How to make my character stronger?

[K the strange]

I am level 64 and I still find I am being butched with ground combat, I do not want to pay real money to get any extra weapons or armour and feel like I am missing something like skill selection or upgrading skills (I know about all the skill trees and traits).
I am just wondering if there is a place to get better gear or a menu or items that will help my character kick ass like I see other players do on PvE missions.

There is a lot of what I find to be useless items in my inventory I can't equipt or use when I right click them and I'm wondering if they might have something to do with leveling up.

Be nice with comments...

[Fedora01]

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to look through your ground traits and choose some that suit your build, these may seem like small changes, but they add up fast. Additionally I'd recommend looking through the reputations and finding one that you think looks fun/interesting and working towards it. If you're still hurting and need something sooner than later, you can buy stuff off the exchange or replay previous missions for some of those sets. The Romulan Imperial Navy set (Uneasy Allies) and the Na'kuhl Temporal Operative set (The Temporal Front) are both excellent sets. Finally, equipping your Boffs with expose weapons and your character with an expliot weapon goes a long way towards improving your killing potential. If you have any more questions feel free to ask

[K the strange]

Originally posted by Fedora01:

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to look through your ground traits and choose some that suit your build, these may seem like small changes, but they add up fast. Additionally I'd recommend looking through the reputations and finding one that you think looks fun/interesting and working towards it. If you're still hurting and need something sooner than later, you can buy stuff off the exchange or replay previous missions for some of those sets. The Romulan Imperial Navy set (Uneasy Allies) and the Na'kuhl Temporal Operative set (The Temporal Front) are both excellent sets. Finally, equipping your Boffs with expose weapons and your character with an expliot weapon goes a long way towards improving your killing potential. If you have any more questions feel free to ask

Ah sweet thanks man, will give it a try, I'm thinking my charater might just have messed up stats and don't have any retain tokens. But I'm gonna try with all the traits and equiptment, it's just hard to play end game content with STO for free I guess, sadly...

[VoodooMike]

Originally posted by "K the strange":

I am level 64 and I still find I am being butched with ground combat, I do not want to pay real money to get any extra weapons or armour and feel like I am missing something like skill selection or upgrading skills (I know about all the skill trees and traits).

If you're not looking to do the major grind to get the absolute best weapons at mkXV gold levels (and I don't blame you... especially when it comes to ground combat) then consider focusing on defensive ground building - focus on not getting killed rather than carving a path of instant destruction through missions.

An easy way to chew through ground content is to bring along several engineer boffs focused on fabrications. Give each eng boff chroniton mines, the faction-appropriate turret, maybe shield or medical generator (especially if you use the doff that gives a decent chance to spawn both on a single skill use), maybe the mortar. Every fight will be a mess of transported-in equipment, and look like the fourth of july, but you can just as easily close your eyes and cover your ears until the fight is over and you'll have won.

Cheesy? Maybe.. but its better to start from a position of "I win every fight" than "I'm frustrated at how often I die". Then you can experiment with things more in line with your play style, by reducing the cheese and replacing it with things that sound interesting to you.. and see if it makes things better or worse for you.

[Baroon Valm]

playing endgame content in STO is ez even for F2P (like myself) and the only real problem is it takes time (or money if you don't want to spend time) which is problematic only to those who don't know how to play the game yet, but if you read the descriptions of stuff, have a little bit of common sense you just grind a few mill ec and buy the stuff out that you need for your build and that is it... and no, grinding a few mill ec isn't hard, do an endeavour, admirality and such and you will get that within a week no problem.

[The Arkady]

If you get killed in ground combat a lot, it usually means you're using a bad selection of bridge officers on your away team. (And chances are you are a tactical captain.)

Basically, a good away team is what @VoodooMike suggested. 2 engineers is essentially a must-have, though you might as well do 3. For the fourth slot, you might want to bring a science officer that can help keep the enigneers up and running.

Tactical boffs on the ground are mostly useless redshirts. Seriously. Only bring one for style points (and if you are a useless redshirt tactical captain yourself, think twice about that). If you absolutely need those style points and are Federation, stick with Elisa Flores; you'll be hard pressed to find a less useless ground tactical officer. Even then, get her Overwatch II or III asap.

Also, boff traits do matter. (Superior) Creativity rules. More mines more quickly and all. You'll generally want to avoid space traits on your away team boffs. That's not gospel, though; 3 decent to good ground traits and a throwaway space trait still beat 4 bad ground traits.

Should you go chasing high-quality boffs on the exchange, focus on getting two good engineers first. You will be getting a Voth science boff from the Dyson sphere reputation, and with his built-in self-rez, he's a prettynice long-term option.

[K the strange]

Originally posted by VoodooMike:

Originally posted by "K the strange":

I am level 64 and I still find I am being butched with ground combat, I do not want to pay real money to get any extra weapons or armour and feel like I am missing something like skill selection or upgrading skills (I know about all the skill trees and traits).

If you're not looking to do the major grind to get the absolute best weapons at mkXV gold levels (and I don't blame you... especially when it comes to ground combat) then consider focusing on defensive ground building - focus on not getting killed rather than carving a path of instant destruction through missions.

An easy way to chew through ground content is to bring along several engineer boffs focused on fabrications. Give each eng boff chroniton mines, the faction-appropriate turret, maybe shield or medical generator (especially if you use the doff that gives a decent chance to spawn both on a single skill use), maybe the mortar. Every fight will be a mess of transported-in equipment, and look like the fourth of july, but you can just as easily close your eyes and cover your ears until the fight is over and you'll have won.

Cheesy? Maybe.. but its better to start from a position of "I win every fight" than "I'm frustrated at how often I die". Then you can experiment with things more in line with your play style, by reducing the cheese and replacing it with things that sound interesting to you.. and see if it makes things better or worse for you.

Ah thanks mate, I shall give it a try and don't worry, wasn't too cheesy.

[K the strange]

Originally posted by Baroon Valm:

playing endgame content in STO is ez even for F2P (like myself) and the only real problem is it takes time (or money if you don't want to spend time) which is problematic only to those who don't know how to play the game yet, but if you read the descriptions of stuff, have a little bit of common sense you just grind a few mill ec and buy the stuff out that you need for your build and that is it... and no, grinding a few mill ec isn't hard, do an endeavour, admirality and such and you will get that within a week no problem.

Sweet man, I'll give it a try too, hopefully I get somewhere

[K the strange]

Originally posted by The Arkady:

If you get killed in ground combat a lot, it usually means you're using a bad selection of bridge officers on your away team. (And chances are you are a tactical captain.)

Basically, a good away team is what @VoodooMike suggested. 2 engineers is essentially a must-have, though you might as well do 3. For the fourth slot, you might want to bring a science officer that can help keep the enigneers up and running.

Tactical boffs on the ground are mostly useless redshirts. Seriously. Only bring one for style points (and if you are a useless redshirt tactical captain yourself, think twice about that). If you absolutely need those style points and are Federation, stick with Elisa Flores; you'll be hard pressed to find a less useless ground tactical officer. Even then, get her Overwatch II or III asap.

Also, boff traits do matter. (Superior) Creativity rules. More mines more quickly and all. You'll generally want to avoid space traits on your away team boffs. That's not gospel, though; 3 decent to good ground traits and a throwaway space trait still beat 4 bad ground traits.

Should you go chasing high-quality boffs on the exchange, focus on getting two good engineers first. You will be getting a Voth science boff from the Dyson sphere reputation, and with his built-in self-rez, he's a prettynice long-term option.

Sweet, will give it a shot, I get attatched to boffs easily but always keep some to delete if i need to,

[Szeron]

It would help to know which career your captain is, and what part you're specifically having trouble with(are you wanting to be more durable? kill things faster?).

Engineers and Scientists are very easy to build self sufficiently(as in, they don't need away team support). Tacticans, while having a lot of excellent offensive options, do need a little more work to build for survivability.

In general, The dyson reputation does have a very sustainable ground set with naturally regenerating shields and deployable resistance barriers. The weapon also has an exotic damage type(proton) with both AoE sweeping and high damage sniper firing modes. Furthermore, there are several personal traits available to all captains that can increase health(Peak Health) and damage/status resistances(Sturdy, Sure Footed, etc.).

Offensively speaking, having a combo of immobilization/snare and aoe blasts will render most content trivial. Beyond that, you'll likely want a heavier hitting weapon to rip down bosses with(like snipers or auto rifles if you want AoE sweeping options).
-Engineer: Mines and Mortars
-Science: Electro-Gravitic Field and Exo/Endothermic Field(you can get the cold/endo version from the winter event store)
-Tactical: Suppressing Fire and Grenades (Battle Strategies is great for improving general damage too)

Defensively, it tends to vary by class and there are a lot of nice lockbox loot you can grab from the exchange.
-Engineer: Medical Gen and Reroute Power to Shields
-Science:Nanite Health Monitor and a heal of your choice (Medical Vanguard trait will cause your heals to enhance/regenerate shields)
-Tactical: Overwatch and hypos

These things can be applied to your away team as well(sans science officers) if you really want to steamroll things, and specializations will obviously give you a lot more options to fill gaps.

If you really want to break ground combat and are willing to spend some EC, there are many lockbox modules on the exchange that can be used by any class. The Herald modules, specifically, are mostly quite.. "overpowered".. if you don't mind almost literally becoming a dimensional space-wizard.


All this said, these aren't "hard rules"; experiementing and having fun is important too. There are some pretty fun synergies beyond just this.

[kajelis]

I personally go a different route with my Tactical toons. I go with 2 science Boffs and they need to be either holograms or Android's, One Engineer Boff which is again a Hologram or Android, and one tactical which is of course a Hologram or Android. They seem to have more survivability from what I've noticed. For my team, my Tac is the Loriss Hologram, Engineer is an Android, my Medic is an Android, and my last science officer is a Borg. So far it's worked well for me. My main too uses Zephram Cochran's Shotgun, obtained from the Phoenix Box, as well as the Romulan and Nahkul sets mentioned earlier. There are so many routes to take. Ask around in your fleet and I'm sure you'll get many different responses.

[twobits]

I had found https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/tspbasicboffguide and was going to give it a try. May also work for the OP.

What do people think of that guide? Is it still decent? Any suggestions to tweek it if so?

[The Arkady]

For some extra plasma rifle OPness, take a look at the VR Fleet Embassy bridge officers: engineers with Superior Plasma Weapon Specialist and Superior Creativity, and tacticals with Superior Soldier and Superior Plasma Weapon Specialist. Slightly glass cannonish (particularly the non-resilient males), but can be quite fun.

[The Arkady]

Originally posted by twobits:

I had found https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/tspbasicboffguide and was going to give it a try. May also work for the OP.

What do people think of that guide? Is it still decent? Any suggestions to tweek it if so?

I think the setup will still work (and looks particularly nice for engineering captains imo), but tbh I don't much care for it as a suggestion for relatively inexperienced players. A simple engineer-heavy setup is still easier to acquire/complete than one requiring four specialists.

[Kamiyama]

If you need gear I would recommend the "Uneasy Allies" mission in the Iconian War episode series. It has the Romulan Imperial Navy set which has a bonus to plasma damage on the kit, a bonus to your secondary weapon attack on the armor, and a high-capacity shield with a good resistance bonus.

Pair it with the plasma weapon of your choice and do lots of extra damage with it. If you use the secondary with ambush it will deal lots of single-target damage.

If you're a tac captain, I highly recommend plasma grenade. If you combine it with a control skill like gravitational juncture (universal kit module from lockbox) and micro cryonic warhead (from winter event vendor) you can group up enemies, freeze them in place, and burn them with the plasma fire. This is a good combo for clearing groups.

Other than that, use combat pet spam. Security escort (there's a trait that lets them throw grenades), shard of possiblities, hortas, dino, echo papa drone, etc. Summon your army and use tactical team to buff their damage.

Bring hypos. There are lots of NPC's that use melee attacks which skip your shield.

I've seen some people use crazy effective specialist setups before in ground queues. Just today there was someone using the solar beam skill from the iconian lockbox with some kind of cooldown reduction and was spamming it like crazy. I've never seen so many NPC's get roasted by the sun before. Heck if I know exactly what their setup was.

[Kamiyama]

Originally posted by The Arkady:

If you get killed in ground combat a lot, it usually means you're using a bad selection of bridge officers on your away team. (And chances are you are a tactical captain.)

Basically, a good away team is what @VoodooMike suggested. 2 engineers is essentially a must-have, though you might as well do 3. For the fourth slot, you might want to bring a science officer that can help keep the enigneers up and running.

Tactical boffs on the ground are mostly useless redshirts. Seriously. Only bring one for style points (and if you are a useless redshirt tactical captain yourself, think twice about that). If you absolutely need those style points and are Federation, stick with Elisa Flores; you'll be hard pressed to find a less useless ground tactical officer. Even then, get her Overwatch II or III asap.

Also, boff traits do matter. (Superior) Creativity rules. More mines more quickly and all. You'll generally want to avoid space traits on your away team boffs. That's not gospel, though; 3 decent to good ground traits and a throwaway space trait still beat 4 bad ground traits.

Should you go chasing high-quality boffs on the exchange, focus on getting two good engineers first. You will be getting a Voth science boff from the Dyson sphere reputation, and with his built-in self-rez, he's a prettynice long-term option.

My tac captain has 4 tac officers for ground:

Photonic Tactical Officer (lobi store) (Miracle Worker)
Regenerative Nanite Canister I
Micro Cryonic Warhead I
Micro Cryonic Warhead II
Plasma Grenade II

Admiral Leeta Photonic Tactical Officer (Miracle Worker)
Regenerative Nanite Canister I
Micro Cryonic Warhead I
Micro Cryonic Warhead II
Plasma Grenade II

Loriss Photonic Tactical Officer (Miracle Worker)
Regenerative Nanite Canister I
Micro Cryonic Warhead I
Micro Cryonic Warhead II
Plasma Grenade II

Sarish Minna Photonic Tactical Officer (Miracle Worker)
Regenerative Nanite Canister I
Micro Cryonic Warhead I
Micro Cryonic Warhead II
Plasma Grenade II

Why the photonic officers? Because they all wear the Neutronium-Laced Combat Armor which has a huge HP bonus and some of the best defense bonuses of all body armors. Photonics don't breathe and don't ever need to wear EV suits, so this gives them an inherent advantage over flesh and blood officers.

The lobi officer has the kobali shield (I got one with tetryon resistance) and the rest get advanced fleet shields with ResA (which has tetryon resistance). This counters the weakness that photonics have to tetryon damage.

They all use Leck's combat knife so they can bypass borg adaptation. It also has an AOE secondary attack, which helps with Hurq swarms.

My lobi store officer also summons his own drone, and I have him equipped with all 3 combat hortas.

They tear up Hur'q and can finish the mission "Home" (final mission in the Gamma Quadrant arc) without anyone dropping and needing to be revived.

A good tac team will have faster clear speed than an eng team because they don't use stationary defenses to fight.