Personally, Engineers only suck in space due to mostly being tanks, yet cannot produce the aggro to fully realize it (they do make for great DPS/build practice; given that some can last longer than a boss NPC and still throw some extras at you).
In space, a Tac Captain geared for tanking can still do more than an Eng Captain geared for tanking, due to being able to draw aggro more easily (and still contribute some DPS to pull). If Engineers had some Captain-based aggro-drawing skills, they'd have their niche.
BOFF skill-wise isn't much better, you have 2-3 offensive skills and the rest all situational (not to mention, many of them share cooldowns, making it difficult to get a solid Eng build going at all). If they at least decoupled shared CDs among the Aux and Emergency skills (only sharing CDs on same skills at different ranks), there'd be a bit more viability among Eng BOFF skills.
At least Engineers still have more ships going for them (even moreso than Tacs still); Sci players outside of the Federation haven't gotten squat since the Delta Pack and Pathfinder (Sarr Theln doesn't count; being a Sci-oriented Carrier, rather than a dedicated Sci ship).
Engi's can produce the aggro to realize threat.
I like the idea of granting engi's a way of increasing threat; I think the way to do that would be via a trait as opposed to an active ability. That not only makes this threat permanent on those who want it, but makes it so that a significant part of the class isn't wasted on people who aren't tanking.
As to cruisers supply and demand, that doesn't really matter imo (well, it does, but not to this). I can just swap ships every 60 seconds, I have to make a completely new character to stop being an engineer.
SCM - Crystal C. (S) - [00:12] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 8.63M(713.16K) - Fed Sci
Comments
Engi's can produce the aggro to realize threat.
I like the idea of granting engi's a way of increasing threat; I think the way to do that would be via a trait as opposed to an active ability. That not only makes this threat permanent on those who want it, but makes it so that a significant part of the class isn't wasted on people who aren't tanking.
As to cruisers supply and demand, that doesn't really matter imo (well, it does, but not to this). I can just swap ships every 60 seconds, I have to make a completely new character to stop being an engineer.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
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