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Snoozetastic PvE Ground Fabrication Engineer build
maelwy5
Member Posts: 593 Arc User
Snoozetastic PvE Ground Fabrication Engineer build
So as of yesterday evening I finally got around to bothering to finish off my PvE Engineer's BOFF team (by replacing my TAC BOFF's armor)
I realise that there are likely very few people who would actually bother going to the trouble of fully outfitting their BOFFs with rep gear for the sake of a tiny little bit more performance... but for the happy (or insane) few: here are some ideas.
CAPTAIN:
Kit: Fluidic Mk XII [Mod] [Turret] [PsiDmg]
Mechanic Modules: Weapons Malfunction; Chroniton Mine Barrier.
Fabrication Modules: Beam Turret Fabrication, Bio Turret Fabrication, Nanite Medical Generator.
Equipment: AMACO Weapon. 8472 Shield and Weapon (Disruptor). AMACO (+Heal) or Omega (+DPS) Armor.
Devices: Gambling Device, Shard of Possibilities, Horta, Battery or Fractal Remodulator.
Ground Traits: Aggressive, Soldier, Lucky, Peak Health, Orbital Devastation, Adrenal Release.
Ground Rep Traits: Omega Weapon Proficiency, Mental Acuity, Deadly Aim, Lethality.
Duty Officers:
1. Diagnostic Engineer (Weapons Malfunction)
2. Fabrication Engineer (Support Drone)
3. Armory Officer (Turret)
4. Transporter Officer (Generator)
(Remaining slots don't really matter... Ground Warfare or Doctor/Nurse/Assault Squad/Armory Officer?)
This Captain Setup is pretty powerful by itself, more than capable of soloing ground missions on Elite and bosses in the Sphere Battlezone. So now we add in some BOFFs just to make things even worse:
BOFFS:
(i) Tactical (Neilson Tribble)
Best race option is probably a Photonic or Jem'Hadar. Tellarite can work too.
Abilities: Sweeping Strikes I, Photon Grenade II, Lunge II, Smoke Grenade III
Undine Armor
Shattering Harmonics Shield
Shattering Harmonics Sword
(Self +Dmg and Enemy -res)
(ii) Science (Neilson Tribble and a Fractal Remodulator)
Best race option is probably a Voth or Female Android. Betazoid can work too.
Abilities: Medical Tricorder I, Tachyon Harmonic II, Vascular Regenerator II, Nanite Health Monitor I
Omega Force Armor
Omega Force Shield
Omega Force Weapon
(Team +Res and +Crit, Self +Dmg/Crit)
(iii) Two Engineers (each with a Neilson Tribble and a Fractal Remodulator)
Best race option is any Purple Alien with "Superior Aggressive" and something like "Lucky" or "Soldier".
Abilities: Shield Recharge I, Weapon Malfunction II, Turret Fabrication II, Support Drone Fabrication I
Adapted MACO Armor
Adapted MACO Shield
Adapted MACO Weapon
(Team Heals, Self and Fabrication +Dmg/Crit)
Gameplay:
+ Leave your BOFFs on "Automatic" and walk from the start of the mission to the end of the mission.
You should, quite literally, not have to lift a finger.
Your Tac BOFF's Smoke Grenade and your Engineers' Weapons Malfunctions (which can now chain to multiple mobs) will keep most trash from firing at you.
Your Science BOFF will lead off with Tachyon Harmonic on most mobs, which will be followed up by your Engineer's Secondary Fire Grenade Attack landing, along with your Tactical BOFF's Photon Grenade. After they use their secondary shot, the Engineers will start blasting everything with their buffed AoE Pulsewave shots. Their Drones and Turrets will pick any stragglers off, and your Tac BOFF will usually end up joyfully bouncing the toughest enemy up and down whilst trying to stab its face off.
If the enemy actually manages to deal any damage to you, your Engineer's Armor proc and your Science BOFF will heal it right back up again.
+ If you don't want your BOFFs to do *all* the work...
...just walk up to the nearest mob and summon a set of mines and/or at least one Turret or Drone.
Boom, Zap, Dead mob.
Due to the Duty Officer effects, often you'll see yourself and your BOFFs summon three Turrets/Drones at once. Because each source has a seperate chance to summon a seperate set of "bonus" Fabrications, technicially you can have a total of 10 Turrets, 9 Drones, 2 sets of mines and both a Shield Generator and a Medical Generator out simultaneously. Plus a Horta and three 'shard' copies of your Captain.
All at once. Talk about "pet spam"...
Just in case that wasn't bad enough; the [PsiDmg] Proc from your captain's kit applies to every shot taken by your Turrets and Drones - including any additional copies produced by Duty Officers. So you can have Four Turrets and Three Drones all doing substantially more damage than normal (it also applies to your mines, but this is just icing on the cake - a BioTurret can end up doing more than 130 DPS with the [PsiDmg] Proc BY ITSELF even without you dropping into "aim" stance to buff it further. Compare this to the ~30 DPS you typically see from a Standard Turret!).
Versus particularly tough Bosses, you can use Weapons Malfunction (often you'll get the effect chaining to nearby foes) and drop a Medical Generator (often you'll get a Shield Generator spawning at the same time) to smooth things out.
Realistically speaking, you can walk from one end of "Assimilation" to the other without your captain ever needing to touch a button, certainly without ever needing to remodulate.
+ And if you want to get complicated, you can always occasionally press your weapon "Fire" buttons.
Your damage is going to be higher than normal due to the Tac BOFF's Sword Debuffs and the Sci BOFF's Set Bonuses; as well as your own equipment set bonuses... and even leaving that aside, you should be seeing nearly 30% Crit Chance and 100% Crit Severity before weapon modifiers!
...any thoughts? I appreciate that [Psi] Kit Procs are usually dismissed out of hand, but they drastically improve a Fabrication build. And yes, I know I'm lazy... :P
So as of yesterday evening I finally got around to bothering to finish off my PvE Engineer's BOFF team (by replacing my TAC BOFF's armor)
I realise that there are likely very few people who would actually bother going to the trouble of fully outfitting their BOFFs with rep gear for the sake of a tiny little bit more performance... but for the happy (or insane) few: here are some ideas.
CAPTAIN:
Kit: Fluidic Mk XII [Mod] [Turret] [PsiDmg]
Mechanic Modules: Weapons Malfunction; Chroniton Mine Barrier.
Fabrication Modules: Beam Turret Fabrication, Bio Turret Fabrication, Nanite Medical Generator.
Equipment: AMACO Weapon. 8472 Shield and Weapon (Disruptor). AMACO (+Heal) or Omega (+DPS) Armor.
Devices: Gambling Device, Shard of Possibilities, Horta, Battery or Fractal Remodulator.
Ground Traits: Aggressive, Soldier, Lucky, Peak Health, Orbital Devastation, Adrenal Release.
Ground Rep Traits: Omega Weapon Proficiency, Mental Acuity, Deadly Aim, Lethality.
Duty Officers:
1. Diagnostic Engineer (Weapons Malfunction)
2. Fabrication Engineer (Support Drone)
3. Armory Officer (Turret)
4. Transporter Officer (Generator)
(Remaining slots don't really matter... Ground Warfare or Doctor/Nurse/Assault Squad/Armory Officer?)
This Captain Setup is pretty powerful by itself, more than capable of soloing ground missions on Elite and bosses in the Sphere Battlezone. So now we add in some BOFFs just to make things even worse:
BOFFS:
(i) Tactical (Neilson Tribble)
Best race option is probably a Photonic or Jem'Hadar. Tellarite can work too.
Abilities: Sweeping Strikes I, Photon Grenade II, Lunge II, Smoke Grenade III
Undine Armor
Shattering Harmonics Shield
Shattering Harmonics Sword
(Self +Dmg and Enemy -res)
(ii) Science (Neilson Tribble and a Fractal Remodulator)
Best race option is probably a Voth or Female Android. Betazoid can work too.
Abilities: Medical Tricorder I, Tachyon Harmonic II, Vascular Regenerator II, Nanite Health Monitor I
Omega Force Armor
Omega Force Shield
Omega Force Weapon
(Team +Res and +Crit, Self +Dmg/Crit)
(iii) Two Engineers (each with a Neilson Tribble and a Fractal Remodulator)
Best race option is any Purple Alien with "Superior Aggressive" and something like "Lucky" or "Soldier".
Abilities: Shield Recharge I, Weapon Malfunction II, Turret Fabrication II, Support Drone Fabrication I
Adapted MACO Armor
Adapted MACO Shield
Adapted MACO Weapon
(Team Heals, Self and Fabrication +Dmg/Crit)
Gameplay:
+ Leave your BOFFs on "Automatic" and walk from the start of the mission to the end of the mission.
You should, quite literally, not have to lift a finger.
Your Tac BOFF's Smoke Grenade and your Engineers' Weapons Malfunctions (which can now chain to multiple mobs) will keep most trash from firing at you.
Your Science BOFF will lead off with Tachyon Harmonic on most mobs, which will be followed up by your Engineer's Secondary Fire Grenade Attack landing, along with your Tactical BOFF's Photon Grenade. After they use their secondary shot, the Engineers will start blasting everything with their buffed AoE Pulsewave shots. Their Drones and Turrets will pick any stragglers off, and your Tac BOFF will usually end up joyfully bouncing the toughest enemy up and down whilst trying to stab its face off.
If the enemy actually manages to deal any damage to you, your Engineer's Armor proc and your Science BOFF will heal it right back up again.
+ If you don't want your BOFFs to do *all* the work...
...just walk up to the nearest mob and summon a set of mines and/or at least one Turret or Drone.
Boom, Zap, Dead mob.
Due to the Duty Officer effects, often you'll see yourself and your BOFFs summon three Turrets/Drones at once. Because each source has a seperate chance to summon a seperate set of "bonus" Fabrications, technicially you can have a total of 10 Turrets, 9 Drones, 2 sets of mines and both a Shield Generator and a Medical Generator out simultaneously. Plus a Horta and three 'shard' copies of your Captain.
All at once. Talk about "pet spam"...
Just in case that wasn't bad enough; the [PsiDmg] Proc from your captain's kit applies to every shot taken by your Turrets and Drones - including any additional copies produced by Duty Officers. So you can have Four Turrets and Three Drones all doing substantially more damage than normal (it also applies to your mines, but this is just icing on the cake - a BioTurret can end up doing more than 130 DPS with the [PsiDmg] Proc BY ITSELF even without you dropping into "aim" stance to buff it further. Compare this to the ~30 DPS you typically see from a Standard Turret!).
Versus particularly tough Bosses, you can use Weapons Malfunction (often you'll get the effect chaining to nearby foes) and drop a Medical Generator (often you'll get a Shield Generator spawning at the same time) to smooth things out.
Realistically speaking, you can walk from one end of "Assimilation" to the other without your captain ever needing to touch a button, certainly without ever needing to remodulate.
+ And if you want to get complicated, you can always occasionally press your weapon "Fire" buttons.
Your damage is going to be higher than normal due to the Tac BOFF's Sword Debuffs and the Sci BOFF's Set Bonuses; as well as your own equipment set bonuses... and even leaving that aside, you should be seeing nearly 30% Crit Chance and 100% Crit Severity before weapon modifiers!
...any thoughts? I appreciate that [Psi] Kit Procs are usually dismissed out of hand, but they drastically improve a Fabrication build. And yes, I know I'm lazy... :P
[ <<<--- @Maelwys --->>> ]
Post edited by maelwy5 on
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I went to the point of Equipping full Omega to some of my chars and there BOs, but ultimately it doesnt make such a big difference.
I prefer Tactical BOs on Mission (With Lunge 1+3 and Photon Grenade 1+3), they clean rooms faster than Engineers and tend to use Endbosses as mere punchbag (Imaging how often the Boss falls when hit with PG/Lunge from 3 different sources^^), while Engineers are certainly stronger in Dyson BZ. Usually one Sci-Healer gets a place,too.
As for the DPS of that turret, just to clearify, you dont mean encdps. Seen some of them (they are an anoyance in stfs, pushing enemies out of sweeping strike range and mines, overall a ability with poor teamsynergies), and doubt they can do that amount of dps over a whole encounter. Especially since mines usually have around that number of encdps, and they hit a lot harder.
And turrets are just a distraction factor. You will NEVER kill a mob with a turret, never. The damage they deal is ridiculous.
And we are assuming that the mobs you are playing against are static all the time or they are blind. "Your Tac BOFF's Smoke Grenade and your Engineers' Weapons Malfunctions (which can now chain to multiple mobs) will keep most trash from firing at you." - this is completely false. You will be always the first target the mobs will aim for unless you are a tactical and you can use cloak or ambush.
Mainly because the effect of Omega passive tier #3 set bonus (Team Ambush Field) does NOT stack, so you'll only get the benefit of it from one BOFF.
From here - "The team-wide Dodge and Avoidance bonuses provided by Team Ambush Field no longer stack between multiple instances of the Set Bonus. Only the highest Mk set will provide the bonus to a player's team."
I usually make my Science BOFF run the Omega 3-set since the Omega Weapon behaves pretty well with Tachyon Harmonic (no knocking things out of range) and its lower rate of AoE fire compared to a Pulsewave draws a little less aggro onto my main healer.
The choice for the Engineers therefore falls to either picking the Omega Armor (for the +5% Energy Damage) or going for the full AMACO 3-set bonus (for the Crit/Damage which applies to both weapons and summonables). The AMACO Armor (+Heal Proc) and Weapon (AoE Primary Fire and Kinetic AoE Secondary) both have their strong points; so I find opting for the three-set works out best.
By default, a single turret is indeed rather poor damage: the region of 20 DPS.
However, whenever you have the opportunity to summon three at once (DOFFS), and have that damage boosted by skillpoints, that figure rises considerably. It ends up somewhere in the region of 100-120 DPS (before +damage buffs) from each engineer BOFF for Turret Fabrication II. You get a little less for Support Drone I; although the drones follow you around from spawn to spawn.
The main draw is that the placeables will happilly fire at any enemy target that comes into their range - they don't need micromanaged at all.
Mines can work, the potential damage they can deal is ridiculously high... but they usually need to be micromanaged for them to actually hit anything. This is because by Default, BOFFs will just summon mines whenever they enter Combat Mode; regardless of the position of the enemy. It usually ends up being Enter Combat Mode --> Summon Mines --> Run 30 feet towards the enemy and start firing. Mines remain 30 feet behind and never explode.
The poor AI is why I prefer to put my BOFFs on Turret and Drone Duty, and use Mines myself.
In STFs you can't bring your BOFFs; so it'll be a different setup. Personally I find a mixture of Mines and Turrets does very well as long as you are sensible about where you summon the Turrets. Weapons Malfunction is also horrendously underrated for Boss fights...
Actually the Highest DPS team appears to be two Science BOFFs (with twin Tricorder Scans and Tachyon Harmonics) and two Engineers (either Fabrication-heavy, or Micromanaged with mines).
The only time a Tactical BOFF's damage output surpasses an Engineer BOFF's is whenever it's a Photonic Tactical. This is because Tactical and Engineer BOFFs do identical damage with their weapons, so the only difference is from their skills.
"Fire and Forget" Tactical BOFF skills include Lunge and Photon Grenade; both of which do decent spike damage versus armor, but which have a high recharge time and are are next to useless versus shields. For Engineer BOFFs, Turrets and Drones both have a very high uptime and don't care whether they're firing on shielded or unshielded targets... and if you want to micromanage then there are always Mines.
As mentioned previously, the damage output on Turrets is a common misconception from seeing them Undoffed and Unskillpointed. (Not to mention without Procs or other boosts - my captain's Bio Turret summons regularly hit over 200 DPS when I'm aiming... at that point it even starts contending with Mines!)
As an example of somewhere Turrets are useful: look at the Tholian maps on Nukara. Without BOFFs; I can summon Four Turrets; Three Drones, Four sets of mines and Two Generators. I've lost count of the number of times I have annoyed other players to the point of them leaving the zone because any nearby mobs die to Turret spam before they get a chance to fully spawn. No amount of Tactical power spamming can keep up with that level of point defense; and if you time your summon abilities correctly then it's almost as good whenever you're on the move.
Smoke Grenade quite literally blinds every other mob: a BOFF's smoke grenade in PVE is just as potent as a player's. And a mob that cannot see you will not shoot at you.
Two sets of Weapon Malfunctions makes two foes unable to fire ranged weapons at anything for several seconds, and have their damage output heavily debuffed after that. When you add DOFFs, that effect has a chance to become an AoE: it's not uncommon for an entire mob to be affected.
So sure, you might be "targetted", but you'll be taking next to no damage.
Say you are playing an Engineer and start attacking a new mob; in the ~5 seconds it takes you to run into the middle of a group and lay a minefield or drop a Turret, the mob is usually already either blinded, heavily debuffed or half dead from BOFF spam. And because of the sheer survivablity and lack of any need for micromanagement, it scales to whatever level of difficulty you throw at it.
In practice, two of said BOFFs can take out a Boss in the Warzone by themselves without my doing anything other than dropping a Medical Generator. In standard missions I'll just let my BOFFs clear up one mob whilst I drop a set of Mines and/or a Bio Turret on the next one; and on bosses I just drop generators, turrets and mines and wait for them to die. I honestly can't remember the last time I needed to use any kind of Hypo... :P
As for the turrets, I might misjudge them, because I play aggressive, hence using mines and bombs to obliterate everything in sight, while you said you are more the easygoing type. So Turrets never get a chance with my playstyle, hence they rate low with me in combatlog.They just take too much time, and time is money (or ec/dil^^).
One other thing, you should look at the 3pc again, its divided in 2 Bonuses (so to say) those dodge and those for crth. As you quoted, dodge doesnt stack, but CrtH/D still does, and is intended to stack. They never removed it, thats why it its not mentioned in the notes.
The icon also doesnt show a stack (as part of the bonus stacks, part doesnt), but by equipping one BO after another you will see the stacked CrtH/D in you character window.
Armory/Fabrication/Explosives doffs for the +2 chance of extra spawns
Transporter for the shield
4 engineer Boffs, all skilled:
Shield recharge 1
Turret 1
Mortar 1
Medical Gen 2
with the doffs (chances will vary)
Shield recharge 1 = very quick shield heals
Turret 1 4 x 3 = 12 turrets
Mortar 1 4 x 3 = 12 mortars
Medical Gen 2 + shield 1 x 4 = mid health Hot low shield Hot and a looot of passive resistance bonus
plus a captain's similar skills you can have a LOT of pets blowing the mobs away
Or to spice it up, change one or two boff's medi gen 2 to support drone 1, less heals, but another possible 12drones flying around, with their own abilities adding to the chaos
oh and equipment wise im lazy,
Green mk Xi PKBD shields
Green/blue mkxi energy dampening armor (hp a must for the heal)
2 polaron spilt beams + Pulse waves with crtd+ mods for chances of vaporizing
That playstyle sounds familiar; I think the difference is that I use Turrets instead of Bombs between minefield summons! (I find that the bombs take too long by the time they are placed and become live and explode!!) Turrets are great for "mopping up" stray mobs after a grenade or explosion...) :P
One thing you may want to try is the Bio Turret - the Repel it inflicts is actually very handy for bunching up a mob or keeping something (like a boss) pushed into a corner. Or even pushing things INTO minefields
I do enjoy being able to just leave a mob half dead and run to the next one (safe in the knowledge that my Turrets and BOFFs will quickly finish up for me); instead of personally hanging around to polish everything off. It feels a little more immersive, like you're making your underlings deal with "minor annoyances" whilst you concentrate on whatever actually deserves your attention... reminds me of playing a Mastermind in CoH/CoV!!
Interesting.
It might be worth testing this out; but I suspect it'd still not change my opinion of a 3-piece OMEGA over a 3-piece AMACO on my two engineers.
I can understand why a little extra crit might be desirable if you were trying to push your Captain's Weapon damage up as much as possible at the expense of everything else; but my overall team performance would suffer too much (The Armor Heal Procs and additional Turret and Drone DPS from the AMACO bonus are nice, but the real DPS increase comes from all the AoE damage which the AMACO Pulsewaves put out - even BOFFs find it hard to mess up the Grenade Fire secondary and Cone primary attacks!)
"PvE" you mean? :P
STFs and raids are mostly captain-only, but the rest of the game uses BOFFs pretty extensively.
When soloing Missions it just makes things quicker; and in the Dyson Ground invasion zone it makes things much easier... that said, I would like to see some more BOFF-friendly PVE ground maps that are intended to be HARD. Some of the Crystalline ones in New Romulus were fun (example: the underground maps where you need to outfit your BOFFs with Hazard suits); but far too easy with a halfway optimized team...
That said, the captain skills I listed above don't really change for raiding; but I might opt for a full AMACO set (plus the Undine or MACO Rifle) on STFs just for the instant remodulaton.
I can see the merrits in IGE(last room) or CGE (Transformer-Guarding), but it would ruin my plan/playstyle if it happens to misfire (as I have seen too many time in STFs, when others used it), so it would take me more micromanaging then mines&bombs.
I think we simply incorporated our playstyle so well, that it doesnt feel like micromanaging and just comes naturally.
but yeah, I LOVE turret spam! I usually have an away team of 1 tac, 2 eng, and 1 medic.
My character Tsin'xing
Depends on the number of enemies hit. The Flamethrower Turret's plasma attack is the region of ~30 DPS before Procs and ~45 DPS with a [PsiDmg] Proc; in a 45 Degree cone. The Bio Turret deals in the region of ~100 DPS before Procs and ~135 DPS with a [PsiDmg] Proc; but it's single-target only.
Three targets is almost exactly the "break-even" point... so if you're hitting less than three targets with each flame shot; the Bio Turret will technically be better DPS. I suppose the repel can be annoying or useful depending on whether or not you're used to it... :P
That said, you always can slot both and have them out simultaneously