Help understanding advice on Sec Deflector

[gespenst]

I was advised by a few people to use a Deteriorating Secondary Deflector with my Science Captain. The reason this confuses me is that I use Gravity Well which doesn't trigger the radiation damage (from what I understand). Not sure if it was a factor but I favor the Romulan Plasma weapons for DoT on Bosses (since mobs just explode at high mark either way).

They knew the above but told be to get deteriorating over inhibiting. I don't really understand the mechanics of the science powers yet. Can someone explain the reasoning behind this advise?

[ImperatorPavel]

Inhibiting deflectors activate their power after 4 seconds. A fairly decent science build will have significant numbers of enemies dead before those 4 seconds elapse. Given running Improved Photonic Officer is useful for Science builds, things like Destabilizng Resonance Beam can be fairly decent damage sources on a fairly reasonable cooldown.

[cap-boulanger]

If you read the details on the secondary deflectors, carefully, you'll see why...

Inhibiting: does a single pulse of damage 4 seconds after using a qualifying BOFF ability

Deteriorating: does a pulse of damage every second for 10 seconds after using a qualifying BOFF ability (but at roughly half the amount of damage)

So each time you trigger it, you get (over the next ten seconds)...

Inhibiting... 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Deteriorating... 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

... totalling about 5x the damage.

(assuming the target doesn't die. But let's say they do. Even if they die immediately at the 4 second pulse... the Deteriorating will still have done double the damage at that time-point).

Also, in general, the Deteriorating's activation abilities have lower cooldowns, so can be used more often.

[VoodooMike]

Първоначално публикувано от "gespenst":

They knew the above but told be to get deteriorating over inhibiting. I don't really understand the mechanics of the science powers yet. Can someone explain the reasoning behind this advise?

It really depends on your playstyle. If your science builds are focused on Gravity Well then you should stick with Inhibiting. Deteriorating deflectors ability does do more damage to its targets, but unless you're using Tyken's Rift (which has a shared CD with Gravity Well) most of the abilities that it affects are single-target or PBAoE.

I myself use Inhibiting on my current science build because it focuses on Gravity Well and other fire-and-forget AOEs. While it does less damage per target, a 45-second gravity well is likely to affect more than 5 targets per cast.

On option you do have if you want to babysit your Gravity Well is, as Pavel said, Destabilizing Resonance Beam. You can wait until GW gathers a cloud of enemies together and then toss that into the mix with a Deteriorating deflector to cause the lot of them a ton of radiation damage. Of course, you can also just go about your business and GW will deal with them on its own.

[gespenst]

To everyone who took the time to answer my question: THANK YOU!!! It was rather difficult to get comprehensive answers via the chat in game so this clears up my confusion a lot.

I will leave this open for now to see if anyone else wants to add their own take on it but just know this has helped me not just understand this mechanic but is giving me a better idea of how Science builds are examined!