Useful Tips for Star Captain
- Clips of Extraction makes the aspect feel 100% better imo. Without any cooldown reduction, normal 1-orb turns will leave you unable to cast Cryoclasm every turn (2 of the first 3 turns depending on when you pull orbs). With clips you get your 3 every turn and your 2 twice some turns. You should still get cooldown reduction on 2 and 3 (both green augments) to be able to cast Mission Leader multiple times per turn for more drones and to get some double Cryoclasm turns.
- Ideally you want to have a drone available any time you use your 1, 3, or Cone of Frost if you take it. In reality you’ll have some 1 filler without drones, but this should guide all your choices imo. Besides lowering the cooldown, Fleet Commander Mission Leader (blue) augment gives you an additional drone per use, and the DARVe Replicator (green) item you unlock from aspect quests gives you a drone at turn start.
- Invigorate and Lightning Bolt are more limited than on Magma Miner, for example, because they’ll affect the attack binding damage but not interact with the Frostbite or drone damage, so you transfer less with Shocked and you benefit less from Invigorate. I won’t make a strong case for taking Cone of Frost bc usually having a bunch of extra Frostbite on an enemy doesn’t help much, but if you get the Absolute Zero ascension for Cryoclasm it’s very strong, and there’s a purple augment for Cone of Frost that gives +25 Frostbite damage, which is hard to come by otherwise. Defensive bindings are cool too, the base kit is solid and specific around Frostbite/drone.
- The aspect has great, game-changing ascensions, so reroll away from ascending drafted bindings if you can. Stimulate or Big Game Hunter can turn boss fights into just spamming 1, Arctic Commander can scale Frostbite for longer boss fights, Absolute Zero can make Cryclasm a monster nuke with Frostbite stack augments.
Oh it probably goes without saying, but drone damage is physical and your other attacks are magical, so omni damage is ideal.
One more thing, Stimulate reads like a multiplayer ascension since its bounces can buff players, but in addition to using it to buff yourself, a single-player trick is to position yourself such that you can reach otherwise unreachable enemies with the added bounce.
I find this is most commonly useful on bosses that spawn a couple minions each turn. In this example we position ourselves between the boss and its minion and utilize the extra bounce to get some free damage.
I definitely found that SC has felt MUCH worse this patch
I struggled immnesely against first boss at ASC 19
When I play SC with my friend I have the best success playing him supporty. Play something like Smoke Bomb, maybe grab the ascension with precise and mark, or blur, and make it go map wide
And your sentinels should be allowing your friend to still pop off
Just had a T15 group run succeed with 5x inventor, 5x ancient wisdom and 4x physical with 2x the vestige that gives +100 drone damage. Ran quicken smoke bomb and just spammed the hell out of marks and drones
I rarely ever struggle playing SC tbf. I think he’s one of the strongest aspects in the game. He’s very versatile, which can be a weakness because you really have to pick one style and stick with it to succeed
Frostbite does feel a bit weak, but the drones slap hard
Eye of the storm also still goes hard
Star captain has this weird point in group play where my frostbite and drones are doing enough damage that visually it looks like you’re doing nothing. Nothing happens immediately when you push buttons and everything dies when your friends buttons, then you scroll combat log and it was all your damage.
Not really a complaint or compliment, just an observation. Really solid if you’re playing with your kid or just a friend who needs a pick me up. Really easy to trick someone into thinking they’re hardcore solo carrying and give them that power fantasy
Does sometimes result in hilarity with my moss duo buddy 😂 he will have a moment where he forgets I’m his front damage and burns all of his will. “Okay now I need you to finish everything off”….I can’t you already burned your flurry and I haven’t put my frost down yet
I was a Frostbite Enjoyer with my Obelisk frostbite build.. but Star Captain makes it work way better – although you are heavily forced into it. All other aspects can opt into something like burn or crit but optional. You are always going Frostbite on Cap though. Not terrible but build diversity seems a little constrained so far. Still need to grind out another 20+ runs before I settle on my view. Trying every viable build I can think of :p
Solo captain in higher ranks has DPS issues on pure frost builds unless you all in that build and it becomes VERY repetitive. tried 2 different approaches and in both cases hit a wall.
LVL10 – former inkbound rank – solo with bombs modifier and pacificsm