Battle Ready Advancement,B.R.A - The Ultimate Support....Guide

This Support Guide is just a collection of what I've found, in my experience, to work really well as a Black Watch Tank/Healer (Support)

As this is collections of my experience, I will gladly take advice/discussion on every bit of this. I'm human and I'm always open up to new ways to improve, and I do make mistakes. This guide is being made as a starting point to help people find a nice stepping stone into the Tank/Healer Support role.

First of all, The Ship. Cruisers are the workhorse of the Federation, and clearly what Cryptic meant to be full on group Support. Engineers are their Captains (in Cryptic's eyes) so this guide will reflect this energitic duo!
The current ship I am using for STF Support is the Advanced Heavy Cruiser Retrofit (ie The Excelsior) This little ship has a lot of heart and can fill both Tank AND Healing roles at the same time, with the same BOFF Layout.
My Layout

Tactical: Fire At Will 1; Torp. High Yield 2; Attack Pattern Delta 2
FaW is great for aggro, even on single targets. Make sure you are 0KM (not a typeo) from your target and even if there are no adds/mobs around, FaW reduce the charge time on your weapons, thus making you shoot faster. More Shots = More Threat Per Second. This works great with Engineer's Nadion Inversion 3 + Direct Energy Modulation. AP:D Gives you a nice resistance buff, and anything that hits you will take a Disruptor-like debuff. (applies a damage resistance debuff to the target) with Anti-Proton Weapons, the hits and damage just stack up. ** I recommend using Attack Pattern Beta for cruisers who are DPS'ing but there may be better options available For Example, if you are using Tricobalt, you can replace HY2 with AP:B1, and then use AP:O3 (this is great for getting out of tractor beams allowing you to do more DPS)**

Commander Engineer EmpPowerShields1; Direct Energy Modulation1; Engineer Team 3; Extend Shields 3 (required for healing role)
EPS1 is up for 30 seconds with a cooldown of 45 seconds. You can chain 2 EPX abilities back to back to have 100% up time. When EPS1 is trigger, EPS2 for example, goes on cooldown for 30 seconds, so at the end of EPS1 duration, hit EPS2 for constant up time. You will need to be able to chain EPS as a tank as being able to reduce incoming damage is a MUST. I didn't take EPS3 because I wanted/needed the insane hull heal from ET3, comes in very handy for Healing as well as when you find yourself needing something in a pinch. ** note there is a Duty Officer that will reduce the ET cooldown to 15 seconds, making ET3 the BEST hull heal in the game **
Extend Shields 3 is by far REQUIRED by a Healer, it is the BEST SHIELD HEAL IN THE GAME!!! It only has a 15 second cooldown with ~30 second up time. If you don't have it, I will ALWAYS be glad to train a BOFF for you.

Lt. Engineer EPWeapons1; AuxStructure1;
EPW is great for added threat, and alittle extra DPS when you are trying to get a few probes down. EPW works great when chained to FaW, DEM, and Nadion Inverison. ASIF1 is a nice hull heal when ET3 is on cooldown, or if multiple party members are taking hull damage. If you need a BIG hull heal fast, use an Aux. Battery before using ASIF for a quick work around ET.

Ensign Engineering EPS1
I run full weapons which gives me 75 in shields, which really thanks to skills + efficiency captain it adds up to be more! For this build, using anything higher than EPS2 would be overkill (and would also throw alot of the other abilities out like DEM) Chaining EPS1 will do more than do the job fine for Tanking STF "bosses"

Lt. Science Hazzard Emitters1; TransferShieldStrength2
These two in my opinion are staples for self protection. HE are NEEDED against the Borg, its not the assimulation that gets you, its the painful plasma DOT and this is the best way to get rid of it, and it can be used as a spare hull heal. TSS is very helpful when you need to toss a quick shield heal to a party member, when ES3 is either being used, or on cooldown. Try to avoid using ES3 and TSS on the same target, you can get more heals out to your group by spreading the heals.

***Remember to only heal Tactical Captains when they are at or below 15%. Krog has many a-time yelled at me when he was at 30% health and his DPS went down because I ET3'ed him lol!


Edit: Changed recommended Tactical Layout to Attack Pattern: Delta. AP:D is better for support because of the incoming damage resistance, and the debuff of anything hitting you. It's also great for healers who are trying to stop themselves from getting attacked.