So as I said in my other thread, I've been away from STO for a while now - last time I played was when the romulan faction was first added to the game.
I've started a new romulan character and a discovery timeline federation character so far, working on learning the ropes again, but I had a few questions about things that may have changed since I last played.
First up are beams... I've read that beam fire at will was nerfed or changed, and noticed that in the tooltip now it has an accuracy and damage reduction when active. People have been saying to only use beam fire at will III because of that, as it has the least debuffs. Similarly, I was looking through the skills and noticed that beam overload now also increases beam damage and crit severity for 10 seconds after being activated, which I dont think it used to do (used to just be the one big blast); so on a beam heavy build, especially something using dual beam banks, is it worth using beam overload as a primary attack now?
I've been thinking about going with a fed science ship or a science-focused escort and running dual beam banks forward, with either turrets or 360 beams on the back hardpoints, and trying to make use of things like energy siphon, tachyon beam, etc. to maximize the dual beam bank damage. Is that a viable option? Alternatively, might go with a cruiser and broadside using all beam arrays and beam overload for the damage boost.
Both of these new characters are engineer captains, since that's my preferred character archetype for ground missions (drone and turret spam, of course), I'm still not entirely sure what setup I'll be using on the romulan though. Still looking at possibly the dual beam banks and turrets/360 beams for that one on an arkif/arkala escort, but we'll see.
And an on unrelated, food-for-thought sidenote... anyone else recall the time when Earth Spacedock was full of federation ships? Nowdays it looks like an alien zoo...
I've started a new romulan character and a discovery timeline federation character so far, working on learning the ropes again, but I had a few questions about things that may have changed since I last played.
First up are beams... I've read that beam fire at will was nerfed or changed, and noticed that in the tooltip now it has an accuracy and damage reduction when active. People have been saying to only use beam fire at will III because of that, as it has the least debuffs. Similarly, I was looking through the skills and noticed that beam overload now also increases beam damage and crit severity for 10 seconds after being activated, which I dont think it used to do (used to just be the one big blast); so on a beam heavy build, especially something using dual beam banks, is it worth using beam overload as a primary attack now?
I've been thinking about going with a fed science ship or a science-focused escort and running dual beam banks forward, with either turrets or 360 beams on the back hardpoints, and trying to make use of things like energy siphon, tachyon beam, etc. to maximize the dual beam bank damage. Is that a viable option? Alternatively, might go with a cruiser and broadside using all beam arrays and beam overload for the damage boost.
Both of these new characters are engineer captains, since that's my preferred character archetype for ground missions (drone and turret spam, of course), I'm still not entirely sure what setup I'll be using on the romulan though. Still looking at possibly the dual beam banks and turrets/360 beams for that one on an arkif/arkala escort, but we'll see.
And an on unrelated, food-for-thought sidenote... anyone else recall the time when Earth Spacedock was full of federation ships? Nowdays it looks like an alien zoo...
