Captain's Log: Raiding in STO - A look at the STFs

Check out my latest STO column and leave your feedback about it here :)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/04/07/captains-log-raiding-in-sto-a-look-at-the-special-task-forc/

Nice article Brandon.

Before my own wall of text, I will preface this by saying I have only run each of the Borg STFs once and still consider myself a newb at it (especially The Cure and KA).

That said, the only thing I would quibble with is the "ideal" team build cited in the article, and used for the sign-ups for the fleet. Gavin lead us through "The Cure," running a team of 4 Science Officers and 1 Tactical. Even with 3 of us being complete and utter newbs, we completed the STF in under 2 hours, substantially less time than the normal "fleet arranged" team that was running at about the same time. If I recall the final tally, it was about 1 hour and 40 minutes when we excluded the bio breaks.

Mike and I ran Infected with a PUG before we joined Stonewall, and once we determined the best person to lead, we did fantastic with 2 Engineers, 2 Sci and 1 Tactical. As a matter of fact, I recall that in the last room, we were in such a rush to get the 4 corners down, that the jumpers wiped trying to get back into firing position for the final boss. One Engineer managed to tank, and complete, the final battle entirely on his own, preventing us from a reset.

And the only reason I quibble about it at all, is that Mike and I partnered our way up to VA. Once we got the Task Forces, it became more difficult to stay in lock step because I have been able to get into the STFs easier, as a Tac, where he has to wait for a Sci slot to open up (and I would guess he isn't the only one).

The use of alternate kits (such as Geo on Sci) can change up the tactics enough to make successful alternative team build outs viable. Thinking back to Infected, Gravimetric Shift would have been great to locking down the respawns that could interfere with the Jumpers. In Khitomer Accord, having a couple of Sci with Gravimetric Shift would help hold off the attack waves when you are taking out the shielded generators(?) in the final room.

I am looking forward to running the STFs a few more times each so I too, can learn to lead them, and eventually take the opportunity to experiment with non-traditional team builds.

You are right :) That is why I said the ideal team; it can be done with others perfectly but after running as many as I have (you saw the numbers :silly:) I can concretely say that 3 tacts, 1 eng, and 1 sci is the ideal mix (in my opinion) -- of course you will be able to do it with 5 of any class but maybe not in the shortest amount of time

Thanks so much for reading it though and sharing feedback! It means a lot :)

Pretty good article, however, i must point out that there is a quite a bit of "bad" information being relayed there, i'm sad to say. Like you pointed out some of it is your opinion and i totally understand that, let me point out some differences of opinion.. ;) I'll prob end up tearing it apart, i apologize, it's my ACD don't take it personal, nobody ever listens to me anyways.. :P
Mainly like it can be said any STF can be run by any combo of professions, some combo's make it more easy then others of course. But there is actually 2 optimal teams, 1 tac, 2 eng, 2 sci and 2 tac, 2 eng, 1 sci. I personally have 5 tac'd, 5 eng'd them but optimal are those. Mainly cause Tac skills are solo buffs for the most part, where eng's and sci's compliment each other and the team. In an STF if you are running 2 or more tacs a Eng should NEVER be using an exploit weapon. Engies should always be expose, and if you need that extra exploit the Sci should be using it. And kits.. the Squad Leader kit is actually the most worthless Tac kit in game, unless you are running the 3+ tacs, that's because if you are taking full advantage of the tac's they should be nowhere near the rest of the group.
You described the roles as the "trinity" well there is no trinity other then the fact there are 3 main prof's heh. That being is as there is no aggro control built into STO there is no true tanking capability. Whoever hits first or is perceived as the biggest threat is attacked. That's why engies are nice, cause turrets automatically are considered highest threat even though sometime they are 100% worthless in a situation. Then they will go for the Tac's and sci and finally engies.
You didn't go into space much, but by KA you should be fully purp'd up.
Other gear, unless you like carrying around tons of consumables, the shield recharges are worthless, they are on the same cooldown as your other hypos, and power cells. And you can recover shield just by breaking LOS for 2.3 seconds which is not hard to do and a hypo will make up for any loss there. And the armor recommendation of "Energy Dampening Armor" is great for PVP and general PVE but is pretty much garbage for STFs. For the STF's you want "PolyAlloy Weave" reason being, 85% of borg damage is Kinetic and physical. Only the few that shoot at you will the energy protect. When they assimilate you, gravimetric you, punch you, that's all physical and kinetic. You are better off wearing the PolyAlloy in the STF's.
Again this was not mean to detract from your article it's good. And the one thing I enjoy about STO is the fact that you can pretty much do them with anything. You can go 5 man sci with geophysicist kits, 3 tacs 2 engies etc. There are the teams that make it go more smoothly of course, but can be done as long as each person knows what they are doing and their part. (Even newbies if they are educated on what to do, will know their part.) And as such, each person is going to find something that they like that they feel is the best. You and your numbers say 3 tac, sci, engie. My numbers say 2 tac, 2 engie, sci. (don't ask to compare numbers though, i have you beat lol.) But very good article none the less.

@Ranir

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for reading it :) I obviously couldn't go into every different option available but more so went into what I know from experience works so that someone new to the STFs could have somewhat of a guide to getting started.

Good article! :) Thanks also for reminding me to join the PriorityOne channel!

Though of course everyone is going to have their own opinions about what the best group setup is, I agree with Brandon in that generally, and if everyone's a decent player (ie. healer and eng can keep everyone alive), 3 tacs 1 eng 1 sci seems to be fastest. Note *fastest*, not *best*. Though imo fastest=best :laugh: Personally I don't think that the extra buffs or exposes brought by an extra sci or eng can match the extra dps (and thus speed) brought by a tac.

I've done the 4-sci Cure run a few times now, and while I can vouch for its matchless efficiency I'm still convinced that the Gravimetric Shift thing on the workers is a bug and will be removed at some point (more's the pity! :pinch: )

My 'wishlist' for STFs at the moment would be:

• If STO is going to continue using the trinity, add in some decent threat mechanics and allow for proper tanking.
• Make some boss mechanics clearer (I still have no idea what's Manus of Borg's schtick is, we always just nuke her; same with the ground boss in KA).

Quote by Nikku

I've done the 4-sci Cure run a few times now, and while I can vouch for its matchless efficiency I'm still convinced that the Gravimetric Shift thing on the workers is a bug and will be removed at some point (more's the pity! :pinch: )

I got to thinking about this after The Cure run a few weeks ago. What if this is actually "working as intended?" For once, the AI having to play by human rules? What I mean is that if we are hit with anything (including a lingering DoT), any interaction we were doing is automatically cancelled.

I used my Plasma Grenade to augment Mike's (Tarvash) Gravimetric Shift, and it seemed to be the same effect: the DoT seemed to interrupt the interact. After all, Interrupt, at least according to Star Trek Online Wiki includes an Interrupt.

If it hasn't already been done in some fashion, it might be interesting to test the theory by putting a pair of Tac officers with Plasma Grenade as the sole defense on the first device and see if the DoT alone can prevent the interact.

The difference is that plasma fire is a DoT, so it's ticking interrupts from damage. Whenever the workers activate their repair ability, after a couple of ticks the damage interrupts and resets their ability cooldown. Crucially, the workers can then reactivate the ability once it's off cooldown, even though they are still in the plasma flame. They'll get interrupted again, most likely, but they can still activate it.

Now I may be wrong here, but as far as I know grav shift is a hold, with initial damage that interrupts as damage usually does. Aside from that it doesn't interrupt at all. What Grav Shift does to those workers after its initial damage isn't interrupting - it's actually preventing them from activating the repair ability - but grav shift doesn't do this in any other situation I can think of, which is why I think it's unintended.

Has anyone tried using any other hold abilities on the workers? Maybe it's the hold debuff that does it - if so that might suggest this is something the devs intended. Otherwise it seems really odd to make grav shift the single uber-ability for The Cure.

Grav shift is indeed a fragile hold ability with an initial damage which of course causes the interrupt. My guess explicitly would be that it is a bug that they don't "reactivate" after the hold. I do know that engineers used to be able to do the same effect with their covershields and forcefield domes, if you popped it while the workers were shutting down the beacons they would get pushed back, stand up and go back into shutdown mode and be out of range of the beacon, but that has been fixed. As far as other holds, from all of my runs through that is the only hold that stops them dead, they seem to recover from other holds just fine.
Also on a side note, i'm sure that those who have run the cure more then once is aware of the resistances the borg have when fighting them at times. Alot of people for some time speculated that the resistances are a bug, they aren't, but they aren't working totally as was intended, and well, since it came be overcame, the fix is on the back burner. Correct me on this part if I'm wrong, i believe it is just the heavies and elites that get the resist, but maybe normal tacticals as well, been a little while, but they each will have an immunity to 2 damage types at random, for a 30-45 second period. During this time all damage from these types cause no damage at all. They are catergorized as such: Immunities: Beam, Bolt, Physical, Kinetic, Energy, Phaser, Tetryon, Plasma, Polaron, Disruptor, Antiproton. At any 1 time they will have up to 2 resistances active, there is a higher probability of them activating a particular resistance if a specific damage is done. Ie. if everyone is shooting phasers at them higher chance they will immune phaser over disruptor as example. This does not affect the proc's of the weapons, so a plasma fire can still hit them if they are immune to plasma, they just won't take the dot damage until their resistance removes. This was intended to provide the canonical appearance they adapted to your weapons. The big side effect is when they put up resistances to Energy, which blocks all weapons, and kinetic is of course h2h and knockback damage. And when they have both of those up, it's fun to fight for 45 seconds doing absolutely no damage to them. The best bet is to carry a variety of weapons, if you are using all energy, change it up, plasma bolt pistols, disruptor beams as an example, that way if they become immune to bolts or plasma, you can switch to disruptor and beams, since you won't know off the bat if it's the bolts or plasma, if not both, so 2 different types leaves you with a chance that you can hit with the 2nd weapon.

Just some 2cents plus more then what was needed.. sorry i tend to ramble.. :P