Flow Capacitors

[namikaze]

I'm curious about how to handle Flow Capacitors. I'm looking at picking up the new Carrier (no stats yet, duh) and it looks like the Terran set will do some awesome stuff with Flow Capacitors. However, I've never used them before. Can someone explain how a drain build works, why Flow Capacitors is awesome, etc.?

[robonixon]

Flow caps generally makes drain skills scale in terms of effectiveness as a boost, so 100 flow caps = 100% more effective drain, 200=200% more, etc. Skills that benefit from this are things like Energy Siphon, Tachyon Beam, and a lot of others, as well as everyone's favorite console in the DPS league, Plasmonic Leech. It also affects the proc on Tetryon and Polaron weapons and any variant of other weapons which has the proc from either of those added as a bonus.

As with Sci builds where your exotic damage is the focus and you'd boost PartGens, you would do the same with a Drain build for your Flow Caps. Embassy science consoles with +Flow, a crafted Conductive RCS with +Flow, the Rule 62 Ferengi Lobi Store console, the Jem'Hadar Deflector, and other gear will boost it (but those are the big ones).

[namikaze]

So if one uses high Flow Capacitors, how do they then handle damage? Is it just weapon-based at that point, or are there some methods of causing damage with those skills (aside from the secondary deflector).

I'm currently running with high Particle Generators, so I imagine this might tweak my play style a bit. Since we can't know yet whether or not the new carrier will support a secondary deflector (none do, currently), I can't completely anticipate the changes that this will bring for me. Still, I am excited about the possibilities.

[James]

So if one uses high Flow Capacitors, how do they then handle damage? Is it just weapon-based at that point, or are there some methods of causing damage with those skills (aside from the secondary deflector).

I'm currently running with high Particle Generators, so I imagine this might tweak my play style a bit. Since we can't know yet whether or not the new carrier will support a secondary deflector (none do, currently), I can't completely anticipate the changes that this will bring for me. Still, I am excited about the possibilities.

I would imagine that we would already know if the new carrier is going to be science orientated like that. My guess is that it won't, and will have at least a Commander End/Cmd slot once we see it.

If you are looking for a science carrier, there is always the Caption Atrox!

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

[namikaze]

Yeah I've got the Caitian already - working on filling up its hangar. Even if I don't go full on science-y with the new carrier, the Terran set will work well in my Intel ship, I'd imagine.

[robonixon]

Drain itself doesn't do damage but it does provide an annoyance to enemies and makes them more vulnerable. However, in PVE it is almost useless as enemies have very high resistance to it (via Power Insulators skill and other Cryptic hackery). In PVP it can be deadly. 

[namikaze]

I don't really do PvP at all - so it sounds like Flow Capacitors is less useful to me as a PvE player than it would otherwise be if I did PvP.

Hmm.

[robonixon]

In my experience it works best to boost your Plasmonic Leech performance in PVE, or to increase the drain of your tetryon procs. Energy Siphon can also be a poor man's Leech if you have good flow caps skills.