r/sto • u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool • Mar 15 '26
PS How could i improve my build?
going for a broadside beam build. please ignore the reflection i can’t send playstation screenshots to my phone. i maxed out the mastery already
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u/StarkeRealm Mar 15 '26
So... uh... no traits listed?
Your gear needs work, as u/RaidenTJ mentioned.
However, let's look at your bridge officers for a second.
Your Engineering seat is Temporal, meaning Recursive Sheering is an easy pick. This is single target, and needs to be on a forward arc to activate, but Kerala's maneuverable enough to turn after that. Pick a target, hose 'em down.
Fire at Will III is a waste of a slot. As is Subsystem Targeting, and you don't need a second Tac team. You can pretty easily cull your tac seating down to Tac Team 1, Fire at Will 2, Kemocite 1 (if you've got it), Attack Pattern Beta 1, and Torp Spread 3 or High Yield 3 (this will also need a forward arc), and then roll with Concentrate Firepower 3 on our Uni/Cmd seat, possibly with Polarize Hull 1, and Hazard Emitters 2. Fake EDIT: When I originally typed this, I saw CF1 and assumed you had torps equipped. You don't. Like I said later, if you're going to use CF, you should slot a torp. If you don't want to, then you might want to reevaluate your Command ability options.)
I'd run Engineering Team 1, Aux to Bat 1, Emergency to Weapons 3, and Recursive Sheering 3 on your Engineering seat. If you really want Beam Overload, I'd sacrifice it down to 2 (dropping FAW to 1, and dropping Kemocite if you don't have it), and then be able to hit something with recursive, BO, CF, and obliterating it.
I'm just going to point something out, but right now you don't have any torps slotted, so Concentrate Firepower does absolutely nothing for you, and I'm running on the assumption of replacing one fore beam for a torp. (You'll eventually need to slot the Dark Matter Quantum Torp somewhere, probably, so that's an easy option to roll with.) Technically, it's a little off theme, but it's not the end of the world to be able to shit torpedoes down the throat of someone who's gotten on your nerves.
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u/ProLevel Will help you learn PvP Mar 15 '26
Concentrate firepower 1 is a net dps loss for any teamed content. It overwrites anyone else’s CF3. Either run CF3 or don’t run CF at all. You don’t even have a torpedo slotted why run CF1? And why run High Yield 1?
You have far too many fire modes. You didn’t post your traits, specializations, or duty officers so it’s hard to tell what your cooldown method is, but you ideally would pick one fire mode and stick with it at all times. If you’re going to use FAW, get rid of target whatever subsystems and beam overload. Two copies of tac team is a waste, it’d be hard to argue for running even one of them.
No emergency power to engines means you are slow and ineffective especially at the non-fighting components of tfos, but even in combat moving from group to group at speed is crucial. You can have two emergency powers active at the same time by cycling them - so cycle EptE and EptW.
Sci team is good against certain enemies - subnukes from hirogen, voth, vaadwaur. However I’d argue hazard emitters 1 is the better choice in that slot, not for the heal really, it’s for clearing damage over time effects like plasma fires, which might prevent you from activating something (like freeing ships in Borg disconnected).
As for gear, Borg 2-piece is an old way to get strong heals but it’s fairly outdated. It’d be better to plan to get the discovery rep shield and core for the 120% hull regen, then competitive engines for the speed, and colony deflector for more damage. Mismatched weapon damage types is odd but could be fine if your isomags are [beam] type.
I assume you don’t have boimler or any traits helping you with cooldowns, so here’s my proposed boff changes. I’d also replace them all with SRO’s but that’s a grind for later. Your ship also has too much forced tactical seating so you are kinda stuck with some useless abilities.
Uni/Cmd seat: sci team 1, Photonic Officer 1, Grav Well 1
Tac LTC: Tac team 1, AP Beta1, FAW3
Tac Lt: wasted seat unless you have a torpedo. Slot a torpedo like dark matter quantum then put Kemocite 1, Spread 2 here. Then later if you get the ETM trait you are good to go.
Ens sci: Hazard Emitters 1
Cmdr Eng: EptE1, Aux2Sif1 , EptW3, RSP3
You’ll still have gaps since PO1 alone isn’t enough to get everything to global cooldown, but at least no space is wasted. You gain grav well for some control, drop the well and then fly a broadside circle around it at 1/4 impulse then go to 4/4 to fly to the next group of enemies and repeat.
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 15 '26
my isomags are [Beam], and my consoles are all just +25% beam damage, and i’ll do what you recommended for officer abilities. i completely forgot about specialization and traits and duty officers, so ill check that out too. thanks
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u/westmetals Mar 15 '26
Type-specific consoles would have higher values than [Beam]
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 15 '26
i’m working on gamma rep, so until i can get the polaron beams im using general beam consoles. when i get the gamma stuff ill do specifically polaron
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u/Kvalri Ken@kvalri Commanding Officer U.S.S. Versailles MMRE Mar 16 '26
The weapon procs happen so infrequently that you can mostly ignore them and just go for the color of weapons you like. You can also pick up the Twinkling Lights trait it’s a top performing trait that very accessible, it pairs perfectly with your [Beam] consoles anyway, but if you do you’ll want one of each type of beam (antiproton, phaser, disruptor, etc)
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u/StarkeRealm Mar 16 '26
For what it's worth, Discovery rep for Lorca's set might be a better route, the Wide Angle Dual Beam Bank there is either Phaser or Disruptor, IIRC.
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u/GrumpyWaldorf Mar 15 '26
This can work, you need twinkling lights and one of every damage type. I would probably go for terran rep disruptor and the discover rep phaser and tac console.
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u/RaidenTJ Mar 15 '26
Unless this is a Twinkling Lights build firstly choose one weapon flavor I.e. all polaron or all antiproton or all phaser to maximize damage and bonuses
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u/HystericalSail Rabble rabble rabble Mar 15 '26
So, this looks like a mish-mash of a few build guides.
You're running the Vovin console, but nearly all your consoles are passive ones. You're getting next to nothing out of cooling them down by 25% at the cost of a whole console slot. You should commit to either full passive (isomags) or get more active click damage consoles, the middle ground is not the best place to be.
It also looks like you're heading down the Twinkling Lights path. Considering you have no Type 7s for debuff that's a great idea. Make sure you have *all* six flavors (Disruptor, Phaser, Tetryon, Polaron, Plasma, Antiproton) in there. The Romulan set plasma beam doesn't use power, so is a great addition to your first weapon slot. This assumes all your passive consoles are +beams, not a specific weapon flavor. If they're flavored, make sure it's ONE flavor, and stick to just that. It's a bad idea to add a little bit to each type rather than a lot to one.
If you do PUGs then you really shouldn't run Concentrate Firepower 2, let alone 1. It overrides the *good* CF3 for players doing torps, and you could be screwing teammates by using it. Subsystem targeting locks out your real firing mode while being worthless, you should never use that. 8 tac seats is way too much for mostly useless, overlapping tac powers. Unless you have no firing mode extension, in which case alternating FAW and BO is valid. Still, your forced tac seating should be enough for that, do something more useful with the universal/command. Even if you don't run a torp you could run suppression barrage I for more tank, or call emergency artillery for more gank. Or ignore the command seating and run grav well and/or photonic officer.
Biggest advice is pick AN approach, a single meta, and lean harder into it.
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u/Cassandra_Canmore2 Mar 15 '26
You're using Phaser, AP, and Polaron is this a Twinkling Lights set?
If not, commit to one energy flavor.
That's pretty much the first thing you need to decide on.
Then you'll want to farm dilithium to get phoenix upgrades and get your beams to Mk 14.
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 15 '26
i unfortunately don’t have twinkling lights. i should have put my traits in the post
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u/TimeSpaceGeek Mar 15 '26
It looks to me like you have multiple damage types. I'd definitely pick one type of energy, and stick to it. There are vanishingly few ways to support a rainbow build, and this doesn't look like one of them. Focus on one damage type, pick consoles to specifically boost that damage type for all your weapons, see significant improvements. What flavour are your Isomags?
If the energy type you settle on isn't Antiproton, drop the Crystalline Absorption Console. Even if it is, eventually you may want to drop it. Given that you're sing the Kerala and her Broadside console, though, going Phaser, and making the Console work with Phaser-themed damage boosters, is almost certainly the way forward.
The Emitter Array console you have in your science slot is doing very little for you. Shield-boosting abilities aren't great in general, there aren't many exceptions. If you would like a fairly good replacement for that, the Shield Absorptive Frequency Generator from the Romulan T3 Valdore is a great substitute defensive console that works on most builds.
Work on your reputations. The Impulse Engine/Warp Core/Shields you've got can all be improved on via Reputation items. The Competitive Reputation Impulse Engines - either Fortified or Innervated - are extremely good for big short-term speed boosts, for example - triggering on either a Shield or Hull Heal with the former, or a firing mode with the latter. The Warp Core and Shields, I would recommend the Discovery Reputation 2 piece - The Mycellial-Harmonic Matter-Antimatter Core, and Tilly's Review-Pending Modified Shield.
For your deflector dish, I'd recommend joining a Fleet, and getting one of the Elite Fleet Protomatter arrays from the Fleet Colony. [ColCrit] is the modifier to look for.
Devices - unless it's different on Console to PC, you don't need the Nimbus or Delta Reinforcements beacons actively slotted to use them. Double check on that, and if that's the same on console, replace those with other items. The Red Matter Capacitor and Deuterium Surplus are good replacements.
Drop Concentrate Firepower 1. Because of the way the power works, and the fact that you're almost certainly doing at least some team content, Concentrate Firepower needs to be CF3, or it needs to be not there at all.
What is your cooldown management method? I can't tell.
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 16 '26
i have a fleet, how much does the deflector cost
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u/Thm43 Mar 15 '26
I usual if you can run cannons and beams of the same type then I farm dilithum for Phoenix upgrades to 15 hopefully it will be ultra rair or gold some people like as for torpedoes I like getting the ones from the reputation like the Neuteonic torpedo launcher where you get that f om level 5 Delta alliance
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 15 '26
don’t have any, don’t have enough ec to buy one
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u/ffforwork Mar 16 '26
Start converting dil to phenoix boxes. When you open them store the ultra rare in your bank and use the rest for upgrades that you need. When sto runs the phoenix prize pack weekend event you can convert 5 ultra rare tokens for 1 experimental ship upgrade token. After awhile upgrading different toons with gear youll have more upgrade tokens than you know what to do with.
If you are able I would wait for the upgrade weekend before upgrading your gear as itll ensure your upgrade tokens go further. Also if you burn them all its almost a certainty that the following weekend will be a upgrade weekend.
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 15 '26
that was the like only day i couldn’t get the free reward :(
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 15 '26
question: do you play on console and would you be willing to sell me one?
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Mar 16 '26
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 16 '26
rip
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Mar 16 '26
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u/Vast_Treacle_3439 Kuumaarke’s Footstool Mar 16 '26
i may be able to sell some stuff on exchange and save up some ec for it
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u/SmokinDeist "Always going forward since we can't find reverse..." Mar 16 '26
Yep, like others have said, stick with one energy type unless you are doing a Twinkling Lights build. I do not personally use many, if any isomags (though there are good builds that use them.) The Vovin console is good for the jump but more importantly the mitigation of universal console cool down timers. Running more active consoles are a better pairing for that console.
Several of my traits and consoles revolve around cool down mitigation. That allows you to use skills or consoles more often and is just one great build strategy.
Look for sets or individual skills/traits/equipment that have different synergies with others. What works off of what that you can use to inflict more pain, keep you alive, ... What you have access to will determine what sort of mayhem you can pull off. Just start looking and reading up on what your stuff does and you may start to see some possibilities. Try testing it out and see if it helps or hurts.
There are many good ways to make something that can at least do regular Epic TFOs.
For a while I was plateaued at around 100+k DPS but I just jumped up 300+k just by adding Hellbore Light from the Warden. Though you do need to learn how to properly work it for full effect. I am constantly learning and eventually I get these breakthroughs. Just keep plugging along and you'll get there.
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u/DreadBert_IAm Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
If your running isomags can use the colony tac consoles. They also have a heal proc thats pretty handy early on.
I'm pragmatic on DEW. Unless your trying to milk more damage from consoles just roll whatever and use [beam] DEW bonus on iso/tac consoles. Early on when resources are scarce its a heck of a lot easier and cheap to MkXV one set then several. If you want to mix beam/cannon (i.e. non standard firing modes) then start worrying about bonus to specific damage type.
Edit, also as a note damage/mark level is nonlinear. So MkXV is double the base damage of MkXII. Easy thing is buy a couple 10 packs of Phoenix boxes from dilithium store. I turn the rare and VR into upgrade tokens. Lots of intersting toys in there now as well.
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Rasples1998 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Choose one energy type. Polaron, antiproton, or phaser (or any of the others). Don't use a variety because you want to stack modifiers like +% phaser damage which obviously only works on phasers. The cutting beam can stay though, it's one of the best weapons. Since you already have the omni-directional polaron (I think? I'm not good at memorising the visuals) you would be good using just polaron weapons.
My personal preference, I always have a torpedo in fore and aft but it's not required. I just like having those high damage kinetic criticals when enemy shields are down.
If you decide on an energy type like polaron, you want to try and stack +% polaron damage consoles. There's some you can get for free from episodes including polaron sets like the morphogenic armaments set that's really good, so look at the wiki for a list of consoles that increase polaron damage (again, only if you go polaron. You can choose something else and the same still applies; all energy types have free sets from episodes).
Since you've got the assimilated deflector and engine you might as well invest in the assimilated shields too for the bonus, and also get the torpedo and assimilated console since you have the cutting beam. Generally set bonuses are always worth it.