I adore my Lex FAW build. One thing I will take issue with. Maximizing for broadsides arcs is key to a Broadside Beam Overload build. But with FAW you’re looking to get in the middle of stuff and go all disco beam ball of death. The front is still a firing arc. The targeting is mainly random. Sticking a narrower front firing torpedo is not a huge loss if it comes with a huge set bonus. It’s gonna shoot at something. I always FAW is more for solo content where you are mowing down waves of stuff. Patrols etc.
I love my FAW-into-BO Preferential Targeting build. I get the fun-ness of FAW and when that ends, then I use Beam Overload with that sweet 100%+ damage trait to clean up big single targets. And then I do it again. It's so fun seeing massive damage numbers after cleaning up all the trash mobs. I get to have my FAW Cake and BO Eat it too.
I enjoy this gamestyle as well and almost done grinding out my Avenger class moving the crew to our new flagship on our Lexington Dreadnought. Is your build similar to Stu1701 or have a good reference to review. Somewhat new to STO (currently 57) but like having a list for progressing the ship the way I want in the end.
@@mixzawa Mostly similar, but I don't have the Advanced Engineering consoles that boost phaser damage, but use the old school Spire Advanced Tactical consoles. Maybe not meta, but it's still very effective against most content.
@@junkiexl86 I could only imagine how much more damage I could be doing if i was using the new Advanced Engineering consoles to boost up Weapon Power to ungodly, but... some of us don't want to farm THAT hard to go bonkers like that.
@@salenstormwing Dont need to farm. Buy 2K zen then buy the 3-pack ship upgrade tokens, then sell those for 300M. That will bank you 6 Isomags. 2500 zen can buy you 4 Upgrade tokens which after sale, will get you 8 isomags. I get it money can be tight, but you can rake the leaves at a neighbor's house or something. I mean Isomags are great, but I was talking more about traits. Stack UD, EWC, Ruin, Cultural Conquest, Terran Goodbye, Ship of the Line and SCW and just watch the world burn with FAW and lock the rest of the team out of doing any damage themselves.
The only thing I recommend is remembering to add in what space skill choices for the ship build for the newer players who although they won't have all the max lvl traits and weapons still might try using this build while leveling and could make a mistake when choosing skills as they level.
I use emergency power to engines frequently, in conjunction with the phoenix store emergency conn hologram which guarantees a reset on evasive manoeuvrers (capped at the usual half cooldown minimum). If you're not in the fight, you're not doing any damage.
@@NotoriousNickNorris I do a bit of that, too, but I have a min-max X2 cnidarian on my main, full adv eng consoles, sentry mode, etc, so I get bored with using it for leveling. Mostly I just poke along and follow the story, but in a Lexington with whatever phaser consoles I can pull off other ships.
@@NotoriousNickNorris you can do that for leveling the ur Cpt. but you will still have to bring in other ships to get the traits on a new toon and patrols work for that really well, fire at will+torp spread+gravity well do really good on patrols with a bunch enemies.
@@DerDrecksack87 you fly the Cnidarian, but reclaim other ships for consoles to put on it. Otherwise I don't know what you're talking about. You don't even need your regual BOff abilities with the Cnidarian.
@@NotoriousNickNorris yeah but you need the traits from other ships too and you can only get those by leveling the ship up until its main trait is unlocked so u can use it on ur main build when roling a new toon and to unlock the traits fast you need to run a bunch of patrols or TFOs and fire at will is really good on most of those ships, the Cnidrian can go jelly mode and auto win against mobs, but the other ships cant like the Arbiter, Alliance Battlecruiser, Cardassian intel dreadnought, Gagarin and so on depending on the build you want and the traits you need for it.
So. i know this video is older. But still wanted to comment. I bought the Lexington with a copoun thanks to your advice. Changed from my presidio Beam Overload to the Lexington Beam Overload. I liked the presidio. But boy do i love the lexington. And then i saw this FAW build. And tried it.... Now i worship the lexington. its plain amazing. Currently sinking thousands of dil into 8 isomags (no fun tbh). Long story short. Thanks for your work. I love it (as much as the lexi ;))!
I was in the Excelsior II next to the Atlantis over DS9 the other day. After getting a look of the outside, now I get one into her inner workings. I havea not dissimilar build on my Excelsior II and have in fact EPtS with the Inquiry trait. Together with EPtW it builds my holy trinity of traits for DEW builds: Emergency Weapon Cycle, Weapons Hot, Deflectors To Full and Ship Of The Line. Constant haste buff and +50% critd.
Yeah, I bought into the whole "Agony phasers somehow deal more damage" thing as well only to later find out it was a placibo effect. I went back to crafted [Pen].
I’m with you; I don’t like Single Target, love the look of phasers firing everywhere, and love charging around and passed enemies while blasting them with broadsides. My favorite hull, though, is the Sovereign. I do like the look of the Constitution-III hull though.
Hey Stu, i found that combining Entwined Tactical Matrices with Inertial Supremacy from the Rex pilot escort and Temporal Surge from the Bozeman intel heavy raider = fun. Inertial supremacy 20-50 debuff pairs with attack pattern beta and entwined keeps the internal up. Then temporal surge gives you max speed and crit chance to die for lol. Then the intell seating reduces this cool down I use intelligence team and override subsystem safeties. I play on play station and have used some of your build ideas. Great channel. If you build around this, can’t tell for 100 percent certainty about damage but the fun factor is definitely in with this build. Have a great day
Great video! I always use arrays on my large 4x4 ships. It just makes sense, especially with most of these TFOs surrounding us with enemies. I definitely wish they would make some of those set torpedoes wide-arc. Especially the DMQ. I usually don't put on any at all. I didn't even know narrow beams were a thing. Mine isn't near as good as yours though. I don't have nearly as many consoles, traits and doffs.
I have been really enjoying the Broadside Emitter Array. Since your build is phaser, it will really help you. I would also use Advanced Plasers. I like the Crit Dmg.
Love the build. EDIT: just noticed it’s on an engineer too, which is crazy 1). How did you get the combatlog to only record the portion of Ninth Rule involving the waves? I figured it would log the entire patrol, including the downtime in between Madran and all his bs, which would negatively affect your numbers. 2). Do you think the numbers are a little skewed by Ruin? What I mean is, by the time you got to the portion you logged, you had probably already destroyed 10 enemies. So you came into the log already with +20% bonus damage from ruin. And in a normal tfo, say ISE, you’re not going to be able to stack ruin as high as you’re able to in this scenarios simply because you can’t make the kill blow on as many enemies. 3). If you’re running ETM, why not run Supercharged Weapons as well? Would seem to be easy to pick up the 30% cat 1, 4.5% chance, and 19.8% severity
1. Just don't turn on the combat log until you get to the part with the waves of ships warping in. I usually turn it on when i put the tractor beam on Madran's ship. 2. On the lower difficulties, yes, but I think it's fine on elite, enemy ships are pretty durable at that point. You do have a point that not every TFO has so many spawns like that, but there are a few that do, like Gravity Kills or Starbase 1. 3. Supercharged Weapons could work, especially if you're still using the Spire consoles (additional crit severity will be more important then), but I don't think the quantum torp firs quick enough to get full stacks of the trait, at least not for long. I usually only use that trait with the full lorca's set because that extra dark matter torp it fires off triggers the trait. That set would work better on a forward facing build than a broadsider like this.
Nice. I am a fan of surgical strikes myself but this is nice. Also I get the thing with weapon lay out. I can't get past a forward and aft torp I just can't not have two torps Haha
for me i love beams, just the visual is amazing, right now i have a hybrid style with back consisting of Omni Cannon Omni Torp and Forward being Beam Disco Dual Heavy Beam Enterprise Era Beam Cannons Torp, utilizing both rapid fire cannons and fire at will, Fire at will triggering my entwined tactical matrices allowing me to use torp spread and superior area of denial to weaken nearby targets with FAW for my teammates and cannons to smack anything with rapid damage, and had it mixed with some tanky stuff to make me feel like a dreadnought.
Thanks for the video! Yeah...Isomags. Go listen to the Monty Python song I Love Traffic Lights. Listen to the whole thing. It sums up my feelings on grinding them. I'm now thinking of a BO dual beam build on the Bortasqu.
I love the lex. I hate the the weapons layout but the thing is so good that it doesn't matter too much. With it being a miracle worker I can always use the trillium turret to proc mixed armourments and the omega cutting beam and console for weapon power cost reduction.
Fire at will is cool and all but single target builds are great at dealing with groups and the big boss ships, because typically if you can bring down the tactical cubes in guillotine in less than a minute then you can usually one shot everything else, and you get the wind up sound followed by a slower more sustained feeling beam.
Stu, your knowledge of STO is boundless! I might suggest zooming in on your video capture when you are showing off equipment in your inventory or traits in your character screen. Live long and prosper, comrade.
This is certainly an interesting build, from the 8 isomags to you considering putting a SHIELD ability on your ship, I sometimes wish I was as great as you
Love your videos Stu, thanks for the tips. I wish you'd also give us new players, F2P, options also, as we don't have most of those other ships to pull components off of.
I really like this build, and your playstyle is the same as mine. I want to try this build with disruptor or polaron, because I already have several ships with a phaser loadout.
I'm just returning to the game. My current daily driver ship is the Lexington but I have it set up with a full turret build I think you made a video on it a long time ago. Its good enough to get me through content for now. I really want to try this broadside fire at will build though.
@@Stu1701 I'm most certain it was you. I followed your video for the memes, but it ended up working out so well i stuck with it. Then i took a several month break from the game and just came back. It still works, I have all the goochy modules. The DPRM, the DOMINO ect..ect..In order to replicate this Broadside build, i'de just need to buy the phasers and the engineering modules. I have just about everything else.
Am I doing something wrong or does Vinncent Kish not work properly with Entwined Tactical Matrices? A Faw 1 which is triggered by torpedo spread is not increased.
I wouldn't mind the longer cooldown and trait nonsense for FAW if its cannon counterpart (CSV) had the same issues. Instead anybody with a Klingon Recruit has easy access to Withering Barrage while you need to buy Entwined Tactical Matrices from the Z-Store. Add in the cooldown difference and the most fun way to set up a ship is one of the weakest and most expensive ways while the easiest to set up a good ship is the single most boring way to play. Beams targeting everything within range is the classic Star Trek combat style. It should be encouraged!
I like the Ba’ul antiproton weapons, still can’t get the Omni to drop though, but I also like using a torp in front and rear because it “feels” right me.
I love Ba'ul weapons, especially for a FaW build like this. Though I wouldn't use more than one torp. I get wanting it for the canon feel, but adding a second torp on an energy weapon build like this isn't as good as another beam.
@@Stu1701 yeah, once I can get the Ba’ul Omni to drop, cost is a little high on the exchange for me at the moment, I will swap the rear torp out for it, I use the Ba’ul lobi set for the extra bounce with the full damage so that torp will stay the remaining slots are all Ba’ul beams, might just grab another beam while I wait on the Omni to drop, this vid gave me a lot to think about. Until recently I wasn’t concerned with builds, but now I want to get into them, so thanks for having easy to handle content 😁
Would you not get a bit more out of adding APB and dropping Kemo for TS1? Or are you just making up for it's loss with SAD and don't really miss the DR stacking? Although 20k on that parse isn't too shabby.
still learning the game but does the Dynamic power redistributor module just buff weapon damage or does it buff all damage your doing. asking as one who is focusing on science ships. im just not sure how "all damage" buffs vs "bonus damage" buffs work.
I tend to prefer broadside builds with beefier ships. Though I have more single target builds than aoe/FAW, (exception being my Sci: gobbler builds), mostly because of the weakness of FAW builds with overall DPS.
Does anyone know the build ( Sorry Stu thought it was you) where the Lexi has insane defense? All I remember it was like a FAW build with 2 Narrow Beam Phasers. Thanks if anyone knows
Earlier in the video, he references something Spencer (CasualSAB) did in regards to phasers. Spencer released a video several months back where he tested all of the various phasers in game at that time. And it showed outside a few outliers, they are all fairly the same. Good watch all the same!
Based on Spencer's test, Agonys were still better than Obliviating. Pretty sure the order was Advanced, PEN, Pulse, Sensor-Linked, Agony, Obliviating, then Standard. Though his test wasn't perfect because it was just the phasers themselves firing, no other conditions like other boff or console abilities. That why I haven't switched to PEN. If I were smart I would've switched to Advanced, but they don't like right on the Odyssey, its like putting propellers on F-16, it looks just wrong.
I'm currently embarking on my first forray into building for DPS. Could this be modified for a front dual beam bank build? Or do you have a forward dual beam bank build guide?
Yes, this could easily be modified for a forward facing build, however I wouldn't do it on the Lexington because it has a 4/4 layout. If you're going after DPS, you want something with 5 forward weapons slots. You could still do it on the Lexington, it just wouldn't do as well as something with 5 weapons in front.
Hey @Stu1701 if you want the connie 3, i have a spare. i ran a contest for my fleet, but one person hasn't been on in several months to claim the prize. if you would like to take me up on the offer, just reply. My only condition for this ship, is A: you do a ship review on it like you do, and B you name the ship after some kind of cat. again, my only conditions. this is not a joke, this is actual. as for the cat thing... i run Caitians... thus, you know, cats.... sorry / not sorry about the shedding on the captain chair. not a joke, not a prank, a ligit offer.
Yes, but the Dark Matter torp doesn't have a wide version, so using it on a broadsider like this is kind of a pain. I prefer to stick with a torp with a 180 degree arc.
Both have their ups and downs. Vengeance has more room for Uncon triggers, has the option to use Surgical Strikes III, and has a 5/3 weapons layout. But Lexington has a spinal lance, a better turn rate, and has an extra console slot thanks to being a full MW ship. Lexington is also a C-store ship, while Vengeance is Lobi, so Lexington gets a point for better accessibility. Obviously I'm going to pick Lexington because I'm an absolutely fanboy for the Odyssey-class, but both are very solid choices, so it's really just a matter of which you like more. You really can't go wrong between the two, in my opinion.
The economy in this game is borked. xD Those traits and DoFFs are so insanely expensive! :O Don't really have the cash to drop 170 AUD to get ship of the line. xD Is there a version of this build with less insane amounts of money? :)
Something I've been trying to figure out is, if I would go to the terran reputation T6, and go to the disrupted beam array it says you can only equip 1 per ship. Where are people buying them that they can add several to their build? I've been playing for a couple years but just now started buying T6 ships and doing the research to build them out. Any help is appreciated!
If you're talking about the Terran Task Force Disruptor beam, that's a unique weapon (most reputation project gear is), so you can only equip one. You can also equip the Terran Task Force Dual Heavy Cannon along with it, but thats because that is a different weapon. Same with the Phaser version, you can equip one of the beam array and one dual heavy cannon, but no more (you also can't equip the phaser and disruptor versions together, they're considered the same weapons). There are other weapons similar to the Terran Task Force Disruptor weapons that are available in the Dilthium Store section of the reputation called Withering Disruptors. They are similar to the rep project weapons, but without the damage buff that scales with your target's hull that makes them so powerful. These Withering Disruptors you can equip as many as you want.
Great video! Question, do anyone know if the Experimental Power Redirection console is able to be set as an auto clicky on console (ps4/5/xbox)? I can't find any info if it's clicky can be set to an auto option.
I don't know for sure because I don't play on console, but from what I understand, that's something that can be turned on for any ship console on the console platforms, so I would assume yes.
@Mrsniperouz As far as I know, Console Clickys can't be set to Auto-Activate. If there are, they are super rare as I have yet to see one. It's super annoying because almost everything ELSE can be set to Auto. I wish Console Clickys and Set Clickys could be set to Auto.
@@ForeverDegenerate when I say console, I'm talking about ps4/5 and Xbox. There are tons of consoles that can be set to auto, as well as set clickys on the ps4/5 and Xbox. Just want to know if this one can also be set to one of the auto selections for ps4/5 and Xbox.
I like the video but I really disagree about the Conny 3. It is a joy to fly. It feels tight and responsive looks great in FAW and it really feels like a Conny ship. It was worth every dollar.
This isn't the navy, this is STO. A cruiser is a general type of ship thats typically larger and more tank focused than science or escort type ships. Tier 6 cruisers are almost always guaranteed to have a Commander level Engineering seat. A Dreadnought is a specific sub-type of Cruiser that has features that set it apart from other cruisers, like a hangar bay, a different mastery trait that gives some additional crit chance, and sometimes a spinal lance.
Love your videos.. it's annoying as I play on console mostly and the exchange has NOTHING on it. And anything it does have is massively over priced... 2M per agony beam for example....
Honestly I started in the fire at will meta and it was really lame. 1) I actually like the change that makes the other firing modes more worth doing. Though I wish rapid fire cannon got a tad of a buff maybe that would be bad for pvp though. 2) If they make fire at will better it will take over most casual builds. I think it really just makes the game to easy and because of that it should be balanced a bit worse then the other beam mode. Like in my mind the easier it is to use something the worse it should preform just from a mmo meta stand point. 3) I think it builds bad habits out of the gate if someone eventually looks into pvp. Maybe it could use a buff but I do think it should always be balanced worse then overload just because its easier to use and I don't want to see the meta return where new players think they should slot fire at will and not think at all. That is a trap I fell into and I really think the game got way better when I got out of that "just always pick fire at will" trap. Interesting build though and entertaining video!!
