Obsidian Beacon

Tholian Tarantula Dreadnought Cruiser

Build Overview and Focus

As of March 2025, this page is outdated and no longer being updated. Check out my Jorogumo for a current support build, or my Heavy Tank Tarantula for a current Tarantula build. 

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 satisfying about taking tons of damage and just shrugging it off. 

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 this is still by far my favorite ship to fly. As such, it has turned into a Energy + Kinetic Support build. 

Energy means most of my damage comes from energy weapons, but what is Kinetic 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 "Kinetic" debuffs. This isn't a high-end torpedo support since I also have a torpedo stealing Concentrate Firepower, but this supports exotic builds and torpedo builds to a significant degree. Many exotic powers as well as torpedoes are kinetic damage types. 


Namesake

This ship is meant to be a flagship for others to follow, and is there to benefit the team. It has a history of being a guide to fleetmates in other queues... "Follow the big ship". So, covered in a looming, dark skin, we get the Obsidian Beacon

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 (4)

Legendary Ships - None

Event Items/Ships (2)

Lockbox Gear & Duty Officers (13)

Lobi Gear (1 x 200 lobi)

Lobi Ships - None

Lockbox Ships (1)

R&D Promotional Ships - None

Change History

Build Breakdown

The Obsidian Beacon is a big ship. It's hard to miss. This makes it a great tool to lead others to victory, simply follow the "Giant Drillbit". I also focus heavily on sources of -DRR, specifically "All" or "Kinetic". There is a little bit of team buffing, but primarily debuffs. 

The Tholian Mesh Weavers are fantastic for support, with each sporting Attack Pattern: Beta III. I also have a full suite of Energy weapons to spread around Cold Hearted and Altamid procs (-15 Kinetic and Plasma DRR). 

The Tarantula can also tank in a pinch, mostly because of being a large hull and and Engineering captain. 

It's also Tholian, and every Tholian ship I fly must sport the Web Cannon (and newer Webspinner).

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

Starship Equipment

Notes:

The primary focus for this build is Kinetic Support. As such, I am differing from the normal energy weapons on supports (Disruptors). Altamid Plasma has a chance of -15 Kinetic and Plasma DRR. The Altamid Omni (Lobi) that I have always procs on a critical hit, so this has pretty good uptime. The Experimental Romulan beam still has the disruptor proc available, while still doing Plasma damage. This would be a more budget-friendly way to mimic this build with Plasma weapons. The Lukari Plasma beam has a 5% proc for healing in an AoE. The Dark Matter torpedo is a "token" torpedo. What this means is that it's there to trigger many other abilities. You'll see many supports not wanting a torpedo to not "steal" Concentrate Firepower. However, this one has a DoT that triggers Atrophied Defenses, will use Torpedo Spread so I can use Entwined Tactical Matrices as a way to get 100% uptime on Fire at Will, and trigger the Gamma Deflector. The Nukara Mines are more on theme than anything, but the hold will benefit anyone running the Tholian Webspinner. 

For the Drive Train, I went for the Gamma 3pc for the team Kinetic damage, but also the deflector for the -DRR kinetic damage when firing torpedoes. The other pieces are mostly just there for the set bonus. The 4pc wasn't strong enough for me to slot all 4 pieces, so the shield was the easy choice to replace with the Tilly shield, which increases shield damage. 

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 Exotic Batteries and Beam Batteries 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. 

Each piece of equipment is covered in the table below, but the highlights are the Torment Engine and Web Cannon as these are some of my favorites for this build. 

Finally, the pets are exclusive to Tholian ships, but they each have Attack Pattern Beta III so they are tough to beat. 

Starship Consoles

Set Bonuses

Bridge Officers

Meta 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

Starship Traits

Reputation Traits

Active Reputation

Duty Officers

Miscellaneous

Ship Stats