[Engineer] The Workshop (builds, guides, and discussion)

[Karast]

I thought it would be nice to have a thread for builds, general questions, and advice.

But for new engis here is some basic information.


There are 3 mastery tries.

Rifleman: This is our single target dps tree. The key abilities are snipe, gunblast, hip shot, incendiary round, and signal flare.

It does mainly physical damage, and does benefit from weaponskill, but as things are right now stacking ws is not really an option. That will change with access to more tactics and armor sets in T4.

If you play rifle it is good to use gun turret for the armor debuff.

Grenadier: This is our ranged AoE Dot tree. The key abilities are napalm, strafing run, acid bomb, frag grenade, fire bomb, flashbang, and concussive grenade.

It does mostly corporeal damage, ws does not provide any benefit except for strafing run.

If you play grenadier the goal is to stack dots and napalm on a target area to give a bit of AoE pressure, which can be followed up with good ST dps from firebomb. It is very action point intensive, and has reduced range. Many find the throwing arm tactic vital to increase the range of abilities. It gives high damage numbers, but with a lot of enemy healing it is not often effective for killing enemies.

Tinker: This is a close range / support tree. Key abilities include blunderbuss, friction burn, detonate, landmine, lightning rod, magnet, and bugmans best (keg).

This does a mix of corp and physical, mostly corp. Most Tinker engi's go for keg and magnet. Magnet is great offensive and defensive CC, and it is one of the main warband spec's. Keg is also very popular as it is a good source of heals. Tinker also has a lot of AoE burst when skills such as lightning rod, friction burn, and detonate are combined with morale 2 unshakable focus.

For stat stacking right now weaponskill stacking is not ideal. We just can't get enough without weakening out other stats.

The stat priority for dps is as follows: critical hit, ballistics skill, weaponskill. Crit is the hardest to get. Most players use their renown points for crit. BS is easy to get from set bonuses, tactics, talismans, and potions / buffs.

I will add more information in later posts. But if there are any questions or comments just post!

[Scrilian]

Rifleman any good after the buff?

[Karast]

It's better. Snipe on a 5s cooldown helps the rotations. But it still suffers from the fact that it lacks a solid finisher like SH / SW ST spec's. Snipe is a good dps ability, but if it and hip shot doesn't kill a target by the time you get a gunblasts off they can be healed back to full or out of LoS.

Rotation-wise that's it's biggest weakness I'd say. Sometimes you get lucky with dot ticks to finish people, but often you don't.

As we move into T4, armor is going to become a bigger and bigger issue, but it's a problem across the board so I am hoping the dev's will step in and take a look.

Having a dead weight ability at the top of the tree really weakens rifle. A heal debuff or a good finisher in place of phosphorous shells would make a night and day difference, but that is a huge change to make, or even to get people to talk about, and the opposition to a big change like that, more than likely makes it impossible.

[Karast]

My honest suggestion would be for a new end tier ability. Maybe on a 30s CD, makes you next gunblast, snipe, or crackshot instant, with double the AP cost.

But I don't think it's in the cards honestly.

[Halhammer]

Xxxx

[Halhammer]

Sorry what? L2fukinP. Rifle man was and is totally viable, up until T4. Then it isn't.

[TenTonHammer]

That's precisely what he said

That rifleman falls off in t4

Anyone who played engie in live knows this

What if phosphorous shells became an ability that temporarily buffed ws or an ability that temporarily increased armor penetration by a scaling amount of all rifleman abilities for a short duration

[Sigimund]

Move phosphorous shells to Grenadier. It would fit in there perfectly without an overhaul. Swap it with Strafing Run and rework that into your debuff or finisher.

[Nomi]

I think that would be awesome putting strafing run in rifleman. I do actually like phosphorus shells though. I just helps having an additional dot.

[TenTonHammer]

In retrospect your right PS and SR would fit grenadier and rifleman better respectively than the trees they are in currently