Engineer Warlord Set Changes

[Hypernia]

Current BiS Engineer sets have an issue of failing to adequately cater to the respective playstyles, which I will broadly classify into 3 sensible possibilities:

1. Rifleman Single Target Physical Damage Build
2. Grenadier AOE Corporeal Damage Warband Build (Either with Napalm or Magnet)
3. Solo Roaming Defensive / Regen Spec

There is a potential 4th spec, Blunderbuss Physical Cone AOE + Magnet build (but this is so niche, boring, and outclassed by MDPS such that the only benefit it brings is Magnet, which isn't strong enough to make it a sensible choice).

However the current Warlord set fails to have good stat alignments to cater for these playstles. Some examples:
- 6pc bonus to grenadier tree, which does corporeal damage
- 2pc Weapon Skill bonus - for physical damage
- AA Haste on Jewelry, Shoulders, and Gloves - for physical damage
- 5pc Ranged Power bonus, which is great for the Range Power gear build, focused on capping BS and then maxing Ranged Power to continue boosting damage - 5 Warlord, 2 Tri, LOTD Cloak + Jewel, Sentinel Gloves, Bloodlord Weapons

The Main and Off Sov sets (and the new defensive Darkpromise set if the Armory bonuses are correct) cater very well to the existing Rifleman and Defensive / Regen playstyles; however the Grenadier build lacks a cohesive set that isn't filled with bonuses you don't want for the damage type you will be dealing.

My suggestion:
- Convert 3pc Set Bonus from +83 Weapon Skill to +83 Wounds
- Convert 4pc Set Bonus from +6% Reduced Chance to Be Dodged to Reduce Cast TIme on Barrel + Lightning Rod by 1s
- Remove the +AA Haste from items and convert this to redistribute the +6% Reduced Chance to Be Dodged from 4pc Set bonus that was changed
- Redistribute + Weapon Skill on items to + Wounds / Toughness / Initiative
- +80 HP/s could be moved to the Def Sov chest, and replaced with +2 AP/s
- 7pc Armor debuff could stay as a group support option, although it's completely pointless in the current meta with 100% ArPen WLs and running 7pc on sets isn't really a good choice over the other mixed options. It might make sense to continue to exist as a Slayer synergy, as their ArPen doesn't get as high


These changes would serve to bring the Engineer up substantially in viability for an organised warband, both in terms of improved survivability, but also a better alignment of their stats to the damage type they are looking to deal. As Napalm and Phosphorous Shells don't stack in an area, this still won't make it so that a warband would want to bring multiple Engineers (not least because of their lack of instant AOE M2) but it will allow them to compete more fairly on damage with other Order DPS classes. Increased survivability is needed to make up for the lack of defensive and mobility tools the Engineer has versus White Lion; no root break, no charge, no pounce. Shorter / instant casts on Barrel and Lightning Rod respectively would also allow them to keep up with the pace fights move better, which currently is extremely fast; returning viability to these abilities.

[Battlefield]

Warlord set besides ballistic and weapon skill should have also wounds bonus.

About Healing keg better make it strictly self healing no more healing for group and instead of this instant cast or 1s cast on the move or increase a cooldown.

[gersy]

it works great as is for rifleman, no need to nerf it. the portions you want to remove from it are some of the best qualities of it like AA haste and weapon skill. there already exists mainsov for grenadier and defsov for tinkerer. it makes sense that warlord would be there for rifleman. bis rifle is already 5warlord/4 tri or 6tri/3warlord depending on what type of rifle build you are doing. the one point i can agree with is that the +2 to grenadier tree is entirely misplaced on a set clearly designed for physical builds.

[Lyra2]

+1 Gersy
as a rifleman player I'm using 6 tri 3 warlord which is bis imo. what am I supposed to play with your warlord rework.
you are removing a WS bonus set and a 3 pieces with a lot of native WS. main sov isnt that good for rifleman, 4/5 or 5/4 is a loss of 40-50 WS, 5% AA and 4% damage.

[Hypernia]

Assuming all numbers versus medium armour targets, no guard.

Comparing A. 5 Main Sov / 4 Tri versus B. 6 Tri / 3 WL (Both with 2x Topaz Annulus) gives the following differences, A to B assuming identical tactics / renown / talis (FS2, Crit 3, WS 5, BS 1, with 8x WS Talis and Range Power Epic Tali, BS/Crit Liniment):

+62 Armor
+17 Toughness
+38 Initiative
+83 Wounds
+1 Weapon Skill
-7 Ballistic Skill
+5% Reduced Chance to be Dodged
+3% Armor Penetration
+3% Ranged Crit
+2 AP/Second
-25% AA Haste (Using the maths here, this is a ~14% reduction in AA Damage, assuming you use Hand Crafted Scope, 20% reduction if you don't: viewtopic.php?t=54621). This is a meaningful difference; and shouldn't be ignored.

Average damage per shot of Focused Fire is 540 for build A and 544 for build B, Hip shot 605 vs 611, Snipe 1225 vs 1236; which is a negligible difference.

Build C with 5 WL / 4 Tri and same everything else has 536 Per Shot on Focused Fire, 609 on Hip Shot, and 1214 on Snipe, with a 11% AA drop with Handcrafted Scope and 16% without; from the following stats changes: C vs A:
-40 Armor
-17 Toughness
-28 Initiative
-73 Wounds
-5 Weapon Skill
+6 Ballistic Skill
-1% Reduced Chance to be Dodged
-3% Armor Penetration
-6% Ranged Crit
-2 AP/Second
+19% AA Haste

You raise a good point on AA haste though; I can't see an issue with moving those bonuses to Main Sov in place of the current ones on Jewelry and one other piece, either Shoulders, Helm, or Body in lieu of the existing Crit / Reduced Chance to be Dodged bonuses. Why Main Sov doesn't have Weapon Skill as it's 3pc bonus is strange as well, but that's another matter.

But frankly I just dispute the point that Main Sov is a good Grenadier Set; it's just okay but does less damage than WL / Tri / LOTD mix even with a load of useless bonuses. Unless you want to explore massively overcapping Ballistic Skill; which will simply be outperformed by the Warlord Range Power bonus anyway.

Damage calculations on current Warlord / LOTD / Tri Range power Build put it at 830 Average damage on Phosphorous Shells with Acid Bomb corp debuff versus 774 for 5 Sov / 4 Tri (7% damage increase) and a below 5% increase on AOE DoT damage. 5 Sov / 4 Tri does get around 2k extra wounds and the ability to push defenses further with FS3, Parry, or Dodge Disrupt using extra points; which isn;t nothing, but may be less impactful playing Grenadier from mid-range and working to avoid taking the main damage from the opposing WB.

In short; make each Engi set good at one thing, and not having multiple sets with weird bonuses not properly catered to individual playstyles. Especially Grenadier which needs some love to actually be WB viable.

[gersy]

afaik for grenadier typically you go 7sov 2tri (belt/ring tri) for raw damage output bis. maybe you could try calculating it too. with this setup you've a gigantic amount of crit (if i recall over 70% with proc active, 2x topaz, turret tactic, etc) and more importantly a crit damage boost, which should impact damage quite a lot as engi doesn't have any crit damage boost to speak of.

as for the rifle test, did you add in the 4% damage bonus of 6tri ? i didn't see it on the list of differences. and this build is of course AA oriented, so you are trying to maximize that because bloodlord rifle has 4.0 speed, meaning very slow but very hard hitting, and with a tremendous amount of AA haste from gear and tactic it allows you to weave autos between every gun blast and snipe without delay and also lets you do easier channel cuts with focused fire allowing you to auto+hipshot at same time and do mini timestamps with focused fire+aa+hipshot+turretshot all at same 0.1 second.

[Ruin]

it works great as is for rifleman, no need to nerf it. the portions you want to remove from it are some of the best qualities of it like AA haste and weapon skill. there already exists mainsov for grenadier and defsov for tinkerer. it makes sense that warlord would be there for rifleman. bis rifle is already 5warlord/4 tri or 6tri/3warlord depending on what type of rifle build you are doing. the one point i can agree with is that the +2 to grenadier tree is entirely misplaced on a set clearly designed for physical builds.

then is shoud be dedicated to a rifleman mamstery, not granade. and thats the issue, and you wrote that granade spec i using the ste dedicated for riflman build, that also provides 6% armor pen. so theer aare a loot of bonuses misaling between the sets for engi.