U.S.S. Frontenac

Legendary Temporal Operative Science Vessel

Released: 2022 - 12

Build Overview and Focus

For those who know my history within the DPS community, they would know me somewhat as a traditionalist when it comes to personal DPS. Support builds haven't really appealed to me for the bulk of my time playing. Its been a hurdle for me to come to the acceptance that dedicated builds which sole purpose is to boost another's build to higher damage is not only commonplace but is the de facto accepted method of getting personal DPS records within the last few years. 

Since both EPH and Tilor have their own support builds, I thought it time to return the favor and create one of my own. This is designed as its own support platform focused on supporting in close quarter combat, like that of HSE and ISE both. 

Build Purpose and Scope

This comes as inspiration from Spencer's own guide on ISE support exotics, however I've made some changes to accommodate for a more generalist build rather than a dedicated Torpedo assisting platform. The Glenn is one of three ships that have access to both command, temporal, and a commander science seat...with the other being the expensive and single character unlock Sh'vhal Temporal Science Spearhead and Voth Bastille Temporal Science Vessel. The Bastille however offers some issues when tackling the concept of support in that it lacks access to a Lt.C Command power. This limits its utility by not having access to either Suppression Barrage or Concentrate Firepower 3.

Command Seating:

Command Seating is modernly used for target outgoing damage debuff and torpedo assistance. By taking Concentrate Firepower 3, the build can now readily provide a huge damage buff to torpedoes on projectile builds as CF3 is a huge force multiplier. It is important here to only take CF3, since lower ranks of CF tend to override higher ranks which can result in a large damage loss for projectile builds.

The other facet of command is present Suppression Barrage. Since the Glenn is limited to a Lt.C seat, the only rank of SB that can be slotted is 1. I speak at lengths about how rank 3 can change the build aspect of tanks, however not all platforms people want to tank on carry commander command seating. Therefore having at least SB1 can be beneficial to a team which isn't as durable.

For all purposes of this build, flying with a dedicated and competent tank is the ideal. The best record setting runs with this platform have all been with the CF3 configuration, but the ability to swap to SB1 is a boon to the platform.

Temporal Seating:

Temporal seating is an interesting place. Most think of it as a source of additional exotic damage, of which it absolutely is. These powers often have an additional aspect, such as decreasing target damage. However temporal has an oft forgotten power in the form of Rapid Decay. This is an Aux Scaling -DRR debuff on a single target, which scales in time with entropy. Normally a dedicated dps build wouldn't touch this power, however on a support build where the personal damage isn't as big of a factor, this falls very nicely into the seating selection.

At the ships native 130 Aux Power Setting, Rapid Decay 1 2 and 3 provide -46, -60, and -74 target DRR respectively. This is a huge amount, being one of the largest single target bridge officer -DRR effects available.

However since the power only lasts 5s natively, it requires entropy to make useful. Higher rank builders get in the way of both higher rank Rapid Decay as well as higher rank gravity Well. Therefore I've chosen to pair this with Channeled Deconstruction 1. This is an Ensign temporal power that has its own exotic damage source, but also acts as an entropy builder supplying +1 every 2 seconds. After 10s then this would provide 5 entropy, which doubles the duration of Rapid Decay.

Alternatively to this combo, if the goal is to provide a durability buff to the group Chronometric Inversion Field is useful for giving targets an outgoing damage debuff.

Science Seating:

The last pillar of why the Glenn specifically was chosen is access to Gravity Well 3, and a few other science sources as well.

With the 400+ Control Expertise this build hits, this allows gravity well to be come a true Grabbity Well and suck up everything within a 12km. While normally you wouldn't want to take more than 400, more in this case does help as it makes the GW action much more snappy and makes everything tight nit. When an Exotic Build uses Delayed Overload Cascade, a stronger GW helps keep things together much better rather than blasting everything to the ends of the map. As well, having a tighter more snappy gravity well means any AOE targeted debuffs (such as sensor scan) can affect more targets in range.

Acquired from the mission Blood of Ancients, Destabilizing Resonance Beam is a meta exotic power. In this build however, we are more focused on that -5 DRR and -5% energy weapon damage debuff to targets hit by each pulse. Since this effect doesn't scale with higher ranks only rank 1 is needed.

Utility and other Support Choices:

Like EPH, I have chosen to build this on a science captain. While this isn't a critical factor as all professions have some level of team support, science offers the most. Engineering captains can cast EPS Power Transfer 3 onto other players to juice their power levels and tactical captains get Fire on my Mark (a large single target -DRR effect), Vulnerability Assessment and Tactical Fleet. However science captains get access to Sensor Scan, Scattering Field, and to a lesser degree Subnucleonic Beam 3.

Note: Using photonic fleet will spawn entities that consume concentrate firepower stacks, so be warned, this could reduce the performance of a torpedo ship.

The Consequence of Damage on a support

There is a bit of a debate around how much damage you want supports to do. Obviously in an ideal world some would want supports to do no damage, however after having flown this for a better part of a month I can say you do still want support builds to have damage. Being able to clean up a couple targets that the focused DPS ship missed is useful. 

Some would say that in the event of that the run should be scrubbed and tried again. However the way myself and the others at STOBetter play, we don't sit down and micromanage our runs to that extent. While it is a valid way to play the game and get records, we prefer to play as regular people might; just queuing up to do a thing and if we know we carry multiple things that don't stack (Tachyon Net Drones, Focused Frenzy, concentrate firepower, ect) we might just ask who gets first take on a target, but otherwise we don't necessarily plan our runs to any large extent.

The result of this is that we sometimes have DPS players with us who do run off and leave things. It is especially frequent when playing with DPS channel individuals who run single target BO or SS builds. As such this build does have the capacity to deal damage, and often parses at about 150-200k due to the nature of how many debuffs I stack on targets and how the various powers scale with the high aux needed to fuel the many sources of -DRR.

I don't go out of my way to build this for damage but a consequence of how myself and others play the game, having damage on this build has been a boon to its performance rather than a hinderance. As our group has improved, so too has the need to reduce the damage, 

Platform Choices:

As discussed earlier, the Glenn is one of three ships with Temporal and command and a Cmdr Science seat, with one of the three being ill-suited to using command powers for support and the other being a single character unlock for almost the same price as the tenth anniversary pack that the Glenn comes from. This therefore means that unless you want to spend large amounts this ship is almost exclusively limited to high rollers.

For this, the Glenn offers access to Temporal Specialization mechanics. Support Configuration is the go-to for this ship, granting +40 CtrlX (pushing the ship to a passive 418 CtrlX), as well as +10 max Aux power which just makes all the many aux scaling -DRR and damage powers that much punchier to use. This has an added benifit of reducing the outgoing weapon damage to help 'shift' the damage scaling in favour of the primary and secondary supported players.

This leads to two avenues for those seeking more budget options (since we would ideally like to have a lt.C command power always);

Sensor Analysis

Typically, Sensor Analysis is a damage increase for the ship using it. And in most cases I wouldn't ever recommend casting it on another player for the purposes of increasing healing to them (dedicated healers not withstanding). However Sensor Analysis offers something no other power does...it can be a pointer!

What I've taken to doing with this power is putting it on the player the team intends to try and set record for. Given Sensor Analysis creates a large arrow above the ship it can let me know the rough location of the supported player at all times. This is very useful when the map is full of explosions like in HSE, as the blinding mess that is warp core breaches can often obscure another players position. As well, the various PBAOE buffs on this build (namely Scattering Field and High-Energy Communications Network) are best used when in area of said player, and casting SA on them to get their general direction is another helpful way to maintain that buff on them.

Namesake

Frontenac has a long and storied history as a name. It is a common name for both locations and ships of French decent in the new world. Take the meaning of it from whatever storied place in history you want. I choose it from Frontenac Axis from the Thousand Islands.

Meta Analysis

Budget Analysis

Change History


Build Breakdown

Aimed as a pure support build, there is a very little focus on much else. However, since most support type consoles and powers also scale with EPG CtrlX or DrainX, the build runs 200+ in each of these skills. As well, a few of the consoles have +% exotic damage tacked on which further emphasizes the exotic leaning nature of this ship.

Skills

Skill Unlocks

Notes

Ayjei's tree is aimed towards DEWSci and the builds that come along with it, support included. He takes only a few points into engineering for power management and then the rest into damage. Of all my currently posted characters his is the most offensively tuned for the greatest flexibility, at the cost of personal durability which usually needs to be solved through consoles or bridge officer powers or even traits.

DrainX

Long ago I set out to craft a drain build...then some history happened and drains on targets in PvE broke and hasn't yet returned. I could very well respec but this is a part of the character's storied past I want to keep (also it is a very fun build to fly, even if its not super useful).

27 vs 26 Point Tactical ultimate

Since this is a support build it is once again reasonable to assume that 27 is the way to go. If I was to build this character as a totally dedicated support build and have them only do that, I would concede that 27 points into the tactical ultimate is useful. However that point has been allocated elsewhere, and I still believe that outside of super planned runs a person's cooldown reduction scheme is still important to focus on and should not be dependent on others to provide it for them.

Build

Starship Weapons

Notes

A weapon type I don't see much are polarized disruptors and probably for a good reason. Linking back to my days exploring drains, these were cheap weapons I upgraded for the use on a Drain Tank that never really flourished. However being the avid hoarder of all things they make a come back here.

From a support perspective, the best procs would be those that apply -DRR to targets. As such a few examples of weapon types that could be used:

There's a plethora of weapon types available here, so get creative and use a type you want. Finally worth noting, the Altamid Modified Plasma Omni has a guaranteed debuff on crit, but conflicts with the Gamma reputation Omni (also its 200 Lobi, which I don't have or want to spend).

Torpedo

The Resonant Transphasic Torpedo is one of three torpedoes I know of that carry an innate -DRR on target, the other two being the Nausicaan Energy Torpedo and the Delphic Distortion Torpedo. Of these the Resonant was the one on hand, but arguably the Delphic is better for this purpose. No real wrong choices here of the three so pick which you want if you wanted something less shield drain focused.

Realistically when flying with torpedo builds you want to avoid using a torpedo at all costs. However I've found having this shield drain torpedo to be very beneficial due to the damage incursion torps suffer from hitting shielded targets. I should also note you can just...not fire the torpedo and hang on to CF procs. You won't get another so long as you have it and can use the torpedo when the target paint wears off. 

Starship Equipment

Notes

Gamma 3pc is here to focus more on torpedoes and provide some passive team buffs. However the Iconian Space Set is an easy trade off with the intent to focus support an energy build. In the current configuration the entire build is more built towards torpedo support but I wouldn't call it a dedicated torpedo support ship outright due to how heavy the emphasis is on all damage reduction debuffs rather than just kinetic or physical.

Starship Consoles

Set Bonuses

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

There are several lockbox lobi and promo ships with support consoles. A compiled list with rankings can be found here. I've tried my best to also get a blend of both energy weapon aligned (Dominion Targeting Synchronizer) and projectile aligned (Deconstructive Resonance Emitter)to not bias the ship in any one direction so that I can take it along with anyone in random groupings without knowing ahead of time. There's some merit to slotting the Cutting Tractor Beam, giving the target an engine or shield offline. I however didn't see the shield offline very much and have dropped it in favor or other consoles.

You can usually guess what people are flying and make some substitutions but I've found its not needed for the most part. Additionally, while I don't have it, the Opening Salvo console scales with DrainX and can guarantee offline to target shields.

Budget Tweaks:

Because of the heavy reliance on consoles from other C-store ships I would call this an expensive ship, even if there isn't any lockbox lobi or promo ships needed. However on the support guide page we have lists of support consoles which are easy to change out. 

For those with the Vanguard Pack, the Polaron Particle Inverter can be used to fit the 2pc with the Dominion Targeting Synchronizer

Bridge Officers

Notes

As discussed, the primary reason for running the Glenn specifically is access to the Commander Science seat for large 12km range gravity wells, temporal powers for rapid decay and an entropy builder, and command seating for concentrate firepower. Other ships are capable of doing this but its few and far between.

While Structural Analysis is a huge debuff, it cannot be stacked on a target, which may interrupt a DPS players capability of use the power. Exotic builds will suffer the most from you running this.

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

Based on Spencer's video from almost year ago on the same platform, the current meta on supports is to load up on as many unconventional system triggers as possible to reduce consoles as much as possible. I however believe that there is the option to be a bit more nuanced in this approach, rather than just slotting as many as possible.

The combination of Rapid Decay and Channeled deconstruction can rotate and apply a -70 DRR for 10s every 25s, which is as far as I've found the single best debuff combination for a single target that can be found for bridhe officer combinations.

As much as I enjoy tachyon beam, it is very obviously the weakest part of this build. I personally prefer the shield stripping aspect of tachyon beam and the latent shield resistance debuff granted from Tachyon Dispersal but with Carrier Wave Shield Hacking granting a shield offline for 5s you can achieve the same result while picking up another control, for a much shorter time however. I've not had a chance to test this particular configuration much myself but I would recommend it to people looking for a sidegrade.

Traits

Personal Traits

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

The only trait I think is an obvious choice that I haven't taken is Resonating Payload Modifications. This is still bugged (and has been since day 1 of its release), given how absurd this can get at anywhere up to 25+ stacks. Feel free to use it but be aware of this (the interaction is specifically with mines so you should be free to ignore this), but you don't want the torpedo firing often anyway so it's really a catch 22 trait; either use it to bump number and risk stealing CF procs or don't and ignore the trait.

Expedient Repairs is another option that can be used here if you place the Aux2Sif on another player. I don't currently have it to use that but it is an option. Another common one I don't have is Psychological Warfare for the control effectiveness. This would best replace the Ablative shell

For tactical captains Coordinated Targeting Solution might also see some use by giving back FOMM if the target dies while its active, although Intelligence Agent Attache is perfectly capable of doing this same job for all captain powers.

Budget Tweaks:

For budget players who want to save some EC:

Starship Traits

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

While I have Cold Hearted available to me, using it requires Aux2Bat which removes aux power. Given how much of this build scales with aux its not worth the effective DRR trade off for a stacking -50. Ideally the tank would carry this and spread it with Ba'ul weapons so a support wouldn't have to worry about this. Alternatively a science ship with pilot such as the Equinox, Vulcan Experimental Scout Vessel, or the Mirror Crossfield Science Destroyer could be used with in conjunction with pilot seating.

Improved Gravity Well can also be a hinderance. Since it does apply a -DRR to the main target, I personally find it very useful. Large long lasting gravity wells can be applied tactically, and as such you don't just spawn it whenever its around. Best is to combine with a knowledgeable tank with a smaller shorter lived gravity well. For ISE I've found it best if the support opens with GW in the start, letting the tank take care of left / right and then the support applies once again on the gateway to suck up the map for the EPG or torp build to punch everything. Obviously there might be some tactics I'm not aware of not being part of the DPS channels myself but this is what I've found to be the best way to handle GW on this support build.

Budget Tweaks:

Thankfully all this stuff can be acquired from the C-store, but just to list out some of the traits that came to mind while building this:

Reputation Traits

Active Reputation

5th Slot here would ideally be the Tethered Non-Baryonic Asteroid to help clean up. This can be used in lieu of a gravity well on left and right in ISE. More Discussion on my tank build here.

Duty Officers

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

I haven't seen much talk on support doffs...maybe this is an unexplored option or theres just not very many noteworthy options.

Budget Tweaks:

Miscellaneous

Ship Stats

Keybinds and Piloting

I spoke about the opening rotation at the start of this page. I would refer to that for this section. Since I started playing I use key binds sparingly and manually activate most stuff so I don't have many macro or binds to speak of. This ship is almost entirely clickies so everything here is done manually aside from a few tactical power rotations

Opening Rotation:

Unlike most other ships I build where its just use all the offensive powers, the Glenn support build has an opener (for those unaware, this is a standard ability use that gets used at the start of every combat engagement). Before Engaging in combat Support Config is assumed to be turned on when entering the instance. 

The opening rotating is as follows:

For HSE, QSM can be used at the start in between steps 2 and 3 for larger and bigger damage GW. 

For ISE, QSM should be used to pull things up to the gateway (or the clump which the exotic boat is making).

Ideally we would put now activate some consoles. Beyond this it will be determined by the team speed. You might get a team where the DRB should be saved and used on another target or the team is still on the first group of enemies. This is where the judgement of a the pilot comes in. Regardless, this will take some practice and knowledge of your team composition.

Parse Breakdown

ISE Record Damage Breakdown

Portability

As discussed in the intro, the two big platforms that stand out are:

Pulling from Spencer's original video on the Glenn, some examples include but aren't limited too:

All of these are however just Lt.C command and Cmdr Science ships only. As such they lack access to the temporal debuffs, but are also capable of using the science seating for unconventional systems triggers.

A ship I would be curious to see this ported too would be the Allied Flight Deck Cruisers (Tellarite Pralim / Orion Blackguard / Suliban Silik) for the ability to slot the IFF Manipulator which is a -400 DRR on a target if you hit it on a single target. Since these have a Commander Engineering they are unlikely to be amazing in any aspect at support but they could potentially make a very handy support style tank.