Ground DPS Basics

Damage Categories 

Full credit should be extended to Markus in the STOBuilds Discord for writing out and explaining the equation, which is similar-but-not-identical to the space one, and originally documented on the STO League website.

Just as in space, there are five broad categories of damage that are separate multipliers that are applied to the base damage of a kit or weapon to increase or amplify its damage. 

1. Damage, sometimes called Category 1 (Cat1), is the most common source, since damage increases from Skills, Mark, and Rarity (for weapons and many kits), and Kit Performance (kits only) fall into this group. If you see an item that provides +____ Damage (e.g. Phaser), it usually falls into this category. Unlike space, weapon mark is over-valued in that all other damage increases are de-rated at 75% benefit.  Standard weapon mods [CrtH, CrtD, KB, DOT] provide 2% increase for each mod; [Dmg] is its own thing, as are a number of other special mods. 

2. Bonus Damage, sometimes called Category 2 (Cat2), largely comes from traits, certain kit modules, flanking damage (default is 50% damage), and also includes Critical Hit Chance (CrtH) and Critical Severity (CrtD) in the following term (1+sum(Bonus Damage) + CritH * CrtD).

3. Armor/Shield Penetration reduces enemy resistance. Armor and Shield Penetration are applied differently depending on whether or not you're hitting a shielded target or not. In practice, most heavily-shielded ground targets are better dealt with via shield-bypassing weapons and ground modules, so shield penetration is substantially less valuable on ground than space. 

4. Final Damage comes from [Dmg] mods on weapons as well as well as a . Each [Dmg] mod is a 3% final multiplier, stacking multiplicatively. An Epic weapon has another [Dmg] mod built in as well. There is also a weapon type multiplier which adds another multiplier based on the weapon attack type (see the link above) and a ranged multiplier, along with some variance. This only applies to weapons. 

The damage equation for ranged ground weapons is thus as follows:

Final damage = Base damage * (1 + Weapon Mark damage increase + 0.75*sum(Damage buffs + 0.25 * Weapon Proficiency Skill) + 0.02 * # of Weapon Mods) * (1 + sum(Bonus damage buffs)) * (Resistance modifiers) * 1.03^(# of [Dmg mods)) * Other final mods

Knowing the equation is not essential to doing well on the ground, but it does help put things in perspective, for example why Cat1 buffs are less valued than Cat2 given that you'll already have a lot of Cat1 from weapon mark, and Cat1 bonuses are only 3/4s as effective as equivalent Cat2.

Expose/Exploit

Ground weapons in Star Trek Online are classified as either Expose or Exploit. Expose attacks (typically a secondary mode) have a chance to make targets vulnerable to Exploit attacks, which by default add 200% Cat2 (Bonus) damage. An Exploit attack consumes the Expose debuff. There are a variety of methods to increase Expose chance or Expose enemies, including (but not limited to)

• Dangers to the Alliance personal trait, which exposes the highest rank enemy within 30 meters by default for 8 seconds

• Expose weapons have a chance of exposing enemies with their secondary attacks. This is a low % and generally unreliable

• Armory Officer duty officer which doubles Expose chance from the Phoenix Box

• Any number of kit modules

• Target Optics Tactical Captain ability

• Tricorder Scan Science Captain ability

There are also methods to increase Exploit damage, such as the Covert personal trait (10% exploit increase), or Expose duration (example: Xindi Kits with [ExpDur] mod).

But how do you know when the target is Exposed? It's hard to tell at first, but once you know what to look for, it's fairly obvious. You're looking for a big orange debuff marker on your target and then . . . wham, you hit them with the Exploit attack. By default, the "G" key targets the nearest Exposed enemy.

The orange round symbol, which unfortunately looks like Fire On My Mark's debuff, is the Expose symbol.

Does it matter? In the current state of the game, not much. A good Exploit combo is more of a nice-to-have rather than something to chase. Kit-based damage doesn't care about Expose/Exploit, although many kits have a chance to expose, and not all of the top-tier ground weapons are Exploit. Moreover, swapping weapons mid-fight just to get off a juicy Exploit attack is something that's theoretically possible but rarely done. 

Benchmarks

If you want to measure the results of your hard-earned build optimizing, here are the two standard maps accepted by the community for DPS benchmarks:

• Bug Hunt Elite sends you through a series of caves infested with blue-gills (bugs) while protecting a Demolitions Expert. You must have 5 players on the team to run this map. If the Expert dies, the mission fails.

• Nukara Trans-dimensional Tactics pits you against waves of Tholians, including their project leader, on the inhospitable world of Nukara.

Complete either map with CombatLog enabled and parse the results, typically with a third-party parsing tool like SCM or CLR to see how you measure up. This site prefers using BHE measurements. In our estimation, 1000K BHE DPS is decent, roughly comparable to 300K ISE DPS in space and capable on any Elite Ground TFO. 1.5K DPS would be considered very capable, approximately equivalent to 500K ISE and capable of carrying ground Elite TFO maps, and 3K would be roughly analogous to 1M DPS ISE (or higher). 

Ground DPS Build Anatomy

Types of Builds

Ground builds, as far as we can tell, don't have easy classifications like space builds do for things like CSV, Exotic, etc. While we're woefully unqualified to do so, we had to come up with some kind of classification page to name our pages so it wasn't just "Tac 1, Tac 2, Eng 1, Eng 2, Eng 3...". 

• Assault builds are focused more weapons and weapon-based effects. 

• Fabricator builds are focused around constructs and/or drones. Stereotypical "bunker builds" fall into this category for engineers.

• Mage builds are focused heavily around offensive/control-based kits

• Support builds emphasize buffing the team, debuffing enemies, or healing allies. 

• Hybrid builds are a mixture of the above.

• Melee builds exist but we don't cover them.

Most popular meta DPS builds are either Mage builds or Hybrids depending on how you classify certain kits. Remember, the kit is king.

Career

Career tends to matter much more on ground than it does in space due to many kit modules being restricted based on career, though the prevalence of powerful universal kit modules has diluted that somewhat. 

Powerful Mage/Hybrid builds can be made on any career, so if that's your bent, it matters less. Tactical and especially Science have the most powerful damage-dealing kit modules that are career-specific, but Engineers also have one of the single best offensive kit modules in the game (Anchor of Gre'thor) to make up for it somewhat.  Assault (weapon-focused) builds lend themselves much more strongly to Tactical and to a lesser extent Engineers. If you're into Fabrication, there are enough universal kit modules that summon drones, mines, and turrets to make such a build on any career, but Engineers are the best at it. Support builds are best-suited for Tactical or Science due to having +damage to team or -DRR captain abilities. We discuss those more in our Ground Support Basics guide. In terms of which career has the overall highest ceiling, Engineers have the current record on Bug Hunt Elite, but that was with a very specialized build and team composition. For sure, both Tactical and Engineers have parses over 10K DPS, and even just 1.5-2K DPS is enough to handle every Elite Ground TFO if each team member is at that level.

Species

This area can matter, but it also . . . doesn't make a huge difference. Aliens get an extra trait slot, which is always powerful. Bajorans get the Creative trait built in. Andorians get increased damage at lower health. Jem'Hadar Vanguards gain additional damage. There are some other more fun/themed racial traits out there, but they have a small impact overall. 

Skills

The standard meta approach would be to take all the points in Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Penetration, Weapon Criticals, Kit Performance, and Kit Efficiency, eschewing all defensive skill points. If you want to take more defensive stats, especially on a mage build, keep Kit Performance Kit Efficiency maxed, and take a point in Endurance Training and Armor Expert or Personal Shields, but I wouldn't drop more than 2 or 3 points at the very maximum on defensive skills. 

Specialization

If you're doing dedicated ground content like a TFO, Temporal Operative (primary) and Commando (secondary) are the undisputed best. Here's why:

Temporal Operative passively provides up to 50 passive Kit Performance, decreases the defenses of enemies affected by damage-over-time effects, amplifies your damage-over-time effects, lowers your kit cooldowns via 10% recharge haste, adds temporary HP on use of kits, and lowers the cooldown on secondary firing modes.

Commando passively provides up to 20% weapon/melee damage, lowers the cooldown on secondary firing modes, reduces kit cooldowns by 20%, adds 5% CrtH while aiming, gives regeneration while crouching, and adds significant HP/ShieldHP. 

None of the other specs come close to providing that much offensive benefit. 

Primary Weapon

Note: Some testing/results informed by testing done by DrHusten. We have not tested or evaluated all weapons; there are dozens of weapons and most of them are similar.

When it comes to ranged ground weapons, there are broadly-speaking some standout top-tier weapons, several situationally very effective weapons, several classes of highly-effective weapons, and several classes that should largely be avoided. This guide again, does not cover melee, but the Mind Meld Device from the Discovery reputation is reputed to be the best. With kits being so heavily emphasized in current ground content, weapon selection matters much less if you're not focused on weapon damage. In general, you want a weapon that has an AOE effect at least on its secondary and preferably an exploit as well. 

Standouts

• Plasma Wide Beam/Split Beam/Piercing Beam Rifles - (Crafted, Wide Beam and Piercing Beams come from Vendors) the secondary on this is an AOE damage Exploit attack. If you're using Romulan Imperial Navy, the +Plasma damage is an appreciable damage increase for these and Romulan characters can get an additional +Plasma through traits. This is the most accessible of the options.

• Phaser Full Auto Rifle (Dsc) (Lobi) differs from the standard Phaser autorifle by having a different primary fire. It is widely considered one of the best weapons in the game and looks fairly conventional as far as space guns go. Unfortunately, it is rather expensive since it costs 50 Lobi.

• MACO Pulse Rifle (22c) (Lobi Store) is another Lobi weapon similar to the Full Auto Rifle. Its proc gives a 5% chance to increase most ground skills by 25, which is quite nice. Furthermore, if the tooltip is correct, its primary attack appears to be an Exploit. 

• Boolean Heavy Cannon (Lobi) is a large single-target damage burst weapon. It has a very long cooldown on its attacks, especially the secondary AOE cylindrical fire, but it is good at doing long cooldown burst damage, mostly to a single target.

• Portable Phaser Cannon Special Issue (Lobi) is similar to the Boolean Cannon, but you need to charge up the secondary attack (hold secondary fire button) and then release to fire it up to 3 times depending on how many charges were stored up. 

• Advanced Herald Antiproton Beam Projector (Lobi) has some advantages in that its primary attack chains to up to 2 additional targets and the secondary attack is a large AOE.

• Advanced Temporal Defense Dual Pistols (Temporal Reputation) are not that different from other dual pistols but have very long range (35m compared to standard 25m) and have a single-target Exploit attack on their secondary fire as well as an AOE attack on their tertiary, which requires firing 7 times to build up the attack prior to use. 

Situationally Very Good

• Kuumaarke Visionary Gesture-Driven Charged Particle Conductor (Event) with the 4-piece. If you build around this set, it's probably best to go for either 2 or 4-piece, which means including the weapon. The weapon itself is okay, but can be used as a secondary in favor of something more powerful

• Section 31 Heavy Assault Rifle (Event) has a unique sweeping beam secondary attack that pairs extremely well with the Covert Assault Drone kit module. If you're using this weapon, for the love of all that is good and right, acquire a Covert Assault Drone and enjoy the bzzzt plus the pewpewx500.

• Replica Thompson Submachine Gun (Event/Captain Picard Bundle) deals AOE damage on the primary attack, even more AOE damage on the secondary attack and, since it deals physical damage, bypasses shields. Additionally Borg can't adapt to this weapon, making it the premier anti-Borg weapon. Unfortunately, access to it is either trivial (Event reclaim) or ludicrously expensive. Also pairs well with the Covert Assault Drone.

• TR-116B Sniper Rifle (Crafted/Exchange) is a poor man's Thompson since it also bypasses shields via kinetic damage and can't be adapted to. It does have higher range, but lower DPS. The secondary mode is mostly useful for sniping distant targets that you can't reach yet for closer-range but more effective attacks.

• Breen Cryoshaper Thermal Depletion Pistol with the 3-piece (Event) has an AOE damage secondary attack and with the 3-piece fires very, very fast. Don't use otherwise. 

• Hyper Compressed Cryo Launcher (Nukara Reputation) - most Pulse Waves aren't great, but if you can get close to large groups of enemies, this has some potential. 

Broadly Decent/Good

These classes of weapons tend to have AOE secondary attacks and while there are some small variations between various types of procs, they're largely the same. Advantages would go to weapons that have useful procs (Example: Krieger Wave have a chance to increase KPerf, Ba'ul Antiproton gain additional AOE), or contribute to meaningful set bonuses which we'll discuss below.

• Split Beam / Multibeam Rifles

• Assault Miniguns

• Terran Task Force High Density Beam with its larger AOE on secondary

• Auto Rifles

• Split Beam Pistol

• Dual Pistols

Broadly Bad Unless Specific Variant Listed Above

There are other lesser-known, one-off weapons as well that we haven't tested or seen tested.

• Sniper Rifles

• Compression Pistols

• Stun Pistols

• Blast Assaults

• Wide Beam Pistols

• Pulsewave Assaults

• Martian Mining Laser

Ground Sets: Armor, Shield, Secondary Weapons, Etc.

When considering your armor and personal shield, in keeping with principle #1 (Damage gets the job done), consider what offensive benefits the gear item brings, as well as how effective it is at keeping you alive. To a lesser extent, this applies to your secondary weapon as well. For the most part, secondary weapons serve three purposes in STO:

1) If you're using a powerful secondary firing mode on one weapon, put the weapon you shoot in "regular mode" in your primary slot and switch to the secondary when its cooldown is up. In practice, most secondary firing modes can generally be reduced to a pretty low cooldown through traits and specializations and this is usually more micro-management than is warranted.

2) If you're using different weapons for different enemies (read: Borg/Elachi). Having that TR-116B or Thompson handy when you need it keeps it out of the bank when the drones start closing in. In practice, you could just swap the weapon in on maps with Borg, but some people like having all their employed gear ready to go. Too bad there aren't ground loadouts.

3) For a set bonus. This is the path that people will take if they're optimizing for ground, as this lets you run a powerful 2-piece or 3-piece set bonus and since you basically never use the secondary weapon, might as well get some stats out of it.

Just like with weapons, there are a few possible set bonuses/combos that are worth mentioning. We're not going to cover all the not-good ones:

Universally Good

• Burnham's CQC Armor (Discovery Reputation) is sought for its 10% Critical Hit Chance boost and 20% CrtD boost, but also has better survivability than Fleet Armor. This is the preferred option. 

• Na'kuhl Temporal Operative Shield (Mission Reward: The Temporal Front) is favored with its 2-piece (via secondary weapon) because not only does the shield have a passive that makes you temporarily immune to damage, the 2-piece brings 2% CrtH and 30% CrtD

It's hard to go wrong with the Burnham's Armor/Na'kuhl Shield and Na'kuhl secondary weapon for the mix of offensive and defensive stats and both are readily accessible. That said, if you want a spicier setup, keep reading:

Situationally Good

• Advanced Fleet Recoil Compensating Armor (Fleet Starbase) is sought after for its 80% boost to Critical Severity. Typically [ResAll]x2 [HP] [CrtD] is the preferred mod combo. Be aware that this armor has lower survivability.

• Privateer's Combat Armor (Lobi Store) is expensive at 200 Lobi, but provides lots of Kit Performance and Readiness on an armor. It has low survivability, mostly in the form of dodge and a holographic distraction decoy.

• Kuumaarke Visionary Armor/Shield/Kit Module/Weapon (Event) has both powerful set bonuses and solid effects. The armor has an instant-restore shields button. The shield has a passive 10 second damage immunity (60 second recharge) when shields go offline. The 2-piece set bonus adds 25% of your Shield Capacity to your Hit POints. Offensively, with the weapon slotted, you can consume shields to deal electrical damage damage and gain 200 Kit Performance on your next kit module, which is fairly insane. When you are at full shields, the 2-piece causes you to sacrifice 25% Shields to get +100 Kit Performance on your next attack. With the 3-piece, you gain a cone attack that zaps enemies (and your allies' retinas) repeatedly, for total of 5 + KPerf/25 zaps. If you're slotting this set, my recommendation is either 2-piece (which also brings 25 Kit Performance), or else go all the way to 4-piece to get an additional 50 KPerf and boost the max health increase, shield heal, and the KPerf from the 2-piece. This set is very visually busy, but it's quite powerful.

• Breen Cryoshaper (Winter Store) is decent for cold-themed characters using its pistol, but is only useful with the 3-piece. 

• Romulan Imperial Navy (Mission Reward: Uneasy Allies) has a passive on the armor that grants secondary attacks 50% more damage and its 2-piece provides 30% critical severity while aiming. The 3-piece is not worth running. 

• Omega Force (Omega Reputation, 3-piece), Gamma Concerted Armaments (Gamma Reputation, 2-piece), and Iconian Resistance Elite (Iconian Reputation 3-piece) have their uses for their teamwide buffing effects. Omega Force (3-piece) and Gamma Concerted Armaments (2-, 3-piece) both stack. We cover these more in Ground Support Basics but if you do a lot of teamed content, you could put them on your captain.

• Furtive Perseverance (Mission Reward: Survivor) has a 2-piece bonus that gives 10% CrtH / 20% CrtD while stealthed and not moving, doubled while also crouching, and 5% Kit Readiness. The 3-piece bonus adds 25 KPerf and a chance to apply Ambush (which will re-stealth you). You need to have a low cooldown stealth to make this work and it's fairly difficult to pull off, but the rewards are decent if you do.

Devices

Out of all the devices in the game, there are only a few that are truly consequential. Most combat pets do not qualify; use them if you like them and have them, but generally don't expect much out of them. Here's the highlights:

• Large Kit Overboosters are crafted from the Kits & Modules R&D, spammable (10 second duration/15 second cooldown) and are both a substantial boost to Kit Performance as well as a kit recharge mechanic since they reduce kit cooldowns by 37.5% a few seconds after use. We'll discuss that further below.

• Gambling Devices are expensive since they're originally from the Lobi Store and can also be sold on the Exchange. If you win, you get 10% CrtH, 10% CrtD, and +15 Dodge for an hour. If you lose, the same stats are subtracted. 

• Dosi Rotgut - this is a consumable that's somewhat hard to come by since requires a doff chain and the Tulaberries commodity but if you're really optimizing on the ground, you take a shot of this to get a bunch of CrtD prior to running your DPS map. It's not usable in combat, so you'd take a drink at the start and then swap it out.

• Pahvan Healing Crystal - this is a mission reward from "Illusion of Communication" that gives a teamwide heal. It's basically Vascular Regenerator (heal-over-time) for the team, and it's non-consumable so you can use it over and over again (1 minute cooldown).

• Tribbles share a cooldown with the Gambling Device, but are much cheaper. There are lots of them, but the best benefits in descending order are from Rainbow (Teamwide stacking CrtH, Summer Event), Daring (5 KPerf, 1% Kit Readiness), Solanae (1% CrtH), or Andorian on a cold build (2% Bonus Cold Damage). Only 1 may be active at a time and they will consume food items slotted to create more Tribbles. There are some other rarer ones which give bonuses, but these are both easy to get and effective compared to something like IDIC Tribble which is a Zen Store purchase for less benefit.

• Paradox Corrector is a device from Delta Recruitment that revives you and all fallen teammates, restoring 50% HP. This is most useful on Arena of Sompek but can help keep you alive on otherTFOs or missions as well. More of a nice-to-have than essential.

• Large Hypos are a single-use burst heal that can be crafted. Unlike the Pahvan Healing Crystal, they heal a large amount in a singular use, but they're also consumed on use. They share a cooldown with other batteries/hypos/healing crystal.

Kit Frame

The Kit Frame is one of the bigger stat-boosting items on your build, so selecting a good one is important, especially since the vast majority of them cannot be re-engineered. The most important stats on a Kit Frame are as follows:

• Kit Performance [KPerf] helps amplify all your kit modules, and kit is king

• [CrtX] provides both critical hit chance and severity

• [KCD] provides kit readiness, which situationally can be helpful

• [WpnDmg][WpnPen][WpnCriticals] improve the damage, armor/shield penetration, and critical hit/chance of your weapons, which will obviously impact builds that rely on weapon damage more.

• Other damage-type specific bonuses like Plasma are helpful too if building around them.

Risian Kits

The undisputed best kit in the game comes from the Summer Event Store and is called the Risian Kit (not Andorian or Vulcanology). It's powerful because you can re-engineer it to [KPerf]x3 [Proc][KPerf/Wpn], which is the largest amount of Kit Performance on a kit in the game and again, remember that kit is king. The proc also has increase weapon damage and a chance of triggering other Risian kit modules based on using Risian kit modules. 

In order to maximize this kit's potential, you must do the following IN ORDER: 1) Buy the kit (1,000 Lohlunat Favors), 2) Place it in the upgrade window to get it to Mk XII Very Rare but DO NOT ADD UPGRADES, 3) Re-engineer the kit until it's [KPerf]x2 [Proc], 4) NOW you can upgrade it. It will be [KPerf]x3[KPerf/Wpn] at Epic.

Honorable Mention

• Romulan Imperial Navy is the easiest to get since it's a mission reward from the "Uneasy Allies" mission has guaranteed mods that include [CrtX] and Plasma Damage. Getting one with [KPerf] is an utter crapshoot from replaying that mission and getting one with [KPerf]x2 is the equivalent of finding a unicorn. The 2-piece adds a significant bonus (30%) to Critical Severity while crouching, so if you're using this kit, it's best to use a Plasma Weapon and crouch a lot.

• Breen Cryoshaper comes from the Winter Event Store and is decent in that it has both 2 [KPerf] mods and [KCD], but shines if you're building specifically around Cold damage since it has a passive increase to cold damage. The 3-piece bonus has value in that it drastically increases the firing speed of the pistol

• Frontier Kits have a 12.5% chance to trigger a different kit module effect based on career. Tacticals get Rally Cry II, Engineers get Beam Turret, and Science gets Exothermic Induction Field. Out of those, Tactical or Science has the stronger effect, but since these come from the Exchange and are both unreliable and undoubtedly expensive if seeking ones with [KPerf], I'd rather have Risian. The Rally Cry from this does not stack with other Rally Cry bonuses.

• Universal Kentari Kits come from the Fleet Colony and are mostly for support builds due to the teamwide [Radiant] active that provides significant Bonus Ranged and Melee damage to nearby allies for 10 seconds, with a 30 second recharge. You could also run it on an Assault build. If you buy this kit, buy the one with these mods: [KPerf][Radiant][WpnCrit][WpnDmg].

Kit Modules

Kit modules are the most important part of a ground build, but there are also hundreds of them. We have evaluated several dozen we've used or have seen others put to good use in our armada. Not all kit modules have been evaluated, and once again, melee builds are not considered. This is unlikely to ever change. Our coverage of defensive kit modules is light because no more than 1-2 should be slotted.

For a quick rundown on the strongest Kit Modules we've seen, here are the most universally effective ones:

• • Universal: Ball Lightning (Summer Store), Ba'ul Obelisk Network (Exchange), Gravity Containment Unit (Discovery Reputation), Mudd's Time Device (Discovery Reputation, but see below), Chain Conduit Capacitor (Exchange), Micro-Generator Drone (Event), V'ger Probes (Event), Collective Will (Exchange)

  • Tac: Trajectory Bending (Exchange), Graviton Spike (Summer Store), Motivation (Exchange), Chroniton Micro-Torpedo Spread (Temporal Reputation), Battle Strategies (Crafted)

  • Eng: Anchor of Gre'thor (Winter Store), Explosive Drone (Exchange), Chroniton Mine Barrier (Crafted/Fleet Store)

  • Sci: Cold Fusion Flash (Exchange), Exothermic Induction Field (Crafted/Fleet Store), Andorian Summer (Summer Store)

For a more detailed analysis with commentary, swing on by the Tier Lists page and check out the module list, where we evaluate over 60 modules. Again, this is not all of them.

Maximizing Kit Uptime

By default, all kit modules that aren't 100% passive have a base cooldown, which represents how long they take to use again once activated. The cooldown can be reduced by cooldown reductions, which reduce the remaining cooldown by a percentage of the base cooldown (example: Large Kit Overboosters), or a flat number of seconds (Example: Tendi Nurse doff), and the much more common recharge hastes which increase the rate at which the cooldown ticks relative to seconds of time. For example, if you have 50% recharge haste, a 30 second base cooldown kit module is reduced to 30/(1 + 0.5) = 20 seconds. We call the cooldown after recharge hastes and cooldown reductions are applied the modified or final cooldown. The uptime of a module, which takes its duration for prolonged effects (example: Photonic Overcharge) and divides it by the modified cooldown is also important. Even if the modified cooldown can be reduced further, some kit modules see no benefit if their modified cooldown is already at the duration.

It’s important to note that ground builds have a LOT of recharge haste built in very cheaply. If you’re seriously running ground TFOs, you’re running Temporal Spec (20%) and Commando (20%) specs, plus two points in Kit Efficiency skills (20%) and Field Technician (10%). You can add on the reputation trait Mini Chrono-Capacity Array (9.4%) for nearly 80% recharge haste. Beyond that, there are Large Kit Overboosters (LKOs) that provide 37.5% cooldown reduction every 10-15 seconds (depending on if you have Biochemist that increases their charge rate, see below). 

The most common strategy that people use to deal with long kit cooldowns is Mudd's Time Device, a Universal Kit module from the Discovery Reputation that does two important things. First, it saves you from death if you die while active, returning you to where you were and restoring your health, once every 30 seconds. Secondly, and I believe many players are slotting it for this reason, when activating a kit, other kits on cooldown have their cooldown reduced by 15% of the activated kit’s cooldown. This is quite powerful and translates to “activate kit, get cooldowns back on other modules.” This is most effective on long cooldown kit modules that have little or no minimum cooldown like Ball Lightning or Motion Accelerator. 

Other Niche Options

Overcharging is a personal trait that provides 10% recharge haste while shields are full.I wouldn't rely on this in general Elite content since it requires your shields to be up, which they're not when you need cooldowns most.

Gone Before Security Arrives reduces captain cooldowns by 20% when exiting combat, but this is not great for general TFOs, even on BHE which has some combat breaks. It's believed to be a recharge haste.

Chroniton Jolt is a kit module. It has a powerful but unreliable cooldown mechanic whose utility relies on having allies (including your own fabrications) within 6 meters, but applies the effect to the team. Since you can't reduce its own cooldown with it, it's basically a worse Mudd's Time Device for general use IMO.

Tendi (Nurse) duty officer has a 20% chance to lower cooldowns by 2 seconds on use of a heal, once every 5 seconds. This is usually kind of hard to reliably trigger and thus is also not accounted for in the tool. The best way we’ve found to exploit this is on an Engineer with Overload Power Cells (which causes some minor self-injury) and a Passive Medical Field kit module. Each tick has a chance to roll Tendi. This is a fairly uncommon setup, though we do have a build that employs it.

A Muddy Question

It's not intuitive to assess whether or not Mudd's Time Device is needed for your chosen without doing some math. Since that slot used for Mudd's Time Device could be another offensive kit module, it'd be helpful to have a couple of things:

1. A quick reference table of some of the most common kit modules and whether they need additional cooldown support from Mudd's Device in the base setup described above with 79.4% recharge haste, or the base + LKOs. 

2. A tool that allows you to check in-depth if you're deviating from the setup described above. 

Well, here they are!

Quick Kit Cooldown Reference Chart and Tool

Note that not all modules are included and if something was within 1-2 seconds of its minimum cooldown without Mudd’s, I said it probably wasn’t worth it to give up a Kit Module for Mudd’s just to cool that module faster. Similarly, if a damage-oriented kit module’s cooldown like Chain Conduit Capacitor or Gravity Containment Unit was sufficiently low without Mudd’s (<10 seconds), I said it could go either way since you’d have to be fast on your fingers to activate the ability and then a couple of others to get it noticeably lower, and not all ground combat is non-stop fighting. 

If quick reference table doesn't suit your needs, consider the ground cooldown calculator. The Back End tab of the table also has all of the durations, base cooldowns, and minimum cooldowns in it. 

The tool allows you to (and I would encourage this) draw your own conclusions based on your personal setup. For example, if Paradox Bomb is the primary lead ability for your combo, what matters is that your other nukes sync to that minimum cooldown of 15 seconds, not absolutely minimum. Similarly, Motivation is powerful, but 100% uptime on that ability is unreliable since the buff expires after a certain amount of healing is done; hopefully your build is not based on having that active all the time. Is it worth it to slot Mudd’s just for that? Only you can determine that for your personal scenario.

The tool only accounts for passive recharge haste since frankly, programming it to accurately use Mudd’s would be a giant headache and isn’t really needed. Instead, the tool will offer a recommendation on whether to use Mudd’s or not for a given kit module depending on if the modified cooldown is within 2 seconds of global, or if the uptime is above 90%.

As with our other tools, please make a copy to fill it out for yourself. It’s worth noting that not all kit modules are in the tool, just the ones that were easily accessible. Feel free to request for either other sources of Recharge Haste or Kits to be added, but you’ll need to supply the module or the Lohlunat Favors unless I can craft it or happen to have it already.

Don’t forget that cooldown reduction is only part of the benefits of Mudd’s Time Device; avoiding death is very solid too. Once your ground build is sufficiently developed, that’s not a major concern on Elite with good control, but it’s still a powerful effect!

Traits

Personal Traits

The ground personal traits tier list on our Tier Lists is sortable and filterable on price point, so we'll point you there instead. Even F2P should be able to pick up most of the good ones that aren't from the Lobi Store with a little bit of grinding.

Reputation Traits

Unlike space, where there are some different choices, there's only a handful that are truly meaningful on ground. 

Always slot:

• Lethality (Romulan): 4-5% CrtH

• Deadly Aim (Dyson): 16-20% CrtD

• Magnified Armaments (Gamma): 5-6.3% Bonus All Damage

Pick 2:

• Personal Energy Amplifier (Iconian): 5-6.3% Bonus Kit Damage, especially on mage, fabricator or hybrid builds

• Mental Acuity (8472): 10-12.5% Bonus Damage while aiming. If you're good at staying in Aiming stance, this is excellent. If that's not you, probably better to skip it. 

• Energized Nanites (Iconian): Outgoing damage heals you. This is powerful, even if it's deceptive in the parses. If you feel squishy, it's an excellent option. It will frequently show up in SCM as the source of the thing that did the damage (i.e. Covert Assault Drone under Heal - Abilities), so it's misleading. 

• Miniaturized Chrono-Capacitor Array (Temporal): 7.5-9.4% Kit recharge time. If you know you're using Mudd's for sure, you probably don't need this. If you're not using Mudd's, definitely take it. 

• Omega Weapon Proficiency (Omega): 12.5% melee damage, 6.25% bonus energy damage. Good on Assault builds, but Personal Energy Amplifier should always have higher priority

• Strength of Body (Gamma): SCIENCE ONLY. Grants 15/18.8 KPerf for 15 seconds after activating a captain ability. Most careers have too long of cooldowns on captain abilities to justify this.

Honorable Mention:

• Rending Shots (Delta): is 5-6.25% Critical Chance, stacking up to 10 times, but outgoing weapon critical hits remove all stacks. Even on my mage builds, my weapons are critting around 40%, and so I don't think this stays stacked long enough to meaningfully matter. If you have lower personal endeavors for ground and are still building up, this could be useful.

Active Reputation Traits

Don't skip these! Active Reputation traits have some significant benefits, and since you can take 5 out of the 6 possible options (assuming the unlock), you might as well to get some extra damage and healing, admittedly on very long cooldowns.

• One Little Ship (Gamma) summons a miniature Danube Runabout to gun down your enemies. While it has a long cooldown, the Runabout does good damage (about 100-200 DPS) and has very long range, making it good for areas where enemies lob attacks from long range, like the middle stages of Trans-dimensional Tactics or the Spawnmother stage of Bug Hunt Elite.

• Piezo-Electric Perimeter Snare (Lukari) hits an enemy with an AOE electrical damage and root effect for several seconds. This does decent damage (20-50 DPS when used on Spawnmother on BHE) and is good for busting bosses on maps like BHE, NTTE, or HGE.

• Defiance (Dyson) is a temporary damage resistance, damage, and heal boost for 20 seconds. You have to be below 50% health to use it, but it's over 1000 damage resistance rating, which will keep you alive until you can heal via other means. The damage boost (41.3% all damage at rank 2) is also significant. 

• Concussive Tachyon Emission (Delta) is a PBAOE shield-damaging shockwave. This is less useful on maps like BHE or anywhere else you face enemies without shields, but is an offensive power. Still a good idea to unlock and slot.

• Medical Nanite Cloud (Omega) is a PBAOE heal which also has a 50% chance to revive unconscious allies and removes Borg Assimilation and Expose. It's a solid heal, so if you get low, pop Defiance and then this. 

That means that Visual Dampening Field (Terran) is generally the one to skip, as the temporary PBAOE Ally Cloak/Confuse has limited utility on most maps.

Duty Officers

There are not many duty officers that we've found that are truly impactful on the ground, so we're not making a tier list for them, especially since we tend to reserve 2 doffs for universal/space doffs. Instead, here are the top performers, some middling/average performers, and a couple that aren't as good as they look from the outside. Remember that duty officer pool limitations are shared between space and ground, so if you have heart set on a Sensors Officer, make sure you're not also running one in space. 

Example of a ground doff layout. Neal Falconer is mostly for boosting space DPS against Borg since his effect also applies in space. Dedicated ground builds building around parsing maps would replace him. 

Universal, high impact

• Assault Squad Officers that have a chance of increasing Critical Hit Chance (CrtH) or Critical Severity (CrtD) on firing ranged weapons are an Exchange purchase. They fit well on any offensive build, but are nice-to-have rather than truly essential. It's best to buy these at blue (Rare) rarity rather than purple (Very Rare) due to the overall cost. Max of 3 total.

• Biochemists that lower the cooldown of batteries are powerful if you use Large Kit Overboosters (and if you're seriously chasing ground numbers, you need to) because, unlike the Quartermaster with the similar power in space, they work on the individual battery cooldown rather than just the shared cooldown. A Very Rare one will grant you 100% uptime on Large Kit Overboosters and a Rare one slightly less than 100% uptime. Max of 1, avoid if you don't use Overboosters.

• The Warfare Master from Gamma Recruitment applies 10% all damage to both space and ground. I suppose if you're really building around ground you could put him in your space slots, but those are more impactful.

Career-specific, high impact

• Tac: Sensors Officers that grant a debuff on Target Optics are an Exchange purchase, but add an additional -20 DRR for 15 seconds to targets affected by Target Optics. Maximum of 1.

• Sci: Regular Biochemists are relatively easy to acquire and add a hefty -10-40 DRR for 5 seconds to targets debuffed by most science kit debuffs. This is much cheaper to acquire than the Battery Biochemist and we recommend these ones for Science captains running support, or if you don't want to spam Overboosters. Again, max of 1.

• Sci: Biologists that increase the duration of Tricorder Scan are high impact and are also easy to acquire.

• Eng: Sorry guys.

Universal, moderate impact or situational

• The Armory Officer from the Phoenix Box that doubles your chance to expose is okay if you're building around Expose/Exploit. Max of 1.

• Na'kuhl Ground Warfare Specialists with the following effect: when activating Ground Kit abilities, 20% chance: 20% of next 5 sources of outgoing damage applied as Hitpoint Healing. Damage-over-time effects do not trigger the healing. This is okay if you need healing, but not usually needed overall. This is an Exchange purchase, max of 1. 

• The Legume Creel Diagnostic Engineer from the "Firewall" mission offers a 20% chance to deploy an Exocomp ally for 45 seconds on flanking. This is solidly mediocre but again, is free. 

• Research Lab Scientist with a chance to gain a Saurian ally barely does anything but is technically a thing. Exchange purchase. 

• The EMH Nurse from "All That Glitters" has a chance to summon a medical hologram on use of a hypo. Again, this is not much impact but does provide some minor healing. 

• Transporter Officers that reduce the recharge time of combat pets are again, okay, if you have some decent combat pets. There aren't many that truly impress.

• The Tendi Nurse that provides 20% chance: Targets of your Heals are pumped up and receive an instant -2 sec Recharge Reduction to any Kit Modules currently on cooldown. (May not occur again for 5 sec)  has some very situational uses if you can 1) ensure you're taking damage and 2) ensure you have a continuous source of healing to proc Tend. The Overload Power Cells kit module is the best way to handle the former; something like a Passive Medical Field Generator is a good way to handle the latter.

Career-specific, moderate impact or situational

• Eng: Fabrication Engineers that have a chance to summon an additional support drone are  . . . okay in the sense that Support Drone is okay but at least you're guaranteed to have it. At least they're free for completing Engineering doffing commendations or critting the Support Eridon Nebula colonization chain.

• Eng: Armory Officers that have a chance to beam in an additional turret on use of Beam Turret are solidly mediocre effects for a solidly mediocre ability. I can't say I would slot either the module or the doff.

• Eng: Security Officers that have a chance to apply hold on Chroniton Mine Barrier are okay, and Mine Barrier is a really solid kit ability. This is an Exchange purchase and there's a max of 3. 

• Eng: Explosives Experts that have a chance to beam in a second Quantum Mortar are okay. Quantum Mortar isn't a highly-rated kit module, but it's not bad for a starter and the doffs are easily obtained. 

• Eng: Transporter Officers that have a 40% chance (at Very Rare) to create a Shield Generator when creating a Medical Generator and vice versa are decent for Fabricator builds running those two modules. 

• Eng: Diagnostic Engineers that have a chance to increase ranged damage with Equipment Diagnostics are cheap but still mediocre if you're running an Eng Assault. 

• Eng: Damage Control Engineers that give a minor resistance buff to targets of Quick Fix are okay if you're using Quick Fix. Exchange purchase. 

• Tac: Assault Squad Officers that have a 20% chance to refresh Ambush for 5 seconds when you expire Ambush through putting out damage are okay if you're building around Ambush.

• Tac: the default Security Officers that add a chance to beam in more security officers are to tactical captains what the Fabrication Engineers that have a chance to summon support drones are for engineers. It's a mediocre effect for a mediocre ability, but you're guaranteed to have it and they're easily obtainable. Up to 3 can be slotted.

• Sci: Doctors that give an extra chance for heal on use of Medical Tricorder or Triage are okay. This is an Exchange purchase.

Avoid, not worth it

• Sci: Explosives Experts that give a chance for Exothermic Induction Field to fire projectiles, as far as I can tell, are pretty bad and expensive from the Exchange. Max of 1. Exothermic is a solid kit ability, but that doff isn't worth the cost for less than 10 DPS.

• Universal: Explosives Experts that have a chance to cause Radiation AOE on Exploit Attack seems very good, but even if you're exploiting a lot, barely registers.