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Gripes with engineer's kit abilities

momawmomaw Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Who knows, maybe somebody actually reads these things? These are my thoughts on the engineer's kit abilities, some of which are just plain lacking and lead to basically only two of the kits being used by most engineers I have seen.

First, the ones that work fine and so will not be discussed further:
Chroniton mine barrier
Fuse armor
Medical generator
Quantum mortar
Seeker drone
Transphasic bomb
Weapon malfunction

Everything else has issues that make them annoying or useless:

1.) Combat supply.
A nice premise, but the mechanics are a serious pain in the antennae. You can't equip things during battle, which means you can't equip your combat supplies when you pick them up nor can you change to normal supplies when you run out of the ones combat supply gave you. There's also some bugs with the way this ability works if you have SOME empty device slots but not enough to pick up all the combat supplies. Finally there's the pure inelegance of having to shuffle around in your inventory every time you use this.

Recommendation: Total overhaul. Instead of giving players disposable consumables that are carried away and require inventory shenanigans, make it so that anybody standing near a combat supply crate gets a small extension on their tray with the options to use a combat supply device, just like the small tray extension given by equipping an environmental suit. Using devices from the crate this way costs nothing and can be done as many times as desired while the combat supply crate persists, though the combat supply does trigger the consumables cooldown. If a player has ordinary devices equipped and on their tray for normal use, make it so that charges are not used up if they are near a combat supply crate. So you have med hypo * 5 in your Shift+4 slot, walk up to the crate, use your med with Shift+4, and you still have med hypo * 5. Finally, with a Quartermaster, let the supply crate grant minor and major regenerators.

2.) Equipment diagnostics
The only part of this that currently matters is the shield hardness modifier. Because of the way damage resists work, the damage resist bonus is negligible, and removing mechanical debuffs isn't something that happens often enough to justify burning this ability for that. With 30 seconds of active time and 1:30 recharge, it's something you use before a big fight but this doesn't really give enough performance to suit its cooldown profile/opportunity cost.

Recommendation: Add a constant shield recharge effect to replace the meaningless damage resist, add a bonus to both rate of fire and damage on energy weapons, and a skill bonus to engineering abilities. Basically all of your equipment should be Just Plain Better while equipment diagnostics is active. Diagnostic Technician doffs should extend the duration of Diagnostics rather than adding new features to it.

3.) Force field dome
Nice idea, but again, because of the way damage resists stack this is a lot less impressive than it looks.

Recommendation: Change the defensive bonus to a dodge chance instead of an armor resist.

4.) Quick Fix
As a personal ability it's nice and spammable, but as a way to support fabrications this is pointless since fabrications have almost no survivability and often die to one good attack.

Recommendation: When used on a fabrication, this ability should proactively add a lot of temporary hitpoints (couple hundred), and give a significant bonus to weapon damage, to make the fabrication a significant threat. The only kit that has Quick Fix is the Support Technician, who lacks any offensive abilities of their own, so this gives them something to do to contribute to the fight.

5.) Shield generator
Way too weak. Offers effectively no real difference in the defensive strength of players and will generally be destroyed by one good attack.

Recommendation: Give the shield generator itself strong shields which constantly replenishes at a decent rate, to protect it. Enemies should be forced to actually concentrate on destroying the generator rather than taking it out as collateral damage on AOE. Double (triple??) the shield regeneration effect for players inside the bubble.

6.) Shield recharge
Magnitude is too low given how fast enemies rip through shields.

Recommendation: Needs to either offer an immediate and full recharge, or a more persistent defensive bonus.

7.) Turret fabrication
Mostly okay once it's deployed, but has a painfully long animation attached to its creation which can get you killed just trying to plant the thing.

Recommendation: Change the summon animation from the crouch to the same "on the move" style that support and seeker drones have.
Post edited by momaw on

Comments

  • diogene0diogene0 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    And now do this for sci and tacs. 70% of the sci abilities are completely useless, and half of the tac ones are stupid.
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  • guriphuguriphu Member Posts: 494 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Your Combat Supply idea is interesting (although saving a few hundred energy credits is still hardly worth losing a kit power). Being able to grant regenerators would be a really nice feature, however. How many times have we all been on a mission and somebody runs out of regenerators, only to find that everyone else's are all in their bank?

    Equipment Diagnostics is highly effective when paired with other shield heals (which is the entire point of a resistance boost power). Shield resistance does not suffer from diminishing returns, and can be boosted to near 100% for a short period if running all the buffs on the Equipment Tech kit. The Diagnostic Engineer doff also adds a significant damage boost to Equipment Diagnostics, and the power can be passed to a teammate, which is useful. You also forgot to mention the immunity to mechanical debuffs, e.g. polaron procs (Jem Hadar enemies), fuse armor (Borg enemies, Engineers of various races), and weapon malfunction (Engineers of various races). This is one of the Engineer's most effective abilities, especially in a team setting, where tactical initiative can reduce its cooldown to allow for longer up-time and the buff can be used on whatever ally needs it most. I like your idea of making it improve the engineer's abilities, since engineers are generally underpowered and could use the buff, although I think your suggestions are going a little too far. A 5% skill boost would be a nice addition without overpowering the skill.

    I agree with your other points.
  • zahinderzahinder Member Posts: 2,382 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Combat supply is very annoying.

    Part of the problem is that the hotbar functionality in STO is REALLY FRAKKING HORRIBLE:
    'Ok, drag something into first device slot, drag first device slot to the hotbar. Drag something else into the first device slot... wait, it disappeared from the hotbar? What sense does that make??? GAAAARHG'

    Dragging one of your device slots to the hotbar should just set that hotbar button to 'device slot 1' and that's that. The fact that it doesn't work like that makes me wonder A) how the heck they coded it, and B) what the heck were they thinking.


    (For extra lulz, imagine this post with a lot of cursing I'm not allowed to post on the forum)
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  • weylandjuarezweylandjuarez Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    zahinder wrote: »
    Combat supply is very annoying.

    Part of the problem is that the hotbar functionality in STO is REALLY FRAKKING HORRIBLE:
    'Ok, drag something into first device slot, drag first device slot to the hotbar. Drag something else into the first device slot... wait, it disappeared from the hotbar? What sense does that make??? GAAAARHG'

    Dragging one of your device slots to the hotbar should just set that hotbar button to 'device slot 1' and that's that. The fact that it doesn't work like that makes me wonder A) how the heck they coded it, and B) what the heck were they thinking.


    (For extra lulz, imagine this post with a lot of cursing I'm not allowed to post on the forum)

    That, and the fact that ground set powers are swapping places all the time now drives me nuts - I've lost track of the number of times I've hit the Shield Cap instead of Remod in ground STFs because the stupid powers keep changing their stupid places on the stupid stupid hotbar :(

    AND I'm really tired of dragging Boff powers out of my main hotbar when I change zones or switch between ground and space - and please please for the love of God can they fix the bug that nixes your Boff seating when you change ships - argh!!! :(
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  • tc10btc10b Member Posts: 1,549 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    I too would like button a to mean item 1. I'm sure it used to work that way. Now changing my equipped items is such a pain in the rear end I often don't bother with it.
  • smokeybacon90smokeybacon90 Member Posts: 2,252 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Quantum Mortar, Medical Generator, Shield Generator, Cover Shield, Mines and Transphasic Bomb all have the same animation times as Turret Fabrication. I think even the drones do too. Yes, if you plop down a mortar, med gen and a turret one after another, that's the best part of 10 seconds spent defenceless. But on their own it is not so bad. Even better, place them pro-actively, in anticipation of approaching enemies, or before you go charging into a mob. Coupled with the appropriate doffs, you can make your own personal fire support platform.
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  • tc10btc10b Member Posts: 1,549 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    I like to drop them all behind a cover shield or off to one side of a doorway. I find this works reasonably well.
  • haravikkharavikk Member Posts: 278
    edited January 2013
    momaw wrote: »
    7.) Turret fabrication
    Mostly okay once it's deployed, but has a painfully long animation attached to its creation which can get you killed just trying to plant the thing.

    Recommendation: Change the summon animation from the crouch to the same "on the move" style that support and seeker drones have.
    I want to play as a fabricator, and have a Mk X Very Rare kit and all the appropriate skills, but the turrets just seem to pull immediate aggro and die way too quickly. This can be a bonus in some ways, since it means I'm not being shot at for a few seconds, but I'd personally like to see fabricators as more strategic than that; placing turrets where they can lay down fire on enemies in an enclosed space like a corridor, but they just die too easily, and don't do anywhere near enough damage. Not that NPC enemies have anywhere near the behaviour required for strategic placement to really matter anyway.

    I'd rather see them be toughened up a lot more, but have a much longer cool down. Maybe with the duty officer bonus being to apply a constant bonus to turret health and shields rather than randomly beaming in an extra turret (which for me only seems to happen when I least need one). I like the idea of another ability being usable to give turrets a significant boost, this is the kind of cooperation I'd love to see more of as a couple of engineers working together to position reinforced turrets at key locations should absolutely be a thing to fear, rather than laugh at as the turret dies almost straight away or deals so little damage it may as well not be there :(


    Same deal with the medical and shield generators, which personally I think should be combined and likewise be made a lot more resilient with a longer cool down. It'd probably also help if friendly NPCs tried to stick close to medical/shield generators while remembering to dodge when a grenade is thrown at them. These things should be all about placement, but most area of effect abilities will kill them quite happily regardless of where you put them.

    More ideally I'd rather see the shield generator part functioning more like bubble shields in Halo; they would prevent anyone inside from suffering any damage at all, giving them a chance to heal, but leaving them unable to fire out either. The device itself would only suffer damage from certain abilities, otherwise an enemy has to try and get inside the bubble to attack the generator directly.
  • tc10btc10b Member Posts: 1,549 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    The bubble shield idea sounds like a good compromise for the force field dome and the shield generator powers as it would make both immensely more useful.

    The annoying thing I find about turrets/drones is that if you use them in STFs you're wasting your time as the borg adapt to them almost instantly making them only useful as aggro grabbers. They should remodulate when you do. At least the support drone does stuff other than shoot.
  • zahinderzahinder Member Posts: 2,382 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Yeah, I find shield/medical/whatever generators die too fast when I actually need them. If the fight isn't dangerous enough to need them, the enemies don't manage to destroy them. Add to that the time spent building them... bah.

    The main value of generators is when you can set up a defensible position (cover shield + stuff) and fight from that position.

    The problem is that most combat in STO moves so quickly that setting up a position like this is a waste of time. Ground pvp and some STFs, maybe.
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    Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?

    Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?

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  • momawmomaw Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    guriphu wrote: »
    Equipment Diagnostics is highly effective when paired with other shield heals (which is the entire point of a resistance boost power). Shield resistance does not suffer from diminishing returns, and can be boosted to near 100% for a short period if running all the buffs on the Equipment Tech kit.

    My experience has always been that it doesn't do enough to justify the 1:30 cooldown time. Armor resists seem to basically stall at the 40-45% mark, but you have more health than shield and the armor always works. Plus, there's little benefit to pumping up your shield resistance to become impervious for a few seconds at a time when all the situations you might be faced with take more time than that to neutralize (elite tactical drones, dahar masters, etc). That's why I'm saying make Diagnostics a sort of mild Do Everything Better buff.
    The Diagnostic Engineer doff also adds a significant damage boost to Equipment Diagnostics

    A chance of, rather. If it was a flat damage bonus instead of a chance, that basically satisfies my recommendation that Diagnostics should increase damage output.

    Quantum Mortar, Medical Generator, Shield Generator, Cover Shield, Mines and Transphasic Bomb all have the same animation times as Turret Fabrication. I think even the drones do too.

    Drones and mines both have a "fast" animation, which can be performed while moving and leave you exposed for a minimal amount of time. The kneeling animation is fine for the mortar, bomb, medi gen, and shield gen because these are "strategic landscaping" type fabrications, while the turret with its fast cooldown and minimal firepower ends up being more of a distraction.

    Making the turret a really strong thing that has an extensive cooldown means players get LESS use out of it, because they'll be forced to save it for truly desperate situations instead of tossing it out as the group moves. Now, if you want to go that route with having a really strong turret pet, then make it so we can pick the turret back up which resets the cooldown time. That way we can move it around as the fight continues.

    Though, I fear doing that would just make the kits that can use turrets even more awesome at the expense of the less used ones.
  • elandarkskyelandarksky Member Posts: 1,013 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    momaw wrote: »
    1.) Combat supply.
    A nice premise, but the mechanics are a serious pain in the antennae. You can't equip things during battle, which means you can't equip your combat supplies when you pick them up nor can you change to normal supplies when you run out of the ones combat supply gave you. There's also some bugs with the way this ability works if you have SOME empty device slots but not enough to pick up all the combat supplies. Finally there's the pure inelegance of having to shuffle around in your inventory every time you use this.

    Recommendation: Total overhaul. ... grant minor and major regenerators.

    2.) Equipment diagnostics

    Recommendation: Add a constant shield recharge effect to replace the meaningless damage resist, add a bonus to both rate of fire and damage on energy weapons, and a skill bonus to engineering abilities. Basically all of your equipment should be Just Plain Better while equipment diagnostics is active. Diagnostic Technician doffs should extend the duration of Diagnostics rather than adding new features to it.

    3.) Force field dome
    Nice idea, but again, because of the way damage resists stack this is a lot less impressive than it looks.

    Recommendation: Change the defensive bonus to a dodge chance instead of an armor resist.

    4.) Quick Fix
    Recommendation: When used on a fabrication, this ability should proactively add a lot of temporary hitpoints (couple hundred), and give a significant bonus to weapon damage, to make the fabrication a significant threat. The only kit that has Quick Fix is the Support Technician, who lacks any offensive abilities of their own, so this gives them something to do to contribute to the fight.

    5.) Shield generator
    Way too weak. Offers effectively no real difference in the defensive strength of players and will generally be destroyed by one good attack.

    Recommendation: Give the shield generator itself strong shields which constantly replenishes at a decent rate, to protect it. Enemies should be forced to actually concentrate on destroying the generator rather than taking it out as collateral damage on AOE. Double (triple??) the shield regeneration effect for players inside the bubble.

    6.) Shield recharge
    Magnitude is too low given how fast enemies rip through shields.

    Recommendation: Needs to either offer an immediate and full recharge, or a more persistent defensive bonus.

    7.) Turret fabrication
    Mostly okay once it's deployed, but has a painfully long animation attached to its creation which can get you killed just trying to plant the thing.

    Recommendation: Change the summon animation from the crouch to the same "on the move" style that support and seeker drones have.


    1. I really like the regen idea
    2. kinda like a 'shield vascular regenerator?'
    3. Dont forget it does offer the pushback which has its applications, something i would think would be interesting, maybe a deflection proc added to any ally in the field? (nothing 1:1 ratio, but a small damage deflection :p)
    4. the bonus hp i can kinda go for.. but the damage boost is more than sufficient atm in my opinion :p (keep in mind 3 support drones due to doff proc grants 3-4 quick fixing ultra buffs.. :|)
    5. Not sure about buffing the gen itself, but maybe increase the base regen/resistances slightly, in terms of ballance you dont want the support fabrication kit to = godly defence (mega shields, nice heals, and a barrier that adds evasion?)
    6. personally i find shield recharge more than acceptable, think of it as the shield medical tricorder, fair heal, nice resitance and short cooldown, only bad thing its not present in many "good" kits
    7.Turret fabrication shares is animation with mortars/generators, i think its fair, given you are constructing a static gun platform :p

    [/COLOR]

    tc10b wrote: »
    The annoying thing I find about turrets/drones is that if you use them in STFs you're wasting your time as the borg adapt to them almost instantly making them only useful as aggro grabbers. They should remodulate when you do.

    Support drones will use 'quick fix' very often on fabrcations, two awesome things about this? Support drone is avaliable to all engineers, and there is even a doff that can proc 2extra drones.. 3quick fixing drones floating around? :P
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  • elandarkskyelandarksky Member Posts: 1,013 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    momaw wrote: »

    Making the turret a really strong thing that has an extensive cooldown means players get LESS use out of it, because they'll be forced to save it for truly desperate situations instead of tossing it out as the group moves. Now, if you want to go that route with having a really strong turret pet, then make it so we can pick the turret back up which resets the cooldown time. That way we can move it around as the fight continues.

    Though, I fear doing that would just make the kits that can use turrets even more awesome at the expense of the less used ones.

    Part of me is dying to suggest sticking wheels on them, portable turrets that follow you into combat ^^

    Space tanks :D
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  • adamkafeiadamkafei Member Posts: 6,539 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    diogene0 wrote: »
    and half of the tac ones are stupid.

    I disagree, they are simply suited to a role that does not suit your style of play, my tac toon doesn't use a kit that aids their own DPS and only their DPS, I use a kit that allows me to debuff entire groups of enemies so the rest of my team can faceroll them, sure it comes at the price of personal DPS but it is certainly worth it.

    I think it is time science and engineering characters got something worth having considering the game is DPS based, which happens to be tacs job.
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  • elandarkskyelandarksky Member Posts: 1,013 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    adamkafei wrote: »
    I disagree, they are simply suited to a role that does not suit your style of play, my tac toon doesn't use a kit that aids their own DPS and only their DPS, I use a kit that allows me to debuff entire groups of enemies so the rest of my team can faceroll them, sure it comes at the price of personal DPS but it is certainly worth it.

    I think it is time science and engineering characters got something worth having considering the game is DPS based, which happens to be tacs job.

    May i ask your opinion on 'Draw fire' XD
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  • adamkafeiadamkafei Member Posts: 6,539 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    May i ask your opinion on 'Draw fire' XD

    Sure, I would say its perfectly fine, it keeps groups of enemies off your team, its only stupid if used wrong, i.e. using it on a group of elite borg drones with no medic to keep you alive
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  • nicha0nicha0 Member Posts: 1,456 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Wow, I think the OP needs to look outside of being an engineer. Engineer has some of the most overpowered abilities in the game. Of all the problem abilities listed only combat supply and equipment diagnostics are problematic, the others might not always be desirable, but they do have a real use, they aren't one ability does all type things though.

    Compare to tactical:

    Buffs -
    Draw Fire - Tiny damage resistance buff that tells every enemy to kill you right that second, you'll die about 2s later.

    Motion accelerator - Move faster with more melee damage, available in the melee kit, which is.. not ideal for melee. Good going.

    Overwatch - Group damage resistance buff, does little to anyone wearing equipment with skill points properly placed.

    Rally Cry - The 10hp/sec heal isn't going to save you today, but the buff to critical hit is nice, still the kits it is attached to don't support utilizing critical hits.

    Stealth module - Enemies still see you when agroed, its a joke, only good for sneaking around non-agroed enemies

    Suppressing Fire - Finally something useful, debuffs an enemies damage. One of the best abilities

    Ambush - Strong single attack damage burst, the best ability out there

    Battle Strategies - Small damage increase for 15s


    Damage abilities

    Smoke grenade? It doesn't seem to do anything, especially on the large number of AoE attacks.
    Photon grenade. The highest damage, but available in not wanted kits only
    Plasma greande.. OK damage, the DoT makes enemies run around like morons, often bugging missions, so your team wants you not to use it
    Stun grenade - a 2s stun and minimal damage every 30s? ya no thanks

    4 grenades, the strongest does half the damage one of those op mines do, and you can lay down 10 mines in the time tacs throw a grenade. 20x the damage.. and they go where you want them, not flying half way across the map to a location you weren't even pointing at.

    Sweeping strikes - good dps, utterly useless in reality, you're going to die using this.

    Lunge - Good single hit of damage, able to hit from a medium range. Used to exploit it is very effective, without it.. meh

    There we go, 4 tactical kit abilities that don't completely suck. Odd that tacs have few abilities that actually damage things.

    On to science?
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  • tc10btc10b Member Posts: 1,549 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Overwatch also debuffs the targets that attack you, so in theory if you used Overwatch and Draw Fire together (Security Protocol) you would debuff everything allowing the rest of the team to kill them easily. Throw in some medical nanites and you're set to take the damage you're receiving. I've seen it work quite well.

    Rally Cry is a group buff which not only heals but boosts the entire teams critical hit ratio. Add to this the Doffs that can cause it to be an AoE rez. It can be quite useful.

    Battle strategies can be given to other team members and can boost an otherwise low dps output.

    Admittedly all the grenades do suck, plasma grenades work quite well with suppressing fire though.

    Tactical players are supposed to do most of their damage with their guns, hence why they have two skills in the skill tree that boost their damage. Combat Specialist and Weapons Proficiency. Don't forget as well you get target optics and Fire on my mark which can cause you to melt enemies quite easily if properly skilled.
  • hereticknight085hereticknight085 Member Posts: 3,783 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    What about Target Optics? I lurv that thing. Massive damage buff and a relatively short CD.

    As for engis, I rather like the idea of mobile turrets. But instead of having them follow you around like the lap dogs... erm BOffs, you should be able to give them rudimentary commands, like move, hold position, SLAUGH... erm attack. As for mortars, you can make em move too, but have them have to stop moving to fire. And give them deployment animation, sorta like siege tanks from SC and turrets from BZ1998. But this mobile turrets idea... ME GUSTA!!!!!
    It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once. B)
  • tc10btc10b Member Posts: 1,549 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Wouldn't moving turrets be exactly like seeker drones except that they don't fly and are therefore a bit more limited?
  • nicha0nicha0 Member Posts: 1,456 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Target optics is not a kit, so I didn't include it.
    Engineering drones >> Security guards? ya
    Tactical iniative is the best ability out there, but another buff


    Rally cry's crit boost is good, which is what I said. The fact you need to use it on a bad kit.. not, whats the point of a few seconds of crits when other abilities are going to do more all the time?

    Plasma grenade's fire tends to bug out enemies and have them actually run away from you.. it assumes all fire is on the ground so it much run run run, chasing enemies down in places like incurrsion loses the captain part. It makes Armek a nightmare

    But when it comes to it, is eng bad off? Not at all. There is no reason why tacs couldn't have a gun overload ability, or something like that to shoot with, after the 5 buff the enemy is 3/4 dead already.

    Why would you make a tactical player a bad tank when a medic can out tank anyone? For less skill points no less. Also fire on my mark, suppressing fire, overwatch are all skilled by the tier 5 advanced tactics.. are you really going to put skill into that?

    I've stopped using grenades after playing the completely over powered version on my eng, I'm onto the operative kit. The engineering kit enemy neutarlization is just crazy over powered though.
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  • momawmomaw Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    nicha0 wrote: »
    But when it comes to it, is eng bad off? Not at all.

    Engineers have two really powerful kits, and the rest are basically novelties. I wasn't aiming for "Oh woe is me, engineers have no good kits and are useless!", which is absurd, I was aiming for "of the kits engineers can use, most are not really viable because their abilities don't work very well".
    The engineering kit enemy neutarlization is just crazy over powered though.

    It is, which is why I didn't suggest that it needed improvements. :)
  • mimey2mimey2 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    momaw wrote: »
    Engineers have two really powerful kits, and the rest are basically novelties. I wasn't aiming for "Oh woe is me, engineers have no good kits and are useless!", which is absurd, I was aiming for "of the kits engineers can use, most are not really viable because their abilities don't work very well".

    It is, which is why I didn't suggest that it needed improvements. :)

    I agree. I'm of the mindset that all kits should be...approximately equal, regardless of the situation, but some kits would be more effective in other scenarios.

    Like Enemy Neutralization, that's a-ok, doesn't need a change.

    The new Romulan Engineering kit is a slight step in the right direction. It makes the turret a bit more useful by adding a flamethrower, and giving you Quick Fix to use on the turrets and such. Not completely useful, but getting on the right track.

    Take Operative as another example. Not a bad Tac kit or anything, but where do we truly ever need to be stealthy in a PvE situation? (PvP is a different story) So in a way, it's not THAT useful in general.

    Or Xenobiologist, it's just a random assortment of powers in a way, which have little synergy.

    That's the word though: Synergy.

    Kits that don't have synergy are usually considered junk or at least not good, while kits that do have it are really good, maybe even OP (but only because they're worth using compared to the others).

    Fire Team is a great example: Ambush provides a huge one-shot buff, Battle Strategies provides another buff and removes tactical debuffs, Suppressing Fire is a tactical debuff, and then a Plasma Grenade on top of that.

    Used together with the other Tac buffs, you can essentially one-shot a whole group of enemies on the ground with a pulsewave. Even if they live, you'd still hurt them considerably.

    It works well because it has such synergy with it's class. Most other kits don't really have that.
    I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
    I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
  • lordmalak1lordmalak1 Member Posts: 4,681 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    I WISH I could use the bunker fabrication kit on my TAC toon because it works so well. I'll drop a shield gen, a medical gen, take a step forward and drop a cover shield, then take a step sideways and drop a turret.
    INSTANT bunker- takes less than 10 seconds.
    As long as the cover shield stays up the shield and med gens never die and I can just spawn turrets to my hearts content. Shield and med generators are great for deploying behind walls as their effects ignore walls. I like to put them next to doorways (so they dont get exposed to enemy fire) and drop turrets in the doorway openings that are shield protected.

    The kit has so many good uses that my TAC toon doesn't have.
    KBF Lord MalaK
    Awoken Dead
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    Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
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