Sci scorts are great, eng scorts are TRIBBLE, i have no idea how you come up with the idea, that Eng scorts bring anything to the team, that Tac and sci don't do 10x better.
Urmm.... I read that post as "Engis are only good as tanks or healers whenever they're flying a cruiser"
Yes that's a clearer way to say what I was getting at.
It's not just engineers either, if you're in a Cruiser on STFs you need to be tanking or healing.
You're still going to be shooting stuff, in fact you need to if you want to hold threat - you don't need to give up all of your offense to "tank" and in fact I don't recommend that at all (and I'm pretty sure neither does Maelwy5, but I'll let him comment).
And whilst there are a few 'DPS Cruiser' builds that approach Escort Territory, it doesn't take much extra investment to turn an Engineer in a DPS Cruiser into a proper tank... so it really comes down to a question of if you're not going to tank, how do you propose to make yourself useful in a team?
Exactly.
Here's how I was running my Eng/Ody before I took a break from it.
Sci scorts are great, eng scorts are TRIBBLE, i have no idea how you come up with the idea, that Eng scorts bring anything to the team, that Tac and sci don't do 10x better.
Primarily because he's not talking about PvP.
In PvE Sci and Eng are roughly in the same situation in Escorts because SNB is all but pointless in PvE and is nowhere near the level of power and usefulness it has in PvP.
The Sci has a slight edge, not 10x, due to Sensor Scan and Sci Fleet IMO.
Photonic Fleet and SNB are pointless though.
An Eng/Escort on the other hand can take ranks in threat control and actually soak aggro with Miracle Worker & RSF.
An Eng/Escort on the other hand can take ranks in threat control and actually soak aggro with Miracle Worker & RSF.
Pretty much this.
Engineer in an Escort = More Survivable, but Less Damage than a Tac in the same.
(assuming optimal builds).
The PVE game pretty much comes down to balancing Survivability and Damage Output. The Tac Escort is at the far end of the DPS side of that scale, the Eng Cruiser is at the opposite end - the Survivability side. A Tac in a Cruiser and an Engineer in an Escort are both somewhere in the middle.
Usefulness to a team depends on taking one of those possible combinations and shoving them into predefined team roles. If you've a "perfect" team, optimised in such as way that your damage dealers will never be in danger of dying, then your optimum teammate choices will be different than in a team where (for example) aggro isn't solidly locked down and not as much healing is available.
Another consideration is that an Engineer is the best class to fly a hybrid skillpoint build - one where they can choose to pilot both a Cruiser and an Escort and bring either ship to a mission. Reason being that retaining "Threat Control" whilst they're flying their Escort isn't as much of a problem for Engineers: they can still tank stuff like Tac Cubes in their Escorts without dying, even with incompetent PUG teammates.
you don't need to give up all of your offense to "tank" and in fact I don't recommend that at all (and I'm pretty sure neither does Maelwy5, but I'll let him comment).
Definitely.
I'd actually say that Properly Tanking is harder with with lower offense, because your threat rating is tied to your damage output. If you have very poor DPS, your foes won't shoot at you (even with high investment into the Threat control skill) because your teammates will be producing a higher amount of threat. And letting your teamates get shot at sort of defeats the purpose of tanking...
Unlike a tac or sci in an escort, an engineer in an escort can get upclose and personal with it's target and keep damage going, long after the sci and tac has runaway to lick their wounds.
For example the tactic in an STF is to stay 8km away from a gate so don't get pulverized. The problem with this is that dual heavy cannons are more affected by range then any other weapon and at 8km they loose a lot of their damage. An engineer in an escort however can put it's nose right to the gate and not have to worry about dying.
Similarly in PvP the main source of tanking for escorts is man. That however means they have to be moving at high speed all the time when under fire, leading to them missing openings. An engineer however can sit there and soak up the fire as it relentlessly pummels a target.
As for the Op, I'd strongly suggest he'd get an escort. They haven't been the best ship for a month or even a few months, they've been the best ship sometime during the year the game came out (after the update that raised the escorts hull and shields out of the danger zone and everyone stopped calling them glass cannons). With very few exceptions, tanking in this game is so easy that an escort can casually tank damage without even needing the engineer powers. Since switching from a cruiser to an escort a year back the game feels like super easy mode (if it wasn't already). A shame really since I vastly prefer cruiser style gameplay, but at the end of the day they just don't deal enough damage. You'd think it'd be the larger slower ships that'd be armed with the heavier weapons, but nope.
Set up wise I'd say 4x dual heavy cannons and 3x turrets are best for an engineer, since he'll need to focus on sustained damage. For PvE I've found the best dual heavy cannon mods to be CrtD x2, CrtH.
For ground:-
Pulsewave for general combat
Split beams for the first part of Infected
Sniper for long distance
Using an escort is surely still an option that is why i asked for a build that would work with both ship types, escorts and cruisers.
Now after what you all said here it might even be good to have threat control as an eng regardless of ship since we will always have good survivability.
Since i am not really a fan of torpedoes and i already found some people saying going all cannons/beams is fine, maybe this can be the way to go for me.
Would this build work well with both an cannon-escort and a beam-cruiser?
Since i am not really a fan of torpedoes and i already found some people saying going all cannons/beams is fine, maybe this can be the way to go for me.
All Cannons/Beams are fine with the following caveats:
For All Cannons + Turret Escorts you are best off in Patrol or Adv Escort.
For all Beam Cruisers you will want to cycle 2 copies of EPTW 1 (you're generally better off doing this anyway, but 8 beams demands it).
Yes, for PvE that is the safest bet, DHC all the way, forget anything else. I would suggest Patrol Escort/Advanced escort/Heavy Escort Carrier for an eng, just pick the one you like best. If you have a jem bug, or have a a hard time staying within the billion EC limit go bug.
has everything you need to know about escorts, (also about cruisers) I'd stay with the escort though.
You can listen too this guy, or you can tell him to STFU like I do, and play the way you want.
STF's are simple. Your entire team could be science based, and you could still get the optional and finish in a reasonable time, provided the pilots are good.
The issue is, everyone likes tacs, because tacs are simple. I like them for that reason too. Easy, deal as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible.
But cruisers take more finess, science even more so. Cruisers are there as minor field control, but because engineers in cruisers are so bloody tanky, theres a lot of things you can do to improove your damage. Like for instance, I run dual eject warp plasma. With that, I can basically keep a plasma field going indefinitely. Helps a huge amount on keeping probes/bops/raptors/negvars/nanite spheres at bay. My science is dedicated too tractor beams, which is even better at field control, and finally I now have dual aux2dampners on me, which keeps my speed well up there, and gives me a nice kinetic damage resistance.
Let the mindless thugs run Tac. You'll be laughing at them when you're the last one standing on the field.
I AM THE HARBINGER OF HOPE!
I AM THE SWORD OF THE RIGHTOUS!
You can listen too this guy, or you can tell him to STFU like I do, and play the way you want.
STF's are simple. Your entire team could be science based, and you could still get the optional and finish in a reasonable time, provided the pilots are good.
The issue is, everyone likes tacs, because tacs are simple. I like them for that reason too. Easy, deal as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible.
But cruisers take more finess, science even more so. Cruisers are there as minor field control, but because engineers in cruisers are so bloody tanky, theres a lot of things you can do to improove your damage. Like for instance, I run dual eject warp plasma. With that, I can basically keep a plasma field going indefinitely. Helps a huge amount on keeping probes/bops/raptors/negvars/nanite spheres at bay. My science is dedicated too tractor beams, which is even better at field control, and finally I now have dual aux2dampners on me, which keeps my speed well up there, and gives me a nice kinetic damage resistance.
Let the mindless thugs run Tac. You'll be laughing at them when you're the last one standing on the field.
Just to let you know, i haven't touched my tac toons since S1.2
d) just get used to being outdamged and healed by everything around you and enjoy flying your favorite ship. nothing wrong with it in PvE. Should you ever venture into PvP....see a)
Far from true. I have an enineer in the new regent and with his build he tanks like there's no tomorrow while still outdamaging 70% of the escorts I ever fight alongside .
a) kill you eng, roll a tac, see c)
b) wait for cryptic to balance classes and ships (hope you have a pensions fund)
c) fly and escort use DHC
d) just get used to being outdamged and healed by everything around you and enjoy flying your favorite ship. nothing wrong with it in PvE. Should you ever venture into PvP....see a)
e) I would drop the aft torp, use a quant up front for PvE is ok, full on beamboat is still viable. I prefer the enemy neutralisation kit on ground for my eng.
You know, I feel bad scoring first place in Gorn Minefield 4 different times today. With my engineer in a tac odyessey. It isn't just the FaW spam, but also my ability to get around the map quickly while everyone else chugs along slowly in RED ALERT.
You know, I feel bad when a real tank isn't present in a space stf. I know first hand how much more those one shot torps, cutting beams, and DEM powered crits have taken the tankiness away from escorts. My Tac escort use to nose rub Borg Cubes and Gates with impunity, but those days are gone.
Saying an engineer/cruiser is a wasted spot in pvp is debatedable. Saying an Engineer/cruiser is a waste in pve is downright laughable.
Comments
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Yes that's a clearer way to say what I was getting at.
It's not just engineers either, if you're in a Cruiser on STFs you need to be tanking or healing.
You're still going to be shooting stuff, in fact you need to if you want to hold threat - you don't need to give up all of your offense to "tank" and in fact I don't recommend that at all (and I'm pretty sure neither does Maelwy5, but I'll let him comment).
Exactly.
Here's how I was running my Eng/Ody before I took a break from it.
Ltc Tac: BFAW 1 > APB 1
Lt Tac: BFAW 1 > APB 1 > APO 1
Ens Tac: TT 1
Cmd Eng: EPTW 1 > EPTS 2 > EPTS 3 > Aux to SIF 3
Lt Sci: HE 1 > TSS 2
2x Purple TT Conn Doffs
3x Purple Damage Control Engineers
9 Ranks in Threat Control
Primarily because he's not talking about PvP.
In PvE Sci and Eng are roughly in the same situation in Escorts because SNB is all but pointless in PvE and is nowhere near the level of power and usefulness it has in PvP.
The Sci has a slight edge, not 10x, due to Sensor Scan and Sci Fleet IMO.
Photonic Fleet and SNB are pointless though.
An Eng/Escort on the other hand can take ranks in threat control and actually soak aggro with Miracle Worker & RSF.
Pretty much this.
Engineer in an Escort = More Survivable, but Less Damage than a Tac in the same.
(assuming optimal builds).
The PVE game pretty much comes down to balancing Survivability and Damage Output. The Tac Escort is at the far end of the DPS side of that scale, the Eng Cruiser is at the opposite end - the Survivability side. A Tac in a Cruiser and an Engineer in an Escort are both somewhere in the middle.
Usefulness to a team depends on taking one of those possible combinations and shoving them into predefined team roles. If you've a "perfect" team, optimised in such as way that your damage dealers will never be in danger of dying, then your optimum teammate choices will be different than in a team where (for example) aggro isn't solidly locked down and not as much healing is available.
Another consideration is that an Engineer is the best class to fly a hybrid skillpoint build - one where they can choose to pilot both a Cruiser and an Escort and bring either ship to a mission. Reason being that retaining "Threat Control" whilst they're flying their Escort isn't as much of a problem for Engineers: they can still tank stuff like Tac Cubes in their Escorts without dying, even with incompetent PUG teammates.
Definitely.
I'd actually say that Properly Tanking is harder with with lower offense, because your threat rating is tied to your damage output. If you have very poor DPS, your foes won't shoot at you (even with high investment into the Threat control skill) because your teammates will be producing a higher amount of threat. And letting your teamates get shot at sort of defeats the purpose of tanking...
For example the tactic in an STF is to stay 8km away from a gate so don't get pulverized. The problem with this is that dual heavy cannons are more affected by range then any other weapon and at 8km they loose a lot of their damage. An engineer in an escort however can put it's nose right to the gate and not have to worry about dying.
Similarly in PvP the main source of tanking for escorts is man. That however means they have to be moving at high speed all the time when under fire, leading to them missing openings. An engineer however can sit there and soak up the fire as it relentlessly pummels a target.
As for the Op, I'd strongly suggest he'd get an escort. They haven't been the best ship for a month or even a few months, they've been the best ship sometime during the year the game came out (after the update that raised the escorts hull and shields out of the danger zone and everyone stopped calling them glass cannons). With very few exceptions, tanking in this game is so easy that an escort can casually tank damage without even needing the engineer powers. Since switching from a cruiser to an escort a year back the game feels like super easy mode (if it wasn't already). A shame really since I vastly prefer cruiser style gameplay, but at the end of the day they just don't deal enough damage. You'd think it'd be the larger slower ships that'd be armed with the heavier weapons, but nope.
Set up wise I'd say 4x dual heavy cannons and 3x turrets are best for an engineer, since he'll need to focus on sustained damage. For PvE I've found the best dual heavy cannon mods to be CrtD x2, CrtH.
For ground:-
Pulsewave for general combat
Split beams for the first part of Infected
Sniper for long distance
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Thanks for all the feedback.
Using an escort is surely still an option that is why i asked for a build that would work with both ship types, escorts and cruisers.
Now after what you all said here it might even be good to have threat control as an eng regardless of ship since we will always have good survivability.
Since i am not really a fan of torpedoes and i already found some people saying going all cannons/beams is fine, maybe this can be the way to go for me.
Would this build work well with both an cannon-escort and a beam-cruiser?
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=notorps1_0
Any further advice is also appreciated.
All Cannons/Beams are fine with the following caveats:
For All Cannons + Turret Escorts you are best off in Patrol or Adv Escort.
For all Beam Cruisers you will want to cycle 2 copies of EPTW 1 (you're generally better off doing this anyway, but 8 beams demands it).
Before I can comment on your skills choices, I need to know if you intend to PvP with any regularity or if this is for PvE only.
For PvE you are much better off with a general build taking many skills to 6 to cover many bases.
For PvP, especially team focused PvP, you really want to be pretty specialized in what you want the build to excel at.
For your BOFF slots you have over prioritized torpedo skills vs. cannon skills and have no skill ranks in Torpedoes at all.
Keeping what you have, Id make the following adjustments if you want to stick with Torpedoes:
TT1 > CSV 1 > APO 1 > APB 3
TS 1 > TS 2 > CSV 2
Requires 2 to 3 Conn DOFFs (you can actually do this with non-purples, it just takes more DOFF slots).
If you skip Torpedoes entirely:
TT1 > CSV 1 > CSV 2 > APB 3
TT 1 > APB 1 > APO 1
The torpedo-skills were just leftovers from the last build, so i would probably go with the second choice of BO-Powers: http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=engtac11_0 or http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=engtac12_0 or http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=engtac13_0
You can listen too this guy, or you can tell him to STFU like I do, and play the way you want.
STF's are simple. Your entire team could be science based, and you could still get the optional and finish in a reasonable time, provided the pilots are good.
The issue is, everyone likes tacs, because tacs are simple. I like them for that reason too. Easy, deal as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible.
But cruisers take more finess, science even more so. Cruisers are there as minor field control, but because engineers in cruisers are so bloody tanky, theres a lot of things you can do to improove your damage. Like for instance, I run dual eject warp plasma. With that, I can basically keep a plasma field going indefinitely. Helps a huge amount on keeping probes/bops/raptors/negvars/nanite spheres at bay. My science is dedicated too tractor beams, which is even better at field control, and finally I now have dual aux2dampners on me, which keeps my speed well up there, and gives me a nice kinetic damage resistance.
Let the mindless thugs run Tac. You'll be laughing at them when you're the last one standing on the field.
I AM THE SWORD OF THE RIGHTOUS!
Sci/eng exclusive here
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Far from true. I have an enineer in the new regent and with his build he tanks like there's no tomorrow while still outdamaging 70% of the escorts I ever fight alongside
You know, I feel bad scoring first place in Gorn Minefield 4 different times today. With my engineer in a tac odyessey. It isn't just the FaW spam, but also my ability to get around the map quickly while everyone else chugs along slowly in RED ALERT.
You know, I feel bad when a real tank isn't present in a space stf. I know first hand how much more those one shot torps, cutting beams, and DEM powered crits have taken the tankiness away from escorts. My Tac escort use to nose rub Borg Cubes and Gates with impunity, but those days are gone.
Saying an engineer/cruiser is a wasted spot in pvp is debatedable. Saying an Engineer/cruiser is a waste in pve is downright laughable.