Description: I got the Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit (which I lovingly call my Fleet Ass Cruiser) about a month ago, and ditched my Odyssey Star Cruiser which I had used for a long time in both PvP and PvE. The Odyssey is still a great ship, but it only has two tactical console slots and a total of nine console slots. I decided it was time to upgrade to a Fleet-level cruiser, and this was the perfect choice.

As you will see in my skillpoints, I have ZERO points in torpedo skills, opting for a pure energy skillpoint build while focusing on critical hits. I still use the Omega Torpedo because it's really good, and for the set bonus which grants weapon power drain resistance. I'm currently working on accumulating enough Fleet Credits to buy two Romulan Tactical boffs, which would boost my Critical Rate to 12.2%, and my Critical Severity to 69.1%. Beam Overload II is somewhat of a wild card, as I've noticed a high damage variance when I connect hull hits. A normal direct hull hit will do anywhere from 6,500 to 16,000, and a critical hit can do 12,000 to 38,000. I guess it depends on the target's damage resistance and other factors. The three Energy Weapons Officers help me use BO2 very often and saves me a tactical slot, but it might be more economical/efficient to run a Aux to Batt. build with Technicians doffs, but I chose not to do that for reasons that I will discuss in a bit.

The weapon power drain is pretty bad, so I use Nadion Inversion, the Omega Adapted Borg 2/3 set bonus, and Weapons Batteries to try and keep my power above 100, which is somewhat effective but not as good as say a DEM build or a EPtW build. Overall this build has a solid 5,000 - 6,000 DPS, which is better than most cruisers, but DPS isn't really important so much as being able to do a lot of shield-penetrating damage in a short amount of time. A normal, non-Beam Overload hit does 1,500 to 2,800 damage and has high shield penetration even at maximum range. When something NEEDS TO DIE RIGHT NOW, I'd like to say that this ship is there to do that.

I chose not to do the Aux to Batt./Technicians build because cycling Aux to Batt. drains your auxiliary power, which is important for the second half of my build, which is healing. This build, in addition to doing some respectable burst damage, can heal someone back from basically dead and also give escorts some tanking power with Extend Shields II. I may swap out Transfer Shield Strength II for Hazard Emitters II to have two copies of HE, but as of right now the build works great as a healer. The only healing directed at myself comes from EPtS, the Assimilated Borg 2/3 set bonus, Engineer-specific healing abilities, and Aux to SIF III since it has such a short cooldown. All of my other healing abilities are dedicated and on standby for when one or more people need to get healed immediately.

Lastly, I also chose to stick with [Borg] turrets because Fleet turrets don't do that much more damage per hit and therefore don't really benefit that much from critical hit/severity, and they also have a 7.5% chance to do an extra 1,000 damage to Borg enemies which I think is far more beneficial than the small base damage boost from Fleet turrets (yes, the [Borg] proc actually works most of the time, and shows up as Chaotic Particle Stream in ACT).

Experience edit (22 Mar 2013): I PvP'd against a broadside Galor using an Aux to Batt. build and ended in a stalemate, but ultimately lost in terms of effectiveness. My build as above cannot win any 1v1 or possibly 2v2 matches, especially against opponents using Tractor Beams, but it will shine in 4v4 or bigger matches where people need healing and opponents cannot afford to focus on one target (you) that takes too long to kill. My honest opinion is that Aux to Batt. builds are way more effective for PvE and PvP if you want to take a role that is less focused on healing and more focused on using a bunch of abilities with relatively longer CDs (abilities in the 45s to 1 min CD duration are ideal).

I also changed the antiproton turrets to tetryon turrets but they don't really do a whole lot in terms of overall damage because the proc chance is so low. Probably switching back to AP turrets.

Build: http://imgur.com/a/MSYvZ#0

• Normal (same as above): http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=saberfleetassaultcruiserv01_0

• Aux to Batt: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=saberfleetassaultcruisera2b_0

Skillpoints: http://imgur.com/a/MSYvZ#1

Defensive Specs:

• Hull Strength: 58,941

• Hull Repair Rate: 353.3% of max hull every 60 seconds (or 20,823 every 6 seconds)

• Shield Facings: 12,272 each (MACO 12 shields with 2x Mk.XI Field Generator Consoles, blue quality)

• Shield Regeneration: 654 every 6 seconds

• Damage Resistance: 25.3% base damage resistance against everything, goes up depending on skills used

Bridge Officer Layout:

Active Duty Officers:

• Energy Weapons Officer (x3), purple quality - 50% chance to reduce CD by 10 seconds on all beam abilities whenever a beam ability is activated (except subsystem targeting). (Note: the probability of this not working at all is 12.5%, meaning there is a 12.5% chance that your beam ability CD will not get reduced. The other 86.5% of the time, it gets reduced to 15 seconds or close to it.)

Warning: these three EWO doffs cost me a total of about 27 million EC. You can get blue quality ones for significantly cheaper and they will do a sufficient job.

• Warp Core Engineer, blue quality - 20% chance to give 20 to power levels to all subsystems for 15 seconds on the use of any Emergency Power ability.

• Conn Officer, purple quality - reduce CD on Evasive Maneuvers by 5 seconds. (Note: this doff can be swapped out for pretty much anything else. I chose this Conn Officer because I use Evasive Maneuvers fairly often.)