Cruiser or Escort for an Engineer?

denliner1701

My character is an Engineer and I was wondering if I should stick with the Cruisers or switch to the Escorts?

They're opposites with the fact the Cruiser is a tank which can dish out acceptable damage and last longer than the Escort while the Escort can do extreme amounts of burst damage while being extremely fragile. My Engineering capabilities can patch up some of the Escort's fragility, but being in a Cruiser can also reinforce the Cruiser's strengths in it's ability to tank.

I'm still used to the fast damage dealing gameplay of a Bird of Prey, but I have used cruisers somewhat (Vor'cha class).

Sorry if this is in the wrong section, but can you guys help me with choosing what's best?

aveldra

It really depends on the job you want on the team. If you want to just kill stuff roll escort, if you want to support stick cruisers. Now if you do a lot of stfs escort all the way, especially if you pug because you can't trust your team to do the damage and you have to expect from yourself to carry that run. STFs being just a dps race anyway I would always run escorts.

For the new Fleet missions it's a toss up, if you have a dedicated player who knows how to support and all that you can take up the dps role and vice versa. The cool thing with the new Fleet missions it's not about just dps so it's friendly to support classes.

thoroon

Just to put some things right:
Cruisers aren't necessarily "tanks", they also can be very great supporters (healboats).
Escorts aren't fragile ships. Nearly anything which blows an unbuffed escort up, will do the same to a cruiser.

STFs are all about DPS and a bit of damage reduction while you have aggro. Any Escort can handle this for a while (and in some cases MVAE/HEC greet here, nearly forever).

Fleet Missions are all about support (crossheal etc.) and good DPS from anyone. How you achieve the DPS goal depends on your team as a whole (having a sci debuffer is a huge boost for example). In "No Win" the requirements are very tight in higher waves, in others not so much, but still can make a difference.

PvP on the other hand is messed up a bit. Usually try to survive an alpha strike, then wait who gets the bigger numbers out between cooldowns.

denliner1701

Thanks for the advice. I might go for the Escort line, but I'm seriously going for the Excelsior-R, since it looks so versatile at DPS and support.

dashuk2381

Just to add my two cents, my first Engineering captain I rolled I went straight Cruiser all through VA. I decided to run another Engineering captain and this time went the Escort route and it's been incredibly fun. The Engineering BoFF powers really lend to the survivability of the escort overall and you can pump out some awesome damage. It's def. a fun route to go.