STO Helpdesk With Jo4play, Episode 5: Skill Tree
Skill Tree
Skill tree, one of those things that doesn't seem important untill someone takes a look at yours and gets a stroke (belive me i have seen all manners of skill trees, nothing surprises me anymore). Skill tree is an essential part of your character because it determines your passive atributes, and good skill redistribution will be the difference between getting a well balanced build and getting a build that doesn't work.
Space skills
These are some wide bois, all are read from left to right. All bonuses are skill based and depend on other bonuses for the full effect (aka formulas that are wayy too boring and would make this very dull):
Hull restoration: Improves the effectiveness of your heals, up to 50% healing bonus, A MUST HAVE unless your intended lifetime is 5 seconds
Hull capacity: Up to 30% bonus max hull, very useful to make you survive just a little bit more but won't save you from those oneshot abilities devs had left for all factions, SITUATIONAL
Shield restoration: Same as hull restoration but for shields, pretty neat to have, especially when combined with resilient shields, (disclaimer: shield tanking isn't much of a thing), A MUST HAVE
Shield capacity: Same bonus as hull capacity but for shields, highly dependable on what shield you use (cough cough Hypercap Shield), SITUATIONAL
Energy weapon training: Up to 50% damage increase for energy weapons, highly recommended for any energy weapon based build ( soo around 75% of all builds), A MUST HAVE
Projectile weapon training: Same as above but for projectile weapons, that 25% that uses pure torp builds (usually closelly linked to EPG builds), SITUATIONAL
Eps flow: Improvement to your EPS flow up to 100% (as some used to say EPS=key to DPS), your energy transfer rate is incredibly important to properly shunt and refresh your power levels, HIGH PRIORITY
Side tree: Full impulse shunt is avreage to useless, there are so many better ways to spend your points, JUST DON'T (can be bridged over)
Impulse expertise: Up to 40% speed and turn rate buff, amazingly fun thing to have to boost your (relatively bad) manuverability, HIGH PRIORITY
Control expertise: Up to 50% control effectiveness, for all needs of control abilities (plenty of them), lesser known fact to use it to build control res, SITUATIONAL
Side tree: Control amplification is a must have for any EPG based build because that dmg res reduction is very good, SITUATIONAL TO HIGH
Drain expertise: Same buffs as control expertise but for drain abilities, useful to prevent some nasty subsytem offlines from things like OSS, SITUATIONAL TO HIGH
Side tree: Drain infection is a considered a bit of a waste of points but hey if you got a spare lying around sure, MEH
Targeting Expertise: Up to 15 acc rating bonus, incredibly useful especially for acc overflow builds (basicly adding crit bonuses), HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Defensive manuvering: Up to 15 defensive rating bonus, for all those slippery ships to avoid unecessary damage, or at least reduce it, SITUATIONAL
Hull plating: Passive skill boosts to resistances, branches into the more individual resistances, fairly simple, straightforward and useful, HIGH PRIORITY for that dmg reduction
Damage control: Increasement of passive regen, useful to a degree, dependable on will you rely on passive or active heals, SITUATIONAL
Shield regeneration: Same thing as damage control for shields, again dependable on active or passive shield regen but you will rarely focus on shields
Shield Hardness: Damage negation for shields, similar to hull plating, not sure of all it's uses because of massive ways for enemies to drain your shields, SITUATIONAL
Weapon Amplification: Free crit severity, don't mind if i do, JUST YES
Weapon Specialization: Free crit chance, same as above gimme gimme
Grouping the engi skill trees cause they are all the same thing: All these skills will give you boosts to your power levels, useful to a degree (if you got that AMP core than damn), USEFUL TO SITUATIONAL
Exotic particle generator: EPG, the blood of every science build,the more the merrier, Up to 50% exotic damage increase
Long range targeting sensors: The skill you need if you intend to fire your weapons, significantly reduces falloff of damage with range (up to 20%), YES
Hull penetration: Improves abilities to deal with armor, fairly useful, +10 armor pen, USEFUL
Shield Penetration: Improves abilities to bleed damage thru shields, Useful for all those shield heavy enemies, USEFUL
Warp core potential: adds additional power levels, useful to maintain that power, USEFUL TO HIGH PRIORITY
Side Tree: Warp core efficiency is a boost based on set subsystem power, USEFUL
Engineering readiness: up to 20% ability recharge speed, VERY USEFUL
Shield Mastery: negating crits every 20 seconds with further options for that crit to heal you or reflect it to enemy, SITUATIONAL
Science readiness: up to 20% ability recharge speed, VERY USEFUL
Coordination protocols: Team boosts, pet boosts, more the merrier, if you like team based things TAKE IT
Tactical readiness: up to 20% ability recharge speed, VERY USEFUL
Progress bars:
I will gloss over this part because the micro i will have to do will be massive, and i want this to be reasonably sized:
This is the reason why the class of the point matters, you will get bonuses for sticking to one particular skill point type. Smaller 1 lightning circles offer possibilites to craft manuals, while larger 2 lightning offer a chance to gain a passive bonus
Applying at least 24 points gives you the ultimate ability and subsequent 3 will buff that ability further:
ENGINEERING ULTIMATE: For it's sound it is quite underwhelming, plasma DoT damage is something that isn't worthwhile to cripple your ship by making it useless to deal meaningful damage
SCIENCE ULTIMATE: Offers a massive boost to crit chance. Actually can be useful if you build around it and know how to utilize the 10 excess points you will probably have in your science
TACTICAL ULTIMATE: Argueabely the best option, offers a haste boost, marking them, very useful with further upgrades to make the boost team wide
Ground Skills
Keeping this short mostly due to repeat of same things for ground, and lack of interest in this part of the game
TOP LEFT:
Weapon section, honeyland of every tac officer, beffing up your weapons to do the most damage as they can
TOP RIGHT:
Armor part, the beefing of your sustain, needed, but in what dosage
BOTTOM LEFT:
Buffing your shields like a boss, semi useful and interesting
BOTTOM RIGHT:
Must do section to buff your abilities from your kits
Ground tray, filled with useful buffs you can use to improve and specialize
Conclusion:
The skill tree is the first touch into the number game, where you get to mess with the formula parts that will dictate your ship effectiveness and make some number cruncher mad because you aren't using a thing that is 2.31958% more effective.
I recommend moderation and bit of testing if you have surplus retrain tokens, if not look for standardized layouts. I am a bit sorry for the lack on the ground part, not my area of expertise and STO servers began to act up so i had to finish this quicker.
As alwas this is Jo4play SIGNING OFF o7
EDIT: gonna fix the squished screenshots soon
Last edited by jo4play on Tue Nov 06, 2018 9:44 am; edited 4 times in total