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Ideas to boost Engineers in space?
risian4
Member Posts: 3,711 Arc User
Tacs have their tactical buffs (crit severity + chance bonuses, resistance ignore, increased arc/shots per volley etc.) and science has debuffs (shield and power drain, removal of enemy buffs, disabling and shield ignoring damage).
What (if anything) should they give Engineers? Something new, something that's taken away from the other careers?
What (if anything) should they give Engineers? Something new, something that's taken away from the other careers?
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I'd suggest a PBAOE while using Reverse Shield Polarity but it already exists.
As mentioned before, they also need some offensive punch. I would add a Hull and Shield Penetration to Nadion Inversion for one. Nothing major, but something to make it a nice damage boost. I would also give them an innate Attack Pattern skill like Tactical Captains get. Perhaps an Engineering specific Attack Pattern that adds Weapon Haste or provides a massive boost to power levels while active.
I honestly don't think it would take much, just a few tweaks. On ground I think they're just fine but they need a boost in space for sure.
Right now, the offensive abilities to Engineers are: Aceton Beam, Eject Warp Plasma, Endothermic Inhibitor Beam, and Structural Integrity Collapse. The damage that these abilities do is highly insignificant that most Engineers avoid using them unless they have nothing else to slot. Their damage needs to be higher and should be buff-able by consoles and skill points; their cool down time needs be reduced so that they are actually a viable option. I would even go further to say that there should be Duty Officers that significantly buff these abilities if they don't exist already.
Boarding Party should also add a demolition effect so that it can also be an offensive ability. Instead of using shuttles trying to get to the targeted ships--which can be outrun--Boarding Party should have similar abilities as the Borg who transport over to ships to inflict their effect, making it impossible to outrun. A slight cool down timer reduction would also be useful for this ability.
Directed Energy Modulation should have a Hull Penetration effect in addition to it's Shield Penetration. Having both types of penetration would make it a desirable ability to use again.
Auxiliary Power to Inertial Dampers should either change out the Kinetic Damage Resistance to All Damage Resistance or include Physical Damage Resistance to the Kinetic Damage Resistance.
Both Auxiliary to Structural and Engineer Team need boosts to the amount of Hit Points restored to ships when used.
Extends Shields--probably the most useless ability in the game--should have an additional effect as well as apply its ability to the caster's ship. A shield hardening effect as well as a greater reduction to shield damage would be useful. A clearing of all disabled subsystems would be helpful and useful for this ability. A Duty Officer could even allow Extend Shields to act like a weaker version of Reduce Shield Polarity.
Captain abilities also needs some adjustments. Engineer Fleet's All Damage Resistance should be increased. EPS Power Transfer should have it's Power Transfer Rate increased. Miracle Worker should have increased Hit and Shield points. Nadion Inversion should have it's energy drain percentage increased. Rotate Shield Frequency should also have it's Shield Point and Shield Damage Resistance percentage increased.
These changes would definitely help make using Engineering abilities viable again.
Oh, I believe you. I have the Tac Ultimate on my Temporal Agent and he doesn't do nearly as much damage as my Engineer. Somehow, I think the skills revamp has jumped the shark.
I did the same thing on my Engineer. As @seaofsorrows rightfully mentioned, on the ground engineers are just fine. In space I've found myself going for science abilities.
I tried the new engineering ability from the Winter event, the endothermic beam it is I think. Not really impressed with that, it's performing a lot worse compared to DRB.
In general:
I like the 'more offensive abilities idea'. I'm sure there already are ways to get a powerful build while focussing on engineering abilities, but it seems so much easier for Sci's and tacs to perform well with their specialties. Which is why I mainly created this thread. All interesting suggestions so far
^^ Listen to this man!
Yes, thematically, an innate armor debuff skill sounds rather Engineery to me. Like Attack Pattern Epsilon, "Grants a +5% extra hull penetration when active."
Yeah, but shields get blown through so fast anyway...
I guess I just have the mindset to emphasize consistent damage as much as possible. Attack Pattern Alpha is there never a strong candidate for me in that department. To be perfectly honest, I find myself rarely using this class ability.
To me the largest gains are provided by one's BOFF abilities and a lot of other things, almost rendering class abilities practically only useful under certain circumstances. It is not something that I use for every engagement but I guess that depends on how quick you kill things. If you kill targets slower, and thus allowing class abilities to recharge, then I guess it adds a different layer to your play style. To me it is just not part of my 30-second rotation.
Just going by the title: Eject Seats.
Why? They're both really good as is, and are bread and butter Engineering powers. How are these not performing well? In fact, in most of the threads I read about engineering skills, ASIF and E-Team are pointed at as proof that Miracle Worker needs to be improved.
That sounds like a fun idea and a really cool concept. But for the love of Scotty, can we call it something else other than an attack pattern? Not only will that sound too tactical, be a very strange order to give your engineer ("Mister LaForge, attack pattern episilon, engage!" ... "Uh, captain, right now I'm busy with the brussard collectors") but also when we've gotten to Epsilon we've got to admit we're pretty deep into the greek alphabet.
The idea of adding a shield and/or hull resistance bypassing effect to nadion inversion would be nice to have, as that would give us some more potent offensive potential in engineering toons. THough i would not mind seeing something like while Nadion inversion is active it gains a inversion stack each time you are hit with a energy weapon or drain power from targets, and then when nadion inversion expires it gives you some kind of bonus with the strength of the buff/bonus gain is based on how many stacks of the inversion buff you had.
Though for me even just a base-line buff to the strength of npc enemies would boost the viability of engineering, since than it would make the fact of the defensive nature of engineering more viable as a focus. If the enemies you would face were more powerful an dangerous baseline, then defensive nature of the abilities of the engineer would become more useful component of the career.
Though it would be nice to see a balancing pass done over the engineering abilities to make them, mostly the higher seat abilities more viable choices compared to the other carreers, as well as making a heavy engineering boff-layout ships more appealing. Things like extends shield could be worked that not only does it restore some of the target's shields on use, but also causes the target to have some of the shield healing of abilities used on the caster applied to them, or that if used on a hanger/seperation-pet will have this effect applied to all the player's deployed pets. An with Rotate shield frequency I think could use the effect of negating any shield bypassing, or negating shield/hull penetration during the duration of the ability.
I agree engineering on ground is quite nice, and quite balanced really, though i would not mind a few things to be added. Things like making a module that can switch your fabrications between a mobile mode and a stationary mode, more so that if you just placed your fabrications you could use switch them using this an not waste globals on dropping them again if you killed everything nearby. Even the idea of getting a doff that might allow you deploy your minefields on a target over at your own feet (with a slight arming time before they explode), as it seems the mine-fields are deployed via being beamed down by your ship so quite possible to see done. Even though it would not happen it would be fun if we could get a engineering module that has us call down a mech-suit that we can pilot, like the voth do maybe as a voth module out of a new voth lockbox, while piloting this mech might disable some of our other modules like the none shield healing modules.
Hehe, thanks for the laugh
I like this suggestion, and the one that all careers should have their own specialised attack pattern.
As I have argued elsewhere, most abilities that we consider 'tactical' are in fact boosts performed by engineers who modify the ship's systems so it would make sense to have an engineer attack pattern.
I don't know why I would be trolling. I am telling the truth that Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire On My Mark and Tactical Fleet are not crucial or essential to my build. Of course, this does not apply to everyone's builds... but personally I just never found the classes to be hindering me from creating what I think are good builds. I just don't consider the difference between the class abilities that game breaking, probably simply because I have never really relied on them. But I can only speak for myself.
As to whether I need major help in playing the game. Perhaps... I am not an expert at this game. I merely inform people of my observations and findings, and sometimes I even admit that those observations could be wrong and that people need to do further research.
Either way, if you think I am so wrong for not using Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire On My Mark and Tactical Fleet then I guess you will have to watch this video and judge for yourself. Would these three abilities further increase my damage? Most certainly... but does my build work perfectly fine without them? Personally I would say so but of course I could be wrong and I wouldn't deny it if somebody were to prove me wrong.
I can only speak for myself and say that I only use Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire On My Mark and Tactical Fleet when I absolutely need to. Normally this means I save them for bosses and health sponges like Borg gates. Otherwise they get used outmost rarely.
I have a 15-30 second rotation and my tactical class abilities do not fit perfectly into that rotation with their 2~ min cooldowns. Below is a video featuring EPS that I actually posted in another thread. But it shows what kind of rotation I use and that my class abilities are not that often used.
I certainly believe one can make an excellent build without Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire On My Mark, or Tactical Fleet. But... when you have the abilities available to you, gratuitously, it baffles me to hear you would not use them. Especially the first two are godlike.
I can understand that people would use them if it took them longer to kill targets, because then the duration of their class abilities would more or less equal the time it takes to destroy targets. It would provide them with 1:1 ratio (full 30 second use) or 1:2 ratio (15 second use out of 30 sec duration). Unfortunately for me even that 1:2 ratio can be hard to achieve at times, so most of their use would go to waste until the health sponges arrive or a lot of targets are available for me to sink my teeth into.
But truth be told, I think one of the reasons why I don't use them is because I have a lot abilities that I already have to keep track on and try to trigger in a harmonious rotation and orderly fashion.
You know, I figured you'd have no possible retort left for not using those abilities. And yet you managed to compile a compelling argument for not using them, nonetheless.
And to have more scenarios where 'winning' is based on endurance, not DPS. Those are good fun, not only for the challenge but for the salty tears of people who wander in thinking it's another pew-pew-pew festival.