I can hardly imagine going for EPS corruption on an Engineer captain. Bleh!
I can, as long as you're also putting points into EPG. I'm starting to wonder if more exotic damage skills for Engineers wouldn't actually do the trick.
I can hardly imagine going for EPS corruption on an Engineer captain. Bleh!
I can, as long as you're also putting points into EPG. I'm starting to wonder if more exotic damage skills for Engineers wouldn't actually do the trick.
Eh, I'm not so sure. Even if you sacrificed your entire ship to the EPG gods, I don't think EPS Corruption would even be close in terms of utility to the other ultimate abilities. Also, engineers do not have any innate abilities that can buff exotic damage, like tacs and scis.
Probably not. Not saying that Engies still wouldn't need a buff, mind you. It just seems to me that might be a possible route to buff them, given that both Acteon Beam and EPS Corruption are bolstered by EPG. Perhaps more exotic, engineering-specific AOE skills?
I'm pretty sure an equally invested tac or sci will nearly always outperform an eng. The main problem is that tacs can actually stay alive just as well as an eng but do much more damage.
I'm not sure where you're coming from here. Put the same tanking build on a TAC and ENG and the ENG (thanks to in-built defensive abilities) will be able to take more punishment. A TAC will be able to do more damage, but all you can say about survivability is that it may be able to do the job sufficiently well, not just as well.
Getting to that point, though, I'll say is a trickier proposition than simply throwing an ENG into an offensive build and calling it an "offensive tank." It's an optimization problem, how many traits, consoles, and boff powers do you dedicate to staying alive? While you're playing around with resistance/immunity/healing, an ENG build can just keep stacking on the damage with a more single minded focus, knowing that it's got a couple of extra healing abilities to set a workable baseline. You mainly have to move in one direction rather than finding a balance between two (to the same degree).
Now, with overall power such as it is in STO, you'll end up either way with something that'll easily see you through any PVE (probably with more damage for the TAC, thanks it it being TAC). But if you want something (below the min-max level) which is basically more reliable in an offensive tanking role (ie. has a greater in-built capacity to survive spikes in difficulty) then I would recommend an ENG. The captain powers reduce the need to compromise for survivability with skills, consoles, and boff powers. I probably wouldn't recommend one for a single-minded tanking build (that's just pure defense, there's not much you can do with that) but Eng can be a great platform to compensate for the fragility of an offensive build on a Raptor/Escort or (what I've been finding lately) an exotic damage build.
Basically, an ENG captain is something to generalize with, not specialize. A pure turtle just doesn't have that much utility in STO, and I don't think there's much you can do to change that (something else needs to happen, and that's found in SCI, TAC, and spec powers). That, in my view, is the biggest disparity in ENG/SCI/TAC builds. You can productively specialize in your own profession with the other two. Because of what ENG is, you want to change tactics.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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I'm pretty sure an equally invested tac or sci will nearly always outperform an eng. The main problem is that tacs can actually stay alive just as well as an eng but do much more damage.
I'm not sure where you're coming from here. Put the same tanking build on a TAC and ENG and the ENG (thanks to in-built defensive abilities) will be able to take more punishment. A TAC will be able to do more damage, but all you can say about survivability is that it may be able to do the job sufficiently well, not just as well.
Getting to that point, though, I'll say is a trickier proposition than simply throwing an ENG into an offensive build and calling it an "offensive tank." It's an optimization problem, how many traits, consoles, and boff powers do you dedicate to staying alive? While you're playing around with resistance/immunity/healing, an ENG build can just keep stacking on the damage with a more single minded focus, knowing that it's got a couple of extra healing abilities to set a workable baseline. You mainly have to move in one direction rather than finding a balance between two (to the same degree).
Now, with overall power such as it is in STO, you'll end up either way with something that'll easily see you through any PVE (probably with more damage for the TAC, thanks it it being TAC). But if you want something (below the min-max level) which is basically more reliable in an offensive tanking role (ie. has a greater in-built capacity to survive spikes in difficulty) then I would recommend an ENG. The captain powers reduce the need to compromise for survivability with skills, consoles, and boff powers. I probably wouldn't recommend one for a single-minded tanking build (that's just pure defense, there's not much you can do with that) but Eng can be a great platform to compensate for the fragility of an offensive build on a Raptor/Escort or (what I've been finding lately) an exotic damage build.
Basically, an ENG captain is something to generalize with, not specialize. A pure turtle just doesn't have that much utility in STO, and I don't think there's much you can do to change that (something else needs to happen, and that's found in SCI, TAC, and spec powers). That, in my view, is the biggest disparity in ENG/SCI/TAC builds. You can productively specialize in your own profession with the other two. Because of what ENG is, you want to change tactics.
Hmm. At the endgame, engineers and tacs can take about the same amount of damage. If anything, tacs can do even more healing due to the abundance of heals stacking with damage rn. The areas that engineers are supposed to excel in are not really 'specific' to them anymore. I'm not saying tacs are always better than engineers at healing or power management. However, when at the endgame (not only the min-max level), the difference that engineering captain skills make become nearly negligible in combat because the powers are so weak when compared to the other alternatives. Captain abilities are supposed to be 'top tier' abilities, but that is simply not the case with engineers. Miracle Worker is outhealed by RIF, Desperate Repairs, Continuity, and even boff abilities such as RPM, ET, and HE. Rotate shield frequency is a joke of an ability and it has no real foreseeable use due to the fact that it does basically nothing. EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion are also weak when compared to all the other forms of power boosting in the game.
The main problem with engineers is that new abilties/consoles/traits keep on being released that can replicate and even outperform the main core attributes of engineers. This is not seen with tac or sci abilities however. Take GDF for example. One of the flagship consoles mimicked the functionality of GDF, but it was significantly weaker than the captain ability. Following the same logic, Miracle Worker should be considerably stronger than RIF, but right now (according to my parses), RIF does nearly 3x the heals of miracle worker on my eng.
I can, as long as you're also putting points into EPG. I'm starting to wonder if more exotic damage skills for Engineers wouldn't actually do the trick.
Ug. To get EPS Corruption you have to buy heavily into yellow talents... which are redundant in the extreme for an Engineering captain.
A science or tac captain can both get more utility out of EPS corruption than an Engineer captain can. Both those professions can use the extra durability you MUST gain to get 25-28 picks deep in yellow. Whereas the Engineer captain can approach their talent choices like a broody-eyed berserker, going all in on red or blue choices and still be "durable enough".
Cross-wiring your Profession and talents is a very strong strategy. Doubling on Engineer with heavily yellow talents is creating a brick in a game with virtually no brick scenarios. If anything, talent choices are driven more by the ship you will be using rather than profession -- carriers, Exotic damage black space magic, torps vs. energy. These are talent decisions, and the more fragile the ship, the more yellow choices you benefit from. If you're playing Cruisers Online, you don't need much yellow at all. Only the power level choices really contribute to damage, and some of them are still fraught with efficiency pitfalls...
How did we go from "Engineer skills need to be buffed" to "Engineer skills are enough so that running engineering traits is redundant"?
While I'll grant you that going all yellow isn't necessary and that, yes, you should build for the ship you intend to fly, being an Engineer who builds toward the Engineering Ultimate should be intuitive. There has to be some way to make running an Engineer more desirable to the playerbase. Personally, I love my engineer (both of them, actually), but the one traited deep into Science is always, always going to outshine the one trained deep into yellow. At least for as long as things work the way they currently do.
I still think speccing for EPS Corruption isn't the worst idea in the world. It's just a distant third to the other two ultimates.
We'll see. Also, it seems that Cryptic really, really wants me to respec my engineer after all. They just emailed me a code for a T6 Sovereign and 10 spec points. Granted, the spec points turned out to be only two, but now I have a brand new tank to deal with. O.o
**** me! They just gave you a free T6 Sov? Where's mine??
Oh, that is just so raw.
It appear's like many things to come from the RNG (Random Number God or Goddess) and I still have yet to figure out if this God is male or female, or simply a member of the Continuum having a little fun. A few member's of my fleet got the code and many did not.
I suspect a prerequisite requirement may require people having used unbound ZEN to Star Trek Online in the past, but it appear's the dollar amount may not increase or decrease your chances. Still generally Cryptic is very FAIR in terms of all giveaway's they use to reward player's regardless of how they are arrived at.
Back to the Engineer discussion please.
I admit I like what duncanidaho11 said above. All my ENG do have a balance of some TAC damage & SCI exotic / shield healing which gives more credence to more players considering balance--perhaps more so for ENG than SCI or TAC. Another poster commented that the 27 points in SCI or TAC have a damage multiplier effect that ENG don't enjoy. Still, despite the fact my ENG are well balanced. I have Hull Restoration with 2/3 skills cause placing 3 point's is generally only wise in a few skill tree's because of diminished returns.
1 skill point gives 50 points, second 25, third 10 points generally as a rule, and furthermore each addition 50 point's generate smaller benefit's in some skill disciplines.
Still my biggest complain is with ENG ability to take damage cause I have 2/3 skills in Hull Regeneration plus I traited them each with ENG Trait's to further boost regeneration & hull. Still ENG TEAM II barely heal's for 11% or so and the first is about 8% which is lost almost as quickly as it's recovered especially if you take a large hit.
I must say, with the new queues, there is more clearly a need for a tank now - those Tzenkethi and especially their explosions can hit hard.
I agree with some notions that Engineers shouldn't be all focussed on dealing damage - perhaps that's a broader problem of the game though, one that appears to be the focus of the Devs in this new season. They definitely tried to make the new queue one where team work is needed and where shooting your way through can be very painful.
Perhaps making the different roles more important again (tanker, healer, damage dealer) can be a succesful way to solve the problem, I guess we will see soon.
I must say, with the new queues, there is more clearly a need for a tank now - those Tzenkethi and especially their explosions can hit hard.
I agree with some notions that Engineers shouldn't be all focussed on dealing damage - perhaps that's a broader problem of the game though, one that appears to be the focus of the Devs in this new season. They definitely tried to make the new queue one where team work is needed and where shooting your way through can be very painful.
Perhaps making the different roles more important again (tanker, healer, damage dealer) can be a succesful way to solve the problem, I guess we will see soon.
Yeah, engineers definitely don't need tac level dps. However, they do need a slight dps buff to abilities such as EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion so that they are not completely outclassed in terms of dps by scis and tacs. Imho, engineers shouldn't be a pure defensive class as that would simply just lock the player into a single role: being a turtle. Currently an equally geared tac can do nearly 2x the damage of an engineer while a sci can do a good 30-40% more. Buffing their offensive abilities slightly so that they can keep up with the other classes while maintaining a strong defensive focus would better for the engineering class.
I think where Star Trek Online 'jumped the shark' is 'Space Magic' and making it so important and powerful; that's Star Wars territory. Are all SCI captains Telepaths? they can manipulate time and space-why need a ship? It just doesn't fit -imo into Star Trek. I've always thought of ST as space ships, technology, aliens, etc but never mystical powers.
I think once 'space magic' was introduced, all balancing went out the window. I remember when I first played Sci wasn't as it is now, granted this is 5+ years ago.
I admittedly am a bigger Star Wars fan but there are things that I feel are much better done in Star Trek. I think Lore is cleaner-albeit the different timelines/instances are a bit confusing. I like that Star Trek can be seen as perhaps actually happening, the tech, first contact with the Vulcans to us within the next 1-200 years(provided we don't destroy ourselves and Earth prior to becoming 'enlightened' ).
There's no 'logical explanation' - we're not Asgardians that have such higher tech that its considered 'magic'- about being about to simply at a whim create a vortex in space-that's Q territory IMO. Alas, the Sci crazy cat is out of the bag so there's no way to put it back in.
Perhaps give ENG a high base hull/shield HP per level? say Tac gets .8, Sci gets .9 and Eng gets 1.20 or something passively. Make it so Eng powers are more effective for Eng than SCI/Tac. Perhaps put a cap on SCI powers no matter how high you have the subsequent stat that affects SCI powers.
At this point the game is long in the tooth and I doubt anything radical will be implemented.
Post edited by cayleer on
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I think where Star Trek Online 'jumped the shark' is 'Space Magic' and making it so important and powerful; that's Star Wars territory. Are all SCI captains Telepaths? they can manipulate time and space-why need a ship? It just doesn't fit -imo into Star Trek. I've always thought of ST as space ships, technology, aliens, etc but never mystical powers.
I think once 'space magic' was introduced, all balancing went out the window. I remember when I first played Sci wasn't as it is now, granted this is 5+ years ago.
I admittedly am a bigger Star Wars fan but there are things that I feel are much better done in Star Trek. I think Lore is cleaner-albeit the different timelines/instances are a bit confusing. I like that Star Trek can be seen as perhaps actually happening, the tech, first contact with the Vulcans to us within the next 1-200 years(provided we don't destroy ourselves and Earth prior to becoming 'enlightened' ).
There's no 'logical explanation' - we're not Asgardians that have such higher tech that its considered 'magic'- about being about to simply at a whim create a vortex in space-that's Q territory IMO. Alas, the Sci crazy cat is out of the bag so there's no way to put it back in.
Perhaps give ENG a high bas'e hull/shield HP per level? say Tac gets .8, Sci gets .9 and Eng gets 1.20 or something passively. Make it so Eng powers are more effective for Eng than SCI/Tac. Perhaps put a cap on SCI powers no matter how high you have the subsequent state that affects SCI powers.
At this point the game is long in the tooth and I doubt anything radicale will be implemented.
actually space magic is far more a star trek thing than a star wars thing. which funny cause start wars is more honest about the little it does have. where as star trek wraps it in a brunch of sciency sounding words and the only logical reason given is "trust us it's science not magic" where as they have reach the mcu asgardian sci as magic level quite a while before sto started. as far as fixing eng, more of what the have been doing work adding ways for eng to do some of the things tact and sci works.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
I am levelling an engineer with the engineer ultimate skill tree (level 59 now), and I must say while the dps numbers in the game are certainly way off, an engineer does work in the game at its present state. I don't see a need to boost them any more. Sure, they do less damage, but there is plenty of content in the game that needs more tankiness than damage, or can be done with tankiness instead of high damage.
Engineers in their present state don't contribute to tankiness much. At the endgame, engineers are purely outclassed in terms of what they can do better than the other classes. Scis are the best at controls and debuffing, tacs are the best at doing damage, and engineers don't really have anything unique going for them at all.they're supposed to be the best career for tanking but now, engineers are actually the worst at tanking due to not being able to pull threat. The only thing that engineers can actually be the best at is being a pure "turtle" but there is absolutely no use of being a turtle in the game right now (and being a turtle doesn't really contribute to the team). As I said before, engineering captain abilities are currently outperformed by boff abilities and consoles. This shows how bad the current state of the career is; no captain ability should be worse than a boff ability, console, or trait.
One of the main problems in STO right now is actually the lack of content that requires tankiness. Even elite queues do not pose that much of a challenge anymore due to the state of powercreep. However, even if tankiness were much more prevalent in the game, engineers would still be considered sub par to the other careers, because they are simply better at tanking. Right now, end game engineers are faced with the problem of how do you tank when you're not pulling enough threat because you damage output is so low.
Engineers aren't completely out of the question. With just a few tweaks here and there, it could become a viable career again, but they need to make engineering captain abilities strong again (and not outclassed by a lot of other abilities in that category). For example, Miracle Worker should be one of the best heals in the game, if not the best heal. However, even with the trait that decreases its cooldown, it was completely outhealed by Continuity, RIF, Desperate Repairs, and even Engineering Team (a boff ability).
Engineers are fine at the beginning of the game. However, as more abilities get unlocked, tacs and scis are able to use engineering abilities to a much higher degree of effectiveness than engineers themselves at the cost of just a few traits and consoles. Engineers are actually forced to run these consoles/traits themselves because their own captain abilities are not enough to sustain them enough in endgame combat.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate engineers. My engineer can do over 100k dps and is capable of tanking everything the game throws at me. However, if an equally leveled/geared tac or sci was flying alongside me, my ship would be outclassed in nearly every aspect (except for pure healing but that doesn't really matter nowadays). If anything, tacs can outheal engineers now due to the abundance of HoT abilities stacking with damage implemented.
How did we go from "Engineer skills need to be buffed" to "Engineer skills are enough so that running engineering traits is redundant"?
I'm guessing it happened when you started speaking to someone who mains an Engineer instead of someone spouting hysterical nonsense about them being unplayably behind the curve. It happens when you're fond of content that's not pure shooting galleries.
Engineering traits ARE redundant for them Engineer captains - you'll still be taking some defensive and sustain boff abilities (like ANY captain would) but what you gain in ADDITIONAL durability from built-in captain abilities is more than adequate to offset skipping a ton of yellow talent choices you'd be thinking pretty hard about as a Science or Tactical captain running any of the more fragile ship types.
Personally, I love my engineer (both of them, actually), but the one traited deep into Science is always, always going to outshine the one trained deep into yellow. At least for as long as things work the way they currently do.
Pretty sure that's what I just said. EPS corruption requires deep investment in a tree that an Engineer shouldn't take. EPS corruption rocks on toast for a Science captain. While going science captain/science ultimate/science ship tends to get you a bit fragile same as Tac captain, tac ultimate, escort. You CAN triple down (profession/talents/ship), but it's not optimum for ANY captain. Overspecialization is not unique to Engineers.
I still think speccing for EPS Corruption isn't the worst idea in the world. It's just a distant third to the other two ultimates.
Distant third out of three (four, really, because Engineers also excel with balance builds that don't try for any capstone/ultimate) IS the worst choice in that small world.
I run enhanced Frenzy on my main Fed Tac captain... but only because shes in a boat that plenty durable on it's own and can afford the hyper specialization in red line. Frenzy is a lot easier to run on an Engineer for the reasons mentioned above and still fly a sleeker ship.
I'll make a STO Academy link later. The build took quite a lot of investment (roughly about 1.7 billion EC and 1 million dil) though so it isn't exactly easy to make. On a side note, I spent less than 400 mil EC and 200k dil on my tac captain and he already outperforms my engineer in nearly every aspect.
How did we go from "Engineer skills need to be buffed" to "Engineer skills are enough so that running engineering traits is redundant"?
I'm guessing it happened when you started speaking to someone who mains an Engineer instead of someone spouting hysterical nonsense about them being unplayably behind the curve. It happens when you're fond of content that's not pure shooting galleries.
Engineering traits ARE redundant for them Engineer captains - you'll still be taking some defensive and sustain boff abilities (like ANY captain would) but what you gain in ADDITIONAL durability from built-in captain abilities is more than adequate to offset skipping a ton of yellow talent choices you'd be thinking pretty hard about as a Science or Tactical captain running any of the more fragile ship types.
Personally, I love my engineer (both of them, actually), but the one traited deep into Science is always, always going to outshine the one trained deep into yellow. At least for as long as things work the way they currently do.
Pretty sure that's what I just said. EPS corruption requires deep investment in a tree that an Engineer shouldn't take. EPS corruption rocks on toast for a Science captain. While going science captain/science ultimate/science ship tends to get you a bit fragile same as Tac captain, tac ultimate, escort. You CAN triple down (profession/talents/ship), but it's not optimum for ANY captain. Overspecialization is not unique to Engineers.
I still think speccing for EPS Corruption isn't the worst idea in the world. It's just a distant third to the other two ultimates.
Distant third out of three (four, really, because Engineers also excel with balance builds that don't try for any capstone/ultimate) IS the worst choice in that small world.
I run enhanced Frenzy on my main Fed Tac captain... but only because shes in a boat that plenty durable on it's own and can afford the hyper specialization in red line. Frenzy is a lot easier to run on an Engineer for the reasons mentioned above and still fly a sleeker ship.
Fair enough. I do miss tanking like I used to back before the skill revamp. My engineer didn't seem quite so underpowered then.
To be fair, on my main Engie, I'm running a heavy science spec and using an Adapted Destroyer for my main ship. I do have several T6 ships now, including that Intel Assault Cruiser which I think could be used as something of a tank, especially with the threat console it comes with. So now I'm faced with a delima: Do I actually respec him back into a tanking/dpsish role, or do I keep doing what I'm doing. I'm loving the extra damage I'm doing, but I'm hating how paper-thin the hull feels. That, and my tac temporal agent still does more damage than him with a Frenzy build and worse gear.
So I'm not really certain what the right course of action for my Engineer would be.
I'll make a STO Academy link later. The build took quite a lot of investment (roughly about 1.7 billion EC and 1 million dil) though so it isn't exactly easy to make. On a side note, I spent less than 400 mil EC and 200k dil on my tac captain and he already outperforms my engineer in nearly every aspect.
Thank you. Cost really isn't something I'm too concerned with, as I'm already heavily invested anyway. But I would love to see what an actual tank in the current meta looks like.
Might be weird but giving engineers a few different manners of tanking might help. Like to make them abit more desired you could create something that spreads out the healing an damage taken by other party members, while using something like the sensor analysis toggle ability of the science ship line. For the sake of ease lets call this ability sync-shields for example, and below I can explain what it might work like.
Shield-syncing: This ability is a engineer specific career ability that allows the engineer to sync/link their own shields an hull integrity fields with one or more nearby allies, which they have toggled their sync-shield/hull ability onto. While this is active both the player an allies affected by this toggle-abilities have both the damage their shield/hull take, and also the healing done to their shields/hull shared between all toggled targets an the engineer using the ability. I would say allow the engineer to place this on two other allies at maximum. If you than added in things like a engineering trait that might place a innate damage reduction buff on those affected by the toggle-ability, or that the engineer naturally would negate a portion of the incoming damage from his linked/toggled allies, but you could also place a outgoing buff to healing received by the linked allies that are healed thru the toggle-ability. THough to me this would make so much sense kinda as a ultimate ability for the engineering career tree.
Engineering: Overload Integrity Field I/II/III
Increases your Starship Hull Repair stat for 12 seconds
While active, being healed by Bridge Officer or Captain abilities will heal up to 3 allies within 5km for a percentage of the healing received
From the newest lockbox. Been playing around with OIF 1 in my build. Doesn't seem too awful.
Engineering: Overload Integrity Field I/II/III
Increases your Starship Hull Repair stat for 12 seconds
While active, being healed by Bridge Officer or Captain abilities will heal up to 3 allies within 5km for a percentage of the healing received
From the newest lockbox. Been playing around with OIF 1 in my build. Doesn't seem too awful.
it's a decent ability. I've been messing around with it and it seems okay-ish; not game breaking, but not terrible. It seems like something that a healer would definitely want but I'm not sure about a dps tank though (which is what I play on my eng).
Looked into the new lockbox consoles and picked up a couple. 2 pieces of the set increases the damage output for Phasers, Plasma and Disruptors by 33%. That's not a small thing.
If it's cat 1 (and it is), 33% isn't a large thing either... That's 33% of the damage a mk I white weapon does. Nice, certainly, but only if the consoles do stuff you want too.
If you have a Tal Shiar Adapted Destroyer (my favorite ship in the game ) on a Engi captain, try an enhanced Frenzy build with your only yellow picks being the ltcmdr boxes, 1 point of offensive system tuning, and 1 point of warp core potential. Once you have frenzy cranked the leftovers in blue/science choices.
Well, for my current build, they actually do work. The secondary shield projector gives +20 to shield regen and reduces damage to shields by 5%, plus the active for it throws up secondary shielding on your ship, similar to what you get with the Dyson Destroyer, plus a debuff cleanse for your entire team.
The Disruption Pulse emitter gives you +20 EPG and +20 Control Exptertise, which is also nice given that I'm using both GW1 and SSV 1. The active skill isn't bad, but being a cone it's situational. Nice extra damage if everything is in front of you. At least it doesn't make you stand in place like the plasma cone does.
Edit: The TSAD is the one ship I have that I keep coming back to. I think I need to go with "If it aint broke, don't fix it" and start getting keys with my Arc Zen and saving up for when a T6 version finally gets released.
If anything, talent choices are driven more by the ship you will be using rather than profession -- carriers, Exotic damage black space magic, torps vs. energy. These are talent decisions, and the more fragile the ship, the more yellow choices you benefit from. If you're playing Cruisers Online, you don't need much yellow at all. Only the power level choices really contribute to damage, and some of them are still fraught with efficiency pitfalls...
[/quote]
Just another reason why it makes no bloody sense to charge us for respecs which is unforgivably petty and money grubbing.
Ok, pause. The talents have NOTHING to do with your choice of profession. A science or tactical captain can build their way to EPS corruption. An Engineer captain can build their way to Probability manipulation and Frenzy... and probably should.[...]
That is true, but wouldn't you agree that there's a pattern here, shared between the engineer captain class and the engineer skill track?
And between what players want out of being an engineer captain.
Comments
I can, as long as you're also putting points into EPG. I'm starting to wonder if more exotic damage skills for Engineers wouldn't actually do the trick.
I'm not sure where you're coming from here. Put the same tanking build on a TAC and ENG and the ENG (thanks to in-built defensive abilities) will be able to take more punishment. A TAC will be able to do more damage, but all you can say about survivability is that it may be able to do the job sufficiently well, not just as well.
Getting to that point, though, I'll say is a trickier proposition than simply throwing an ENG into an offensive build and calling it an "offensive tank." It's an optimization problem, how many traits, consoles, and boff powers do you dedicate to staying alive? While you're playing around with resistance/immunity/healing, an ENG build can just keep stacking on the damage with a more single minded focus, knowing that it's got a couple of extra healing abilities to set a workable baseline. You mainly have to move in one direction rather than finding a balance between two (to the same degree).
Now, with overall power such as it is in STO, you'll end up either way with something that'll easily see you through any PVE (probably with more damage for the TAC, thanks it it being TAC). But if you want something (below the min-max level) which is basically more reliable in an offensive tanking role (ie. has a greater in-built capacity to survive spikes in difficulty) then I would recommend an ENG. The captain powers reduce the need to compromise for survivability with skills, consoles, and boff powers. I probably wouldn't recommend one for a single-minded tanking build (that's just pure defense, there's not much you can do with that) but Eng can be a great platform to compensate for the fragility of an offensive build on a Raptor/Escort or (what I've been finding lately) an exotic damage build.
Basically, an ENG captain is something to generalize with, not specialize. A pure turtle just doesn't have that much utility in STO, and I don't think there's much you can do to change that (something else needs to happen, and that's found in SCI, TAC, and spec powers). That, in my view, is the biggest disparity in ENG/SCI/TAC builds. You can productively specialize in your own profession with the other two. Because of what ENG is, you want to change tactics.
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Hmm. At the endgame, engineers and tacs can take about the same amount of damage. If anything, tacs can do even more healing due to the abundance of heals stacking with damage rn. The areas that engineers are supposed to excel in are not really 'specific' to them anymore. I'm not saying tacs are always better than engineers at healing or power management. However, when at the endgame (not only the min-max level), the difference that engineering captain skills make become nearly negligible in combat because the powers are so weak when compared to the other alternatives. Captain abilities are supposed to be 'top tier' abilities, but that is simply not the case with engineers. Miracle Worker is outhealed by RIF, Desperate Repairs, Continuity, and even boff abilities such as RPM, ET, and HE. Rotate shield frequency is a joke of an ability and it has no real foreseeable use due to the fact that it does basically nothing. EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion are also weak when compared to all the other forms of power boosting in the game.
The main problem with engineers is that new abilties/consoles/traits keep on being released that can replicate and even outperform the main core attributes of engineers. This is not seen with tac or sci abilities however. Take GDF for example. One of the flagship consoles mimicked the functionality of GDF, but it was significantly weaker than the captain ability. Following the same logic, Miracle Worker should be considerably stronger than RIF, but right now (according to my parses), RIF does nearly 3x the heals of miracle worker on my eng.
Ug. To get EPS Corruption you have to buy heavily into yellow talents... which are redundant in the extreme for an Engineering captain.
A science or tac captain can both get more utility out of EPS corruption than an Engineer captain can. Both those professions can use the extra durability you MUST gain to get 25-28 picks deep in yellow. Whereas the Engineer captain can approach their talent choices like a broody-eyed berserker, going all in on red or blue choices and still be "durable enough".
Cross-wiring your Profession and talents is a very strong strategy. Doubling on Engineer with heavily yellow talents is creating a brick in a game with virtually no brick scenarios. If anything, talent choices are driven more by the ship you will be using rather than profession -- carriers, Exotic damage black space magic, torps vs. energy. These are talent decisions, and the more fragile the ship, the more yellow choices you benefit from. If you're playing Cruisers Online, you don't need much yellow at all. Only the power level choices really contribute to damage, and some of them are still fraught with efficiency pitfalls...
While I'll grant you that going all yellow isn't necessary and that, yes, you should build for the ship you intend to fly, being an Engineer who builds toward the Engineering Ultimate should be intuitive. There has to be some way to make running an Engineer more desirable to the playerbase. Personally, I love my engineer (both of them, actually), but the one traited deep into Science is always, always going to outshine the one trained deep into yellow. At least for as long as things work the way they currently do.
I still think speccing for EPS Corruption isn't the worst idea in the world. It's just a distant third to the other two ultimates.
It appear's like many things to come from the RNG (Random Number God or Goddess) and I still have yet to figure out if this God is male or female, or simply a member of the Continuum having a little fun. A few member's of my fleet got the code and many did not.
I suspect a prerequisite requirement may require people having used unbound ZEN to Star Trek Online in the past, but it appear's the dollar amount may not increase or decrease your chances. Still generally Cryptic is very FAIR in terms of all giveaway's they use to reward player's regardless of how they are arrived at.
Back to the Engineer discussion please.
I admit I like what duncanidaho11 said above. All my ENG do have a balance of some TAC damage & SCI exotic / shield healing which gives more credence to more players considering balance--perhaps more so for ENG than SCI or TAC. Another poster commented that the 27 points in SCI or TAC have a damage multiplier effect that ENG don't enjoy. Still, despite the fact my ENG are well balanced. I have Hull Restoration with 2/3 skills cause placing 3 point's is generally only wise in a few skill tree's because of diminished returns.
1 skill point gives 50 points, second 25, third 10 points generally as a rule, and furthermore each addition 50 point's generate smaller benefit's in some skill disciplines.
Still my biggest complain is with ENG ability to take damage cause I have 2/3 skills in Hull Regeneration plus I traited them each with ENG Trait's to further boost regeneration & hull. Still ENG TEAM II barely heal's for 11% or so and the first is about 8% which is lost almost as quickly as it's recovered especially if you take a large hit.
I agree with some notions that Engineers shouldn't be all focussed on dealing damage - perhaps that's a broader problem of the game though, one that appears to be the focus of the Devs in this new season. They definitely tried to make the new queue one where team work is needed and where shooting your way through can be very painful.
Perhaps making the different roles more important again (tanker, healer, damage dealer) can be a succesful way to solve the problem, I guess we will see soon.
Yeah, engineers definitely don't need tac level dps. However, they do need a slight dps buff to abilities such as EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion so that they are not completely outclassed in terms of dps by scis and tacs. Imho, engineers shouldn't be a pure defensive class as that would simply just lock the player into a single role: being a turtle. Currently an equally geared tac can do nearly 2x the damage of an engineer while a sci can do a good 30-40% more. Buffing their offensive abilities slightly so that they can keep up with the other classes while maintaining a strong defensive focus would better for the engineering class.
I think once 'space magic' was introduced, all balancing went out the window. I remember when I first played Sci wasn't as it is now, granted this is 5+ years ago.
I admittedly am a bigger Star Wars fan but there are things that I feel are much better done in Star Trek. I think Lore is cleaner-albeit the different timelines/instances are a bit confusing. I like that Star Trek can be seen as perhaps actually happening, the tech, first contact with the Vulcans to us within the next 1-200 years(provided we don't destroy ourselves and Earth prior to becoming 'enlightened' ).
There's no 'logical explanation' - we're not Asgardians that have such higher tech that its considered 'magic'- about being about to simply at a whim create a vortex in space-that's Q territory IMO. Alas, the Sci crazy cat is out of the bag so there's no way to put it back in.
Perhaps give ENG a high base hull/shield HP per level? say Tac gets .8, Sci gets .9 and Eng gets 1.20 or something passively. Make it so Eng powers are more effective for Eng than SCI/Tac. Perhaps put a cap on SCI powers no matter how high you have the subsequent stat that affects SCI powers.
At this point the game is long in the tooth and I doubt anything radical will be implemented.
StarFleet Engineer
U.S.S. Diana
Alita Heavy Escort
actually space magic is far more a star trek thing than a star wars thing. which funny cause start wars is more honest about the little it does have. where as star trek wraps it in a brunch of sciency sounding words and the only logical reason given is "trust us it's science not magic" where as they have reach the mcu asgardian sci as magic level quite a while before sto started. as far as fixing eng, more of what the have been doing work adding ways for eng to do some of the things tact and sci works.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Engineers in their present state don't contribute to tankiness much. At the endgame, engineers are purely outclassed in terms of what they can do better than the other classes. Scis are the best at controls and debuffing, tacs are the best at doing damage, and engineers don't really have anything unique going for them at all.they're supposed to be the best career for tanking but now, engineers are actually the worst at tanking due to not being able to pull threat. The only thing that engineers can actually be the best at is being a pure "turtle" but there is absolutely no use of being a turtle in the game right now (and being a turtle doesn't really contribute to the team). As I said before, engineering captain abilities are currently outperformed by boff abilities and consoles. This shows how bad the current state of the career is; no captain ability should be worse than a boff ability, console, or trait.
One of the main problems in STO right now is actually the lack of content that requires tankiness. Even elite queues do not pose that much of a challenge anymore due to the state of powercreep. However, even if tankiness were much more prevalent in the game, engineers would still be considered sub par to the other careers, because they are simply better at tanking. Right now, end game engineers are faced with the problem of how do you tank when you're not pulling enough threat because you damage output is so low.
Engineers aren't completely out of the question. With just a few tweaks here and there, it could become a viable career again, but they need to make engineering captain abilities strong again (and not outclassed by a lot of other abilities in that category). For example, Miracle Worker should be one of the best heals in the game, if not the best heal. However, even with the trait that decreases its cooldown, it was completely outhealed by Continuity, RIF, Desperate Repairs, and even Engineering Team (a boff ability).
Engineers are fine at the beginning of the game. However, as more abilities get unlocked, tacs and scis are able to use engineering abilities to a much higher degree of effectiveness than engineers themselves at the cost of just a few traits and consoles. Engineers are actually forced to run these consoles/traits themselves because their own captain abilities are not enough to sustain them enough in endgame combat.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate engineers. My engineer can do over 100k dps and is capable of tanking everything the game throws at me. However, if an equally leveled/geared tac or sci was flying alongside me, my ship would be outclassed in nearly every aspect (except for pure healing but that doesn't really matter nowadays). If anything, tacs can outheal engineers now due to the abundance of HoT abilities stacking with damage implemented.
Build please!
I'm guessing it happened when you started speaking to someone who mains an Engineer instead of someone spouting hysterical nonsense about them being unplayably behind the curve. It happens when you're fond of content that's not pure shooting galleries.
Engineering traits ARE redundant for them Engineer captains - you'll still be taking some defensive and sustain boff abilities (like ANY captain would) but what you gain in ADDITIONAL durability from built-in captain abilities is more than adequate to offset skipping a ton of yellow talent choices you'd be thinking pretty hard about as a Science or Tactical captain running any of the more fragile ship types.
Pretty sure that's what I just said. EPS corruption requires deep investment in a tree that an Engineer shouldn't take. EPS corruption rocks on toast for a Science captain. While going science captain/science ultimate/science ship tends to get you a bit fragile same as Tac captain, tac ultimate, escort. You CAN triple down (profession/talents/ship), but it's not optimum for ANY captain. Overspecialization is not unique to Engineers.
Distant third out of three (four, really, because Engineers also excel with balance builds that don't try for any capstone/ultimate) IS the worst choice in that small world.
I run enhanced Frenzy on my main Fed Tac captain... but only because shes in a boat that plenty durable on it's own and can afford the hyper specialization in red line. Frenzy is a lot easier to run on an Engineer for the reasons mentioned above and still fly a sleeker ship.
I'll make a STO Academy link later. The build took quite a lot of investment (roughly about 1.7 billion EC and 1 million dil) though so it isn't exactly easy to make. On a side note, I spent less than 400 mil EC and 200k dil on my tac captain and he already outperforms my engineer in nearly every aspect.
Fair enough. I do miss tanking like I used to back before the skill revamp. My engineer didn't seem quite so underpowered then.
To be fair, on my main Engie, I'm running a heavy science spec and using an Adapted Destroyer for my main ship. I do have several T6 ships now, including that Intel Assault Cruiser which I think could be used as something of a tank, especially with the threat console it comes with. So now I'm faced with a delima: Do I actually respec him back into a tanking/dpsish role, or do I keep doing what I'm doing. I'm loving the extra damage I'm doing, but I'm hating how paper-thin the hull feels. That, and my tac temporal agent still does more damage than him with a Frenzy build and worse gear.
So I'm not really certain what the right course of action for my Engineer would be.
Thank you. Cost really isn't something I'm too concerned with, as I'm already heavily invested anyway. But I would love to see what an actual tank in the current meta looks like.
Shield-syncing: This ability is a engineer specific career ability that allows the engineer to sync/link their own shields an hull integrity fields with one or more nearby allies, which they have toggled their sync-shield/hull ability onto. While this is active both the player an allies affected by this toggle-abilities have both the damage their shield/hull take, and also the healing done to their shields/hull shared between all toggled targets an the engineer using the ability. I would say allow the engineer to place this on two other allies at maximum. If you than added in things like a engineering trait that might place a innate damage reduction buff on those affected by the toggle-ability, or that the engineer naturally would negate a portion of the incoming damage from his linked/toggled allies, but you could also place a outgoing buff to healing received by the linked allies that are healed thru the toggle-ability. THough to me this would make so much sense kinda as a ultimate ability for the engineering career tree.
Increases your Starship Hull Repair stat for 12 seconds
While active, being healed by Bridge Officer or Captain abilities will heal up to 3 allies within 5km for a percentage of the healing received
From the newest lockbox. Been playing around with OIF 1 in my build. Doesn't seem too awful.
it's a decent ability. I've been messing around with it and it seems okay-ish; not game breaking, but not terrible. It seems like something that a healer would definitely want but I'm not sure about a dps tank though (which is what I play on my eng).
If you have a Tal Shiar Adapted Destroyer (my favorite ship in the game
The Disruption Pulse emitter gives you +20 EPG and +20 Control Exptertise, which is also nice given that I'm using both GW1 and SSV 1. The active skill isn't bad, but being a cone it's situational. Nice extra damage if everything is in front of you. At least it doesn't make you stand in place like the plasma cone does.
Edit: The TSAD is the one ship I have that I keep coming back to. I think I need to go with "If it aint broke, don't fix it" and start getting keys with my Arc Zen and saving up for when a T6 version finally gets released.
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Just another reason why it makes no bloody sense to charge us for respecs which is unforgivably petty and money grubbing.
And between what players want out of being an engineer captain.