I just still simply can't find what engineering cruiser ships are able to do that tactical or science ships can't do better. I've wanted to make them work for me in a truly competitive manner, and healing and tanking isn't in that catagory. If trying to do anything beyond that you're nerfing your potential big time compared to getting in a ship better equipped for the only two roles of real importance in STO, sheer raw damage or crowd control. Oh and I've always found science ships to be true tanks and healers on top of that more than enough.
Sure, you can fake it, pull off numbers that might seem like something to write home about or some more limited manner of crowd control with eject warp plasma etc with engineering heavy ships, but just imagine if you were in an even more capable ship, your results would always be waaay better. Don't get why cruisers are so popular really.
What I like about Cruisers are in elite modes with the right ammount of threat you can pull it off and let it go back to the CC and DPS ships allowing them to not need to be as defensive if at all. Cruiser abilities are passive team multipliers. They have staying power and well played they end up as the fulcrum point of the battlefield allowing the team to pivot and manuever off them.
For Eng captains you can run minimal Eng boffs on any ship. In general they are trading for more survivability and time for less damage potential. Its not a bad thing and if the whole team is already dmg heavy I reckon it is a good thing.
I find it strange so many things are unfavored in a game that is very well set up for controlled attrition fights. All dmg all the time is an easier payoff for no work though so I see its appeal. I still take pew pew ships out more than others when I am constantly rotating characters.
Leader of The Temporal Guard and Temporal Defence Force
What engineering skills are still useful to throw points in? Impulse thrusters and MAYBE power generation, that's it. Engineer captains are a joke with joke abilities. Has anyone ever hit rotate shield frequency and thought they were doing anything useful?
Can someone explain to me why Engineer captains are a joke with joke abilities? Been playing on PS4 for two months now with 4 captains - 1 science, 1 tactical and 2 engineers. Aside from ground combat, I see little difference between any of the them for space combat. They all have can have the same captain skills, ground and space traits, specializations. Their ships can all be set up the same for boffs and their abilities, with weapon and consoles and gears sets to get almost the same damage and healing capabilities. Sure there are some abilities, skills that are different (someone had mentioned it's only 6 items when I first started playing) but I don't see any huge difference in space combat when I use any type of captain.
To me, it's much more about the skills, traits and abilities "I" assign to my captain for the "type" of ship I am using as well as how I equipment my ship and boff abilities I set up. Not whether my captain is tactical, science or engineer.
I also find it hard to fill engineering slots with anything useful. Well, there's Engineering Team and A2B. EPW too, I guess. But emergency powers and aux powers share cooldown, so that limits how many you can use, boarding parties are a joke, instead trying to catch enemies in warp plasma clouds, you are better off focusing on other stuff, extend shields would only make sense if dedicated healers actually improved the survivability of the team more than dpsers... Engineering skills are mostly focused on health, resistances and power levels and they mostly don't do anything too exciting, engineering ultimate is sort of underwhelming... It's a bit different on ground (I just love planting turret forests), but in space it's kinda... meh. I'd scrap deployable space turrets as devices, and give them to engies as an ability. That could spice things up a little.
Hm, I'm using Aceton Beam, Direct Energy Modulation, Reverse Shield Polarity. Aceton Beam combine with Tachyon Beam, seems to give me a good one, two punch to take out smaller ships quickly combined with phasers and torpedoes right behind them on my Andromeda cruiser. I have 7 skills/abilities set up and only two share the same cool down.
Each profession gets about 4 skills as they level up. The tac-captain skills are unsurprisingly lean heavily towards DPS and turn rate boosts. The sci captain gets buffs, debuffs, a buff-strip, and a summon photonic pets. Engineers get massive self-repair and some energy management tools.
Each type of captain also gets a "fleet" skill. Again Tactical fleet is offensive, the others less so.
The thing is the challenge level of the game is miniscule and it goes down fast as you start to get terminal gear and begin upgrading it... which means that for purely practical reasons everything that's not offense, offense, and more offense is kinda unnecessary because nothing actually challenges your defense enough to sink resources into it. Conversely Engineers have such powerful sustain tools by default that my Fed-side main who just happens to be an Engineer has a skill set that looks like a frothing at the mouth berserker because if something hits her hard enough to care, -click: miracle worker-, go back to pounding its face in. Tacs get kill it faster, Engis get "ain't got time to bleed" and you CAN adjust the rest of your build to capitalize on that. Her ship's main engineering slots can be converted to intel slots (Intel Dread) and she's carrying "blow you up" skill like surgical strikes III where 'red' captains might want to bring a 'whoops that's starting to sting' ability.
The sphere builder lockbox included genetic-resequencer traits that enhance profession-specific abilities. It's not a coincidence the Engineer ones turn your energy management buttons into MASSIVE DPS buffs while the Tactical modifying options were cute but far from stellar (with Science falling somewhere in the middle).
There ARE scenarios where tanking has value, and back when I had her in a fleet Eclipse, she used to glory in dashing ahead of the pug, in stealth, popping Structural Integrity Leech in the middle of all the things, and then laughing as they were completely ineffectual trying to bring her down while the rest of the team carved them up at leisure. Dunno why but that consol's hull drain effect was damn near a forced-taunt. I had agro from the opening volley to their warp core breach.
What engineering skills are still useful to throw points in? Impulse thrusters and MAYBE power generation, that's it. Engineer captains are a joke with joke abilities. Has anyone ever hit rotate shield frequency and thought they were doing anything useful?
Can someone explain to me why Engineer captains are a joke with joke abilities? Been playing on PS4 for two months now with 4 captains - 1 science, 1 tactical and 2 engineers. Aside from ground combat, I see little difference between any of the them for space combat. They all have can have the same captain skills, ground and space traits, specializations. Their ships can all be set up the same for boffs and their abilities, with weapon and consoles and gears sets to get almost the same damage and healing capabilities. Sure there are some abilities, skills that are different (someone had mentioned it's only 6 items when I first started playing) but I don't see any huge difference in space combat when I use any type of captain.
To me, it's much more about the skills, traits and abilities "I" assign to my captain for the "type" of ship I am using as well as how I equipment my ship and boff abilities I set up. Not whether my captain is tactical, science or engineer.
Enlighten me anyone?
Short version:
The only difference between Professions (in Space combat) is the Captain Abilities and Traits
Tactical grants abilities that buff damage output, stack freely, and can improve cooldowns.
Science grants the best buff removal ability available, along with a variety of buffs/debuffs and a summon ability to distract NPC's.
Engineering grants various sources of power management, DRM (Damage Resistance Magnitude), and healing.
As a console player you don't quite have the power creep that we enjoy on console, but basically... power management is mostly redundant to what we're already running, DRM is subject to diminishing returns, and healing is available through a wide variety of traits and other abilities. That and the fact that STO makes use of many kill/time conditions, and very few survival conditions, means that Tactical and Science captains have an edge in performance over Engineers. They aren't a joke, but the best Engineer will lag behind the best Tactical in damage, and therefore mission completion times, rewards, etc.
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.
Engineering with the wrong ship is garbage... Engineering with the right ship (and BOFFs) is as sweet as a nut... Yesterday, I picked up an NX-Replica, and a Guardian-Class cruiser for Cara to play around with. Using the same load (as closely as possible) as previously mentioned on each ship, I put them both through my favorite mission, Stranded in Space. The NX was destroyed before defeating the first Orion ship... O_O The Guardian, on the other hand, sat through all the abuse with barely a dip in shield strength... Did I miss not having two forward mounted cannons on the Guardian? Yes. No question about it. I supplemented the load with a couple of other Polaron-based nasties from my Dominion collection, and it was still able to do some damage, but nowhere near as much as the Valiant-Class could dish out. On the plus side, I was able to load two engineers... Liz Flores(rare) in the primary engineering slot, and my Borg Boff, Sarina(very rare) in the secondary... They made soaking up the Orion abuse a simple matter of triggering the relevent skills as required/cool downs finished... Taking down the Orion Slave barge after rescuing the crew, didn't ever require the ship to move! That's right, it just sat with the external inertial dampener firmly engaged, and allowed the omni-directional beam to make contact at any angle, and with various combinations of torpedoes and mines, hitting, depending if the target was fore or aft...
Now don't get me wrong, the Guardian is slow AF... Quite simply, it can't turn fast enough to keep a fast-moving ship in the sights of three sets of quantum torpedoes, and it does get hit, but it takes them well and the barrages which completely cleaned the clock of the NX, were like water off a duck's back to the Guardian...
So yeah... Right ship, right crew, right set up, and engineering is a massively versatile career style...
You can't be queen of DPS while you're an engineer. If you wanna be a powerful tactical DPS mobo' you cannot be an engineer.
Nothing is wrong with being an Engineer now. It's great and amazing if you are DEFENSIVE.
I've played STO on several accounts since Beta release. I've tried the others, but all my characters. Klingon, Romulan and Starfleet are always Engineers. Never Tactical or Science.
Starfleet Engineer is the best however.
I fly a Exploration Cruiser, T6 as an Engineer. My skills are focused mostly on Engineering as well, I've filled the bridge officer slots as well.
On ground I can create turrets, minefields and that's awesome and quite effective if you get the purple kits etc.
In space I can heal myself. Rotate shield does not do much alone, but for example with a power "Emergency power to shields" or a large battery it can restore your shields fully.
In PVP I suck balls as an Engineer, you're right. You have no use there. But in PVE and just playing the story missions, patrols, dailies etc. I am invincible.
The Engineering powers you gain, combined with traits, skills, a large cruiser ship focused on defense and healing instead of DPS. And you quickly have a ship and you have a Captain that can heal themselves again and again.
I can even take on several Borg Cube's, plasma torpedoes etc. They cannot really hurt me because of my awesome resistance levels, and if they do manage to hurt me. I can go from no shields, 30% hull to max shields and 100% hull thanks to all my engineering powers, bridge officers and abundance of engineering console slots.
The downside however is that I can only manage 14-16,000 DPS.
Engineering is not broken or garbage. You're playing it wrong.
Engineering is not about being DPS and "one-shooting" Borg Cube's.. It's about healing and support. If you don't like that, play as a Tactical.
But don't go crazy just because you can't manage to be a good Engineer, lol.
As an Engineer I might not do the most damage. Large numbers of buff' enemy ships will take a few moments to defeat. But I will NEVER be defeated because of my Engineering powers.
As a Tactical, you do a lot of damage. Same with science now. But you can easily be defeated if you can't "one-shoot" enemies quick enough.
As an Engineer you cannot be defeated if you do it right, but it'll take time to kill your enemies. But if you play PVP you instantly die and you can't do stuff. But PVP is broken anyway.
My KDF Rom is an engineer flying a mirror Mogai, it's survived the delta quadrant pretty well so far.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Engineering boff powers are great. It's the Engineering captain powers that are garbage.
[Sarcasm] Miracle worker, EPS Transfer Nadion inversion yeah, they suck [/sarcasm]
are you freaking kidding?
Nadeon inversion isn't the worst captain power in the game. But miracle worker? Hah, don't make me laugh.
So what makes Miracle Worker bad in the current meta?
Is it that the healing doesn't keep pace with the other sources of healing available in the game?
If so, let's apply the same logic to Tactical Initiative. The cooldown reduction power. Which is how useful in the current meta which has how many other sources of cooldown reduction available?
Engineering boff powers are great. It's the Engineering captain powers that are garbage.
[Sarcasm] Miracle worker, EPS Transfer Nadion inversion yeah, they suck [/sarcasm]
are you freaking kidding?
Nadeon inversion isn't the worst captain power in the game. But miracle worker? Hah, don't make me laugh.
So what makes Miracle Worker bad in the current meta?
Is it that the healing doesn't keep pace with the other sources of healing available in the game?
If so, let's apply the same logic to Tactical Initiative. The cooldown reduction power. Which is how useful in the current meta which has how many other sources of cooldown reduction available?
wha? MIRACLE WORKER is my "oh TRIBBLE" button to get outta trouble quicker than I got into it. Combined with EVASIVE MANEUVERS that's a 100% get outta jail free card. The trait that let's you insta-use it twice in a row is even more ridiculous Aside from the fact it's not a DPS button, how is it not good in the current game?
Sure, if I'm not doing something stupid, or running for a sammich, I might never need it, but for going ballz out and just smashing into things, or just ignoring all the threat and pewing, it's contribution to survival is no joke.
Engineering boff powers are great. It's the Engineering captain powers that are garbage.
[Sarcasm] Miracle worker, EPS Transfer Nadion inversion yeah, they suck [/sarcasm]
are you freaking kidding?
Nadeon inversion isn't the worst captain power in the game. But miracle worker? Hah, don't make me laugh.
So what makes Miracle Worker bad in the current meta?
Is it that the healing doesn't keep pace with the other sources of healing available in the game?
If so, let's apply the same logic to Tactical Initiative. The cooldown reduction power. Which is how useful in the current meta which has how many other sources of cooldown reduction available?
There's no comparison in effectiveness between tac and engineer captain powers. Which is sad because like many players I "like the idea" of engineers. Dealing with engineering problems in star trek made for some of my favorite episodes. Sadly, the game is too set on it's current path to try and completely change how engineers work and put them on the same level as tacs and even scis. This has been discussed and and clearly demonstrated in previous threads and there's no reason to dive down too deep into it again. As a result of the sad reality of engineers in this game, I always say this to players in our armada when they ask about engineers...
"Everyone should make one engineer so that they can see why they should never make another one again."
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
At this point I just wish Careers could be like a switchable specialization. I'd be happy to dabble in all three with my main character. Considering how tac is preferred by such a massive margin, like Federation is to KDF and Romulans, they may as well do it and hope everyone will feel more freedom to vary their gameplay without locking into a single career forever.
Having one of each career now, I can say that Engineers are way behind (in space). The extra heals you get from an Engineer captain can easily be replaced by other traits or items. In fact, some of these traits and items are superior to what Engineer captains get.
There's a reason why some of the best tanks right now in the game are Tactical captains. They are superior in damage dealing, and they can get the same (or greater) amount of survivability to a vanilla Engineer captain through traits and items.
At present, unless you like the ground gameplay style of an Engineer, there is really no reason to roll one.
What engineering skills are still useful to throw points in? Impulse thrusters and MAYBE power generation, that's it. Engineer captains are a joke with joke abilities. Has anyone ever hit rotate shield frequency and thought they were doing anything useful?
There's an underlying problem and here are some examples of it:
Tactical traits and mods augment tactical skills and abilities.
- Plasma explosion consoles
- Vulnerability locator consoles
- Superior Romulan Operative
- Target Rich Environment
- Precision/Advanced Targeting Systems
Engineering traits and mods replace engineering skills and abilities.
- Regenerative Integrity Field
- Desperate Repairs
- Continuity
- Enhanced Hull Plating
You can get by without putting points in engineering skills at all if you have the right traits and one or two consoles. There is no console or trait that can outright replace gravity well or feedback pulse or fire at will. Heck, the engineering profession is so bad that engineering captain abilities can completely replace regular engineering healing abilities or vice-versa. The most useful engineering officer power is dual emergency power to weapons, and tac or science captains can take full advantage of it anyway.
This game is all about the damage because science and tac are now both damage-dealing professions. Engineering needs to be changed to buff damage like everything else, or Engineering needs to die and engineer captains be allowed to switch profession.
For 50 bucks a hour if you are on Xbox 1 I can teach you how to play a Engineer.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
In classic MMO speak:
Tacticals are damage dealers, Science is buff/debuff suport, Engineer is tank - meaning he should be able to aggro all enemies and survive everything they throw on him.
Sure - Engineer will take time taking down enemy (sometimes loong time), but he will (or should at least) survive it...
Edit:
I did just take 1st place in CC normal with my Federation Alien Engineer on T6 Exploration Cruiser (Andromeda Class)
My engineer is my oldest and best character, putting out the most damage while also being able to survive just about everything...
I guess you just have to know how to play them.
i guess so. My best record so far for survivability was in the Mirror invasion Advanced with about 21 ships shooting my Fleet Andromeda at the same time. She did die yes but it took them an extremely long time with that firepower to kill it bout 15 to 20 seconds. so yea while Engineers/Cruisers will not top your DPS charts they can take a hit and keep on ticking.
My engineer is my oldest and best character, putting out the most damage while also being able to survive just about everything...
I guess you just have to know how to play them.
i guess so. My best record so far for survivability was in the Mirror invasion Advanced with about 21 ships shooting my Fleet Andromeda at the same time. She did die yes but it took them an extremely long time with that firepower to kill it bout 15 to 20 seconds. so yea while Engineers/Cruisers will not top your DPS charts they can take a hit and keep on ticking.
Oh yes, I did something similar in CCA today. Kite shards, FaW everything that so much as blinked in my general direction! (Alien eng in Sci Oddy) Got second.
First, I don't think the eng skills in the skill tree are completely useless. Some added power is always welcome. Sure, you can get them in other ways, but you don't have to anymore.
Second, Scis excel at crowd control and AoE damage. They rule mobs of smaller enemies. Tacs excel at localized spike damage (localized may include some minor AoE but only to a limited amount of enemies), bosses are at a loss to fight a tac. Both somewhat struggle (comparatively) with the other stuff, a full blown AoE space wizard will need longer to kill, say, a Unimatrix.
Engs can do both reasonably well. So especially with a less-than-optimal build (because you are lacking traits and/or equipment, not because you use questionable power combos) it is still the best choice to evenly go through all content. You may need longer than others on their specialty, but you can do everything. This diminishes the better your build gets, though.
Then, regardless of how engs fare when compared to scis and tacs, I always love the use of words like "garbage" or "TRIBBLE" when something is not clearly the best at everything. Got a ship all dished out in epic but one weapon has a wrong mod? "TRIBBLE build". If you don't know how to play the second best setup, you don't know how to play the best.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Comments
Sure, you can fake it, pull off numbers that might seem like something to write home about or some more limited manner of crowd control with eject warp plasma etc with engineering heavy ships, but just imagine if you were in an even more capable ship, your results would always be waaay better. Don't get why cruisers are so popular really.
For Eng captains you can run minimal Eng boffs on any ship. In general they are trading for more survivability and time for less damage potential. Its not a bad thing and if the whole team is already dmg heavy I reckon it is a good thing.
I find it strange so many things are unfavored in a game that is very well set up for controlled attrition fights. All dmg all the time is an easier payoff for no work though so I see its appeal. I still take pew pew ships out more than others when I am constantly rotating characters.
Can someone explain to me why Engineer captains are a joke with joke abilities? Been playing on PS4 for two months now with 4 captains - 1 science, 1 tactical and 2 engineers. Aside from ground combat, I see little difference between any of the them for space combat. They all have can have the same captain skills, ground and space traits, specializations. Their ships can all be set up the same for boffs and their abilities, with weapon and consoles and gears sets to get almost the same damage and healing capabilities. Sure there are some abilities, skills that are different (someone had mentioned it's only 6 items when I first started playing) but I don't see any huge difference in space combat when I use any type of captain.
To me, it's much more about the skills, traits and abilities "I" assign to my captain for the "type" of ship I am using as well as how I equipment my ship and boff abilities I set up. Not whether my captain is tactical, science or engineer.
Enlighten me anyone?
Hm, I'm using Aceton Beam, Direct Energy Modulation, Reverse Shield Polarity. Aceton Beam combine with Tachyon Beam, seems to give me a good one, two punch to take out smaller ships quickly combined with phasers and torpedoes right behind them on my Andromeda cruiser. I have 7 skills/abilities set up and only two share the same cool down.
Each type of captain also gets a "fleet" skill. Again Tactical fleet is offensive, the others less so.
The thing is the challenge level of the game is miniscule and it goes down fast as you start to get terminal gear and begin upgrading it... which means that for purely practical reasons everything that's not offense, offense, and more offense is kinda unnecessary because nothing actually challenges your defense enough to sink resources into it. Conversely Engineers have such powerful sustain tools by default that my Fed-side main who just happens to be an Engineer has a skill set that looks like a frothing at the mouth berserker because if something hits her hard enough to care, -click: miracle worker-, go back to pounding its face in. Tacs get kill it faster, Engis get "ain't got time to bleed" and you CAN adjust the rest of your build to capitalize on that. Her ship's main engineering slots can be converted to intel slots (Intel Dread) and she's carrying "blow you up" skill like surgical strikes III where 'red' captains might want to bring a 'whoops that's starting to sting' ability.
The sphere builder lockbox included genetic-resequencer traits that enhance profession-specific abilities. It's not a coincidence the Engineer ones turn your energy management buttons into MASSIVE DPS buffs while the Tactical modifying options were cute but far from stellar (with Science falling somewhere in the middle).
There ARE scenarios where tanking has value, and back when I had her in a fleet Eclipse, she used to glory in dashing ahead of the pug, in stealth, popping Structural Integrity Leech in the middle of all the things, and then laughing as they were completely ineffectual trying to bring her down while the rest of the team carved them up at leisure. Dunno why but that consol's hull drain effect was damn near a forced-taunt. I had agro from the opening volley to their warp core breach.
Short version:
The only difference between Professions (in Space combat) is the Captain Abilities and Traits
As a console player you don't quite have the power creep that we enjoy on console, but basically... power management is mostly redundant to what we're already running, DRM is subject to diminishing returns, and healing is available through a wide variety of traits and other abilities. That and the fact that STO makes use of many kill/time conditions, and very few survival conditions, means that Tactical and Science captains have an edge in performance over Engineers. They aren't a joke, but the best Engineer will lag behind the best Tactical in damage, and therefore mission completion times, rewards, etc.
Engineering with the wrong ship is garbage... Engineering with the right ship (and BOFFs) is as sweet as a nut... Yesterday, I picked up an NX-Replica, and a Guardian-Class cruiser for Cara to play around with. Using the same load (as closely as possible) as previously mentioned on each ship, I put them both through my favorite mission, Stranded in Space. The NX was destroyed before defeating the first Orion ship... O_O The Guardian, on the other hand, sat through all the abuse with barely a dip in shield strength... Did I miss not having two forward mounted cannons on the Guardian? Yes. No question about it. I supplemented the load with a couple of other Polaron-based nasties from my Dominion collection, and it was still able to do some damage, but nowhere near as much as the Valiant-Class could dish out. On the plus side, I was able to load two engineers... Liz Flores(rare) in the primary engineering slot, and my Borg Boff, Sarina(very rare) in the secondary... They made soaking up the Orion abuse a simple matter of triggering the relevent skills as required/cool downs finished... Taking down the Orion Slave barge after rescuing the crew, didn't ever require the ship to move! That's right, it just sat with the external inertial dampener firmly engaged, and allowed the omni-directional beam to make contact at any angle, and with various combinations of torpedoes and mines, hitting, depending if the target was fore or aft...
Now don't get me wrong, the Guardian is slow AF... Quite simply, it can't turn fast enough to keep a fast-moving ship in the sights of three sets of quantum torpedoes, and it does get hit, but it takes them well and the barrages which completely cleaned the clock of the NX, were like water off a duck's back to the Guardian...
So yeah... Right ship, right crew, right set up, and engineering is a massively versatile career style...
[Sarcasm] Miracle worker, EPS Transfer Nadion inversion yeah, they suck [/sarcasm]
are you freaking kidding?
My KDF Rom is an engineer flying a mirror Mogai, it's survived the delta quadrant pretty well so far.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Rouge Sto Wiki Editor.
My character Tsin'xing
So what makes Miracle Worker bad in the current meta?
Is it that the healing doesn't keep pace with the other sources of healing available in the game?
If so, let's apply the same logic to Tactical Initiative. The cooldown reduction power. Which is how useful in the current meta which has how many other sources of cooldown reduction available?
My engineer is my oldest and best character, putting out the most damage while also being able to survive just about everything...
I guess you just have to know how to play them.
wha? MIRACLE WORKER is my "oh TRIBBLE" button to get outta trouble quicker than I got into it. Combined with EVASIVE MANEUVERS that's a 100% get outta jail free card. The trait that let's you insta-use it twice in a row is even more ridiculous
Sure, if I'm not doing something stupid, or running for a sammich, I might never need it, but for going ballz out and just smashing into things, or just ignoring all the threat and pewing, it's contribution to survival is no joke.
My character Tsin'xing
"Everyone should make one engineer so that they can see why they should never make another one again."
There's a reason why some of the best tanks right now in the game are Tactical captains. They are superior in damage dealing, and they can get the same (or greater) amount of survivability to a vanilla Engineer captain through traits and items.
At present, unless you like the ground gameplay style of an Engineer, there is really no reason to roll one.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
For 50 bucks a hour if you are on Xbox 1 I can teach you how to play a Engineer.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Not interested in boosting DPS either. Don't need to one-shot anyone or anything. That's just boring.
Tacticals are damage dealers, Science is buff/debuff suport, Engineer is tank - meaning he should be able to aggro all enemies and survive everything they throw on him.
Sure - Engineer will take time taking down enemy (sometimes loong time), but he will (or should at least) survive it...
Edit:
I did just take 1st place in CC normal with my Federation Alien Engineer on T6 Exploration Cruiser (Andromeda Class)
^^^^
That... Sure, I've tried to make my DPS as potent as possible for efficiency, but I don't want/need to be one-shotting anything...
i guess so. My best record so far for survivability was in the Mirror invasion Advanced with about 21 ships shooting my Fleet Andromeda at the same time. She did die yes but it took them an extremely long time with that firepower to kill it bout 15 to 20 seconds. so yea while Engineers/Cruisers will not top your DPS charts they can take a hit and keep on ticking.
My character Tsin'xing
Second, Scis excel at crowd control and AoE damage. They rule mobs of smaller enemies. Tacs excel at localized spike damage (localized may include some minor AoE but only to a limited amount of enemies), bosses are at a loss to fight a tac. Both somewhat struggle (comparatively) with the other stuff, a full blown AoE space wizard will need longer to kill, say, a Unimatrix.
Engs can do both reasonably well. So especially with a less-than-optimal build (because you are lacking traits and/or equipment, not because you use questionable power combos) it is still the best choice to evenly go through all content. You may need longer than others on their specialty, but you can do everything. This diminishes the better your build gets, though.
Then, regardless of how engs fare when compared to scis and tacs, I always love the use of words like "garbage" or "TRIBBLE" when something is not clearly the best at everything. Got a ship all dished out in epic but one weapon has a wrong mod? "TRIBBLE build". If you don't know how to play the second best setup, you don't know how to play the best.