A Guide for Beginers

Welcome!

I started this Blog because I've found that there is a real lack of useful information with well-reasoned opinions for players of Star Trek Online to figure out how to succeed at challenging content or just improve their characters. On this site, I want to provide information on how to generally improve your character/gameplay. I'll be posting conceptual ideas, tips, tricks, and even character build guides. The build guides will likely be a big help as they will provide in-depth information about how to build a solid character.

If you already are in the 75k DPS channel or have billions of Energy Credits stored in Keys and/or other commodities, this site won't help you and, frankly, it's not intended to. Why would such a person need help? It's for people who are struggling with content or just want to know how to get better. I'm here to help.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

What is a Good Goal for DPS?

This is going to be somewhat controversial, but a lot of thought has gone into my philosophy on this subject. I'll give an explanation as to why I believe what I say provide helpful goals to players in the DPS ranges stated below.

Below 10k DPS:
Basically, anyone below 10k really needs a lot of improvement. Even with green gear on a new 60, you should be above this. If you can't do at least this much, your build has serious flaws, regardless of Career path. If you can't do at least 10k, you can't effectively kill Borg Raptors or Probes in Cure or Khitomer Advanced, which means you are of no use in those maps. It means you are forcing others to carry you because you cannot contribute enough value to a team to do your part.
Goals: You should stick to Normal STF queues in order to test and develop a better build there before entering Advanced queues. Do research on this site, Reddit, stoacademy, etc. Find out what is working for other people or try different combinations of abilities until you find a build you can use effectively. (ie do at least 10k with the build) Then, build up from that point.

10-15k:
This is the bare minimum recommended for Advanced STFs. If you are here, you should be able to receive an invite to the 10k DPS Channel and you are proficient at DPS in Star Trek Online. Congratulations!
Goals: Get your weapons, equipment, and consoles to MK XIV and try to get a ship that fits your build. Really focus on getting a ship that is tailored to your build because you need to have the bridge officer stations that will allow for the high-level Tac, Sci, or Eng abilities you need. You should also be investing in the Reputation and Fleet gear for your build. If you're doing this kind of DPS with all epic MK XIV gear and a lobi ship, your build is the problem. For those kinds of people, your goal should be to eliminate serious flaws in your build. I would start with eliminating anything you find on the "Top 10s" posts on this website.

15-25k:
You're on the right track. If you are in this range, it means you have the beginnings of a solid build.
Goals: At this point, you need to run ISA often to practice navigating it and focus on hitting things from the flank, in addition to increasing the rarity of your gear. (For a Tactical captain, this is still a low number with decent gear - I would recommend examining your build and looking into getting consoles, traits, BOFF abilities, and skills that improve weapon power regen, like Emergency power to Weapons, EPS, or Plasmonic Leech.)

25-40k:
This is where players reach the 30k Channel of the DPS league. If you consistently fall into this range, you are doing really solid DPS. 30k DPS or higher is, in my opinion, good DPS. You should be able to tell that missions have become easier and you should consistently be in the top 2 DPS in PUG STFs. This is excellent damage for Engineer and Science Captains - in fact, either one of those hitting over 30k is a real achievement. It's not top 10 in the world or anything that notable, but it's excellent. If you are a Tac, this is just a stepping stone for you - it's good that you made it here, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Goals: Players in this range are generally missing or Ignoring something. You may have discovered the great and powerful wizard of FAW and optimized your build for it, but it may be that you aren't managing your power levels well. Your equipment may be good, but the mods might not be right and they might not be epic. Maybe you need to get certain traits or ship traits to improve. You might be using too many defensive abilities or defensive consoles, many of which you won't need or want when you're doing 50k+. In most cases, players that can't break out of this range are not getting an efficient cycle of their abilities - could be your DOFFS, your traits, or how you cycle your abilities. many players have way too many heals and, many times, have the wrong ones. Passive healing is a big thing with the upper DPS player-base. Look into the console that comes on the Valdore - you may be able to run with no shield heal BOFF station abilities if you're a Romulan. Your goal should be to find what you aren't doing, or aren't doing well, and fix it. Focus on the big things - power level management, ability cycling, minimizing the number of heals in your build to just what you need/is most efficient, etc -  and then fine-tune after.

40-60k:
Congratulations! You have reached a rare level of DPS - here you reach the 50k DPS channel. At this point, you probably are well-known in your fleet for your damage output. Missions or Normal STFs are seemingly trivial - success is a forgone conclusion. You can do any space content in game with relative ease, provided you have a semi-competent team that can close Radiation Gateways and don't go to the right in ISA. The hardest thing left for you to do is to improve your DPS in ISA. 
Goals: How do you improve from here? There are only a few, specialized builds that can exceed 60k in a PUG. At this point, you'll need to evaluate what changes you will have to make to reach the next milestone. Usually, it's a matter of getting ALL epic gear and finding one of those builds and acquiring one of the truly elite ships  that are suitable for high-ends builds, such as the Scimitar (Especially the Scimitar!), the Tal Shar Adapted BattleCruiser, etc. Breaking out of this range gets real expensive, real fast. You need to decide if you're happy with your current, near-elite level of play or if you're going to reach for STO greatness.

60k-100k:
You have reached the elite levels of DPS. Why not have a distinction at 75K? Because most people who can routinely break 60k, pretty much just need a good low-lag run with a Recluse Nanny or some decent Sci Captains to break 75k. At that point, you're in the 75k Channel - you don't need advice from this blog for the massess anymore - you just need to theorycraft and test those theories to develop a new build or simply copy one of the handful of builds that will break 100k.
Goals: Get perfect, epic gear and theorycraft with other elite players.

100k+:
Congratulations, you win at STO!

200k+:
Please stop. The epicness of your DPS is causing server lag.

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