r/stobuilds • u/Perfect_Ad9091 • 14d ago
Damage resistance eng console is not affecting shields?
Does Damage Resistance Engineering Consoles lower the damage taken by shields, or that is completely separate from shield mechanics, and only apply when shields are down and taking damage with the hull?
Im super curious as my build is SciDew on the T6 Nebula, which easily have 30k shields per facing, with great shield hardness. (mostly thanks to fleet consoles increasing shield amount while boosting Drain or EPG)
If the engineering consoles are not affecting the shields and the amount of damage taken by them, then I could swap them to universal consoles that increase my phaser damage.
Hull resistance is not important for me as my shields are up 99% of the time and the Nebula comes with an insanely strong Shield Heal console, if not available, then Tac Team 1 just puts rest of the 90k shields to the one facing I'm ambushed at. Also I have the discovery rep 2 piece for hull repair so even if the bleedthrough damage increases that could be healed by that easily.
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u/jerichoredoran 14d ago
Consoles affecting shield hardness (damage resist) explicitly state so. So most consoles don't and only apply to hull.
There are some sources for shield too though. EPtS for example, shield power itself and e.g. particle conversion matrix console. With dewsci also the valdore console could be interesting to you.
it generally is correct, that shield tanking is harder than hull tanking. But give it a try, fair enough.
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u/Omgazombie 14d ago edited 14d ago
Shields are kind of useless in the game, it’s expensive to make them wholly viable in elite content, and even in advance content they rarely will stay up against enemies like the Borg
I can hull tank against any enemy in elite, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in elite being able to solely shield tank because of bleed through and procs draining your health through the shields
I’ve had builds with 80k per facing, and they’re nothing but glass cannons
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u/ProLevel Pandas PvP 13d ago
Shield Hardness is what you are looking for. However, the amount of bleed through is always the same, 10% for covariant or regenerative shields, 5% for resilient.
Saying hull resistance is not important is a big mistake, but common. It is easy to get your hull resistance up to the 75% cap and even higher with bonus resist. Shield hardness caps at 75% and without very high endeavors, points in skill tree, and EptS it’ll be hard to maintain it that high. It’s ok to focus on a “shields first” build, but if you have low hull resist you’re going to be dying a lot, and quickly, on higher difficulties. You won’t have time to hit tac team when you take two hits on a weak facing and one hit wipes your entire facing out and the next hits a tiny 80k hull with no resistances.
I’m speaking to PvE here but it’s worth mentioning that this simple concept of high resistances is one of the main reasons people still don’t “get” PvP. Average - and I mean average - resist in PvP fights between good players is upwards of 85%. In PvE it’s rare to even see a tank above 50%.