I want to know three things about the Guramba Siege Destroyer.

1) What Ship Skill line does it feed off of? Raptor? Cruiser? BoP?

2) How does its Javelin / Siege Mode actually work?

3) How often does it generally see use of its Javelin in battle?

1- Raptor, IIRC

2- You push a button and you're in siege mode. You power up the javelin. You then fire it by pushing a second button. The firing of the javelin shoves you back into regular mode.

3- Entirely up to you. Siege mode makes you turn slow. The Javelin has a small firing arc. I tend to save using it for like battleships or the "end" ship of a mission or cluster of ships. In PVP it's about as useful as the Galaxy X's phaser lance.

I'd like to add that powering up the javelin taps it's energy from your energy weapon fire, which means you have to be shooting at something for it to power up. There are indicators on your ship that tells you when you're ready to fire, but the whole process probably takes 15-30 seconds depending on the amount of targets you have available to shoot at and how fast you can spin around to target.

In PvE on normal difficulty the Javelin is pretty much worthless except for "battleship" mini-boss type ships, simply because you'll destroy most ships before the javelin has the power to fire. On Advanced and Elite difficulties, it's not too bad.

Using siege mode in PvP is probably a death sentence unless you have support while it powers up, or you're hitting a solo cruiser or something like that.

Thanks to both of you for that info. One more question: Are Cannons Viable for the Guramba due to its slow turn in Siege mode or are beams better suited to it?

I use 4x dual disruptor beams in the front. Aft has 2x photons and a single beam. Turn rate would work well for dual heavy cannons, I just opted for beams so I'd get the extra damage on the Javelin.

im pretty sure the thing is still free on tribble to test.

copy your character over and see if you can claim it, then you can test it before you buy.

Never really been on Tribble and have no clue how to get there. I am also not Lt. General yet. I am planning ahead.

The Lance uses Beam Weapon proficiencies?

Lance is basically the equivalent of BO3 with a disruptor albeit with a much higher crit chance, unsure if it uses any skills in its firing, it has a narrow firing arc, about on par with dual heavy cannons.


Mines fitted out entirely with disruptor beams and uses APB and FAW 2/3 as its primary damage skills, plus the sci debuffs, the lance is just a nice 28-40k damage finisher for large targets (Cubes, etc).

1. Raptor

2. Hitting the siege mode button causes your ship to rotate around, and bring its tentacles forward like a pouncing octopus. It takes about a second to change into that configuration and a second to change back. During the change you can't fire any weapons at all. The entire time it's in that configuration you will turn like a cruiser, every weapon shot you hit your enemy with will put a small energy drain on them and charge your javelin. In about the time it takes for your BO to get off cooldown you can get your javelin charged. Once your javelin launches your ship will automatically take a non-firing second to change back to a standard mode making follow up difficult.

3. The Javelin shares a CD with other beam weapon powers including Beam Overload. So, in essence, if you fly a heavy beam build with two uses of Beam Overload you could conceivably never have a chance to use the Javelin.

Yes, but only if you use Siege Mode as a situational tool. Out of siege mode it's a nimble ship easily on par with any other escort in the game and perfectly tooled for Cannons. If you try to stay in siege mode near exclusively you'd have a lot of trouble working with the narrow arc of dual cannons.

My personal experience has been that the Guramba works best with a near standard 2DHC/DBB/Torp weapon loadout and a single use of the BO3 power saving the siege mode as a tool for heal heavy enemies who might benefit from the extra spike damage of the Javelin following on the CD of BO3.

With regards to it's survivability, an engineer could probably keep it in one piece quite easily, as it's essentially the same as a Fleet Escort, and those can tank very well for an escort.