I like the changes. Currently the Outcast Engineer is difficult to use to it’s fullest without high risk of getting surrounded or poked in the back. Unless your team babysits you, even the most generous build for personal protection and maneuverability is risky. Every time Outcast Engineer joins the team on Legend or Cata, they die several times, and blame the team, insisting that it’s a viable class.
The engineer is for real. No need to have a protective team. You just need to practice because it has a different gameplay.
It’s like WPoS. It has its gameplay.
The only thing I advise players is not to read the tutorials or copy the builds of the “streamers” etc … It is not because there is a good player with such a build that you are going be good with his build.
The only problem is that I like the “Bombardier” talent. My teammate knows this and gives me the bombs. Except that finishing a game and not having max 3 bombs in the whole game? This makes him an unnecessary talent. However it is a rather powerful burst because the double bombs will devastate all. But next is there protection?
I think to do either:
A) The engineer starts with bombs.
B) He can in proc thanks to the bomber talents.
There, that would be interesting and viable. Too bad to have 3 stacks but never to see your reserve filled.
Having a slow squishy-ranged character is always risky; it’s nothing like WPoS, which is fairly easy to play. I have practiced with engineer extensively (moreso than most ranged classes), and I have tried many different builds. Great damage output but rivaled closely by the ranger who can use invisibility to get off more shots safely, and can maneuver much better.
The engineer’s main advantage is the crank gun, (and 12 shots with the torpedo launcher is meme quality stuff), but those are very slow weapons that you can’t use without ample space, and even with a shield, he can’t get enough room to shoot without teammates close. He’s a ranged character, but I end up spending so much time in melee, where he does not shine.
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About the bombs…
How about having 1 pocket… But initially with the ability to upgrade this bomb to effect of both regular Bombs and Incendiary Bombs (Bombardier`s talent) after taking the second bomb (visually changing it to Morgrim’s Bomb from Chaos Wastes). So we can have upgraded bomb by the cost of 2 basic bombs.
The 25 lvl talents will be:
- 3 (or 2) pockets and Bombardier talent in one
- Ablative armor
- Piston Power (but a bit different - reducing cooldown of Power Fist punch - but that’s a completely different story)
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This is how I feel too. I mainly push into a bunker spot and hold it with a Shield, so I can slam everything away, switch to Flamethrower/Crank gun, and spam.
As Dual Hammers/Drakefire Pistols, I just play as a normal DPS. The build does really well on higher difficulties too.
That said, I wouldn’t mind a slight defensive buff for him. As with most Careers with low health pools and no damage reduction, they can be extremely squishy and barely playable on some difficulties.
Bombardier - 2 bomb effects + setting enemies on fire increases healing the next 2 times it occurs (this would allow you to take Barkskin and still get a bit more THP)
Piston Power - Grants heavy Stagger every 12-15 seconds. If staggered enemies die within 5 seconds receive THP relative to the enemy killed
Also shouldn’t Piston Power work with Trollhammer Torpedo shove, the same way it works with the Grudge-Raker shove?
Yeah. There’s other Talents that don’t have damage reduction too.
2 Likes
What do you mean “no damage reduction”? Ablative Armor is literally a possible 25% damage reduction.
You can talk about playstyle all you like, but any ranged class can be more effective if you adapt your playstyle. The skill ceiling on the Engineer is lower than every other ranged class while the skill floor is higher than any other ranged class.
100 hp is too low, should be 125. The crank gun needs to require less time to get to max stacks and not slow the player down so much when firing. Perhaps he could also get another passive that grants increased movement speed by 1% for each enemy killed with the crank gun stacking up to 15%, or just something to keep him from getting surrounded when there is no safe corner to back into. Maybe give him auto-block while firing the crank gun with a couple of stamina shields.
In short, just give the engineer a bit more health, movement, and make the crank gun crank faster, and he’ll probably be on par with other ranged characters.
The crankgun was just really overvalued for its upkeep. Half of his 4 character specific rows affect it when a lot of the buffs they provide are basic QoL you should already have. You don’t get ult for getting hit or inflicting damage which is a pretty big deal for a character with an ult that is always avaliable. But for whatever reason those 5 stacks of pressure (time lost since its not an active reload) that give you 24s of ult regen are gone if you use the gun unless you run a talent, in addition to the fast decay of those stacks. Just the balance mod where you lose them one at a time would be a huge improvement. Its just so heavy handed for no reason, and then it has giant shot bloom that straight up disappears somewhere around the distance javelins start to bend. Glorified drakegun but with a way worse mechanic (ult).
Its fun for a game or two but the massive upkeep of time wasted on the gun and then also requiring some form of chokepoint or bodyguard to even do anything gets old fast. I usually just zip around move teching with dual hammers desperately mashing reload spamming the trollhammer which is 100% the most entertaining and effective playstyle currently. He can at least make temp HP fast with stagger.
You just turned an actual description of making a specific Career effective through playstyle into a general point about ranged Careers (it’s so general it could fit any Career actually) and then made a subjective argument about skill floor and skill ceiling, after shooing a description of being more skillful. I don’t see your point here.
I already said it would be nice to see him get a little more suvivability, even though Shield Weapons can make him almost invincible outside of being bursted down.
I might get flamed for this but I would like to throw in my 2 cents. Engi suffers from the inablity to dish out consistent damage or stagger if left alone and kiting. That makes him a pretty unpopular pick on high difficulty levels (not considering CW where he can turn into Orbital Annihilation Cannon with right boons), which I consider a bit sad, as this class has good potential and can be pretty fun to play.
To adress this, I think that the piston power should be used as a class passive/perk. It would give him this small edge which will boost his survivavibilty a lot in proper hands. It’s not like he’s leaving his metal arm behind when you go for ablative armor or bombardier!
I could also totally reimagine engi something like this (umgak draft)
This would allow for three distinct playstyles:
- Drakefire flavor: which uses his gatling as limited special sniping tool and won’t sacrifice too much mobility for overcharge as the class is already a wet paper towel.
- Bomber flavor: hoarding bombs for big burst damage in a pinch. Also good for drawn-out games like weekly events, FoW and so on without reliance on teammates or Ranald for bombs.
- A bit more mobile, a bit more tanky “vanilla” engi that actually stands a chance at clutching the game while kiting due to better movement speed and moderate DR.
I understand you, I got burned for creating a subject for retouching on the pariah. I show you an excerpt
And this is the link to my topic: Outcast Engineer recast
I feel like that’s an intentionally designed weakness that ranged careers should have.
Anyway, i disagree, but yeah I’d be happy to see some drakefire interaction.
I feel like that’s an intentionally designed weakness that ranged careers should have.
Let’s take a look:
- BH has synergy with parry on rapier if he fires his special, quick ult and potentially either +movement speed on crits or 30% DR
-WS has “quick draw” ult, can heal herself and can go for movement speed boost on elite kill (tried in on FoW: works like a charm) - BW: double ult and potential slow-cooker build. Torch, block and wait
- Pyro has fleetflame and quick draw ult (again). Also potentially no overcharge slowdown and very good attack speed.
- RV: jailbreak card (invisibility), +10% movement speed and either hp on ult or a free bomb
- Huntsman: jailbreak card (invisibility), +10% movement speed
Just to make it clear: I do not think engi should be good melee career. He just needs a small boost to his survivability and maybe a small rebalance to his talents, because currently some of them are absolutely useless. He should stay difficult, but rewarding.
@Fauchames Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out!
Look, Piston-Power is not a small boost.
It is a footknight charge in your pocket. It fundamentally changes how a player engages in melee. Its place as a level 25 talent is well deserved and underrated because Ablative shouldn’t exist and the community really hates bombadier for some reason.
A small boost is increased health, or QOL changes to his micromanagement, not being able to punt a boss off a cliff.
I completely agree on the fact that the Outcast Engineer needs a rework, especially his utility belt passive which is rather useless as it is right now and I really like what you suggest of making him throw them faster, giving him quite an unique aspect to him, but we can just hope he gets some kind of love in anyway haha