Outcast Engineer - A Discussion

or, at the very very least, just slap some QoL on it in some way so it doesn’t feel so tedious

2 Likes

To rock those bombs you have to not run past item spawns. Most Legendary have 10+ bombs per map. You have to teamplay as a non-engi and pass bombs to them and as an engi utilise the free bomb trinket for some spectacular results.

No.

It is called “balanced”, son.

And here we go, probably a contribution from those guys who stand in the line of fire cause they just wanna kill something.
Son, remember to give unobstructed line to fire to your other team members - they would definitely not hate you for it. Besides I would take a bullet from a minigun to a poke from a rat any day - even on higher difficulties FF is not a danger, it is more of a nuisance.

Plan ahead? Play as a team?

I know I have had my fill of games where either everyone is fighting on their own and you just don’t have time to whip out you lil buddy and feed everyone with lead, or your teammate (or bots) are so overprotective that they make a human/elf wall around you and you’d be like “lemmi shooooot, lemmi shooooot”, but nah, they’ll not give you that opportunity…

It does seem like a nice thing to have… However I’m afraid that it’d count as a buff and I’m against buffing any careers.

I’m in total agreement in here - 50% extra bar and free shots after specials is definitely more enticing for me.

He does not shine in this particular area, true, however swing your hammer a couple of times and chug a nade at the horde and you’re good to follow up with the minigun. One important thing to remember is that there’re 3 other members in the team - you should not carry everyone all the time, proud dwarf.

I’m in agreement with the Thesis on Engineer in Contemporary Vermintide in general.
Actually I’m fine with both new weapons and career: they are not OP as GK. GK even without the ranged option is a marvellous beast, who wins runs all by himself. Engi is just another career: he’s powerful if you play him right, but it requires teamplay and awareness.
AND HE DEFINITELY DOES NOT NEED A BUFF!
Mayyyybe allow us to use that Rapier Sidearm button to crank the minigun? Switching to crank up the gun not to loose stacks got kinda tiresome…

All still very RNG heavy unlike Ranger Vet who can pretty much guarantee a steady supply of bombs…son(?)

1 Like

10+ bombs on Legend + 25% chance for free bombs is too RNG???

10+ bombs isn’t guaranteed, nor is it guaranteed that people will share, and grenadier can be ran on anyone and get lucky so it’s not really all that exciting.

Compared to RV it’s definitely more out of your control

3 Likes

If your team mates choose to be asshats it’s not a balancing issue.
My point is - running your maps smartly brings more bombs than you can carry and does not add a lot to your time.

I agree with your philosophy, but I feel that OE wouldn’t become significantly stronger with this change, it’s more QoL. As it stands now you have to fire it just to keep 5 stacks and it feels very unintuitive to stop and fire into the air every ~8 seconds to keep stacks up. This change I would like to be implemented as baseline, some things are just too cumbersome to deal with that it removes from the fun of the game.

3 Likes

I don’t get the beef with the extra bombs passive. Y’all telling me you want that removed? What would you replace it with? Another aura?

I don’t think it needs to be removed or even changed in any way

I just don’t think it’s valuable enough to be used in an argument to justify any of OE’s weaknesses

5 Likes

That’s if the bombs are being held on to instead of used (and 3 bombs is much more than overkill for any Legend patrol). Realistically speaking you’re probably only going to be carrying at most 2 bombs (I could be wrong for Legend). This is especially true on Cata. It’s much better to make sure everyone has at least 1 bomb as well, even if the OE has Bombardier, simply because of bomb stagger/control.

The bomb passive/talent just seems slapped on OE without much thought.
“Sure I can carry 3 bombs and boost bombs but what if I don’t find any bombs or teammates wont share?”

Scouring the seven seas for a bomb seems tedious, especially when most players could get by without them or simply save them for potential bad situations that may never arise. With no way to generate bombs or prevent consumption, players may be less inclined to make proper use out of them too.

3 Likes

Couldn’t agree more with this post, glad there are those in the community talking about Outcast Engineers position in the game in such a detailed way!

Personally I’d love to see some form of Ablative Armor and Piston Power converted to act as passives in some way. (Within balanced parameters) When they work they are both very neat perks but they feel far too niche to be apart of that talent pool. IMO that entire level 25 talent pool should be dedicated to boosting bombs in some sort of way as to take advantage of his ‘toolbelt’ passive.
Here is a thought; maybe there could be a talent that allows engineer to generate bombs every 100 Crank Gun kills? This would not only add synergy to one of his passives but it could also compete with Bombardier thus creating more unique builds.

On the topic of passives: His ‘Spotter’ Passive is barely noticeable, I’d much prefer to see something that adds a bonus to his much needed survivability. Hell that’d be a perfect spot to replace it with ablative armor, to continue to add some team support maybe being near the engineer gives a lesser form of the perk as well. (Once again within balanced parameters, don’t want it to be too strong.)

Aside from that I honestly don’t think there’s much more to add to this that hasn’t already been said. On behalf of all Dawi Engineers out there, thank you again for writing such a detailed post about this. Maybe someday we can get a light overhaul to his kit that helps alleviate the needless frustration one tends to experience as the engineer.

1 Like

IDK, frankly it’s my favourite. The others just don’t seem to cut it.

Well, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to chuck the talent or change it.
As I have already stated and still state: knowing major spawn points on each map is not hard. Visiting all of them would add like 10-20 seconds to your run vs beelining.

Ofc they are not, however by being a real teammate and giving your engi your bomb, believing that he can make a better use of it, you actually have a coop experience.
Besides 10 being an eyeball estimate - you can have a lot more bombs actually, so many that 30% proc trinket seems too OP.

Actually something has to be done with trinkets: IMHO a free bomb one is the only one worth having.

I’d agree except

Now that bomb damage scaling is fixed, you can get away with having only one teammate using Shrapnel (since that guy is gonna hold his bomb until boss appears) and engi can go bombardier and Explosive Ordinance for max value. The radius increase is more reliable in laying the hurt on mixed hordes and patrols.

At least that’s what I prefer :>

Sadly this.
The horrible power creep of V2 just swipes anything without armor pen and high movement from the grown up table. Sure you can make the Engineer work but its mostly a fun career if you want to do a bit of “machine gun go brrrrrr”.
You can maw down hordes that run up to you in a straight line, preferably at a chokepoint without your allies interfering. Everything else is done way more efficient with another career or simply with melee of anyone and you can eradicate things by making bombs go brrrrr instead of your gun IF you find them.
Horde focus is generally the worst trait in the game since (power creep again) literally every group will have several high cleave melee or AoE options that just wipe them out instantly without any trade offs while the engineer has little support, zero movement and zero sustain in exchange for top tier damage against unarmored targets.
Thats especially a problem if actual teamplay is taken into consideration. Your allies have to heavily protect you to make your kit work and all they get is horde clear. If they are in a bind somehow and you are out of bombs (or would ff kill them) or they are not threatened by a nicely lined up stack of unarmored foes with you being free to be vulnerable for the next 10 seconds for some virtually impossible reason, you end up being absolutely useless.
Basically as long as the group would do fine without you as engineer, you are an addition to the team doing impressive explosion stuff and dakka dakka.

Not that he isn’t nice to play. The concept of not being OP in every field and specialized would be great for an actual koop game. The crank gun and the bombs are a ton of fun and the pistol at least has nice animations but the engineer is sooo far away from being a full member of the group thanks to the immense escalation of throwing whole packs of dissablers and armored elites at the player who in return is able to just instant delete them with special abilities and over the top weaponry. Thats what happens if you power creep your game design, just as weapons being either useless or all the same with a minimal difference.

4 Likes

Totally agree. In my opinion, it’s really hard make him “a worth pick when things get hard” without a total rework (aka almost a new career).

It’s not going happen… but this doesn’t mean they can’t tune up some clunky aspects, like the extreme vulnerability for a static career… three bombs’ slots useless/wasted (on highest diffuculties) without a way to craft/regen/drop bombs… certain talents really meh… etc etc.

Swear to God if you mfers manage to get a passive removed I’m flipping a table.

OE wore off of me really quick.

Gameplay outside of minigun is so bland and the fact his weapons work better on his other careers is not saying a whole lot about the engineer career as a whole.

Idk what can be done but without the minigun, he’s just Bardin from V1 with a skill tree and that’s depressing.

Someone said it earlier that he has no identity outside of his minigun.

2 Likes

I’d argue him carrying the bombs can be a blessing and a curse. If he’s playing at the back of the group or safe spotting like mad (which is how I play him), he should always be in a better position to get a needed bomb off.

Obviously there’s points when another player with them would be better. Grenadier whenever you have too many bombs becomes really good though.

I usually play Shield, Flamethrower and Innovative Ammo Hoppers:

With that build, you can pretty much ignore your team unless there’s more than one Chaos Warrior. Just stand in good spots and get good at Shield Slamming > switch to Flamethrower > spray the Horde, and then switch back, and repeat.

On Cata+ it becomes bonkers with the amount of clear you have, given that it’s not a high Chaos Warrior density modifier.

Other than that, the only problem is that Cata+ with damage mods or high Elite density forces you onto certain Careers anyway.

He doesn’t really seem worthwhile with any of the other Weapons to me though. He just replaces IB Flamethrower for DPS output (not CC etc obvs). RV uses the Masterwork Pistol better, IB/Slayer use his Axe better.

I’d rather he got some CC and maybe a tad more hp than anything else to make him unique. An AoE oil slick mechanic would work wonders, and they don’t have enough cool CC mechanics in the game. Which would make a lot of the squishier Careers more viable on higher difficulties.

2 Likes

I agree with every single word.

I’m not sure it’s a bad thing tho’
I’d rather nerf others than buff OE.