Beam Weapons Becoming Useless?

[evo4ever]

Hello all.

Seen as though I cannot post on STO's official forum because of strict spam rules.. yes it stops genuine users from posting too, so I've brought my self here :). To the subject...

I'm currently a level 57 engineer and I'm having difficulty inflicting reasonable damage to the Vaadwaur using beam/cannon weapons. Here's my setup playing as KDF with a negh'var battlecruiser:

Fore:
2x Quantum torpedos XII (rare)
1x Fluidic Antiproton Dual Heavy Cannons XII (very rare)
1x Fluidic Antiproton Dual Heavy Beam Bank XII (very rare)

Aft:
2x Polaron Beam Arrays XIII (rare) (replacing with antiprotons soon)
1x Vaadwaur Cluster Torpedo Launcher (very rare)
1x Tricobalt Torpedo Launcher (rare)

Tactical Consoles:

Beam Energy console (+17.5%)
Quantum torpedo console (+30%)
Tricobalt torpedo console (+30%)


It seems my projectile weapons are doing most of the damage especially the vaadwaur tris. My beams and cannons hardly do any damage. My antiprotons have CritH 2% and CritD 50% with 100% shield penetration but it doesn't like it when they're in action. I used to have tetryon and plasma weapons up front. I "upgraded" to fluidic antiprotons cos they're much better on paper but the difference in reality seems extremely marginal.. if any difference at all!

Is they're anything you would change to my setup, Am I doing anything wrong? If so let me know and ill put it to the test

[Brigandine]

Both the Borg Assimilated Module and Cutting Beam are 15,000 Dilithium and 500 Omega Marks 30,000 Energy Credits, each.

The Assimulated Module is a tier 1 Task Force Omega reward. The Cutting Beam is a tier 2 Task Force Omega reward. So you'll need to get your Task Force Omega reputation to atleast tier 2, to get both.

[Szeron]

Actually, Beams are generally regarded as the preferred weapon these days thanks to the proliferation of power generation. They also have less of a range penalty(7-8km) than cannons do(5km).

With that said, cannon and beam builds are both still quite effective, they just have slightly different functions. Cannons are great for focused, pressure damage. Beams are better at area suppression and spike damage.

The problem you're facing with the Vaadwaur is that their high movement speed means they have a very high defense value. You can counter that by employing snares like tractor beams, warp plasma, engine drains/disables, etc. or non-missing attacks(AoEs, Torpedo Spreads, Tractor Beam Repulsors, etc.).

The Neghvar isn't a particularly offensive ship itself, but you are kind of hurting yourself even more by not stacking same damage type consoles(they stack at the base level before other bonuses are applied - each one adds the same flat amount to each weapon) and slotting fluidic cannons(cannons are best at close range - fluidic weapons push targets away from you).

It would also be useful to know what your bridge officer layout is - if you want to squeeze out performance on an eng-heavy ship like the non-mirrior neghvar, it's important that you're using those slots for offense. Primarily, that means Emergency Power to Weapons 3 and Directed Energy Modulation.

There are some expensive ways to make the ship relatively competent(namely an Aux2Bat build), but I would still recommend saving up for the mirrior version of the Neghvar on the exchange if you're avoiding C-Store ships. The Mirrior Neghvar has excellent flexibility without giving up the beefiness or iconic appearance of the classic Neghvar. Otherwise, the Qib, Ty'gokor, and Mogh all completely outclass the ship in performance.

[Imperius Rex]

Is not the neghvar the real big battlecruiser? If it is , then its way too slow to use a cannon build. You can park and fire but unless its a gate or something, I would just go beam or torp boat. I personally dislike torpedos but Cryptic seems be pushing them again, but I would go 2 beam arrays in back with the mission omni beam and cutting beam until u can replace with crafted omni beam. 4 arrays up front but if want lil xtra maybe 1 or 2 dual beam banks.

You prob still wont feel a big punch, but the accumulation of dmg with be helpful. tac consoles are key along with boffs but thats for later I guess.

[evo4ever]

Yeah im starting to play PvE to get my omega rep up. So many different ppl have told me to do so many different things, both on here and in my fleet. My heads battered lol. I don't know what to do now! I've already started to overhaul my ship with cannons and turrets please don't tell me ive wasted all that EC?

[From Hell]

Originally posted by DeadPandas:

Is not the neghvar the real big battlecruiser? If it is , then its way too slow to use a cannon build. You can park and fire but unless its a gate or something, I would just go beam or torp boat. I personally dislike torpedos but Cryptic seems be pushing them again, but I would go 2 beam arrays in back with the mission omni beam and cutting beam until u can replace with crafted omni beam. 4 arrays up front but if want lil xtra maybe 1 or 2 dual beam banks.

You prob still wont feel a big punch, but the accumulation of dmg with be helpful. tac consoles are key along with boffs but thats for later I guess.

Why would you do that? You either use beams all around or you use DBB's + Omnis. Using weapons with different firing arcs means you never will be able to fire all your weapons at the same time.

As for the OP, you can use your cannon/turret build for now. Beams are generally the best choice but you should be okay with cannons for now. You will also have a lot of different builds/gears available to you after some time anyway.
Just make sure you get really close to your targets. Firing cannons at 8-9 km away from your target will do no harm to them. Cannons in this game basically work like shotguns. Make sure you are within 3km (the closer the better) to your target. Also learn to use your abilites properly and use them in firing cycles ( a typical cannon cycle is Attack Pattern Beta/Omega + Emergency Power to Weapons + Cannon Scatter Volley + Tactical team). You probably want to have each of these abilites twice for now so you can use the one copy of the ability while the other is on cooldown.

[virpyre]

I'm guessing but you must be on Better with Friends, that one was a pain you only had so much time to setup turrents before the vaadwuar, there's about 3 groups of them too. I just ended up asking for help from 2 fleet members in dreadnaughts to complete this mission sadly it's a pain in ass for a battle cruiser class ship.

The next part ws no picknick either 1 Heavy Artillery ship took me 3 hours, and multiple respawns to beat...one-on-one my gear was plain crap I had to upgrade my gear to mk XIV to even stand a chance.

For the most part the negh'var battlecruiser is really really slow, now there are a setup you can try using dual cannons + turn rate console, but that would take away from your defense or power.

[Nyova]

Beam weapons aren't becoming useless; you just have a (no offense) pretty mediocre setup. Dump every single torpedo launcher and get one from either the Dyson or Borg reputation systems. Upgrade your equipment to XIV and use Dual beam banks instead of single beam arrays. Slap on an omni-directional antiproton beam array and possibly a kintetic cutting beam (borg rep). Also, your consoles are doing almost nothing, if not completely useless. Go to your fleet spire (if you have a fleet) and get vulnerability locators. These consoles also have modifiers based on different weapon types. Don't bother using the aft kinetic weapons you're using now, or the Quantum torpedo launcher; your DPS rate currently is around, what, 3-5k at the most. If you need help obtaining the aforementioned equipment, just add me ingame (@j3300).

[Jimmy McGill]

Originally posted by N3MES1S:

Originally posted by Jolly, the Space Cat:

Upgrade your equipment to XIV

I only needed to read this to stop reading. Are you one of those guys??

If the first thing you do is to recommend him to upgrade equipment to MKXIV, obviously you dont have skills in this game. Do you know that you can suceed in anything with just MKXI uncommon equipment, right?? Do you realize that is more important the skills and how you have your build setup?

To the op. Dont even listen to this guy. Someone who the first thing he does is to recommend upgrading to MKXIV, obviously have no idea at all about this game, probably he is one of those money whales who spent thousands of dollars because he can, and these people need to justify that fooling emselves thinking they cant do anything without the best of the best. In the process they are helping cryptic to keep increasing the power creep and the money mechanics they are famous for.

To the op, just use MKXII with only 1 energy type and all specific enrgy boost tactical consoles, and if in the future you are rich, you can try to upgrade your equipment as a hobby, nothing more.

Says the guy who hasn't played the game for years, claims "Cryptic is making using beams a mandatory thing in any ship." and is seen as a troll by most people posting here more frequently.

[Zengu]

At the current state of the game you want full beam weapons with the kinetic cutter and assimilated console from Omega rep.

Cannons are utterly broken atm but beams are king.

[Jimmy McGill]

Originally posted by Feigling:

At the current state of the game you want full beam weapons with the kinetic cutter and assimilated console from Omega rep.

Cannons are utterly broken atm but beams are king.

They aren't broken. Just not useful. Dual and Dual Heavy Cannons on quick escorts on the other hand rule.

[Zengu]

Originally posted by Sinnaj63:

Originally posted by Feigling:

At the current state of the game you want full beam weapons with the kinetic cutter and assimilated console from Omega rep.

Cannons are utterly broken atm but beams are king.

They aren't broken. Just not useful. Dual and Dual Heavy Cannons on quick escorts on the other hand rule.

sry but even on a escort you gonna use beams cause FAW is too good to pass up. this is talking from a person that does over 70k DPS in ISA and is ranked in the DPS LEague with that withing the top players.

[Zengu]

nah if you know what you need its reasonable cheap and you dont have to get it all at once. especialy at the moment where serber performance is utterly bad up to unplayable i would just gather recources untill they fix it. If they wont fix it soon the ppl who actualy wanna play and not just throw money in wil ealve anyway cause what good is a game when you cant play it properly.

[Jimmy McGill]

Originally posted by Feigling:

Originally posted by Sinnaj63:

They aren't broken. Just not useful. Dual and Dual Heavy Cannons on quick escorts on the other hand rule.

sry but even on a escort you gonna use beams cause FAW is too good to pass up. this is talking from a person that does over 70k DPS in ISA and is ranked in the DPS LEague with that withing the top players.

Sure. And I'm getting 100 DPS in ISA with my Constitution class because Fire at Will.

[Zengu]

This is what beam boats can do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Q-yRoWbvQ

Current State of the game - also regarding the server side latency issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVx8x1qThXc

[Jimmy McGill]

Originally posted by Feigling:

This is what beam boats can do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Q-yRoWbvQ

More like "that's what 3 Scitimars can do".