Isn't the real issue at hand that the engineer native abilities are flat heals while the native abilities from tactical and science stacks with just about everything including the kitchen sink?
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Isn't the real issue at hand that the engineer native abilities are flat heals while the native abilities from tactical and science stacks with just about everything including the kitchen sink?
That's part of the issue. STOCrypticRock had actually admitted in The Show that engineering career abilities were "too focused" and defensive in nature.
"captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion."
and my point stands...
There are DPS there are control/support and there are healing/tanking ability's, traits that go across all abilities no matter what type of captain you play. Whining about something that's not true gets you nowhere..
I'm not sure how many times I have to say this, but right now, engineering captain abilities are being outperformed by consoles, traits, and even boff abilities. While there are abilities that can mimic the function of tac and sci captain abilities, they do not completely outperform them. If you need proof, I would be happy to provide the parses.
Now you can make a argument that in the games current meta that tanking roles are not really needed and that DPS and control/support are more effective in current games meta.. that is a valid argument and one that is unlikely to change for awhile.
Even if tanking was made valid, it wouldn't change the fact that tacs and scis are able to tank better than engineers (due to a higher potential threat scale, and an almost even amount of healing)
Threat scale.. in game issue that effects all captains the same... the issue is game mechanics vs the captain skills. ENG are about survivability and they do that better then ANY other captain.
Amount of the healing.. Eng captain's have more innate healing then any other other Captain... because its a FREE skills with the captain... just as DPS skills are free with tac... or debuff that's are free with sci.
Just as other captain's you can console and use boffs to compliment or shore up areas that you need...
The only reason TAC and SCI appear better is that in the current meta its all about dps...
Sure, engineers are supposed to have great healing but to put it out plainly, Miracle Worker is pretty bad, and I've already explained why; it's simply too weak to be considered a competitive heal. Yes, it's a free skill, but at least the free skill should be on par with the other captain abilities in terms of power. I'm not wanting engineers to be dps monsters, because that role if for tacs. I just think engineer captain abilities should be buffed so that they are considered top tier again and actually make a large difference in advanced/elite content. Miracle Worker should be the best heal in the game (or close to it) but right now, it's around my 4th best heal and that's even with Grace Under Fire.
You however, keep ignoring my main point here. Captain abilities should not be completely overshadowed by consoles that to some extend 'mimic' the ability and they most definitely should not be outperformed by Lt. Cmdr Boff abilities.
Who says that "Captain abilities should not be completely overshadowed by consoles that to some extend 'mimic' the ability and they most definitely should not be outperformed by Lt. Cmdr Boff abilities"
That's your opinion.. the game though shows that there is not a strong difference between the 3 captain class.. that you can get almost the same from using consoles and boffs... same reason as a captain your not locked into a class of ship... you would have a point if you were ship locked to only using escorts as tac, cruisers as eng and sci ships only as sci.. but your not..
in fact the game is more designed to do the opposite of what you says as it more of.. you bring the crew that best compliments your captain and ship...
So no I'm not ignoring your main point.. I'm just disagreeing with it..
"captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion."
Who says that "Captain abilities should not be completely overshadowed by consoles that to some extend 'mimic' the ability and they most definitely should not be outperformed by Lt. Cmdr Boff abilities"
So you're saying that RIF and Engineering Team 3 are supposed to be stronger than Miracle Worker? Okay, then why is Adaptive Emergency systems not stronger than Go Down Fighting?
That's your opinion.. the game though shows that there is not a strong difference between the 3 captain class.. that you can get almost the same from using consoles and boffs... same reason as a captain your not locked into a class of ship... you would have a point if you were ship locked to only using escorts as tac, cruisers as eng and sci ships only as sci.. but your not..
in fact the game is more designed to do the opposite of what you says as it more of.. you bring the crew that best compliments your captain and ship...
First, that's not only my opinion. It's the opinion of many in the community that engineering powers are subpar to their tactical and science counterparts, not because of their inability to blow stuff up like tacs or debuff like scis, but rather because most of their abilities are outperformed by consoles, boffs, and other abilities that allow tacs and scis to take advantage of the engineer's "unique areas" . (Check last week's edition of The Show where they discussed this in more detail.) Contrary to your idea, you cannot get the same performance from using consoles and boffs which function similar to tac and sci abilities. For example, engineers cannot even get close to the dps levels of tacs and can only dream of being able to support/debuff like scis, no matter what consoles and boff abilities they use. Even the boff/console abilities that can function similar to tac/sci captain abilities are noticeably weaker than their captain ability counterparts, while the opposite is true of engineering captain abilities. However, tacs and scis can both heal almost as well (if not better) than engineers AND they can sustain high power levels for periods of time through the uses of just a few consoles and boff abilities. I'm not trying to offend your or anything, but you don't seem to know much about the game as a whole (or I could be misunderstanding you ).
Yes, eng captain skills pale in comparison to APA.
APA is fine. DPS is fine. Even to want to DPS is fine, because like it or not this game is all about DPS for the last 6 years and it would be folly to change that.
But since a DPS career path can tank sufficiently enough, a "tanking" career should by logic DPS enough to be competitive. This is why we suggest all these dps buffs to eng skills.
I propose a few simple changes:
1. Grace Under Fire resets both MW and EPS transfer 2. EPST gain the ability to overcap power. 3. RSF gain perfect shields and give crtd and crth on expiry based on how much you got shot at while buff was on. 4. Nadion Inversion gives weapon haste as well as weapon drain resistance.
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"captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion."
I'm sorry but this goes for any captain ability.... the difference is your not having to add traits or consoles for your innate skills..
Really? What's the replicated ability for subnucleonic beam or go down fighting?
There is an AoE SNB boff ability. Others mentioned the console for go down fighting.
Maybe I'm missing the SNB clone. I don't see it anywhere.
EDIT: Never mind. I found it. It's incredibly weak by comparison.
and my point stands...
There are DPS there are control/support and there are healing/tanking ability's, traits that go across all abilities no matter what type of captain you play. Whining about something that's not true gets you nowhere..
Now you can make a argument that in the games current meta that tanking roles are not really needed and that DPS and control/support are more effective in current games meta.. that is a valid argument and one that is unlikely to change for awhile.
Not really. The comparison between subnucleonic beam/gdf copying and copying of engineering captain powers is completely invalid. Here's why.
GDF can only be imitated with a single console (at only 45% compared effectiveness) and can only be loaded on to a whopping 3 ships per faction. That locks the console out of about 300+ ships. Not a good comparison.
Subnucleonic Beam has a gimped version that can only be used on intel ships. And the only somewhat decent version of Subnucleonic carrier wave would take up a Commander slot. Meaning that it's going to be in place of something good like a max level attack pattern, RSP3, or Grav Well 3, just to name a few. Another bad example
Let's look at Miracle Worker, since it's effects are the most obvious. It grants a shield heal, hull heal, and subsystem repair. These effects are common and can be replicated on everything. Engineering boff powers, traits, ship traits, rep traits, skill trees, duty officers, consoles (that can be used on ANY ship). All of these things can replicate any Engineering Captain Ability. The same is not true for GDF and SNB which have single+gimped arguably useless analogues.
There is a DOff that can remove certain BUffs from an enemy if hit with energy weapons.
There's subnucleonic (or so) wave
there is the Nukara mines
plenty of Options for subnucleonic beam
go down fighting - there's a Reputation trait that improves resistances as health goes down - which would add the trait that improves go down fighting, but not replicate the damage improvmemnt.
The doff procs a chance to remove a single buff. Another pretty bad comparison to SNB. See above for SN Carrier Wave. What about the Nukara mines? I'm not seeing that they remove buffs. SNB removes all buffs unlike the doff, SNCW, and allegedly the mines that you mentioned.
I'm not even sure why you mentioned the reputation trait since in no way is similar to GDF.
Post edited by salazarraze on
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
"captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion."
and my point stands...
There are DPS there are control/support and there are healing/tanking ability's, traits that go across all abilities no matter what type of captain you play. Whining about something that's not true gets you nowhere..
I'm not sure how many times I have to say this, but right now, engineering captain abilities are being outperformed by consoles, traits, and even boff abilities. While there are abilities that can mimic the function of tac and sci captain abilities, they do not completely outperform them. If you need proof, I would be happy to provide the parses.
Now you can make a argument that in the games current meta that tanking roles are not really needed and that DPS and control/support are more effective in current games meta.. that is a valid argument and one that is unlikely to change for awhile.
Even if tanking was made valid, it wouldn't change the fact that tacs and scis are able to tank better than engineers (due to a higher potential threat scale, and an almost even amount of healing)
Threat scale.. in game issue that effects all captains the same... the issue is game mechanics vs the captain skills. ENG are about survivability and they do that better then ANY other captain.
Amount of the healing.. Eng captain's have more innate healing then any other other Captain... because its a FREE skills with the captain... just as DPS skills are free with tac... or debuff that's are free with sci.
Just as other captain's you can console and use boffs to compliment or shore up areas that you need...
The only reason TAC and SCI appear better is that in the current meta its all about dps...
Sure, engineers are supposed to have great healing but to put it out plainly, Miracle Worker is pretty bad, and I've already explained why; it's simply too weak to be considered a competitive heal...
This is a good point. Maybe it is that simple and engineers simply require a buff. The Tac Captain powers buff damage by a percentage. And damage has skyrocketed over time meaning that Tac Captain powers have maintained their effectiveness because it's all based on a percentage. Engineering Captain powers seem to work off smaller raw numbers that haven't gone sky high in recent years. And with damage going through the roof, healing/tanking hasn't been able to keep up.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that lots of tanking is based on damage resistance which has a literal diminishing returns system built into the game. This is a big handicap and should maybe be adjusted upwards.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
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i think it's ONLY available on purple doffs, since the effect originated on those few xindi doffs you had a very low chance of pulling from a reinforcements doff pack, i think
and i made a slight mistake - the lockout is 15 seconds, not 30
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
well said @salazarraze. engineering captain powers are outperformed by their equivalents when in reality they should be stronger. Compared to the other careers, engineers no unique skills as most of them are even overshadowed by some sort of gimmick. They need some sort of boost so people who choose being an engineer can get a set of unique skills as right now, everything an engineer does can be done just as well, if not better than a tac and sci. Just putting it out there....captain abilities should be stronger than their console/trait/doff abilities. But while this is true of the other classes, engineering captain abilities should be buffed so that they can be considered top tier again.
So, SubNuke ... what exactly is the most prevalent use of that captain ability in the game right now? PvP?
Where's it being used in PvE?
CEA and against anything voth, it also disabled the Nah'kul duplicate trick.
It prevents the Borg boss ship from spawning probes in red alerts in addition to messing with the tholian boss ships.
That's just scratching the surface to be honest. SNB is a wicked ability.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
So, SubNuke ... what exactly is the most prevalent use of that captain ability in the game right now? PvP?
Where's it being used in PvE?
CEA and against anything voth, it also disabled the Nah'kul duplicate trick.
Cool. Thanks for the info.
Not to be dismissive, though, but taking that limited scope of the meta into account, it seems SubNuke doesn't pop up in meta enough to really be at the forefront of this discussion though wouldn't you say?
Like ok ... Miracle Worker is taking a ton of heat here right? But CEA is dominated by science builds so ENG isn't going to compete there right? And Voth and Nakhul aren't being parsed competitively are they? I mean, like the Nakhul would be a very very FUN conversation I think. Because those encounters all hinge on things other than DPS. And ENG captains and tanks can excel in those encounters simply because they're not DPS chases. They're time gated and require teamwork more than anything else. And the duplicate trick itself is part of that.
So I don't know. The context again crops up. If the debate is that Miracle Worker is garbage because Engineering Team can outheal it ... while a console can only do 33% of what SubNuke does ... pound for pound that comparison in a vaccuum is a powerful point. But adding in the context of the meta ... as well as what SubNuke is being used for, I just don't know if the comparison is as powerful once you put it into play.
TLDR: My best parses on CE maps are all on my science toon's build. Who is going to have SubNuke anyways. My best work in Nakhul maps is all on my tank and science toons because those maps need things other than DPS. And not many people parse those maps. And the only map I even play with Voth these days is Disco.
So, SubNuke ... what exactly is the most prevalent use of that captain ability in the game right now? PvP?
Where's it being used in PvE?
CEA and against anything voth, it also disabled the Nah'kul duplicate trick.
Cool. Thanks for the info.
Not to be dismissive, though, but taking that limited scope of the meta into account, it seems SubNuke doesn't pop up in meta enough to really be at the forefront of this discussion though wouldn't you say?
Like ok ... Miracle Worker is taking a ton of heat here right? But CEA is dominated by science builds so ENG isn't going to compete there right? And Voth and Nakhul aren't being parsed competitively are they? I mean, like the Nakhul would be a very very FUN conversation I think. Because those encounters all hinge on things other than DPS. And ENG captains and tanks can excel in those encounters simply because they're not DPS chases. They're time gated and require teamwork more than anything else. And the duplicate trick itself is part of that.
So I don't know. The context again crops up. If the debate is that Miracle Worker is garbage because Engineering Team can outheal it ... while a console can only do 33% of what SubNuke does ... pound for pound that comparison in a vaccuum is a powerful point. But adding in the context of the meta ... as well as what SubNuke is being used for, I just don't know if the comparison is as powerful once you put it into play.
TLDR: My best parses on CE maps are all on my science toon's build. Who is going to have SubNuke anyways. My best work in Nakhul maps is all on my tank and science toons because those maps need things other than DPS. And not many people parse those maps. And the only map I even play with Voth these days is Disco.
I'd say Subnuke probably needs a buff too. I don't have too much experience with sci captains tbh (my two mains are a tac and eng) but the ability doesn't seem that powerful. Probably a small -DRR to it would be nice. That being said, I still feel like scis are above engineers right now as engineers don't really have any role. On paper, they're supposed to be better at tanking (which was true at the beginning of the game), but since then the powercreep has rendered them rather meh. Just saying, Sensor Scan is a top tier heal, Attack Pattern Alpha is a top tier damage buff, then technically Miracle Worker should be a top tier heal (but it's not). @darkknightucf and some others talked about this in last week's edition of The Show. You should check it out
My Main (the guy in my Sig) is a tac in a cruiser (Kelvin Konnie) that can tank ISA while getting 145k, Because of this I pretty much retired my engineer until recently. I put my Engineer into my Temporal Dreadnaught and reskilled him to have the Sci Ultimate, he's running Intel Primary/Temporal Secondary, Has Recursive Shearing III and I decked him out with 3 Epic CrtDx3 Pen AP Beam arrays and 4 Epic CrtD x4 Beam Arrays. I get 64k In ISA and have hit 80% Attks in (Tanking the entire instance). At 104k Hull MW barely moves the needle. I rarely hit it since it since my Resists are pretty high and I have ET3 and SIF 1 (RS3 is in the Commander slot). What I'm getting at (in my rambling way) is I'm set up for the DPS meta (I'm not a healer as I suck at trying to keep others alive) and my tac is JUST AS GOOD at tanking and my Eng does less than 1/2 his DPS.
I agree with the statement that MW needs a revamp, at the least the mechanic need to be changed to a Percentage of Hull/Shields.
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Not to be dismissive, though, but taking that limited scope of the meta into account, it seems SubNuke doesn't pop up in meta enough to really be at the forefront of this discussion though wouldn't you say?
SubNuke is more of a PVP meta skill (I've had countless kills because of it) but it still works in PVE against those large targets or targets with gimmicky abilities as mentioned. It won't show up in "meta" though because it doesn't show up in the stats.
Like ok ... Miracle Worker is taking a ton of heat here right? But CEA is dominated by science builds so ENG isn't going to compete there right? And Voth and Nakhul aren't being parsed competitively are they? I mean, like the Nakhul would be a very very FUN conversation I think. Because those encounters all hinge on things other than DPS. And ENG captains and tanks can excel in those encounters simply because they're not DPS chases. They're time gated and require teamwork more than anything else. And the duplicate trick itself is part of that.
So I don't know. The context again crops up. If the debate is that Miracle Worker is garbage because Engineering Team can outheal it ...
My biggest problem with Engineers is the focus on traditional tanking, which no longer works.
From what I'm seeing here, a lot of people still rely on traditional heal skills (Engineering team, Miracle Worker, etc.) for hull heals, and probably focus on running lots of hull and shield hitpoints and high resists as well...
Well, that no longer works for quality tanking in this game. 3 years ago or so it did, I had an Engineer built up for PVP tanking that could tank 5 other players at once and not take any damage just by using resists and such. But the game has changed DRAMATICALLY since then and this way of building a ship just flat out no longer works.
Tanking these days is more about Immunities, proc'cing space traits, Placates, Disables, and most importantly, Heal-while-firing using traits and doffs. Power levels are more important than resists now too due to the Auxiliary to Defense rep trait (and aux to offense too, both of which depend on high power levels to improve both dps and resists).
Also, if your skill tree is heavy into Engineering, you are also hurting your tanking ability. If you want to tank, you need to max out your science tree, and if you want to maximize your DPS, you need to max out your science tree. Yes, it works for BOTH now due to how much the Science tree improves your shields and the fact it unlocks Probability Manipulation, one of the best offensive skills you can have.
Most importantly, ALL of the new techniques for tanking can apply to ANY ship and works just the same with Engineers, Tac captains, and Sci captains as well. This means that the type of captain that can best make use of increasing damage outputs is more important for gameplay than the one that increases tanking abilities.
On a side note, what is even more interesting to me right now, is that Tac captains make better Science-heavy builds than Science captains because both APA, GDF and Tactical Fleet give a "+% ALL damage" bonus which means that EXOTIC damage builds are boosted by said skills... Science captains can't even pull this off.
Also, if your skill tree is heavy into Engineering, you are also hurting your tanking ability. If you want to tank, you need to max out your science tree, and if you want to maximize your DPS, you need to max out your science tree. Yes, it works for BOTH now due to how much the Science tree improves your shields and the fact it unlocks Probability Manipulation, one of the best offensive skills you can have.
My parses and my results don't really show that going heavy into ENG has diminished my ability to tank.
So what's your metrics that you are measuring? Is it the ability to hold aggro? The ability to take damage while holding aggro?
The Skill revamp radically improved my ability to get aggro and take damage, while having a much lower improvement on my overall DPS because I went (and knowingly went there) heavy into the ENG tree.
My damage improved, but everyone else's imrpoved by a lot more. However, my stickiness improved a lot with my skill choices and changing to strategist. I don't rely heavily on traditional heals. I do utilize a lot of traits. It's why Miracle Worker is a workhorse for me. Because I don't need to be constantly relying on Engineering Team.
And as I pointed out, back when it debuted, no one really did much with the ENG tree. They tried it and then moved on much faster into Science and Tactical. Since then, no one's changed their minds and really shown they've done anything with it.
There was one thread, from one player, in these forums. I've not read much of anything on the build reddit since then using ENG either. The book was shut, the case was closed everyone gave up on ENG skill tree.
TLDR:
1- What is the measurement of tanking?
2- What is wrong with ENG skills?
2a - If power management has more of an impact on Tanking, then how is the ENG tree bad for improving tanking when a good chunk of it is focused on improving power management?
3- My tanking experience is that my DPS is rarely top in maps I parse, but my tanking stats are usually either at the top by a wide margin or are edging out the top. I typically do 40k to 45k DPS in ISA pugs, for instance, and yet hold aggro over 100k pugmates quite easily. How is this NOT effective tanking? My results back up that the build can tank. I just don't think tanking is needed for much of anything. But I have two other characters for doing those other things so it's not like I'm going to scrap this build or this character.
It really sounds like the mentality at issue here is "either it helps with 2-minute ISE DPS epeen runs, or it is utterly worthless". Highly subjective, to say the least.
Have to admit, needing to slot Fleet Technician and Miracle Worker to make the Engineering Captain Abilities worthwhile is kind of sad. Then there's the Skill Revamp nerf to the maximum duration of EPS Manifold Efficiency. *sigh* Definitely needs work compared to Tactical, but...
Isn't the real issue at hand that the engineer native abilities are flat heals while the native abilities from tactical and science stacks with just about everything including the kitchen sink?
That's part of the issue. STOCrypticRock had actually admitted in The Show that engineering career abilities were "too focused" and defensive in nature.
...pretty much nails it. Hull, Shields, Power, etc. all have caps while DRM has diminishing returns; compared to the free stacking damage and crit bonuses (that also improve damage-derived healing), there's a clear performance gap. That doesn't even get into the uptime advantage Tactical Captain Abilities enjoy.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
1- What is the measurement of tanking?
2- What is wrong with ENG skills?
2a - If power management has more of an impact on Tanking, then how is the ENG tree bad for improving tanking when a good chunk of it is focused on improving power management?
3- My tanking experience is that my DPS is rarely top in maps I parse, but my tanking stats are usually either at the top by a wide margin or are edging out the top. I typically do 40k to 45k DPS in ISA pugs, for instance, and yet hold aggro over 100k pugmates quite easily. How is this NOT effective tanking? My results back up that the build can tank. I just don't think tanking is needed for much of anything. But I have two other characters for doing those other things so it's not like I'm going to scrap this build or this character.
1. Tanking is the measurement of how well you can get aggro (which engineers are pretty bad at) and how well you can hold it.
2. Right now, the problem with ENG skills overall are that they are too defensive overall and all the things offered in the ENG tree can be found somewhere else too. The problem with eng captain skills are that they're weaker than their equivalents when in reality they should be stronger. While engineering captains are supposed to be the best tanks, tacs and even scis are just better. This leaves engineers with no real unique role left that they can shine at.
2a. the Eng tree right now is much more about defense than about tanking. Also, actually power management only contributes a small amount to dps, which improves tanking. However, the amount of bonuses the eng tree offers to tanking pale in comparison to the sci and tac trees.
3. Hmm, let's take a look at my most recent PuG isa run. I did ~70k dps with 93.5% attacks in. If I was just relying on Miracle Worker and some other heals, there is no way at all I would've been able to go through that run without any deaths. When looking at my heal abilities in the parse, Miracle Worker did around 200 heals per second. Engineering Team 3 and Aux2SIF both did ~ 250 HPS. Desperate repairs did ~300 and Regenerative Integrity Field did a whopping 2k heals per second (nearly 10x the effectiveness of Miracle Worker). As RIF is more effective on captains with more dps, a tac could easily have gotten even more heals out of it. For those who don't have RIF, continuity is a similar 'OH NOEZ' ability that automatically triggers when you're on low health and completely outheals Miracle Worker. While your runs were definitely examples of effective tanking, a tac with equal investment could probably both draw more aggro and heal almost as well.
"captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion."
Who says that "Captain abilities should not be completely overshadowed by consoles that to some extend 'mimic' the ability and they most definitely should not be outperformed by Lt. Cmdr Boff abilities"
So you're saying that RIF and Engineering Team 3 are supposed to be stronger than Miracle Worker? Okay, then why is Adaptive Emergency systems not stronger than Go Down Fighting?
That's your opinion.. the game though shows that there is not a strong difference between the 3 captain class.. that you can get almost the same from using consoles and boffs... same reason as a captain your not locked into a class of ship... you would have a point if you were ship locked to only using escorts as tac, cruisers as eng and sci ships only as sci.. but your not..
in fact the game is more designed to do the opposite of what you says as it more of.. you bring the crew that best compliments your captain and ship...
First, that's not only my opinion. It's the opinion of many in the community that engineering powers are subpar to their tactical and science counterparts, not because of their inability to blow stuff up like tacs or debuff like scis, but rather because most of their abilities are outperformed by consoles, boffs, and other abilities that allow tacs and scis to take advantage of the engineer's "unique areas" . (Check last week's edition of The Show where they discussed this in more detail.) Contrary to your idea, you cannot get the same performance from using consoles and boffs which function similar to tac and sci abilities. For example, engineers cannot even get close to the dps levels of tacs and can only dream of being able to support/debuff like scis, no matter what consoles and boff abilities they use. Even the boff/console abilities that can function similar to tac/sci captain abilities are noticeably weaker than their captain ability counterparts, while the opposite is true of engineering captain abilities. However, tacs and scis can both heal almost as well (if not better) than engineers AND they can sustain high power levels for periods of time through the uses of just a few consoles and boff abilities. I'm not trying to offend your or anything, but you don't seem to know much about the game as a whole (or I could be misunderstanding you ).
Yes it is your opinion that a small minority agree with.. just like anything in this game you will find a vocal minority that can agree with just about anything in the game.. that's does not mean you even close to being right.. as many also have pointed out where you incorrect...
The meta in this game changes over and over.. pre F2P sci were gods... for a long time it was TAC or ENG and sci could stay home.. that was do not just there captain powers but boff powers as well.. then meta changed.. SCI is now competive.. that didn't mean eng all of a sudden lost anything its just that now sci is performing better.. Eng still have the same power that they had when they were number 2 in the power creep...
1. Tanking is the measurement of how well you can get aggro (which engineers are pretty bad at) and how well you can hold it.
Ok. This is a good start. Let's dig deeper into this though because you mention that ENG are bad at doing this.
What are the primary sources of aggro generation?
Right now, it's been my experience that Damage, Proximity and Threat.
My build is low on damage compared to a lot of other builds. But I've built it to be high on proximity and threat. Which my parsing shows out to be working. Because while my damage ends up not being tops, I get and hold the aggro just fine.
So if threat and proximity are two of the three factors ... what helps in those? Proximity would be speed and agility, so you can get up close and stay there. Along with a few other easy to obtain traits and the like that help you when you are either surrounded or up close and personal. None of that is ENG exclusive. But it's also not something a lot of DPS builds focus on. For instance, Pilot at a spec tree choice.
Threat. Threat is pretty standard. Also not ENG specific. There's consoles. There's Strategist. There's ship command power. And two skill tree choices. Those are the most common and readily available threat generation tools.
The other metric for tanking though and this has been and always will be a metric for tanking ... is defense. Surviving the aggro. This is where ENG has the advantage, but also where the meta plays out in that it's not that effective an advantage because things die too fast for it to matter. But as far as tanking goes ... getting aggro is one of the metrics. Taking the damage is the other one. And ENG does have the advantage there.
I don't know I think you can build an effective tank with any of the three classes, depending on ships and traits. I just think most people have pretty much gotten far more involved with SCI and TAC in terms of the trees and the professions and not a lot of people delve into what ENG can do. My own experience with aggro generation shows that my ENG can get and hold aggro from people doing more than twice his damage per second. But as stated, the way to build threat generation in this game right now is not career specific. The base of that is one ship command, two skill tree unlocks that are really low in the skill trees, one secondary spec tree that is really useful, and embassy consoles.
All that being said, I'll be checking out The Show as mentioned above. Sounds like a worthwhile listen.
There are some great points here, but I lost interest when pvp was mentioned. I do remember when engineer was a sort of redmage. In between tac(fighter) and sci(mage)
Engineering needs to be more offensive, i.e., sustained fire without the need for any emergency power to (something) or miracle worker. if anything you should be able to use miracle worker on another friend like how hazards are with sci.
I think that being a purist, for example, being an engineering officer commanding an 'engineering-type' ship, should benefit more than some traits, consoles, or captain abilities. It should have inherent boosts that are tac/tac , or eng/eng , or sci/sci specific.
maybe its time to add some new ship captain abilities and traits such as they are right now? and NOT in lock boxes.
Edit* great point about engineering tanking and aggro and sustainability, happyblobfish
"captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion."
Who says that "Captain abilities should not be completely overshadowed by consoles that to some extend 'mimic' the ability and they most definitely should not be outperformed by Lt. Cmdr Boff abilities"
So you're saying that RIF and Engineering Team 3 are supposed to be stronger than Miracle Worker? Okay, then why is Adaptive Emergency systems not stronger than Go Down Fighting?
That's your opinion.. the game though shows that there is not a strong difference between the 3 captain class.. that you can get almost the same from using consoles and boffs... same reason as a captain your not locked into a class of ship... you would have a point if you were ship locked to only using escorts as tac, cruisers as eng and sci ships only as sci.. but your not..
in fact the game is more designed to do the opposite of what you says as it more of.. you bring the crew that best compliments your captain and ship...
First, that's not only my opinion. It's the opinion of many in the community that engineering powers are subpar to their tactical and science counterparts, not because of their inability to blow stuff up like tacs or debuff like scis, but rather because most of their abilities are outperformed by consoles, boffs, and other abilities that allow tacs and scis to take advantage of the engineer's "unique areas" . (Check last week's edition of The Show where they discussed this in more detail.) Contrary to your idea, you cannot get the same performance from using consoles and boffs which function similar to tac and sci abilities. For example, engineers cannot even get close to the dps levels of tacs and can only dream of being able to support/debuff like scis, no matter what consoles and boff abilities they use. Even the boff/console abilities that can function similar to tac/sci captain abilities are noticeably weaker than their captain ability counterparts, while the opposite is true of engineering captain abilities. However, tacs and scis can both heal almost as well (if not better) than engineers AND they can sustain high power levels for periods of time through the uses of just a few consoles and boff abilities. I'm not trying to offend your or anything, but you don't seem to know much about the game as a whole (or I could be misunderstanding you ).
Yes it is your opinion that a small minority agree with.. just like anything in this game you will find a vocal minority that can agree with just about anything in the game.. that's does not mean you even close to being right.. as many also have pointed out where you incorrect...
The meta in this game changes over and over.. pre F2P sci were gods... for a long time it was TAC or ENG and sci could stay home.. that was do not just there captain powers but boff powers as well.. then meta changed.. SCI is now competive.. that didn't mean eng all of a sudden lost anything its just that now sci is performing better.. Eng still have the same power that they had when they were number 2 in the power creep...
I don't think you know what you're talking about at all. Have you ever flown an engineer as tank before? Firstly, it's not a small minority that agrees with me. Ask any of the top players in the game, and you'll find that your view will be contradicted. Did you even look at last week's edition of The Show?
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me on this post, but you're not even listening to reason, just blatantly attacking my arguments with false evidence to back it up. First, the meta in this game does not change that much; it's been like this for quite a long time. While the engineering abilities themselves have stayed the same, other careers can duplicate them through consoles that have been released. I'm going to ask you a question: do you think engineering captain abilities should be outperformed by their console/boff/trait "equivalents"?
1. Tanking is the measurement of how well you can get aggro (which engineers are pretty bad at) and how well you can hold it.
Ok. This is a good start. Let's dig deeper into this though because you mention that ENG are bad at doing this.
What are the primary sources of aggro generation?
Right now, it's been my experience that Damage, Proximity and Threat.
That's right. We can finally agree on something! :P
My build is low on damage compared to a lot of other builds. But I've built it to be high on proximity and threat. Which my parsing shows out to be working. Because while my damage ends up not being tops, I get and hold the aggro just fine.
True. However, these those other ships were likely not interested in threat at all and instead wanted a tank (like you and I) to take the aggro for them so they can happily go make stuff go boom. My 70k dps build can also easily hold aggro off some of those doing more than 2x my dps. However, as tacs have direct damage boosts they would therefore have a higher possible threat threshold than an equally invested engineer. While there are still tacs and scis that still run the -threat consoles, many have translated over to the +threat consoles in order to get more dps out of Feedback Pulse. I've been in many runs where my threat gets stolen by a tac or sci tank with about equal threat scales but simply have more dps (simply because they have captain abilities that boost it) and therefore, more threat.
So if threat and proximity are two of the three factors ... what helps in those? Proximity would be speed and agility, so you can get up close and stay there. Along with a few other easy to obtain traits and the like that help you when you are either surrounded or up close and personal. None of that is ENG exclusive. But it's also not something a lot of DPS builds focus on. For instance, Pilot at a spec tree choice.
Attack Pattern Alpha gives a pretty big speed boost.
Threat. Threat is pretty standard. Also not ENG specific. There's consoles. There's Strategist. There's ship command power. And two skill tree choices. Those are the most common and readily available threat generation tools.
Some people feel that engineers should innately be able to generate more threat as that would help us eng tanks pull some aggro off those tac/sci tanks. The most direct way would be to add a 'taunt' mechanic to Miracle Worker or any of the other captain abilities, but I feel like a better way would be to simply add a small but direct energy damage boost to either Miracle Worker or Nadion Inversion.
The other metric for tanking though and this has been and always will be a metric for tanking ... is defense. Surviving the aggro. This is where ENG has the advantage, but also where the meta plays out in that it's not that effective an advantage because things die too fast for it to matter. But as far as tanking goes ... getting aggro is one of the metrics. Taking the damage is the other one. And ENG does have the advantage there.
True, I won't deny, engineers will have a small advantage on defense over tacs and scis. However, as you mentioned, this small advantage doesn't really matter in queues, though not because things die to quick for it to matter. In queues where you need to be able to hold sustained aggro, Miracle Worker is not exactly bad, but not that great either. Currently, my ship has a hull of over 100k in combat so a double tap Miracle Worker only heals at most 30%, with a heals per second of ~200. Like I said, it's not too bad, but there are many more better heals out there so once everything is held into account in a queue, it doesn't account for much. However, Regenerative Integrity Field has a burst heal of about the same as Miracle Worker AND it has a HoT for 15 seconds that is pretty much guaranteed invincibility (I've never died while it was active). If Miracle Worker is given a HoT like RIF and a slight boost to engineering stats, then it would probably be a much more valuable heal.
I don't know I think you can build an effective tank with any of the three classes, depending on ships and traits. I just think most people have pretty much gotten far more involved with SCI and TAC in terms of the trees and the professions and not a lot of people delve into what ENG can do. My own experience with aggro generation shows that my ENG can get and hold aggro from people doing more than twice his damage per second. But as stated, the way to build threat generation in this game right now is not career specific. The base of that is one ship command, two skill tree unlocks that are really low in the skill trees, one secondary spec tree that is really useful, and embassy consoles.
People have delved into Tac and Sci because those skills offer more dps than the eng branch. To many the eng skills seem very lackluster and too defensive focused (much like their captain abilities). The reason your eng can take threat off people doing twice your dps is because they're not specced for threat generation, but rather for threat reduction. If you take you current build and copy it directly to a tac or sci, they'll definitely be able to generate more threat as both APA and Sensor Scan are both direct threat boosters. So threat generation technically is actually a career specific ability but only to scis and tacs, which doesn't make sense as engineers should have a higher threat scale than tacs and scis if they're supposed to be the 'tanking' class.
All that being said, I'll be checking out The Show as mentioned above. Sounds like a worthwhile listen.
It's awesome. They discussed powers and mechanics with a dev last time, including the engineering captain powers and how they're rather weak right now. (They start talking about it at 35:00) Also, on another note, feel free to add me in game @happyblobfish if you want.
And as I pointed out, back when it debuted, no one really did much with the ENG tree. They tried it and then moved on much faster into Science and Tactical. Since then, no one's changed their minds and really shown they've done anything with it.
There was one thread, from one player, in these forums. I've not read much of anything on the build reddit since then using ENG either. The book was shut, the case was closed everyone gave up on ENG skill tree.
I, along with a lot of people, did extensive Tribble testing with the new skill trees. I personally tested at least a dozen layouts, incuding running max points into Eng/Sci/Tac, and variants of more "ballanced" layouts not trying for the Ultimates...
Of all the tests, running maximum Engineering for the Ultimate was the worst result, for DPS and just as bad as running full tac for Tanking. Running a balanced build is ultimately the best way to tank, but running full Science was the best way to maximize both damage output and the ability to shield tank.
Yes, shield tank. Shield tanking is more important than hull tanking, even with the heavy focus on [pen]. Quality shields can keep damage off your hull and keep you a live far better than having no shields and a quality hull.
So yes, after extensive testing, everyone has moved onto the most effective skill tree layouts.
TLDR:
1- What is the measurement of tanking?
PVP is the best way to measure tanking because players always put out more damage than NPC's, but if you don't care about PVP there are lots of ways of measuring it. Find any Elite que and tank everything. Personally, I use Starbase 24 as a measuring stick, because if my build can tank 50-100 Klingon ships simultaneously, it can tank anything the NPC's can throw at me.
2a - If power management has more of an impact on Tanking, then how is the ENG tree bad for improving tanking when a good chunk of it is focused on improving power management?
Because flat power boosts are irrelevant when coming from your skill tree. EPS indeed is critical, so ALWAYS put 2 points into EPS. And maybe throw one point into the base resist stats. I also put a point or two into thrusters, and now 2 points into the stats that help Engineering cooldowns so I can run the new "Kraken" build. Otherwise, the rest of the skill points in the ENG tree are best used elsewhere to improve tanking or damage ouputs.
And yes, this is because items like Plasmonic Leach, Emergency power to X abilities, and all the other stacking power boosts max out your power levels. This also applies to resists, with all the abilities and such that increase resists up to the cap. Once you hit the cap, there isn't any reason for over-capping, so you can remove skill points from those areas and use them elsewhere.
3- My tanking experience is that my DPS is rarely top in maps I parse, but my tanking stats are usually either at the top by a wide margin or are edging out the top. I typically do 40k to 45k DPS in ISA pugs, for instance, and yet hold aggro over 100k pugmates quite easily. How is this NOT effective tanking? My results back up that the build can tank. I just don't think tanking is needed for much of anything. But I have two other characters for doing those other things so it's not like I'm going to scrap this build or this character.
I personally always to PUG's, I never do pre-made teams. My DPS is usually first or second, and I tank everything too. I have no downsides to my builds as they are built to solo everything if necessary. I don't chase DPS records, but I will carry a bad team.
If I swap out some consoles for +threat instead of -threat and have Threatening Stance active, I could easily hold agro. Its not a major modification to go from a high-dps build to a heavy tank with ANY of the three classes.
As we're on the topic on tanking, I'll just add that threat generation currently and for a decently long time has always been easier for tacs and scis than engineers. As an engineer lacks direct damage boosts (the easiest way to increase threat), they will always have the lowest threat scale of the three classes. I'm not demanding a damage buff, but engineers really have no way to compete against a tac and sci threat wise right now.
Also, although I have said this quite a few times I'll just say it again... the engineering captain abilities are no longer unique. Engineers are supposed to be, by far, the best at healing and power control. However, these abilities have been sold to the other classes through boff abilities, consoles, traits, doffs, and spec tree abilities. Some of these abilities are actually stronger than their engineering captain power equivalents while they should be weaker. For example, Miracle Worker should be a stronger version of RIF or Continuity, not significantly weaker (as it is right now). The numerous abilities that buff power levels, power transfer rates, and weapon hastes serve as more powerful versions of EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion. Right now, tacs and scis can replicate eng abilities to great effect, leaving engineers extremely weak as they no longer have any area where they can truly shine. For example, tacs and scis should not be able to out-tank engineers nor should they have eng power levels in space. Or you can look at it from this way: Tacs have damage boosts than neither engs or scis can even come close to no matter what consoles, traits, and boff abilities are used. Scis have support and debuff abilities that are unparalleled. In contrast, engineers have healing and power level abilities that can be used by everyone.
Engineering is the best department in the fleet, and it needs a boost up. +1 to Original Poster
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As an engineer lacks direct damage boosts (the easiest way to increase threat), they will always have the lowest threat scale of the three classes. I'm not demanding a damage buff, but engineers really have no way to compete against a tac and sci threat wise right now.
I'd be curious to hear Borticus or CrypticRock discuss this because it's been my experience with this game that Proximity is the easiest way to get aggro in this game and I've found that with lower damage potential, as long as I'm using similar threat generation (+Threat consoles for instance), that being closer to the target has helped me get aggro over people doing more damage.
Proximity aggro has been a key element to my tanking going back all 6 years in this game. It's been something I think that gets overlooked quite often as it's not something one can parse.
EDIT: I'm 1 hour and 5 minutes into the Show podcast. It's fascinating.
Comments
That's part of the issue. STOCrypticRock had actually admitted in The Show that engineering career abilities were "too focused" and defensive in nature.
Who says that "Captain abilities should not be completely overshadowed by consoles that to some extend 'mimic' the ability and they most definitely should not be outperformed by Lt. Cmdr Boff abilities"
That's your opinion.. the game though shows that there is not a strong difference between the 3 captain class.. that you can get almost the same from using consoles and boffs... same reason as a captain your not locked into a class of ship... you would have a point if you were ship locked to only using escorts as tac, cruisers as eng and sci ships only as sci.. but your not..
in fact the game is more designed to do the opposite of what you says as it more of.. you bring the crew that best compliments your captain and ship...
So no I'm not ignoring your main point.. I'm just disagreeing with it..
So you're saying that RIF and Engineering Team 3 are supposed to be stronger than Miracle Worker? Okay, then why is Adaptive Emergency systems not stronger than Go Down Fighting?
First, that's not only my opinion. It's the opinion of many in the community that engineering powers are subpar to their tactical and science counterparts, not because of their inability to blow stuff up like tacs or debuff like scis, but rather because most of their abilities are outperformed by consoles, boffs, and other abilities that allow tacs and scis to take advantage of the engineer's "unique areas" . (Check last week's edition of The Show where they discussed this in more detail.) Contrary to your idea, you cannot get the same performance from using consoles and boffs which function similar to tac and sci abilities. For example, engineers cannot even get close to the dps levels of tacs and can only dream of being able to support/debuff like scis, no matter what consoles and boff abilities they use. Even the boff/console abilities that can function similar to tac/sci captain abilities are noticeably weaker than their captain ability counterparts, while the opposite is true of engineering captain abilities. However, tacs and scis can both heal almost as well (if not better) than engineers AND they can sustain high power levels for periods of time through the uses of just a few consoles and boff abilities. I'm not trying to offend your or anything, but you don't seem to know much about the game as a whole (or I could be misunderstanding you
APA is fine. DPS is fine. Even to want to DPS is fine, because like it or not this game is all about DPS for the last 6 years and it would be folly to change that.
But since a DPS career path can tank sufficiently enough, a "tanking" career should by logic DPS enough to be competitive. This is why we suggest all these dps buffs to eng skills.
I propose a few simple changes:
1. Grace Under Fire resets both MW and EPS transfer
2. EPST gain the ability to overcap power.
3. RSF gain perfect shields and give crtd and crth on expiry based on how much you got shot at while buff was on.
4. Nadion Inversion gives weapon haste as well as weapon drain resistance.
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GDF can only be imitated with a single console (at only 45% compared effectiveness) and can only be loaded on to a whopping 3 ships per faction. That locks the console out of about 300+ ships. Not a good comparison.
Subnucleonic Beam has a gimped version that can only be used on intel ships. And the only somewhat decent version of Subnucleonic carrier wave would take up a Commander slot. Meaning that it's going to be in place of something good like a max level attack pattern, RSP3, or Grav Well 3, just to name a few. Another bad example
Let's look at Miracle Worker, since it's effects are the most obvious. It grants a shield heal, hull heal, and subsystem repair. These effects are common and can be replicated on everything. Engineering boff powers, traits, ship traits, rep traits, skill trees, duty officers, consoles (that can be used on ANY ship). All of these things can replicate any Engineering Captain Ability. The same is not true for GDF and SNB which have single+gimped arguably useless analogues.
The doff procs a chance to remove a single buff. Another pretty bad comparison to SNB. See above for SN Carrier Wave. What about the Nukara mines? I'm not seeing that they remove buffs. SNB removes all buffs unlike the doff, SNCW, and allegedly the mines that you mentioned.
I'm not even sure why you mentioned the reputation trait since in no way is similar to GDF.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that lots of tanking is based on damage resistance which has a literal diminishing returns system built into the game. This is a big handicap and should maybe be adjusted upwards.
it's up to 3 buffs - but since it also has a 30 second lockout after proccing, it's still worse than SNB
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
and i made a slight mistake - the lockout is 15 seconds, not 30
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Where's it being used in PvE?
CEA and against anything voth, it also disabled the Nah'kul duplicate trick.
It prevents the Borg boss ship from spawning probes in red alerts in addition to messing with the tholian boss ships.
That's just scratching the surface to be honest. SNB is a wicked ability.
Cool. Thanks for the info.
Not to be dismissive, though, but taking that limited scope of the meta into account, it seems SubNuke doesn't pop up in meta enough to really be at the forefront of this discussion though wouldn't you say?
Like ok ... Miracle Worker is taking a ton of heat here right? But CEA is dominated by science builds so ENG isn't going to compete there right? And Voth and Nakhul aren't being parsed competitively are they? I mean, like the Nakhul would be a very very FUN conversation I think. Because those encounters all hinge on things other than DPS. And ENG captains and tanks can excel in those encounters simply because they're not DPS chases. They're time gated and require teamwork more than anything else. And the duplicate trick itself is part of that.
So I don't know. The context again crops up. If the debate is that Miracle Worker is garbage because Engineering Team can outheal it ... while a console can only do 33% of what SubNuke does ... pound for pound that comparison in a vaccuum is a powerful point. But adding in the context of the meta ... as well as what SubNuke is being used for, I just don't know if the comparison is as powerful once you put it into play.
TLDR: My best parses on CE maps are all on my science toon's build. Who is going to have SubNuke anyways. My best work in Nakhul maps is all on my tank and science toons because those maps need things other than DPS. And not many people parse those maps. And the only map I even play with Voth these days is Disco.
I'd say Subnuke probably needs a buff too. I don't have too much experience with sci captains tbh (my two mains are a tac and eng) but the ability doesn't seem that powerful. Probably a small -DRR to it would be nice. That being said, I still feel like scis are above engineers right now as engineers don't really have any role. On paper, they're supposed to be better at tanking (which was true at the beginning of the game), but since then the powercreep has rendered them rather meh. Just saying, Sensor Scan is a top tier heal, Attack Pattern Alpha is a top tier damage buff, then technically Miracle Worker should be a top tier heal (but it's not). @darkknightucf and some others talked about this in last week's edition of The Show. You should check it out
I agree with the statement that MW needs a revamp, at the least the mechanic need to be changed to a Percentage of Hull/Shields.
Please enable us to buy a token with Zen to faction change a 25th Century FED to a TOS FED.
SubNuke is more of a PVP meta skill (I've had countless kills because of it) but it still works in PVE against those large targets or targets with gimmicky abilities as mentioned. It won't show up in "meta" though because it doesn't show up in the stats.
My biggest problem with Engineers is the focus on traditional tanking, which no longer works.
From what I'm seeing here, a lot of people still rely on traditional heal skills (Engineering team, Miracle Worker, etc.) for hull heals, and probably focus on running lots of hull and shield hitpoints and high resists as well...
Well, that no longer works for quality tanking in this game. 3 years ago or so it did, I had an Engineer built up for PVP tanking that could tank 5 other players at once and not take any damage just by using resists and such. But the game has changed DRAMATICALLY since then and this way of building a ship just flat out no longer works.
Tanking these days is more about Immunities, proc'cing space traits, Placates, Disables, and most importantly, Heal-while-firing using traits and doffs. Power levels are more important than resists now too due to the Auxiliary to Defense rep trait (and aux to offense too, both of which depend on high power levels to improve both dps and resists).
Also, if your skill tree is heavy into Engineering, you are also hurting your tanking ability. If you want to tank, you need to max out your science tree, and if you want to maximize your DPS, you need to max out your science tree. Yes, it works for BOTH now due to how much the Science tree improves your shields and the fact it unlocks Probability Manipulation, one of the best offensive skills you can have.
Most importantly, ALL of the new techniques for tanking can apply to ANY ship and works just the same with Engineers, Tac captains, and Sci captains as well. This means that the type of captain that can best make use of increasing damage outputs is more important for gameplay than the one that increases tanking abilities.
On a side note, what is even more interesting to me right now, is that Tac captains make better Science-heavy builds than Science captains because both APA, GDF and Tactical Fleet give a "+% ALL damage" bonus which means that EXOTIC damage builds are boosted by said skills... Science captains can't even pull this off.
My parses and my results don't really show that going heavy into ENG has diminished my ability to tank.
So what's your metrics that you are measuring? Is it the ability to hold aggro? The ability to take damage while holding aggro?
The Skill revamp radically improved my ability to get aggro and take damage, while having a much lower improvement on my overall DPS because I went (and knowingly went there) heavy into the ENG tree.
My damage improved, but everyone else's imrpoved by a lot more. However, my stickiness improved a lot with my skill choices and changing to strategist. I don't rely heavily on traditional heals. I do utilize a lot of traits. It's why Miracle Worker is a workhorse for me. Because I don't need to be constantly relying on Engineering Team.
And as I pointed out, back when it debuted, no one really did much with the ENG tree. They tried it and then moved on much faster into Science and Tactical. Since then, no one's changed their minds and really shown they've done anything with it.
There was one thread, from one player, in these forums. I've not read much of anything on the build reddit since then using ENG either. The book was shut, the case was closed everyone gave up on ENG skill tree.
TLDR:
1- What is the measurement of tanking?
2- What is wrong with ENG skills?
2a - If power management has more of an impact on Tanking, then how is the ENG tree bad for improving tanking when a good chunk of it is focused on improving power management?
3- My tanking experience is that my DPS is rarely top in maps I parse, but my tanking stats are usually either at the top by a wide margin or are edging out the top. I typically do 40k to 45k DPS in ISA pugs, for instance, and yet hold aggro over 100k pugmates quite easily. How is this NOT effective tanking? My results back up that the build can tank. I just don't think tanking is needed for much of anything. But I have two other characters for doing those other things so it's not like I'm going to scrap this build or this character.
1. Tanking is the measurement of how well you can get aggro (which engineers are pretty bad at) and how well you can hold it.
2. Right now, the problem with ENG skills overall are that they are too defensive overall and all the things offered in the ENG tree can be found somewhere else too. The problem with eng captain skills are that they're weaker than their equivalents when in reality they should be stronger. While engineering captains are supposed to be the best tanks, tacs and even scis are just better. This leaves engineers with no real unique role left that they can shine at.
2a. the Eng tree right now is much more about defense than about tanking. Also, actually power management only contributes a small amount to dps, which improves tanking. However, the amount of bonuses the eng tree offers to tanking pale in comparison to the sci and tac trees.
3. Hmm, let's take a look at my most recent PuG isa run. I did ~70k dps with 93.5% attacks in. If I was just relying on Miracle Worker and some other heals, there is no way at all I would've been able to go through that run without any deaths. When looking at my heal abilities in the parse, Miracle Worker did around 200 heals per second. Engineering Team 3 and Aux2SIF both did ~ 250 HPS. Desperate repairs did ~300 and Regenerative Integrity Field did a whopping 2k heals per second (nearly 10x the effectiveness of Miracle Worker). As RIF is more effective on captains with more dps, a tac could easily have gotten even more heals out of it. For those who don't have RIF, continuity is a similar 'OH NOEZ' ability that automatically triggers when you're on low health and completely outheals Miracle Worker. While your runs were definitely examples of effective tanking, a tac with equal investment could probably both draw more aggro and heal almost as well.
Yes it is your opinion that a small minority agree with.. just like anything in this game you will find a vocal minority that can agree with just about anything in the game.. that's does not mean you even close to being right.. as many also have pointed out where you incorrect...
The meta in this game changes over and over.. pre F2P sci were gods... for a long time it was TAC or ENG and sci could stay home.. that was do not just there captain powers but boff powers as well.. then meta changed.. SCI is now competive.. that didn't mean eng all of a sudden lost anything its just that now sci is performing better.. Eng still have the same power that they had when they were number 2 in the power creep...
Ok. This is a good start. Let's dig deeper into this though because you mention that ENG are bad at doing this.
What are the primary sources of aggro generation?
Right now, it's been my experience that Damage, Proximity and Threat.
My build is low on damage compared to a lot of other builds. But I've built it to be high on proximity and threat. Which my parsing shows out to be working. Because while my damage ends up not being tops, I get and hold the aggro just fine.
So if threat and proximity are two of the three factors ... what helps in those? Proximity would be speed and agility, so you can get up close and stay there. Along with a few other easy to obtain traits and the like that help you when you are either surrounded or up close and personal. None of that is ENG exclusive. But it's also not something a lot of DPS builds focus on. For instance, Pilot at a spec tree choice.
Threat. Threat is pretty standard. Also not ENG specific. There's consoles. There's Strategist. There's ship command power. And two skill tree choices. Those are the most common and readily available threat generation tools.
The other metric for tanking though and this has been and always will be a metric for tanking ... is defense. Surviving the aggro. This is where ENG has the advantage, but also where the meta plays out in that it's not that effective an advantage because things die too fast for it to matter. But as far as tanking goes ... getting aggro is one of the metrics. Taking the damage is the other one. And ENG does have the advantage there.
I don't know I think you can build an effective tank with any of the three classes, depending on ships and traits. I just think most people have pretty much gotten far more involved with SCI and TAC in terms of the trees and the professions and not a lot of people delve into what ENG can do. My own experience with aggro generation shows that my ENG can get and hold aggro from people doing more than twice his damage per second. But as stated, the way to build threat generation in this game right now is not career specific. The base of that is one ship command, two skill tree unlocks that are really low in the skill trees, one secondary spec tree that is really useful, and embassy consoles.
All that being said, I'll be checking out The Show as mentioned above. Sounds like a worthwhile listen.
Engineering needs to be more offensive, i.e., sustained fire without the need for any emergency power to (something) or miracle worker. if anything you should be able to use miracle worker on another friend like how hazards are with sci.
I think that being a purist, for example, being an engineering officer commanding an 'engineering-type' ship, should benefit more than some traits, consoles, or captain abilities. It should have inherent boosts that are tac/tac , or eng/eng , or sci/sci specific.
maybe its time to add some new ship captain abilities and traits such as they are right now? and NOT in lock boxes.
Edit* great point about engineering tanking and aggro and sustainability, happyblobfish
I don't think you know what you're talking about at all. Have you ever flown an engineer as tank before? Firstly, it's not a small minority that agrees with me. Ask any of the top players in the game, and you'll find that your view will be contradicted. Did you even look at last week's edition of The Show?
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me on this post, but you're not even listening to reason, just blatantly attacking my arguments with false evidence to back it up. First, the meta in this game does not change that much; it's been like this for quite a long time. While the engineering abilities themselves have stayed the same, other careers can duplicate them through consoles that have been released. I'm going to ask you a question: do you think engineering captain abilities should be outperformed by their console/boff/trait "equivalents"?
That's right. We can finally agree on something! :P
True. However, these those other ships were likely not interested in threat at all and instead wanted a tank (like you and I) to take the aggro for them so they can happily go make stuff go boom. My 70k dps build can also easily hold aggro off some of those doing more than 2x my dps. However, as tacs have direct damage boosts they would therefore have a higher possible threat threshold than an equally invested engineer. While there are still tacs and scis that still run the -threat consoles, many have translated over to the +threat consoles in order to get more dps out of Feedback Pulse. I've been in many runs where my threat gets stolen by a tac or sci tank with about equal threat scales but simply have more dps (simply because they have captain abilities that boost it) and therefore, more threat.
Attack Pattern Alpha gives a pretty big speed boost.
Some people feel that engineers should innately be able to generate more threat as that would help us eng tanks pull some aggro off those tac/sci tanks. The most direct way would be to add a 'taunt' mechanic to Miracle Worker or any of the other captain abilities, but I feel like a better way would be to simply add a small but direct energy damage boost to either Miracle Worker or Nadion Inversion.
True, I won't deny, engineers will have a small advantage on defense over tacs and scis. However, as you mentioned, this small advantage doesn't really matter in queues, though not because things die to quick for it to matter. In queues where you need to be able to hold sustained aggro, Miracle Worker is not exactly bad, but not that great either. Currently, my ship has a hull of over 100k in combat so a double tap Miracle Worker only heals at most 30%, with a heals per second of ~200. Like I said, it's not too bad, but there are many more better heals out there so once everything is held into account in a queue, it doesn't account for much. However, Regenerative Integrity Field has a burst heal of about the same as Miracle Worker AND it has a HoT for 15 seconds that is pretty much guaranteed invincibility (I've never died while it was active). If Miracle Worker is given a HoT like RIF and a slight boost to engineering stats, then it would probably be a much more valuable heal.
People have delved into Tac and Sci because those skills offer more dps than the eng branch. To many the eng skills seem very lackluster and too defensive focused (much like their captain abilities). The reason your eng can take threat off people doing twice your dps is because they're not specced for threat generation, but rather for threat reduction. If you take you current build and copy it directly to a tac or sci, they'll definitely be able to generate more threat as both APA and Sensor Scan are both direct threat boosters. So threat generation technically is actually a career specific ability but only to scis and tacs, which doesn't make sense as engineers should have a higher threat scale than tacs and scis if they're supposed to be the 'tanking' class.
It's awesome. They discussed powers and mechanics with a dev last time, including the engineering captain powers and how they're rather weak right now. (They start talking about it at 35:00)
Of all the tests, running maximum Engineering for the Ultimate was the worst result, for DPS and just as bad as running full tac for Tanking. Running a balanced build is ultimately the best way to tank, but running full Science was the best way to maximize both damage output and the ability to shield tank.
Yes, shield tank. Shield tanking is more important than hull tanking, even with the heavy focus on [pen]. Quality shields can keep damage off your hull and keep you a live far better than having no shields and a quality hull.
So yes, after extensive testing, everyone has moved onto the most effective skill tree layouts. PVP is the best way to measure tanking because players always put out more damage than NPC's, but if you don't care about PVP there are lots of ways of measuring it. Find any Elite que and tank everything. Personally, I use Starbase 24 as a measuring stick, because if my build can tank 50-100 Klingon ships simultaneously, it can tank anything the NPC's can throw at me. Because flat power boosts are irrelevant when coming from your skill tree. EPS indeed is critical, so ALWAYS put 2 points into EPS. And maybe throw one point into the base resist stats. I also put a point or two into thrusters, and now 2 points into the stats that help Engineering cooldowns so I can run the new "Kraken" build. Otherwise, the rest of the skill points in the ENG tree are best used elsewhere to improve tanking or damage ouputs.
And yes, this is because items like Plasmonic Leach, Emergency power to X abilities, and all the other stacking power boosts max out your power levels. This also applies to resists, with all the abilities and such that increase resists up to the cap. Once you hit the cap, there isn't any reason for over-capping, so you can remove skill points from those areas and use them elsewhere.
I personally always to PUG's, I never do pre-made teams. My DPS is usually first or second, and I tank everything too. I have no downsides to my builds as they are built to solo everything if necessary. I don't chase DPS records, but I will carry a bad team.
If I swap out some consoles for +threat instead of -threat and have Threatening Stance active, I could easily hold agro. Its not a major modification to go from a high-dps build to a heavy tank with ANY of the three classes.
Also, although I have said this quite a few times I'll just say it again... the engineering captain abilities are no longer unique. Engineers are supposed to be, by far, the best at healing and power control. However, these abilities have been sold to the other classes through boff abilities, consoles, traits, doffs, and spec tree abilities. Some of these abilities are actually stronger than their engineering captain power equivalents while they should be weaker. For example, Miracle Worker should be a stronger version of RIF or Continuity, not significantly weaker (as it is right now). The numerous abilities that buff power levels, power transfer rates, and weapon hastes serve as more powerful versions of EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion. Right now, tacs and scis can replicate eng abilities to great effect, leaving engineers extremely weak as they no longer have any area where they can truly shine. For example, tacs and scis should not be able to out-tank engineers nor should they have eng power levels in space. Or you can look at it from this way: Tacs have damage boosts than neither engs or scis can even come close to no matter what consoles, traits, and boff abilities are used. Scis have support and debuff abilities that are unparalleled. In contrast, engineers have healing and power level abilities that can be used by everyone.
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I'd be curious to hear Borticus or CrypticRock discuss this because it's been my experience with this game that Proximity is the easiest way to get aggro in this game and I've found that with lower damage potential, as long as I'm using similar threat generation (+Threat consoles for instance), that being closer to the target has helped me get aggro over people doing more damage.
Proximity aggro has been a key element to my tanking going back all 6 years in this game. It's been something I think that gets overlooked quite often as it's not something one can parse.
EDIT: I'm 1 hour and 5 minutes into the Show podcast. It's fascinating.