Okay, I'll play devil's advocate and just come right out and say that the new Romulan xenobiologist kit is NOT useless as everyone is so quick to say here. This is coming from one who leveled his toon with it from the moment the regular version was available at Mk. VI on up. I play science as my main 90% of the time since I find engineering to be...well, meh, and tactical to be utterly boring, but that's just me (I still appreciate being on teams with great tacs and engies).

I even used a xeno kit at Mk. X to get started in STFs, including elites. On Infected ground, the gas grenade set up choke points when the team was sniping borg behind the trigger lines and reduced damage we took from those stuck in the cloud, med tricorder to handle moderate damage mostly to myself and sometimes others, biofilter for even more damage resist (I can't stress enough how important every percent of resist you can get on ground elite STFs), and yes even Stasis Field has its use from time to time when I froze an approaching heavy drone that no one was shooting at to buy a few seconds of survival in case we got overwhelmed and a teammate went down. In spite of its effectiveness (it takes lots of practice), I got flak for using the kit in spite of regularly helping teams win optional objectives, most of the time from munchkin tac and engie players who don't understand the value of its abilities. I eventually got myself a Borg Med Analyzer kit which I almost always use, PvE or PvP. I sometimes use Physicist (with the ground grav well doff) for kicks and giggles, but it's lack of heals bothers me a lot, and doesn't fit my play style.

Devil's advocate aside, I was skeptical about Cryptic recycling existing kits for the Embassy, however, including the xeno one. I was expecting, you know, actual Romulan abilities for my sci like the ones that annoy me when I fight the Tal Shiar mobs on New Romulus and The Big Dig temple such as those nasty radiation debuffs/DoTs. Cryptic needs to make these kits fit Romulan technology and their theme. Nothing was said about these being reverse-engineered kits. I expect to feel like a devious Romulan agent with them, not a regular fed sci with a kit so many despise that has a little extra non-Romulan flavor.

All they had to do was take Hyperonic Radiation out of the physicist kit, and rework it as Thalaron radiation with different effects (guess what, biofilter sweep takes care of that debuff, btw), and replace Anethezine Gas with it. I was happy to see tachyon harmonic in the new kit since that is my bread and butter with the Borg kit I use now, but the Romulans never use it, so why is it there? Why not put me, as a sci, on par with a tac and give me an Operative-like cloak ability that has an ambush-like effect that buffs damage for a few seconds when I decloak, and has a chance to either expose or exploit? The obscure Trek PC game from many moons ago, Away Team, featured the ship's Russian sci officer using a personal cloak he acquired from the Romulans and was the only one able to use it. Cloaks should have been a sci-only ability from the start in STO. Tacs already have ambush and other damage buff abilities for god's sake. Balance, Cryptic, BALANCE!!! Pretty please?

As a quick aside from sci stuff, the Romulan engineer kit should have those annoying thalaron drones that deploy thalaron mines (which should be as nasty as Tholian ground mines that are one-shot kill wonders) while retaining their new (and awesome) plasma flamethrower drones (framerate killers, but they kill mobs rather nicely with extreme prejudice), and tacs should have the AoE smoke bomb clouds Romulan subcommanders use to shroud themselves. I think it should be changed to do damage to enemies that enter the cloud similar to theta radiation in space...maybe change it to a nanite cloud since, after all, why shouldn't the Romulans have access to Borg technology? Remember Nero's Narada ship from Star Trek 2009??? The whole dang thing, space tentacles and all, was reverse-engineered Borg tech from top to bottom!