Star Trek Online offers players the option of three different career paths, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Don’t know which one to pick? Want to know which one has the highest DPS? In this guide, we’ll be going over each career path and which one you should choose based on your interests.
For those who have already read the [Top 15] Star Trek Online Best Ships (From Early Till Late Game), this will tie directly into the list. For those who haven’t, what are you waiting for? Go check it out!Star Trek Online is an old game, and it has gone through many iterations with its careers. Once upon a time, the career paths were locked into strict roles: DPS, Healing, and Tanking. However, at this point in time, you can do any of those tasks with any of the careers; it’s no longer as strict as it once was. Instead, it’s based on ships.
In modern Star Trek Online, you’ll select your task based on the ship you use. Want to do “Space Magic'' damage? Pick a science ship! Want to be a big tanky cruiser? Pick Engineering! Want to absolutely demolish things with cannons or beams? Pick Tactical!That doesn’t mean that you can’t perform well in those roles as different careers. An Engineer can still do “Space Magic'' . A Tactical can still be a big tanky cruiser.
Still, there are some career-exclusive items, such as:- Kits: Kit frames and modules are career-locked equipable items, granting the player ground abilities.
- Career traits: A set of four traits is added to the pool of selectable traits depending on the career path.
- Career-abilities: Each player is granted a set of ten career abilities five for space, and five for ground combat.
- Career Craftable Training Manuals: Depending on the career path, a player can craft a specific set of Training Manuals, which can teach Bridge Officers of the same career path new abilities; some of these manuals are not obtainable otherwise.
- Career mission objectives: Certain missions in the game offer career path-specific objectives. This does not impact the end result of the mission.
With that primer out of the way, let’s dive in!
Tactical
For when you dislike diplomacy.
The Tactical career path is by far the most commonly seen in Star Trek Online. Typically seen as the “DPS” career, it comes with innate space abilities like Attack Pattern Alpha (a huge buff to critical damage, critical hit chance, all damage, and turn rate), Fire on my Mark (a damage resistance debuff), and Tactical Initiative (a tactical power cool down reduction).
Something to keep in mind about Star Trek Online is that there is a ground component as well as a space component. The two have distinct abilities, with each career path having different strengths and weaknesses on the ground and in space. . For reasons we’ll get into later, it’s far easier to “do anything” in space combat compared to ground combat.Tactical also comes with unique traits that you can equip for your captain. These traits are:
- Crippling Fire - critical hits reduce targets’ accuracy.
- Last Ditch Effort - +resistance when Go Down Fighting is active.
- Situational Awareness - Grenades will Expose targets.
- Strike Team Specialist - Attacking gives you a scaling +Crit Chance.
GDF is a power that typically only works when you are below a set percentage of hull HP (determined by captain level), but it gives you a scaling damage bonus based on that missing HP. There’s a second trait called “A Good Day to Die” that lets you use this power at any hull value.
What’s great about this is it gives you a flat 40% bonus all damage when combined! So, throw that, with APA, on a ship with 5/3 weapons such as the Gagarin, and you’ll have a burst window that’s just insanely powerful. Stacked with various powers or items that boost your critical severity and critical hit chance, and you turn that burst window into something that skyrockets your overall DPS.This is a very standard way to get into the 100k+ DPS realm. Crits, plus Tactical Captain, plus the right ship, equals vaporizing everything in your path.
All in all, Tactical is very straightforward. Point ship at enemy, destroy enemy. It’s great for players who like to just mash and watch pretty explosions (recently updated!) and not have to worry too much about anything else.
Tactical details:
- Best for dealing energy weapon damage to targets.
- Ground and Space Combat are both very damage-oriented.
- Can synergize well with any build that focuses on critical hit damage.
- Very straightforward, no complexity.
- DPS chasers or anyone who just loves seeing big numbers. Tactical can alpha strike or vaporize most targets in the game when at its maximum.
- Players who like to use critical focused builds and otherwise like to squeeze out every last drop of DPS they can.
- Players who aren’t fans of Space Magic builds and want an easier entry into the higher DPS leagues.
- Fans of Captain Sisko, apply here!
Engineering
Mr. LaForge, reroute primary power to the engines.
The Engineering career path has traditionally been seen as the “tanking” role, but as the game has progressed into a heavy DPS focus, it has lost a lot of its luster. Tactical and Science are both high DPS outputting careers, whereas Engineer just isn’t. For high-end DPS, it lacks the raw bonuses to its abilities that the other two get, which puts it on the backfoot.
It’s still naturally tanky though, so it can be useful for players who are just starting out and want to get their feet wet.They come with powers like Rotate Shield Frequency, which increases shield resistance, and Miraculous Repairs, which gives you a powerful hull repair clickable, though on a fairly long cooldown.
On the ground, they get things like turrets, mobile shield generators, drones, mines, and bombs. They’re actually extremely good in this respect, and can easily control choke points or other areas on a ground map.Their unique traits are as follows:
- EPS Manifold Efficiency - Any Emergency Power to X gives you added bonus power to all power levels.
- Grace Under Fire - Taking 20% of your hit points in damage in less than 5 seconds will reset the cooldown on Miraculous Repairs, but only once every 90 seconds.
- Nanomolecular Architecture - Turrets and Drones have increased resistance and regeneration.
- Shield Harmonic Resonance - Gives your shields a +Resistance every time you are hit and stacks up to three times.
As a rule, Engineers are the hardest to build damage-wise. Not because the game is particularly hard in the terms of doing damage, but that it takes much more to get the same results as the other two. Which means it’s more expensive, more time-consuming, and overall more of a hassle. The exception here is in Ground Combat, where the career path actually shines.
Engineering details:
- Innate tank-oriented powers.
- Comes with abilities and traits that boost power levels.
- Excellent at drones, bombs, turrets, and other ground areas of the game.
- Challenging to build for DPS wise in Space Combat.
- Can be complex, if you want to go for a more traditional tanking role.
- Players who really just like tanking! With the innate traits, you do have an easier time turning unorthodox ships into reasonable tanking vessels, which can be fun if the game has gotten a little stale.
- Players who love the idea of summoning a horde of drones in Ground Combat maps to hunt their enemies down, or otherwise like having a pet army to command.
- Players who want to combine their ground summoning with space combat and build towards "Armada" style carriers.
- Anyone who was a big fan of Scotty or Torres or the other famous Miracle Workers from the Star Trek franchise.
Science
There's coffee in that nebula!
Science careers had an interesting split origin of being both healers and buff/debuffers. Powers like Subnucleonic Beam were critical in PVP to disable the buffs of enemy ships, while things like Dampening Field helped with tanking by reducing all energy damage by 75% inside the field.
These days, Science captains are known for one thing: Space Magic. Space Magic is a term to explain the “magic-like” powers that they toss onto a battlefield. From Plasma Storms to Gravity Wells to Subspace Anomalies and beyond, Science Captains can quite literally fill your screen with multi-colored rainbows of map-deleting powers.While it has oscillated back and forth on whos the better DPSer, as of the time of this writing the ball is back in Science’s court as the supreme king of DPS in the game.
How is this possible? Well, because Star Trek Online has three big things that Science basically nullifies.First, HP sponges depend on huge shield values and hull HP values,which Science captains can either directly bypass or make utterly irrelevant with various powers. Second, they have a massive map presence through Control Expertise—they can throw down one Gravity Well III and suck in enemies from across the map. Third, because of the preceding, they can concentrate all enemy ships on one location and hammer away with increasing power, which chains together with enemy ship explosions, which chains together with more power, which-you get the idea.
Even a highly optimized Tactical captain can’t do what Science can do in terms of its sheer scale. Unless, of course, the Tactical captain is flying a science ship and builds accordingly.Science as a career has morphed a bit in that it really shines best when using science ships. The other two can make basically any ship type work for their purposes, but Science absolutely excels when using the proper ship type.
Some of the traits it comes with are:- Conservation of Energy: All energy attacks against you have a chance to increase your Exotic Damage up to three times.
- Photonic Capacitor: Your science abilities reduce the remaining cooldown on Photonic Fleet by 20 seconds.
- Field Researcher: Control or Debuff kit powers get a damage boost.
- Medical Vanguard: All buffs and heals to allies are enhanced, and shield bleedthrough is prevented.
On the ground, they still perform the same basic function by using “Magic” to suck in enemies, cause huge fires, spread plagues, and so forth. They can also heal, if so inclined, though the game has moved away from career-locked healing in favor of everyone having some amount of access.
All in all, Science captains have a lot of flexibility in their approach, and because of their innate traits, they can also serve in a tanking capacity as well as a “Space Magic” damage dealer.Science details:
- Highest DPS in the game in Space and Ground.
- Uses abilities rather than directed energy weapons (usually, there are exceptions).
- Can tank to a degree due to innate traits.
- Flexible in its approach to anything in the game.
- Anyone who loves the idea of wiping out whole maps of enemies in one go (Diablo players, I’m looking at you!)
- Players who enjoy unorthodox approaches towards doing damage.
- Players who don’t mind complexity in their builds and enjoy theory crafting.
- Players who want to be equally devastating in Space and Ground Combat when it comes to doing damage.
- Players who also want the option to heal, as Science comes with innate traits that boost this potential.
- Anyone who wants to run around like a Wizard and delete things that look at you wrong.
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