Fleet Arbiter: From Budget to High-End

[VADM Wulfric Richter CoS]

The battle ready trait is indeed from the Eclipse. Also, have you tried a run with the Romulan impulse engines to see what that does for your DPS? I understand that the Iconian set is better for the team, but that the Romulan engine is better for personal DPS.

[BigBob357]

I've wondered if maybe the Iconian 4l-piece is the so-called meta because of it's team benefit. IIRC, one of the older metas was to run the Rom Deflector/Impulse and Nukara Shield, and to be quite honest I never ran it. The Ico 4-piece had just been introduced when I came back to the game so I have no point of reference. I do know that all the top DPS people are running. And while the Rom piece may help your personal DPS in solo content, the team buffs would probably still be more beneficial to you since for most of us who are at end-game, STO is tem based. 

[BigBob357]

OK, so I've updated the build. I should point out that the changes I've made cost A LOT! I was however able to take advantage of the Zen sale some of the traits (Helmsman and Pattern Recognition) I picked up were going for much lass than they usually do. I also got stupid lucky and the three [CrtD] [Dmg]x2 [Pen] weapons were posted way under the going rate. That being  said, my survivability has improved tremendously. and I hit a new high:

SCM - Infected [LR] (S) - [02:12] DMG(DPS) - Viktor: 12.78M(102.55K) Solomon Cain: 11.33M(91.51K) RoadBuster: 7.74M(62.41K) Picard: 5.83M(48.10K) Nefertari: 4.85M(45.07K)

here is the build:

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=scarbiter_10873

Again, the missing trait is Coalition Starship Tactics. With the combination of Supremacy, Emergency Weapons Cycle, and Plasmonic Leech w/ 150 flowcaps skill, my power levels are outrageous in combat. Invincible (like Supremacy) is an extremely expensive trait (900 Lobi/~200 mil EC) and 8 seconds of being undefeatable may not seem like a lot, but I can say without hesitation that it has saved my a** in situations where I normally would have been space dust. I will say that this trait really shines when you have something like the RIF console from the Kobali Samsar which, sadly, I don't, Pattern Recognition and Intense Focus improve your defense and damage respectively the longer you are in combat, so while they weren't cheap, they have proven very useful. The same can be said about Ablative Shell which provides a nice hull heal and damage resistance buff after taking enough damage. Helmsman, at least for me, was kind of an impulse buy that I really didn't need, but I have found the increased turn rate and cooldown reduction on evasive maneuvers to be helpful. Coalition Starship Tactics, another expensive trait, provides a variety of buffs depending on team composition 0self included) based on career profession. I dropped Self-Modulating Fire because shield penetration isn't something I needed, but I would most certainly run it during the War Games or other PvP situations.

TL;DR - I was able to increase my damage output from my previous build and improve survivability significantly, but it cost a boat load.

Hope this helps,

SC