Editorials

We’re adding this section to help explain our stances and decisions as needed. 

July 2025

Revised Stance on Bugged/Disruptive/Known Change-Pending items

STOBETTER has adopted a stance on not introducing new items into our builds/tools under the following criteria:

1. It is within 1 year of release AND is (either severely bugged or significantly disruptive to existing builds, as defined by tested results of 30% increase at 1M+ baseline DPS from a single item or higher) AND costs real money to obtain OR

2. The developers of Star Trek Online have stated intent to nerf the item. 

We do this to avoid recommending an item that people spend money on, only for the developers to nerf/change that item later and player investment does not retain value. There have been many examples in the past that have fallen into this category (Tholian Webspinner, Neutronic Eddy Generator, Plasma Embassy consoles). If that means we're not at the cutting, bleeding edge of the meta, well, we've never lived there anyway, just been occasional guests, and STO hasn't increased its difficulty threshold significantly in years, meaning that the ways we build are still more than fine for general Elite TFO play. All items we are currently avoiding will be listed below. 

Current blacklist:

• Krenim Chronophage, until, because stated intention from the devs to nerf it. 

• Hellbore Light for the same reason

October 2024

ISE/HSE meta versus general play

Our builds trend towards effectiveness across a variety of general Elite TFOs rather than specializing on pushing the highest possible numbers on ISE or HSE. We do use organized runs and team compositions on the benchmark maps for the bulk of our build evaluation, but we are not tailoring to those specific TFOs. We take a build concept and/or a ship and push it as hard as we can with our team compositions, build knowledge, and piloting skill. Most of our builds do well on the benchmark maps, but are also suited for general Elite-difficulty play without modification. Statistical analysis of uploaded parses suggests that 15% or less of players who've ever touched the TFO system and had a parse uploaded are above 300K and a scant few hundred are above 1M DPS. To get into the specialized, optimized DPS-chasing build territory, the builds get very narrowly defined and extremely tailored to that map. Our setups aren't as specialized and we're getting up there. Most STO players aren't just chasing DPS by building solely for ISE/HSE and we're not either. Many techniques or build strategies that can work in those isolated scenarios, like outsourcing all survivability or even cooldown reduction, don't work on other maps so we actually find some "peak meta" strategies counter-productive to general Elite play. This is also why we don't adjust loadouts in the briefing phase to stack buffs from consoles or traits and then unslotting them prior to entering combat. 

This is why Tilor and Eph289 are now testing their (non-support) builds on ISE, HSE, and solo, deathless ISA. Starter-tier builds are being tested in conjunction with a support tank on ISA, as it's not realistic for a solo, deathless ISA from a starter tier build. This last test removes all volatility associated with teamplay and forces them to account for survivability, cooldowns, and debuffs to better support and validate a build’s usefulness for general Elite play rather than just teamplay on ISE/HSE. We've said this before, but organized ISE/HSE only is not our focus. 

Our Reddit Footprint

In 2024, Tilor’s reddit account was hacked and banned. Reddit was thoroughly unwilling to help, so everything previously submitted by him is gone, and so we have transferred all of his content to our site. In the future, we’re considering copying all of our content that is only on reddit onto stobetter to avoid this inconvenience going forward. This also means Tilor no longer has a reddit presence. Please reach out to Eph289 (/u/Eph289) or Jay (/u/Jayiie) in the future.

EDIT: Tilor has at least partial reddit functionality back. 

Site Criticism

We welcome suggestions and constructive criticism of our site. For example, Cell1pad suggested some specific tips to improve our Gateway to Gre’thor vods. We pulled the 3 we had finished from our queue, added some VO to them, and updated them. Westmetals suggested a Carrier Traits Tier list and we added that in 2024 after beefing up our own carrier knowledge. Sometimes, we’ll decline to accept a suggestion. For example, DivisionMuEpsilon asked if we were interested in deriving the full damage equation with its radial falloff for Technical Overload, which has some PvP implications and we declined. 

That said, when providing feedback, it’s important to remember to “speak the truth in love.” The tone and truthfulness of the conversation matters. We’re volunteers and all of the testing and write ups we do are a passion project, not a second job. There’s an awful lot of meanness and rudeness on the internet, so if you’re providing feedback or asking a content creator (not just us, anyone) to do something for you, please ask kindly and speak truthfully in your criticism. We get if we’re not your thing, but at least . . . be honest.