Ircen Hydra

Tholian Jorogumo Carrier

Build Overview and Focus

In many games that I have played, I've always enjoyed the tanking or support roles. I get a sense of pride knowing I am lifting my teammates to victory. It's also a way I feel I can serve my friends and teammates. It's not as bright and flashy as a 1M DPS build, but there is something lifting up your teammates to new heights. 

Originally, my main was in a Tarantula as a tank. I supplied healing, damage, and a really big ship to follow ("What do we do in this one?" Follow the big ship!). As the game has progressed, healing allies has dropped off being needed. I have a dedicated tank on another character, but the Tarantula is still by far my favorite ship to fly. I really enjoyed the Recluse as a carrier with some really strong pets, but it was outclassed once the Jorogumo came available. With the "Annual Event," I was able to unlock the last Tholian ship I was missing - easily over 1B EC and by far not the most powerful ship. But it can take advantage of all of the toys Tholian ships have to offer, as well as put out 5 separate sources of Attack Pattern Beta with 4 Elite Meshweavers. Lots of potential to support, and with the Tarantula on kinetic support, an energy support only makes sense. 

Energy means most of my damage comes from energy weapons, but what is energy support? Specifically, I focus on increasing allies (and my own) damage through debuffs to enemies or buffs to allies. I also tend to trade a few "all damage" debuffs for specifically "energy" debuffs, though in general there are not a lot of trades of "all" for "energy" like there is for kinetic. 

Eventually, this build morphed into the defacto support for my fleetmates runs. As such, I chose to get the Mudd's bundle and account unlock the Jorogumo. This also meant that I had three "colors" of the Jorogumo, which are the same build but with slight variations, and the Captain powers also come into play. My friends call me crazy, but now I get to fly one of my favorite ships basically non-stop!

"I can be red, I can be blue, I can be Tactical too. 

I can be green, I can be purple, I can be anything you like..."

Namesake

This ship had a very recognizable 3-point look to it, and it reminded me of multiple heads of a hydra. Ircen is a town in a story I wrote a long time ago. 

Each of the three ships I now use across my account are Sapphire, Citrine, and Ruby Hydra. Sapphires are Blue (science captain), Rubies are Red (tactical captain), and Citrine is Yellow (engineering captain)

Meta Analysis

Budget Analysis

Each category is sorted by priority of contribution. Something that applies to generally more builds will be rated higher than archetype or build specific contributions. Warning: This is not a cheap build.

T6 C-Store Ships (6)

Legendary Ships - None

Event Items/Ships (7)

Lockbox Gear & Duty Officers (14)

Lobi Gear (1)

Lobi Ships - None

Lockbox Ships (2)

R&D Promotional Ships - None

Change History

Build Breakdown

The Ircen Hydra is really there for the support and the hangar. I make a few choices for flavor reasons, though it's not a full flavor build. 

Slotting Energy Weapons and Auxiliary to Battery means I am really going for energy weapon damage and debuffs (Cold-Hearted, Fire at Will, Entwined Tactical Matrices)

Skills

Since this skill tree is shared amongst many builds, I made a separate page for it and the discussion of it. 

Build

Starship Weapons

Red

Yellow

Blue

Starship Equipment

Notes

The primary focus for this build is energy support, though any allies will get a large amount of support from this build. I chose to go with Disruptors which have several procs for reducing damage resistance. 

The "old META" was the Iconian four piece set because of the limited selection of full 4 piece sets, and because of how strong the 3 and 4 piece bonuses were. Passive damage to the full team, and an active to give some extra "All Damage". I already had this set around long before this build, so it was almost a no-brainer to slot here. 

Devices are pretty standard, and most are situational for when I am not primarily supporting. Deuterium Surplus is for when I need maneuverability and Evasive Maneuvers and Emergency Power to Engines are on cooldown. The Energy Amplifiers are extra damage when needed. The Large Auxiliary Batteries are specifically for the web cannon, since I lose a lot of damage due to using Aux2Batt and draining my Aux. I make sure to use one of these before firing the Web Cannon. The Red Matter Capacitor is really just filler, but the extra power boost is nice in a pinch. 

There are a lot of clickies (Universal Consoles with a power you can "click" and use on demand), and as such, Unconventional Systems is really strong and drives a lot of powers and equipment choices. There are 15 consoles across the 3 builds, and each Jorogumo can slot 14 consoles. Rather than make you play "spot the difference", the blue support is on my Carrier character which has a Mirror Engle. The weakest support clicky (in my opinion) was Hostile Acquisition, especially since quite a few of the others are account unlocks. With the release of the Vovin, it's ability to cut down cooldowns on all these consoles is second-to-none. There's no special synergies here, every console is a support clicky that I've analyzed in my support presentation.

Finally, the pets are exclusive to Tholian ships, but they each have Attack Pattern Beta III and interact with the Jorogumo's unique console, so they are tough to beat. 

Starship Consoles

Set Bonuses

Bridge Officers

Notes

Bridge Officer Power Selection is something that has the largest swing in any build. If you don't pick your BOff powers correctly (and drag them to tray), you won't do anything. Each one of these has been hand-picked to interact with every aspect of the build for maximum performance. You'll see no duplicates here, cooldowns are managed so that maximum uptime is achieved with one copy of each power. There's not room for more than one!

...well, except for Auxiliary to Battery, but that's simply how that power works best as a cooldown

Traits

Personal Traits

Red

Yellow

Blue

Starship Traits

Reputation Traits

Active Reputation

Duty Officers

Miscellaneous

Ship Stats