Canon Playability, Defiant Part 8: Thirty-Something (K)

Hello, all, and welcome back to Joe and STO! In what’s become a monthly update, I wanted to bring you up to speed on how the canon Defiant is doing, its two parses, and the upgrades that are coming with the next iteration of the ship.

UPGRADES

So let’s start with a somewhat problematic thing: there was only one major upgrade between Part 7 and now: I upgraded to a fully Tier 6 Defiant.

And that’s not really news; you saw the [T6] designation when I did a screenshot of my build in Part 7. The biggest benefit of that (besides some slightly better survivability with increased Hull and Shield modifiers) was an extra Console slot. As I

I’ve enjoyed having a Battle Cloak due to completing the 3-piece set for the Defiant. The Tier 6 Z-Store version of the ship comes with a Quantum Warhead Module, which gives basically an extra salvo of torpedo attacks via the console and, in concert with the Cloaking Device console and Phaser Quad Cannons weapon, upgrades your Cloak ability to a Battle Cloak. This allows you to hide during Red Alert so you can decloak and unleash your “Alpha Strike” (a term used to describe your highest damage output in a single attack). Oh, and 10% extra Torpedo damage isn’t bad, either (not great as it’s Cat1, meaning it gets lower bonuses through all the math compared to Cat2 bonuses which say “Bonus”)

I did change out…well, really, added one Bridge Officer ability. Cannon: Rapid Fire moved to my Romulan Tactical BOFF to free up a space to allow me to use Lock Trajectory II on another Tactical BOFF that I specialized in Pilot BOFF abilities. This ship maneuvers almost too well. It needs to keep forward weapons firing as much as possible for maximum benefit. You basically get put into a drift where you can only rotate the ship in a circle on what I best described as a horizontal axis. Just keep your Defiant turned toward your enemies and let your weapons and BOFF abilities do the rest of the work.

I did epic out the Tachyokinetic Converter. It’s a staple piece of almost all Space builds, so it only felt right to get it up to its maximum capabilities. I also picked up one more Vulnerability Locator [+Pha] in place of the Very Rare Phaser Relay and upgraded it to Mk XV.

Finally, I got a 5th Space Reputation Trait from my Fleet’s Research Lab. With that, I added Tyler’s Duality, a Tier 4 Discovery Reputation trait. It gives your ship extra Critical Chance based on your maximum hull.

PERFORMANCE

With those relatively few changes, how did combat turn out?

Let’s refresh what the DPS journey has been like the last few months.

Part 3 (the first parses): 15.07k and 11.87k, averaging 13.47k DPS.

Part 5: 22.37k and 16.46k, averaging ~19.42 DPS (+44.17% for the update and overall).

Part 6: 26.58k and 20.15k, averaging ~23.36k DPS (+20.29%; overall +73.42%).

Part 7: 30.22k and 25.32k, averaging ~27.77k DPS (+18.88%; overall +106.16%).

I will say this is the smallest increase yet on average, but it’s still an increase. This is also the 2nd set of parses where the smaller parse beats the larger parse of the previous run (like Part 5’s 16.46k beating Part 3’s 15.07k).

Enough of the hints, it’s time for results!

My goodness! That one player who did 150.7k is INSANE! Everyone doing 50k or more didn’t leave much for me to get, thus why my this is my last set of parses in Infected: The Conduit on Normal. final set of parses will be in Infected: The Conduit on Advanced difficulty (“ISA” from here on out).

The numbers keep climbing! With a better run of 34.30k (not quite a record but at the time of parsing it was the highest for the Canon Defiant) and a worse run of 28.22k, I had a 2-run average of 31.26k DPS! WE BROKE THE 30k BARRIER! This represents an update-to-update percent increase of 12.57%.

That is absurd, to me! Inside of 3 months, we’ve gone from just over 10k DPS to just over 30k, or more precisely an overall 132.07% increase in DPS!

WHAT WE’LL LEAVE BEHIND

We’ll say goodbye to the T6 Defiant and hello to a Fleet T6 Defiant for what I expect to truly be the final update to the Canon Defiant series. I’ve already made modifications, including adding in a console and swapping a weapon for something more efficient and perhaps still cosmetically fine. I’ll possibly make a few final upgrades before making another couple parses, but what I’m seeing so far from an unofficial parse is pretty decent:

This was the start of an ISA in the Fleet Defiant [T6].

Yes, I said, “…the start…”

On the right-most Transformer (from the perspective of the starting area), I got disconnected. I tried to get back in as quickly as I could. Come to find out, other players were also disconnected and coming back to the queue, and we were able to pick back up where we left off. Yay!

However, it meant I couldn’t really count this run as an official test. I feel, though, it shows the potential for yet another jump in DPS by the time Part 9 rolls around, most likely next month.

DEFIANT TO THE END!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and are looking forward to the true finale of the series. If it’s been of help, entertaining in any way (yes, I know, I’m a horrible player and this should probably be pulling 50k EASY), inspired you to get started or get upgraded, whatever! I’d love to hear from you as a reply to this post.

Until next time, may your ship upgrade swap-outs always end up with positive changes. 🙂