fringe laurel
One of my favorite things to do in STO is setup older or obscure platforms for Elite level performance. I had decent success building out the Edoulg and D4x for Korfez-carry platforms, and with a spare Infinity ship to use set off for the next one.
I decided to go for something more thematic this time, while still pushing reasonable numbers in Elite. Some searching on the ship DB brought me to the Undine Cheriax, a ship with a 4-boff layout (my favorite) and some really solid specialist seating for the current meta; Command Pilot with Lieu-Comm Intel, meaning it has access to Clean Getaway and Override Subsystem Safeties. The obvious downside of the Cheriax, and I'd assume the reason we don't see them often, is it's 4/4 weapon layout. This build is firmly a work in progress; I've made some concessions for thematic reasons, which I'll note below.
The "Concessions..."
- This build does not run the Pahvo Omni beam. I wanted to have at least one fleshed out Elite build in my arsenal that wasn't reliant on it, and the Cheriax proved to be a great platform for it. In it's place, I run the Altamid Omni. If you wanted to replicate this build, slotting the Pahvo Omni would be a surefire increase in your DPS.
- This build uses both the Altamid 2pc and Parry and Thrust for extra Plasma spam; it is one of the few ships actually able to make full use of Parry. Dropping both for better options would also be a net gain in DPS.
- Ship is currently at T6X, I ran out of tokens. Once X2, I plan to add Lure Team Command to buff up weapons + Altamid 2pc + Parry. X2 trait will be one of the usual picks (Cultural, Interial Sup, or Particle Fluct)
856k ISE unsupported at present, only aiming for about 1mil on this one at X2 due to thematic sacrifices.
*Side-bar: Seriously, if you have an old Cheriax lying around, try it out in the current meta. It's not the best (4/4 layout, no hanger or exp weapon), but it's fun as heck for cannons and even moreso for broadsiding. *
vague kite