs of emergency powers, you can basic trick the cooldowns into thinking you have 2 copies of eptw and epts (emergency power to weapons/shields). this has a very high percentage rate, but is not perfect.

having 4 emergency power to ___ abilities, (2 copies of 2 skills, so 2 epts and 2 eptw) allows for 100% uptime of both powers which is awesome. but it also takes 4 engineering seats, which you dont want to devote. this build is called a dragon  build.

having 1 copy of each, with 3 damage control engineer duty officers, allows you to replicate the 4x powers, while only having two. it is a very common build for escorts, and my T6 akira uses it.

so, drop one of your epts and replace with Eng team or RSP, and get 3 DCEs for a good dps and tank boost.

your second science power, just change that to science team. 


with science team, eng team and attack pattern omega, you should have no trouble dealing with hirogen and tholians, as APO breaks tractor beams, science team will clear most sci debuffs, and eng team will counter subsystem offline and viral matrix.

interesting note is that emergency power to weapons not only gives you more weapons power which you sorely need with 4x DHCs, but it increases your base damage for a period of time AND repairs disabled weapons systems, which the tholians love to do.


do you have the borg universal console? grab that and kinetic cutting beam.  that is on lik 95% of all builds. its 2pc bonus is amazing, good source of kinetic damage, and the console itself is great for crit boosting.



another thing i just thought of. you dont have a way to group enemies together (grav well, gravimetric photon, etc) so you might want to change from scatter volley to rapid fire.

if you find you arent using attack pattern omega, get yourself LOCK TRAJECTORY. its a pilot power and locks your inertia, and allows you to pivot. this is great for cannon or DBB builds bc it keeps your main guns on target.

i have it on my T6 akira and its so fun! 


last note: try to stay within 4KM of your target, cannons have a SEVERE dps fall off over distance.

[Constantine]

Wow, that is alot of helpful information. Thank you for that. I am presently working up on Task Force Omega, Nukara and Romulan Reputations and I am already working on Tier 2 of these. One of the consoles in TFO is the Borg one you mentioned. I will look into that cutting beam also. I selected the mercury T6 ship mainly for the front 5 Cannons instead of 4 and the ability to back up to keep myself in the DPS sweet spot just a little longer. It helps a great deal to keep my ship in the same shield arc longer. The ship can also flip left right or burst forward. It also comes with Microtorpedoes and a Slip Stream drive.

It does lose Crew FAST though. I do not like that at all. Really need to see how to improve its resiliency but all i see that doing is sacrificing DPS for more tankiness. I do like being able to maneuver though. No ship maneuvers better and i can turn and target fighters and torpedos easily. (I use mouse button 4[the side of my mouse wheel] to target closest threat.  

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=constantinedps_11340

the aegis set was a nice upgrade, but its VERY old at this point. i mean it was basically the first gear set ever.

I bought the Aegis set very cheap compared to what the prices were last night. Roughly 6mil each when I bought them and up to 25mil each last night. I like the short, passive immunity and if i'd remember to hit the Energy Feedback conductor when its up it would help alot more. 

I selected the Polaron due to its low frequency of use and defense but I agree with yoru assessment. Most PVE have defense for the more common damage sources like Phaser, Disruptor and Plasma. But this is just my first real build so i will eventually try different types. I initially wanted a true Federation ship with full Phasers so that will be my next build to work on. 

So epts I becomes eng teams I and get rid of sensor jamming I in favor of sci teams I?

All that Doff stuff I do not really understand. I do not know how to use them in real time? Damage Control Engineers? How do I slot those?

[Battle Lion]

in a nutshell, duty officers is a mini card game, much like admiralty.

each duty officer has a specialty (a job) there are security officers, armory officers, damage control engineers, transporter officers...and so on and so forth.

each of those specialties has an ability. there can be multiple different flavors of a specialty. so for example, you got your flight deck officer. you may have some that say "increases carrier pet accuracy when pets are in defense mode" you may have one that says "reduces time needed to launch new fighters" and you may have one that says "reduces recharge time for boarding party"

in addition to that, they have attributes. so lets say you have a research lab technician. that lab tech could be stubborn, or seductive, or logical. this will play into which doffs are best for what mission.

they also have rarity. the rarity effects how strong their ability is. so for example, a deflector officer with the flavor of "reduces recharge time for gravity well"...the white duty officer could reduce the timer by 2 seconds. the green, by 4. the blue by 6. the purple by 8.


you can have hundreds of duty officers in your roster. you can use them for "doffing" which is finding assignments and selecting which doffs you want to send out on that assignment. slotting doffs that have the right attributes and rarity (so a rare hazard system officer that has logical but not stubborn) will increase the chances of success for that doff assignment. this is a fantastic way to level, and can give decent dilithium pay outs too. 


you may notice you have a active space and ground doff tab. these are the 5 (6th slot is purchasable) doffs that you slot into your ship (or ground build) that are active all the time. no other doff powers attributes or abilities will be active unless they are slotted into space or ground. this has no effect on doffing assignments. in order to set a doff as active you can either drag it into the active space window, or there should be a button on their page that make them active. 


what doffs you use in space and ground ARE effectively what build you have. they give you extra abilities you wouldnt otherwise have. 

for example, a popular build is called Auxiliary to battery (A2B, aux2batt).

the way that build works is you slot 3x technician duty officers of the flavor "reduces cooldowns of bridge officer abilities when aux to battery is used".  when i have 3 of those slotted into my active space, and i use the a2b power, the doffs will 'proc' and all bridge officer powers on cool down will be reduced.

you cant do this without doffs. 

i highly recommend you check out the STOwiki on doffs and doffing and start reading all about the cool powers that doffs have, there are just too many to list. 

i personally use doffs on my A2B build, my drake builds, i use them for tac team and grav well cooldown reduction, for extra shield penetration when using beam overload...to spawn more turrets when on ground...so on and so forth. 

Doffs and what powers you use are the first thing you should decide on before even starting your build. then your ship, then your gear, then your traits. they should all work in harmony with each other.


in unrelated news, dont worry about your crew. like at all. theres nothing you can do to keep them from dying, and theres no longer a way to regenerate them since tac team no longer does that. 

keeping your ship pointed at the enemy is very important, learn to use that throttle (unless you use the pedal to the metal trait) and dont be afraid to park or reverse.
also look into that lock trajectory skill.


when you get your 3 rare damage control engineers that have the text that says they lower emergency power to X cool downs, you can have eptw1, epts2, e-team1 and RSP1. science is hazz em 1 and sci team 1.

take out attack pattern omega for lock trajectory, (youll have to train your officer in the pilot spec, i just bought the spec training token off the exchange) and if you dont like it you can always go back to APO1.

[Constantine]

Ok, i loaded up a few Doffs and I definitely notice a difference in survivability. Except against Shield Drain aka a Borg mainstay. When i fight Cubes and even Spheres by myself, they drain my shields, nearly instantly. I realize that you can't have everything and when I am in Red Alerts, there are ships with me that are top notch. Loaded up with the best stuff to make them powerful. I do alright if there is someone tanking for my ship. One on one though I am rained then boarded. I end up having to hit and run back and forth. If the AI was better, the Borg would follow my hurt ship and finish me off each time. the only thing that saves me is that they just sit there and let me heal then come back, rinse, repeat. 

[Battle Lion]

Ok, i loaded up a few Doffs and I definitely notice a difference in survivability. Except against Shield Drain aka a Borg mainstay. When i fight Cubes and even Spheres by myself, they drain my shields, nearly instantly. I realize that you can't have everything and when I am in Red Alerts, there are ships with me that are top notch. Loaded up with the best stuff to make them powerful. I do alright if there is someone tanking for my ship. One on one though I am rained then boarded. I end up having to hit and run back and forth. If the AI was better, the Borg would follow my hurt ship and finish me off each time. the only thing that saves me is that they just sit there and let me heal then come back, rinse, repeat. 

which doffs did you load and at what rarity? what exactly do they do?

what are your power levels for your ship?