Return of Reckoning

While i dont disagree engi and magus lack something they both do very well in wb v wb and 1v1 situations, sure they wont get a slot in a 6man if u have to run the fotm stuff but the same can be said for not only engi and magus.
Remember engi and magus are meant to be the stationary rdps class so asking for stuff a kiting rdps has is wrong.

My opinion, remove the cast time on demons/turrets and have them pulse out buffs be it ap. dodge disrupt %, cant be setback or something along them lines.
Also maybe change hollow points tactic to something like "snipe and gunblast will now ignore 50% of your targets armor" to help with problem of armor stacking in t4 that really hurts rifle spec engi's.

Morf wrote:While i dont disagree engi and magus lack something they both do very well in wb v wb and 1v1 situations, sure they wont get a slot in a 6man if u have to run the fotm stuff but the same can be said for not only engi and magus.
Remember engi and magus are meant to be the stationary rdps class so asking for stuff a kiting rdps has is wrong.
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This is one of the main issues with these classes.

The idea of a "Stationary RDPS" is one that is inherently flawed conceptually, especially in a game like this. You could make it work in a theoretical situation, but not in one where you have this kind of combat system, and definitely not with the way the Magus and Engie were designed and balanced.

In a game where the MDPS is designed to kill quickly, and has the tools to catch kiting RDPS, stationary RDPS classes are just a bad design decision.

And, to that end, any Magus or Engie player know thats they need to kite if they want to be more than a bloodstain. Trying to be "stationary" at any level, leaves you dead unless you are guarded and over-healed, and at that point, pretty much any other DPS class could do the same thing, much better.

They were not originally "stationary RDPS" they were control/CC classes... and they got hit hard as **** with the CC immunity/nerf update. Later patches eventually made up for it with the turret buff, and that is what made them "stationary" as a large portion of their new dps is tied to being within range of their summons.

1.4.9 seems like it has the right idea by making the summons more reliable, and removing the clunkiness from the mechanic itself which they are now reliant on to even pretend to be competitive.

Engineer has always suffered from lack of ways to deal with armor aside from WS and their low class armor debuff from turret, which ends up being worse than some item/set procs?

gamlith wrote:I love the idea of the engineer and play it alot along side my runepriest. I remember in live there we many problems that i am (not surprisingly) again running into.

Of all the dps to bring, why an engineer?
I saw a similar question made but for the tanks (Why bring a swordmaster?) I am happy the devs wish to address it.
But why bring an engineer? It's aoe is overshadowed by a bw or slayer. Its single target and be easily delt with. It utility? The tinkering tree does have some nice group buffs such as the keg and ap regen, but only effects people with in 30 feet (so unlikely to effect the mdps and tanks pushing in.)

We have some great concepts but are lacking. Lacking even in basic utilities.
No Hdebuff, range snare, or a snare breaker. (perhaps the snare breaker can be lived without) but a range snare is invaluable for survivability and a Hdebuff for group utility.

This is one of the concepts I was trying to describe earlier, but you summarized it in a very neat fashion so I wanted to expound upon this point.

Why bring an Engie or Magus?

Of course, their damage will never be as good as a BW or Sorcs, thats a given, just due to how backlash/combustion work, nor or they as fragile. This is fine, and by design (of course the same argument could be made for SH/Squigs, but they do have a niche that the Engie/Magus do not).

The point I made was that they "should" be brought for their utility, not their damage, as they will never be the primary ranged damage dealers in this game, that niche is filled.

However, the disparity in utility that the Magus/Engie has vs the other RDPS classes isn't great enough to justify their lack of damage in comparison. I fully agree that these classes have always, always, needed more utility. That "should" be their niche and they have some decent utility options, but it is not now, and has never been "good enough". The lack of a ranged snare is a perfect example. The heal debuff, I'm not sold on, I'd honestly much rather have the SH/SW as the ONLY RDPS who has that option available, to keep them in line with their niche. The BW should not ever, and still should not, have a heal debuff, that was always brain-dead design. The one option I could go for is a 25% AoE incoming healing debuff tied to a current ability. Or, they could be the only RPDS to have an outgoing heal debuff, I'd be good with that as well. But each sub-archetype needs its niches, and I don't think the Engie/Magus need to get a 50% incoming as that would devalue the SH/SWs niche.

There is an unlimited amount of changes one could make to the Engie/Magus to make them better, more viable, and well rounded classes. I think the consensus from Engie/Magus players, from live until today, is that they have always needed more utility, not damage. People making and playing these classes know they aren't BWs/Sorcs, but they also realize that as the "medium" damage RDPS classes, they should have the utility and survivability to make them viable, and they never have.

These classes have always been conceptually flawed in design. And the mass pull abilities have always seemed to me like a terrible approach to balance on Mythics behalf. If you give an underpowered class one grossly overpowered ability, your design was terrible, that is no way to ever try to balance anything (and it was grossly overpowered on launch, not so much anymore).

Jaycub wrote:They were not originally "stationary RDPS" they were control/CC classes... and they got hit hard as **** with the CC immunity/nerf update. Later patches eventually made up for it with the turret buff, and that is what made them "stationary" as a large portion of their new dps is tied to being within range of their summons.

1.4.9 seems like it has the right idea by making the summons more reliable, and removing the clunkiness from the mechanic itself which they are now reliant on to even pretend to be competitive.

Engineer has always suffered from lack of ways to deal with armor aside from WS and their low class armor debuff from turret, which ends up being worse than some item/set procs?

They were designed with a stationary pet mechanic, which didn't even have a resummon at launch. Of course, playing them as stationary is brain-dead, but they were most definitely designed as "the most stationary" of the RDPS sub archetypes.

I don't think the turret buff made up for much of anything they lost in the CC patch. It was a band-aid slapped on a conceptual design flaw to make the classes not completely horrible, and it wasn't even that great of a change as the poster above us stated, tieing their damage into being stationary.

Honestly, the whole "growing" part of the damage needs to go. You are within range of your turret? You get the buff. You aren't? You don't. That would make it actually decent. As it is now, its horrible design.

Secondly, the Engineers damage issues were always easy to fix. Just change the majority of their physical damage to elemental (yea it makes no sense lore wise, but its good for game balance) Leave AA in as physical, change the armor debuffs to something else for parity with the Magus, and you're good to go. Give them slightly lower base damage than the Magus to compensate for lack of AA. Or, take auto attacks out, whatever.

If you don't want to go to that extreme, just give them inherent armor pen on most of their physical abilities, and adjust the base damage down (that way they don't get extreme armor debuffs).

If you don't want to go to that extreme, give them a Piercing Bite mirror tactic that gives Gun, Hip, Focused (etc..) 50% armor pen.

Theres lots of ways to fix the Engies armor issue, but that won't fix the class.

Would it be too far or impossible to change the physical damage engineer does with say rifle abilities and just make it all corporeal damage? That may aid in higher tiers where armor gets very high and synergy between my physical and corporal damage abilities is lower.

As for utility I agree 100% that it should be engineers niche. But since the way abilities work cant be changed maybe change the values or distances. the 100ft range on bugmans best and extra ammo tactic did seem a bit much, but since there are limitations on their mechanics, I'm trying to work within them.

I'd love to see some Rifle love. Maybe a better tactic or a decent third ability on that tree.
I'm fine with being a stationary gun, damage now is good but for later it will drop considerably.

gamlith wrote:I love the idea of the engineer and play it alot along side my runepriest. I remember in live there we many problems that i am (not surprisingly) again running into.

Of all the dps to bring, why an engineer?
I saw a similar question made but for the tanks (Why bring a swordmaster?) I am happy the devs wish to address it.
But why bring an engineer? It's aoe is overshadowed by a bw or slayer. Its single target and be easily delt with. It utility? The tinkering tree does have some nice group buffs such as the keg and ap regen, but only effects people with in 30 feet (so unlikely to effect the mdps and tanks pushing in.)

We have some great concepts but are lacking. Lacking even in basic utilities.
No Hdebuff, range snare, or a snare breaker. (perhaps the snare breaker can be lived without) but a range snare is invaluable for survivability and a Hdebuff for group utility.

I propose this for the class changes:

Core:
Make hip shot a range snare via stopping power in the rifle tree
Change gun blast, snipe and frag grenade to corporal damage
Firebomb is now instead a 20-30 ft aoe, scaled to damage obviously

Spec: Tinkerer
Bugmans Best has 100ft radius effect
extra ammo tactic has a 100ft radius effect

This may be all called op but ask yourself, would you now bring an engineer over other dps or revert back to the old meta?

While buffing engineer this way, You also have to buff magus, because what You posted will outshine magus by a miles.
I would start with mirroring keg to magus, because its one of the best utility engineer can offer to his realm.

Why not make that third tactic on Rifle useful?

Coated Bullets
All your path of rifleman abilities now deal Corporeal Damage.

Being a third tactic it is hard to get to, and would make Rifle good into T4, as well as solving the issue trying to balance Ballistic + WS.
Just some thoughts, considering that Magus ST tree is magic dmg.

I'd love to see some Magus love as well, mirroring what the Eng has on tinker.

Changing the damage type of an entire tree is not a good way to address the problems of the engineer. It's a broad, band-aid type fix when the underlying problem is the core relationship between armor and weaponskill, and how much of either certain classes get.

It would be better to take a look at how physical RDPS can get access to armor penetration, through itemization or tactics. Mythic tried giving them a +WS tactic, but for some reason made it -Toughness too. In any case, it wasn't enough.