STO is a DPS race. There's no getting around it.
In that race, Engineers far fall behind.
Every single Tactical captain ability boosts your DPS. Science has Photonic Fleet (which, amazingly, somehow manages to do more damage than a good chunk of players) and Sensor Scan. Engineers have... Nadion Inversion? EPS Power Transfer? Both of which are easily replicated on Sci and Tac captains.
- Rotate Shield Frequency: Huge boost to shield resistance and regeneration. Great in PvP, except now everyone can easily bypass your shields. Useless in PvE since it is relatively easy to keep your shields up. Even if someone has trouble with their shields, they'd be better off using APA/Sensor Scan to mow down enemies anyways.
- EPS Power Transfer: It is not hard at ALL to get high power in all of your subsystems thanks to Leech and +Power from just about every console and/or gear item available. DOffs even grant the ability to run 2 different EPtX abilities with no downtown. Not to mention OSS...
- Nadion Inversion: A decent ability, but again, one that is made irreleveant thanks to DOffs, set bonuses, and the general power overcapping mechanic. Yes, it is helpful for full beamboats. But it's usefulness is easily replicated and overshadowed by the overall lack of other DPS boosting abilities.
- Miracle Worker: Great, but situational at best. However, this doesn't help at all in the current meta of "omgwut" instadeaths before you know what even happened - invisi/mega torps for PvE and the sheer ridiculousness of the stuff introduced in DR for PvP.
- EngFleet: Just... no.
We either need:
A) content that encourages survival

a change in mechanics/balance pass, since even Tac/Escorts can tank
C) buffs/changes to Engineer abilities that will boost their DPS or provide a reason to use them over Sci/Tac
D) All of the above
Comments
Praxi5 isn't saying not to use an Eng...
both science and tac have useful unique captain powers. All of the engineer powers can be duplicated with either boffs, consoles, or powers. That's the issue. Engineers need something unique for space combat.
However, STO is a DPS race, and what the engineers lack is offense. Photonic Fleet is an offensive skill. Attack Pattern Alpha is an offensive skill. Engineers have no offensive skills at all(inherently). But engineers were never meant to be offensive. That's what tactical captains are for. Tacticals overpower. Scientists subvert. Engineers outlast. That's why cruisers are the biggest, the toughest, and the hardest with the largest crews. it's not about the damage, it's about outliving the other guy. And I can do that all day long.
An Engineer in a pure cruiser is a bit redundant, yes.
As much as a tac is a bit redundant in an escort. At some point there really is no more DPS needed to kill something, it just becomes overkill.
The Science Captain in a science vessel is the exception here, as he can utilize all 3 ship types very well.
Personally I prefer engineers in escorts and tacticals in cruisers.
Boarding Party may as well have the Doff turrets a permanent fixture, and the Doff instead adds micro-torpedo launchers and faster movement to them. and the rank levels increase the number of launched ships by 1 (before Doubling from the other Doff).
Aceton Beam might as well be an offensive Deflector-based "lance-like weapon" ability, doing actual damage in addition to its debuff and DoT.
Both would give the Engineers a little more optional offense, and let Boarding Party somewhat serve as temporary attack shuttles.
This shouldn't be a DPS race. Fix that, and Engineers will be "good" again. (Mind the quotes.)
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For example, nadion inversion. Reduce energy drain, including from weapons. That was great several years ago, but now, marion+DEM will do better. And you can use a fleet core with 10% drain resistance, or the lobi console.... It's really easy to have weapon energy drain resistance. And everyone can do that.
EPS ? Well, just use a RMC if you can, or use the absolutely awesome plamonic leech.
So yeah, the engi powers were completely left behind by the powercreep. While sci and tac powers either stack, and are still good because of that, or are unique (snb for example).
I'm talking space. On the ground it's fine, mostly. The shield recharge power is average at best, but otherwise it's fine.
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STO player since November 2013
Engineers have a ton of useful abilities, they're right there on the same level as Tactical Captains. While they may fall just slightly behind in DPS, your staying power helps you make up for it.
I love my Engineer every bit as much as my Tactical Captain. What I would like to see is some more love given to Science Captains. While I disagree with the opinion that Science is useless, I think they could use a boost.
Engineers and Tactical Captains have it easy in this game.
You do know there are people that don't have the lockbox-only-for-Feds Plasmonic Leech console or Fleet only +Power consoles or multi-million EC doffs?
Exactly this.
This is not to say that Engineer's can't do well. They can. But the other Captain abilities give better advantages than any of the Engineering ones.
Those Battlecruisers don't have any advantage while being run with an Engineer. A ship class has no relation with Captain type.
Sure. But you don't need DOffs to have power drain resistance (2pc Assimilated set) nor +Power (EPtX can be cycled with 100% uptime without DOffs, and from almost every gear set). Further, the Intel and Pilot spec tree provide additional defensive abilities, lessening the value of the Engineer's.
RSF: Make it give a "perfect shield" buff where it blocks all bleedthrough like the Steam console while still giving the shield heal and resist. Also allow it to be cast on others.
EPS: Allow it to increase the max power in each subsystem by +5 along with what it already does.
Miracle worker: Allow it to be castable on others.
Nadion Inversion: make it castable on teammates and let it make one immune to all drains for its duration.
Engineering Fleet: Let the damage resistance be extra 10% damage resistance stackable with what one already has so it doesn't get lost in diminishing returns like it does now.
This would make the engineer incredibly useful in both PvE and PvP, in solo play and in team play.
Just my thoughts.
Miracle Worker is awesome. Regularly saves my bacon.
My Engineers reliably do +40k, which is good enough for me to feel like I'm contributing, and that my Engineer isn't gimped.
Even with a Leech there are times where without Nadion/EPS, I'm not at 125 Power through a FAW. (Marion/DEM ensures 125 Power for the other FAWs.) Something to do with overcapping that Vel'gon and Jena have tried to explain before, but then my eyes glaze over and there's a gap in my memory.
I concur engineers are awesome.
But I play exclusively with my tactical captains because they even more awesome.
Honestly, I forget to use them most of the time, and I don't see a difference.
Miracle worker and RSF are really good, but the other 2 ? Lol yeah.
A2b isn't ab energy, that's just a bonus....
They should just reduce the cd on that one....
As far as I'm concerned.... I have a romulan eng and a romulan tac both on a scimitar.... And the eng is actually a lot better in surviving. I still enjoy that class a lot.
But when sh*** gets real the damage is just more important. In elite stuff, in pvp ect you have the shirt stick with an eng.
Still my favorite ground class though....
Two of my favorite toons are eng and while my DPS may suffer very slightly I am not a glass cannon like far to many Tac based ships are and can get in the fight and take hits that destroy pure tac toon based ships. Eng's rock!
It's already pretty powerful, even I have trouble draining someone when they use Nadion Inversion. Drain immunity is too much, specially now that we have a trait that lowers captain ability cooldowns.
And I can tank really well. But since it's all about destroying things before some arbitrary time limit, tanking is useless.
I would like to see them either buff the skills considerably or run through rethink their stupid DPS race they have going on.
This is, again, what I am trying to say.
Engineers can, and do, DPS just fine. They are also excellent tanks.
But tanking is useless. And when it comes to DPS, Engineers can't do anything that Scis and Tacs can't do better.
My main capt is an engineer. That character does 16k dps without trying or using the pirate signal for extra ships. And I survive. So I dont think Engineers need a buff. If I am really trying I can get between 22k to 25k.
Its more about loadouts with an Engineer. Im running the Benthan Cruiser with all tier XIV weapons, Undine rep space set, etc. Even before that and being in a Jem Destroyer I was getting around 11k without any effort and using dual heavies upfront with turrets and laser pointers in the back.
I also dont die. And use Miracle Worker a lot. Which is useful if you have the space trait that gives you a double dip every 5 minutes.
You can survive and do a decent amount of DPS in an Engineer. Its just a matter of researching builds and spending dilithium to upgrade weapons and such.
@Desdecardo since 2008.
Again, as many pointed out already:
Of course you can make decent damage with an ent.
but a tac with the exact same load out will ALWAYS make significantly more damage.
And the content is not gated to tanking. It's about damage. You don't reach the optionals with tanking, you get it with killing stuff fast. And everyone else is better with that.
You may survive longer, but who cares since death isn't really a problem, also the stuff that one hit kills a tac will also one hit kill an eng.
The damage an engineer can do is far more than enough to do any given optional while tanking thrice the incoming damage/dps.
Yeah you are probably one of the people who feels he does "enough" when the team dealing actual damage does the job for him.
Never mind. Believe what ever you want, don't let numbers get in between that.
BWAAAHAHAHAHAHHAAA! *wipes tears of laughter from eyes*
My job as an engineer isn't necessarily to bring the rain. My job is to p*** the enemy off so badly that he ignores the tac coming up his tailpipe with an alpha strike, and keep that tac alive after. Remember TOS, where Kirk distracted the Doomsday Machine? I'm a fiddler crab, and it's fiddler crab season. Luckily this fiddler crab is very hard to crack, and I can take almost anything the other guy can dish out, including invisotorps of doom. Hear that, Vaduwaur Heavy Artillery ships? I mock you!
Romulans: left one homeworld, lost another, third time's the charm?
I love Miracle worker with Fleet Support III. Usually have to make an effort to let my hull get below 50% while tanking the gate in ISA, then call in another ship, miracle heel myself a couple of times and finish the map.
I do suffer in speed runs, when the aforementioned Scimitar horde shows up. But hey, a 60 second ISA... yeah I can live with being low dps guy for that.