Niche partial builds/skills

[Verain]

We've had time for the meta to mostly stabilize, and the Stasiepedia has pretty much all the solid builds, plus discussion, plus some fun builds.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=729222

 

Here's how I think it should go down:

> If you have a build that you want to post in full, put it in the Stasiepedia (we don't need a bunch of build threads cluttering stuff up) and link to it from here. But if you have an interesting interaction or niche use of a talent, lets put it in here.

> Say what your partial build or component interaction is going for. This could be "help newbies on my team", "troll good pilots when i can't win", "do top damage in farm games", or whatever.

> We aren't trying to figure out the best-case uses in here. We know those. Only compare the build to a standard community build if you feel it would be worse at the stated purpose than the standard community build.

 

 

 

Tsuki had pointed out that he was getting good results with Turbo Reactor and Hydrospanner, on a Condor with feedback shield. I haven't tested that out yet (he swears it is an acquired taste), but when he discusses it, he will usually bring up his solid K/D ratio. It's also interesting because while Turbo Reactor is vastly worse than Large Reactor when playing with Quick Charge Shield or Directionals, it's a closer call when it comes to Feedback Shield (or any shield that just gives you the exact baseline of regeneration and time-until-regen). So it's clear that he has a purpose in mind, and the build was tweaked to that purpose.

 

 

 

I'll start with talents:

"In your sites" is not a bad talent. While generally worse than fan favorite Wingman, and only usable close range, it stacks very well with allies, and it stacks even more hardcore with allies using wingman.

"Suppression" is a favorite of mine and I actually run it on ships that I plan to use as dogfight assist. I almost consider it secret tech, in that I don't try to convert anyone to its use or talk about it much, but it's relatively common for me to run it as a bomber, type 3 scout, or type 3 strike, as I like having a meaningful button to press versus a target who is tunneling someone. It feels very good to pop it on a gunship as he's about to take his big shot to someone on a node, or a scout popping TT or, even better, BO.

 

 

Whatcha got?

[Ryuku-sama]

About Supression..... It's very powerful for CP dogfighters (Quell and, I assume, Clarion). The three major threats for a CP Quell are BLC, HLC and slug. Supression is the best way to take out BLC and HLC. I also run it on many of my own builds. I'm always trying to keep my offensive CD avaible for a target worth spending them and always end up not using them often enough... So actually using defensive CD's is more adapted to my playstyle. Problem with Suppression over RI is rather simple. You have to be quick at assessing threats and neutering the correct one to minimize your damage taken... This make it a component in the same range as CP... Hard to use but potentially very powerful.

 

Proton+Thermite... A single torpedo is rather bad. It's hard to lock and easy to break. Two torpedoes bring a unexpected synergy to the game. Two torpedoes doing heavy damage can force everythign but a scout with Disto to stay on the defensive or eat heavy damage. It's a playstyle I don't want to push forward tho. Maximizing that kind of playstyle is very hard. This is definately not a beginner playstyle.

 

Ion Cannons + Cluster + Retro. A retro-jouster at its finest. Ion strips shield in a matter of seconds making cluster hits for 900 hull damage... Retro can buy you the time to lock and fire a scond cluster and kill most dogfighter. It can also be used for some extra evasion to avoid railguns and kill a gunship.

[MiaowZedong]

Tensor Field is usually considered a throwaway buff at the start of a dom match. But it is also the only system component that will contribute both to mobility and evasion. Combined with the usual defensive picks, you can make your Spearpoint/Bloodmark insanely hard to kill. I like to call that a Tankmark.

 

P.S. I can't really agree with the above assessment of Suppression's strength. Like any single-target ability, it is very weak in the 1 v n situations that any ace or aspiring ace must be able to deal with. Suppression and In Your Sights have niche utility mainky because in a coordinated group they can be combined with Wingman and RI. Outside of that, they don't have the extra strength a single-target ability needs to have over its multi-target competitors in order to be viable.

Edited January 26, 2015 by MiaowZedong

[caederon]

EMP Field with a coordinated team

I've gained respect and a healthy fear of T1 Scouts using EMP Field. While fighting against one of Willie's incarnations on Harbinger, he was flying a Blackbolt using EMP field with the top talent set to disable engine components. He usually has a well coordinated team featuring a couple gunships flying with him. He acts a spotter and EMPs targets, then presumably calls them out to the gunships. One ion rail hit later, and you have no engine ability, no engine power, weapon energy or shields and you're pretty much left to just wait for the inevitable explosion. I was impressed.

 

- Despon

[RickDagles]

I second the T1 EMP-Sabotage Scout. Ygritte has been using that successfully on Shadowlands as his main ship for a long time and it is very effective.

 

Also the T3 scout can be very good at taking out a T2 bomber. Shoot an EMP missile at a turret from 7700m to disable or destroy most of the crap near the satellite, then boost in, pop interdiction field engine ability and servo jammer to slow the bomber to a crawl, then blast away your light laser cannons. You can substitute servo jammer with concentrated fire or wingman if you want the ship to be halfway decent vs other ship types. It works best if the bomber is affected by the EMP blast because he can't drop another drone while you're trying to kill him. I would also suggest using Yuun or 2V-R8 as your engineer so that you can get more efficient blasters. It still takes awhile to take one down if you're not getting crits. This build can also work against T1 bombers but beware of the seismic mines, scouts die from 2 hits and he can continue to drop them every 15 seconds. Make sure you pick the T5 ability to disable shield abilities so that he can't pop charged plating or overcharged shield.

Edited January 26, 2015 by RickDagles

[Fractalsponge]

Tsuki had pointed out that he was getting good results with Turbo Reactor and Hydrospanner, on a Condor with feedback shield. I haven't tested that out yet (he swears it is an acquired taste), but when he discusses it, he will usually bring up his solid K/D ratio. It's also interesting because while Turbo Reactor is vastly worse than Large Reactor when playing with Quick Charge Shield or Directionals, it's a closer call when it comes to Feedback Shield (or any shield that just gives you the exact baseline of regeneration and time-until-regen). So it's clear that he has a purpose in mind, and the build was tweaked to that purpose.

 

I think his high survivability is largely due to power dive on the Condor. Everything else is mostly irrelevant to survivability for that ship. I can't possibly believe that, absent power dive spam, his ship is harder to kill with feedback than with distortion.

 

Ion Cannons + Cluster + Retro.

 

This is not niche, it should be one of the gold standard builds.

[Verain]

I can't possibly believe that, absent power dive spam, his ship is harder to kill with feedback than with distortion.

 

Of course not. But he apparently runs into scouts that gleefully remove their frontal shields by shooting his feedback shield. I think that's a pretty niche qualification! The build clearly does what he wants it to do for him, which is all I'm really saying.

 

 

This is not niche, it should be one of the gold standard builds.

 

Indeed it is, and in the Stasiepedia. But you could argue that the type 1 strike is pretty niche, lol!

[Ramalina]

I sometimes play with Lockdown as the crew active on T1 and T3 strikes.

 

With mastered Ions on the T1 it can seriously impair a gunship's ability to outrun a strike, sometimes to the point that they don't get to use their engine missile break. Same idea on the T3, but there it's more a matter of compensating for the lack of thrusters.

 

On rare occasions you can also seriously screw over a scout that thought they were going to have enough engine power to boost out of range or use a missile break. It's rather fun to hit lockdown and see them forced to come out of boost as you start locking a missile.

 

 

In general it's weak enough that I don't do this until the strike's core build components are mastered, but once you get to that point it is viable. Just weaker than CF, Bypass, Wingman, and RI.

[Verain]

I know Tune would use that on a T2 strike. Fish for the break on a ship that has been boosting a bit,, hammer a lockdown and start locking missile.