[Engi] Lightning rod worth getting?

[wraithghost]

Is lightning rod worth getting? Or is it like sticky bomb in terms of low damage? On paper it looks terrible a cast time to use and terrible damage.

I am running napalm + phos with trench fighting and tracer rounds in tinker at RR67 just wondering where to put the last point.

[Glorian]

Back in the day when the new turrets were implemented Lightning rod was not worth it.
It doesn't get an Aoe Cap increase and it doesn't get a range increase.

I am not sure if Lightning Rod is affected by the lift of the AOE Target Cap.
Usually the rod is used to be cast before you do the pull.
Apart from that a simple Blunderbuss blast does the same Damage on more Targets on a greater Range with a flame Turret up.

[wonshot]

Lightning rod is dealing corp damage where as Blunderbust is psy damage type. So resist getting softcapped at 40% vs armorvalues of potentially royalset values, picking this ability or not might depend on how much weaponskill and armor pen you plan on running. Plus just can debuff this resist type yourself for the lightningrod.

Personally I dont think this ability is worth taking for a utility largescale build, such a Electromagnet focused crowdcontrol-build. But each to their own.

[wraithghost]

This is for a full dmg napalm build as I mentioned above, so general consensus seems to be its bad. So you just have bad choices really sticky suffers from low dmg, lightning rod suffers the same, the M4 doesn’t really seem worth going for either. Choices, choices

[Crumbs]

This ability is actually quite good for burst damage, all of what your standard close range engi doesnt have or use properly. Napalm is weaker for the first 20 seconds, in which time enemy has already moved out of it a long time ago. lightning rod is our spikiest aoe damage other than phos shells, most good magnet/melee engi will use lightning rod, big part of our aoe burst. And although we dont have the biggest burst in this spec, we're not exempt from the rule that burst is king

the rotation is to aoe debuff, frag grenade > friction burn > run in deep if you know you can survive > drop magnet > drop lightning rod > phosphorous shells, you can total for 1.5k+ damage in the instant if you do the lightning rod + phos shells immediately after magnet.

You're not a bw so dont expect to be running in and m2 bomb an entire warband alone, dont even try it alone without supporting aoe, its not how its supposed to work, we have to time our rotation when the BWs or melee are dropping their big aoe and morales.

Blunderbuss does not have anything to do in this spec until end gear with 70+rr, so do not use blunderbuss for low weaponskill builds. and if you have low weaponskill, then you should be aiming for 0 weaponskill and max ballistics + a broad range of defenses, we can save alot of stat points optimizing our gear to not be wasteful with stats.

BB doesnt have anything on our corp damage and is a waste of AP unless youre running near 800 weaponskill and armor piercing rounds, different spec entirely, and its a very squishy spec. If you dont get this much WS then you wont hit hard enough, defenses are squashed eg 500-600 WS is still too low.

its definitely worth taking if you got the extra point, sticky bomb is a meme.

[wraithghost]

Disagree about napalm in a choke or around the tank line in city or warband play hits loads of people and keeps on hitting them, most people have effects turned off and stand in it.

[roadkillrobin]

Rod stacks, while Napalm doesn't.

[wraithghost]

I will take both, the choice was between sticky and rod not napalm and rod.