This is a list of all relevant traits for traditional damage builds - i.e. builds focusing on damage from ship weapons and not abilities.
S-Tier contains traits that are universally usable on all builds and are the most effective at what they do.
A-Tier traits are applicable to most build types and perform the best in their category at what they do.
B-Tier traits are traits that can perform as well as higher level traits but might require a more specialized build or have some drawbacks that otherwise prevent them from performing at a higher tier.
C-Tier traits are options that can be used as filler or are strictly inferior to A/B tier traits regardless of build configuration
Any traits not listed are considered F Tier and are either not worth slotting or only used for theme/fun/entertainment and thus not included in this ranking.
When reduced below 5% hull, your ship becomes unkillable for 8 seconds and you benefit from greatly increased incoming healing.
This trait is a staple for high end arena builds, and helps cushion you from making a mistake or getting focused. Many times, a good player will get reduced to zero, escape, then fight carefully for the next two minutes, allowing them to stay in the fight and support their team without letting the opposing team score a point. This will not fix a sub-par build so it is commonly one of the last traits added.
Extends the duration of Beam Overload by 5 seconds, which results it 100% uptime for this ability on builds with good cooldown management.
Never having a gap in your damage output, especially if relying on traits that boost Beam Overload damage specifically, is critical for keeping the pressure on your enemy and preventing them from recovering while under pressure.
Extends the duration of Surgical Strikes by 5 seconds, which results in 100% uptime for this ability.
Constant pressure is important for not allowing your opponents to heal up and escape while you are on the attack. Choose either this or Superweapon Ingenuity - not both.
Reduces weapon power cost and increases damage resistance rating based on flight speed.
At the high speeds of arena fights, this trait is usually worth at least a 200% reduction in weapon power cost as well as 200+ damage resistance, allowing even small fast ships to get close to the 75% damage resistance cap. This greatly improves outgoing damage and durability, but being slowed or held can greatly reduce the effectiveness of this trait.
After activating Cannon Scatter Volley, Beam Overload benefits from a +100% cat 1 damage boost.
Since we are usually cycling a cannon ability along with Beam Overload for healing, this trait works well with that setup and can add a large damage boost to beam attacks. Anytime you are not firing with Beam Overload though, this trait has no benefit.
While at full throttle, every 2 seconds add a stack of bonus damage up to a maximum of 30% (Superior) or 20% (Improved).
Bonus damage is always helpful on builds with other sources of cat 1 damage (such as from tactical consoles), and 30% (superior) is no slouch. The tradeoff is that it takes 20 seconds to build the buff completely and requires you to stay at full throttle the entire time, as any time throttle is dropped (including death) all stacks are lost.
After activating Cannon Scatter Volley or Beam Fire at Will, your weapons cause a -30 DR debuff against targets you hit.
Much like Preferential Targeting, activating Cannon Scatter Volley and then firing on a target with Beam Overload will still give us the benefits of this trait. Sometimes, reducing a target's damage resistance is more beneficial than increasing your damage, with the added benefit of improving the damage any teammate does to your target as well. Contrary to popular belief, no hangar or pets are required to use this trait effectively.
Energy weapons apply a -10 DR debuff as well as a flight speed and power reduction, which stacks 5 times from all sources.
Another highly effective debuff trait, resulting in a total of -50 DR against a target as long as five of your weapons hit the same target. This substantial debuff benefits all damage done to the effected target, but cannot stack more than 5 times even from other teammates running this trait.
When activating an attack pattern, grants hit points and bonus damage based on your Ambush bonus, once per 30 seconds.
While this requires the slotting of specialized bridge officers (each rank of Infiltrator), this can result in up to 40% bonus damage for 27.5 seconds. Combined with the large heal this provides, it can be very effective.
Grants 50 accuracy and 10% crit chance when activating fire modes, but at the cost of 50% increased weapon power cost.
When combined with Rhythmic Rumble, the additional power cost is not as much of a disadvantage and the instant accuracy and criticals are very beneficial. This is F-tier if lacking Rhythmic Rumble, and debatable on slower ships as well.
Grant bonus damage to Beam Overload based on non-weapon power levels, up to 30% if shields/engines/aux are all at 100 or higher.
Surprisingly great trait, regularly responsible for 20%+ bonus damage on most builds. Since many PvP ships cycle two non-weapon emergency power abilities, it is not uncommon to have 25% or higher bonus from this trait at all times, but the benefits are only realized while using fire modes, so be sure to keep Beam Overload at 100% uptime.
When using intel abilities or jam sensors, grant 5xx stealth, 15% bonus damage, and 40 CTRLX.
A superb trait when combined with intel team and intel ships, but worthless on non-intel ships. Extra control and bonus damage is always good, but combined with 500+ stealth which stacks with intel team, it can make your ship much more difficult to target except by builds specializing in this role ("snooper" builds).
While in combat, gain up to 5 stacks of 4% bonus damage, every 4 seconds.
An excellent trait for a total of 20% bonus all damage, but requires 20 seconds to build up - the same as Pedal to the Metal. However, you cannot build stacks prior to entering combat and as soon as combat ends, you lose the bonus damage completely.
When activating universal consoles, grant 2% critical chance and 10% critical severity, stacking up to 5 times.
This can be a great trait when using fast-firing universal consoles such as the Immolating Phaser Lance, as long as you can cover the gaps with other console activations. The buff is short lived and requires some micro-managing to get the best out of.
When damaging a foe that doesn't have you targeted, grants 5% crit chance, 5% bonus damage, and placates the target for 12 seconds or until you deal X damage to them.
Essentially, a minor damage boost combined with the equivalent of Jam Sensors 1. This placate is nearly worthless, but you could do worse than 5% CrtH and 5% bonus damage.
Activating Beam Overload grants +100% flight speed and turn rate for 10 seconds. Energy weapons deal 10-50% additional damage based on distance to enemy targets.
A reasonable speed boost equivalent to Pilot Team 1, but a fairly poor damage boost as you have to be within 2km to benefit from the maximum 50% - which itself is not a huge boost anyway.
Projectile fire modes grant +200 Shield Penetration skill (10% shield pen) and +200 Hull Penetration skill (+20 armor pen).
Essentially, give up a bridge officer slot to use a torpedo ability and get 10% shield pen and ignore 20 DRR of an enemy target. As opposed to traits like SAD and Cold Hearted, which benefit the team, this only benefits your ship, and is inferior to either of those traits.
Activating Beam Overload causes you to gain 10% Bonus All Damage and 50,000 temporary hp for a short duration.
A nice combined heal and damage boost, but falls flat quickly as the buff does not refresh often enough or last long enough to be truly effective.
Activating Tactical Team grants all weapons 20 armor penetration for 10 seconds.
Ignoring 20 DR of an enemy ship is nice, especially if activating tactical team anyway. However, this trait is outclassed by many newer options.
When decloaking or activating AP Omega, grants 64% critical severity and grants High Yield 3, for 10 seconds.
With very high critical chance, this can be a great trait for huge spike damage against enemy targets. Requires a specialized build to make the best of, but can be quite effective in the right hands.
After receiving 10,000 damage post resistance, gain a stack of honored dead. Each stack grants +10 all damage resistance and +1% hull regeneration, which stacks up to 20 times. Each additional stack grants 10,000 temporal hp for 40 seconds.
An effective method for increasing resistances for those who may not have Rhythmic Rumble yet. It's largest drawback is that no stacks are built when taking damage to temporary hull, and stacks are lost when combat ends. This means you might never get up to 20 stacks, either because you are doing very well (rarely out of temp hp) or very poorly (killed before you can heal up enough to get 20 total stacks). A nice survival placeholder with those limitations in mind.
Activating Emergency Power to X abilities grants 3% critical hit and 15% critical severity for 15 seconds.
Cycling two emergency power abilities allows this trait to have nearly 100% uptime, and the bonuses are reasonable especially at higher crit chance ratings where the added severity is a nice benefit. Inferior to many bonus damage traits but this one is free.
When taking damage, increase incoming healing by 5% and bonus damage by 1.5%, stacking up to 10 times.
A massive increase to incoming healing, which also benefits protomatter tactical consoles, is a huge survivability boost. The extra 15% bonus damage is icing on the cake. A great trait for tankier builds expecting more incoming fire.
Upon entering combat, disable targets shields for a short duration. While in combat, build stacks of shield penetration for weapons, up to 50% penetration after 140 seconds.
A decent trait for dealing with ships with stronger shields, but since all benefits are lost at the end of combat it can be very situational.
When activating Emergency Power to Engines, grant 50 accuracy, shield pen, and a chance to knock a target's subsystems offline. Buff duration of 6 seconds.
What appears to be a good trait falls flat quickly with an extremely short duration of 6 seconds, triggering every 15 seconds at best.
Bonus damage when activating Brace for Impact, for 15 seconds. 15% standard, 20% with Improved (requires Gamma recruit).
A short 15 second buff, usable at best every 60 seconds. Detrimental to builds with temporary hull as Brace for Impact will wipe out temporary hull stacks and replace them with tiny, worthless ones. That makes this trait both very niche as well as not particularly effective, and can actually hurt otherwise good builds.
When activating a pilot ability or AP Omega, grant 10% bonus damage and 15 defense to yourself and teammates.
Nice that it affects teammates, but a short duration and relatively small amount of damage increase makes this a niche trait, made even worse by the cost of a lockbox ship.
Grants Beam Overload the effect of Charged Particle Burst, centered on targets hit, once per cycle.
This can be a good way to prevent cloaked ships or intel team users from using those abilities for a short period, but the shield damage is negligible and offers no other benefits. This ship was given away for free several times via codes recently, so it's a good option for a free trait.
When using foe-targeted intel abilities or tractor beam, disable target's shields for 5 seconds.
This shield disable can be quite effective and always lasts 5 seconds, but requires a ship that can use tractor beam without sacrificing anything too critical, or an intel ship.
Activating Pilot and Control abilities +5 control and +0.5% crit chance, but stacks 40 times for a total of 200 CTRLX and 20% critical chance.
An effective way to build up both damage and control - both important stats in PvP. This trait does not carry between maps though, so it can take some time to build up the stacks enough to offer much benefit, and any buff stripping method like Subnucleonic Beam will reset you to zero stacks instantly.
Activating Emergency Power to Weapons grants 20% fire cycle haste and -50% weapon power cost.
There are lots of better options, and giving up an emergency power ability that could otherwise be used for stealth detection or shield hardness is debatable.
Each enemy that attacks you builds up 1% cat 1 damage, 1% hull regen, and 1% hull capacity - stacking up to 30 times.
An important trait for PvE tanks due to the threat increases, this trait is nearly worthless in pvp as it requires both taking damage from lots of sources and offers relatively minor boosts even if you could maximize it.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.