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Understanding Specializations - Self and Bridge officer

Started By:
xonak, Mon 01 Jul, 2019 4:59 AM
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    #1
    I didn't see in the list of guides, nor have I found at any of the sites, a comprehensive guide to understanding the specializations. Mechanically, the idea of selecting and advancing through various bonuses with the specialization points is obviously simple, but ...

    I find it hard to figure what's worth doing. I find the explanation at the wiki utterly perplexing on the subject of primary/secondary, which bonuses or skills are active under what conditions, and importantly, whether it's worth it to specialize a bridge officer, whether there's a down side, whether anything a Bridge officer gets from specializing as, say, a Pilot, would stack with anything my own character's specialization benefits from and ... well you get the idea.

    Obviously the learning curve on the game is steep in some ways, because there are so very many aspects, from how to find fleet projects to which one can donate marks or other items, to understanding admiralty, to understanding which ship or ground weapon is better than which other of same. But there are many resources and eventually one cobbles together a rudimentary, though probably not quite correct, working understanding.

    But for specializations I find there is much less to work as a guide. Unless, that is, that I'm simply disastrous at finding it.

    On the other hand I have the Duty Officer thing down cold and I'm a wiz at Dabo so... everyone has their own special gifts, no?

    If you know of any such guide, I would certainly appreciate a link to it. Or barring that, if you could perhaps tell me which specialization you think is best for a bridge officer for space, and which for a bridge officer for ground, I'm certain to simply take your work for it and spec accordingly.

    In whatever the case, I in advance thank you, and bid you live long and prosper.
    Voyager
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    #2
     –  Last edited by Michael; Mon 01 Jul, 2019 5:18 AM.
    I seem to recall Master Bridger recently talking about this. Just doing a quick search, perhaps the discussion going on in this older thread can help you out to a point. Specifically Master Bridger's responses throughout that thread Cool

    While there's not reasons for the specializations Bridger picked here, you'll see depending on the ship you choose and class your toon is seems to dicate which specializations you'd be better off with. Smile
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    #3
    Michael's advice to check out some of Bridger's builds is excellent advice!

    For a quick breakdown, without knowing whether you're a TAC, ENG, or SCI Captain, and what ship and playstyle that you're going for, I'll give you this, very general advice...for most non-sciency builds, most people use Intelligence for their Primary Specialization and Strategist for their Secondary Specialization.

    If you want to be a space wizard...SCI Captain in a SCI ship doing really sciency stuff...then Temporal Operative for your Primary, and Strategist for your Secondary might work better for you.

    Those are only general recommendations, and are only for your space setups.

    As far as training your BOs, you'll need them to learn different specializations, in order to have access to the training manuals for that specializations BO powers. Gaining a specialization for your BO requires a Specialization Qualification, either crafted in R&D, or purchased on the Exchange. Certain ships have BO seats that allow the use of certain specialization BO powers. If your BO has been trained in that specialization, that BO can slot one of those specializations powers instead of one of it's normal professions powers, i.e.: an engineer trained in the Miracle Worker Specialization, can learn MW BO powers. When slotted on a ship with an engineering/Miracle Worker BO seat, that engineer can use either normal engineering BO powers, or MW BO powers, limited only by what powers he has learned. (Training Manuals from R&D, the Exchange, or other BOs)

    I hope this helps!

    Cheers!!!
    Morris
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    #4
     –  Last edited by Bridger; Mon 01 Jul, 2019 4:32 PM.
    I seem to recall Master Bridger recently talking about this. Just doing a quick search, perhaps the discussion going on in this older thread can help you out to a point. Specifically Master Bridger's responses throughout that thread Cool
    The tread is a bit out of date, and is no longer valid since Season 13.

    In general that is how I use them:

    Intelligence - DPS
    Miracle Worker - Tanking/Healing
    Pilot - Turn rate/Defense by speed
    Temporal Operative - Science DPS
    Constable - Single Target DPS but it is only good in Elite content
    Strategist - Healing/Tanking
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    #5
     –  Last edited by aceman67; Mon 01 Jul, 2019 8:47 AM.
    When it comes to Bridge Officers for Space Combat, you should also be paying attention to the BOFF's traits as well. If that BOFF does not have a Space Trait, it doesn't belong in a Bridge officer Slot, as you're just wasting potential, and believe it or not, space traits from the random BOFFs you pick up while levelling or find on the Exchange are quite rare.

    General go-too for traits (In general order of importance) are as follows:

    In a perfect world (IE if you're a Romulan Captain), you'd want all your Bridge officers to have Superior Romulan Operative trait, something that only Romulan Captains can attain. If you're Fed, KDF or Jem'Hadar, The Male Blue-Quality Romulan Tactical Officer is what you want for all your Tactical BOFF slots. This will give you a +2% Critical Chance, +5% Critical Severity, and +15% Power Recharge Speed for Cloaking, but it's the Crit Chance and Severity that you want.

    Next up is the Pirate Trait. KDF Aligned Captains can deck their whole crew out with this trait if all they want is Nausicans. If you're Fed Aligned, then your only option is Diplomacy or the Hierarchy Science officer from a Delta Rising mission. Pirate gives you +1.5% Bonus All Damage, and +150 Starship Stealth

    Kentari BOFFs from the Colony give you Kentari Ferocity: When target is destroyed: To Self: +2% Bonus All Damage for 15 sec.

    If you're going for a more specialized ability heavy build but are already good on or need something other than Crit Chance/Severity, the Krenim officers from the Research Lab are an option. Depending on what Division you pick (Eng, Sci or Tac), their trait will affect abilities from that Division: Improve the recharge timer on any bridge officer ability within their profession. +10% Power recharge speed for bridge officer abilities. (stacks up to 3 times from different active officers).

    If you bought the VIL Vanguard pack and got the Jem'Hadar Vanguard BOFFs, Using them is a good stop-gap for when you're saving up for other better options (which already touched on). The Vanguard Jem'Hadar BOFFs come trained in all Specializations, you get one Engineer, Science and Tactical BOFFs. They also come with the Engineered Soldier trait, which gives +5% All Weapon Damage, +1% Critical Chance, +2.5% Critical Severity. Not as good as SRO, but something is better than nothing, and since this requires a very expensive Store purchase, it's low on the list.

    What really sucks is that there's no specific trait unique to the Federation that really gives a benefit. Romulans have SRO, KDF have Pirate. Federation has... Leadership? Hull and Subsystem repair is great and all, but pails in comparison with what the other factions have.

    There are others, so if anyone else knows of other options, feel free to chime in.
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    #6
    All of this has been tremendously helpful. Thank you to everyone.
    Voyager
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    #7
    The specialist trees are such a varied lot that there has to be a hundred different ways you could mix them up with different builds. And what one players sees as important in a spec tree might be very different to someone else, and all will vary depending upon your playstyle.

    Generally i'd agree with what Bridger said about the different trees and their areas they help with. Of course it's not perfect for describing things as they have so many variables and passives that buff a lot of stuff.

    Intel - generally DPS, mainly because it buffs things like flanking attacks and gives you some interesting skills like Intel Team that help with damage output.

    Command - helps with tanking to some extent but I find it works best as a sort of "team-wide" debuff/buff type affair. Most of the bonuses you are earning or giving out affect other things after having built up so it may not help you direct, but it can help teammates. It also helps increase hull points passively.

    Strategist - directly helps with tanking, and in combination with that defenses. If you're not into tanking then some of the buffs "might" be useful to players trying to attract less attention as they are all affected by your threat generation toggle.

    Temporal - the best option for any science build imo. It has some awesome passives like letting spatial anomalies chase down enemies and other goodies. Plus there's some funky mechanics to make torps work better which many science players will use in abundance.

    Miracle Worker - pure tanking and healing. I'm not sure what else you would gain from it if those were not something you're aiming to make use of a lot.

    Commando - only mentioned here because it gives a passive ability to drop boarding parties off on enemy ships via Demolition Teams. The rest of it is all ground based so it's honestly not much use in space.

    Pilot - big defensive bonuses and speed make this a must have for me on nearly any build tbh. And because i'm running torps most the time better movement means more time on target and that means more damage potential. The defense buffs are cool to have too and rock and roll is fun in any ship.

    Constable - now there are some really nice buffs to be had here but the biggest problem is that outside of drawn out elite level fights there is literally no reason to need them; combat just doesn't last long enough to make them worthy of the spec tree sacrifice. Single target builds have very little benefit in STO I find, simply because Cryptic's trick these days for content is just filling a map with zerg-rushes of trash mobs and sprinkling the odd semi-boss level ship in the middle. You just don't need that much firepower to defeat single targets because you're always up against a literal swarm of enemies.
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