Engineers: hiding in plain sight

Been a busy week. Just getting caught up on the blogging now; apologies for a quiet couple of days, but when work comes calling, the blog must wait.

So I may have let slip in a previous post or weekly rollup (I’m late on that, aren’t I?) that I’d recently rolled an Engineer alt to muck around with in Tier 1. Ahh, the days of Nordenwatch never seem to last long enough. Well, said Engineer alt is now well into Tier 2… actually, he’s just mopping up the last 20% of rank 21 before pushing officially into Tier 3.

Today was an interesting day — I played three different characters in scenarios throughout the day, to take advantage of the Night of Murder live event that started today. As an aside, the influence rewards are pretty quick to get for this live event, if you’re so inclined — I picked up the elite reward on one character, the advanced on another, and I’m pretty close to the advanced reward on a third in an afternoon of scenarios. Definitely quicker to attain the rewards than in previous live events.

Anyhow, after playing three different archetypes throughout the course of the day (healer/hybrid, tank/melee dps, and ranged dps), I felt as though I had a good refresher as to the differences between the playstyles involved with all three classes. The last couple of weeks of playing Engineer have given me a very different perspective on the PvP/RvR game; the Engineer’s guerilla play-style is very different than my other, higher-level characters and very refreshing when you’ve been playing a healer/low-melee damage class for an extended period of time.

To preface my comparison, let’s look at how the three characters I played today are specced:

• Halfhand, 40 Warrior Priest, Salvation/Grace spec
• Letheras, 31 Swordmaster, Khaine/Hoeth spec
• Tofurkey, 21 Engineer, Grenadier spec

So from that, you can assume that my Warrior Priest is currently specced for full-on group healing (primarily for dungeon runs right now, although I’ve been testing it out in scenarios), and my Swordmaster is focused on single-target DPS with a little Hoeth for more defense (Aethyric Armor) and AoE damage. My Engineer is specced primarily for AoE damage; eventually he’ll likely have some points in Rifleman to bring up single-target damage and potentially grab Snipe, as well.

Engineers are definitely an an acquired taste. The first time I tried one, I didn’t get him above rank 4. This was before they got a major amount of love in patch 1.0.6, but I don’t think it was the lack of damage (ahem) that turned me off, but the PvE play-style I was attempting. I was playing the class like other pet classes I had played in the past (including the White Lion and Squig Herder), expecting my turret to hold aggro while I nuked… err, shot, and tossed grenades from a distance. Of course, this isn’t really the most optimal way to PvE with an Engineer. In addition, I hadn’t even tried the class in PvP, which really is the crowning glory of the Engineer class. My mistake. Once you get the hang of it, PvE with an Engineer is entertaining and generally quite painless. And I don’t even have Napalm yet… that’ll be interesting to try out. I’ll be sure to report my experiences once I have it.

If one class that I’ve tried stands out in PvP across the board, it’s this class. A well-played Engineer can not only create enough havoc to hold off an entire enemy front-line, it can decimate the back line from a semi-dangerous (to himself) position and top the damage charts on a regular basis. Mind you, as many will tell you, topping scenario damage charts is a worthless stat… though it’s still very satisfying to see the next highest damage class doing 50% of your damage output.

The Engineer is a funny class. It makes you consider things you don’t really think about as much on other characters.

With my Warrior Priest, it’s a matter of making sure I don’t have a Witch Elf or Marauder stabbing me in the back or a Disciple of Khaine disabling me while I try and heal — that is, if I’m Salvation specced; I tend to bounce back and forth between specs quite often. If I’m Grace/Wrath, it’s a matter of staying close to my tank front-line — hoping a tank will drop Guard on me and I’ll last a few seconds longer — while I beat on squishies without getting killed myself, and tossing off the occasional group heal when I notice our main healer getting strained.

With my Swordmaster, I’m up in the face of the opposing tanks, peeling them off my healers, or blowing my way through their lines with Gusting Wind, trying to get my big 2H on their healers and lightly-armoured classes. In this case I worry more about positioning in the sense of trying to maximize my AoE knockbacks and make sure that my healers aren’t getting munched on by pets or melee DPS classes. If I’m tanking with a shield, I’m worrying less about my damage output and more about crowd control and defending my squishies.

With the Engineer, it’s all about hiding in plain sight. I’m a low-profile dwarf, and people tend to automatically avoid me more because I either look like an Ironbreaker or they’re going after Archmages and Rune Priests first. Terrain makes a major difference here, because setting up my turret in a position where it can easily reach the enemy means I can fire-and-forget the turret while I back off and start AoEing and picking off squishies with my longer-ranged gun attacks. The trick is to position your turret in a way where it’s in reach, but it’ll survive without being a major target for enemy nukers or AoE.

If we have some kind of landmass in the way, I have to think about which turret to drop — even if I’m specced as a Grenadier right now, there are times where a Gun Turret works better than a Bombardment Turret, especially in standoff. I don’t use Flame Turret as much because it seems more useful for PvE — if I’m that close to an attacker, I’m usually in a bad spot. In any case, my Grenadier-spec turret AoE’s pretty well anyhow, so the cone attack from the Flame Turret isn’t as useful. I also have to consider elevation and distance, as unlike Bright Wizards who can walk around and AoE nuke at a long-range across the board, I have to gauge grenade vs. gun distance and constantly shift around to make sure I’m in range to toss grenades and still manage to stay out of the main melee fight.

Engineers are tougher than they look; between Flak Jacket, Ancestral Inheritance, and armour talismans and potions, I can out-do my medium-armoured Warrior Priest in raw armour. If I stack Ballistics, Wounds and Toughness, I’m definitely hard to kill quickly, unlike most other squishes. I have a ton of utility, and so far I haven’t found an ability that I can’t use in some situation or other. Even the weakest abilities are still useful in the right context, which is a pleasant surprise compared to the other classes I play, where your mastery spec path really limits the abilities you use regularly.

What Engineers give up in single-target killing ability, they trade off for massively annoying (and distracting) AoE DoTs and slightly better defense and crowd-control abilities. The amount of knockbacks and knockdowns available are astonishing compared to other other classes — not even counting Electromagnet if you’re Tinkerer specced (which is admittedly a rare spec; the other two are significantly more effective right now.)

I was grouped with a guildie earlier while playing my Warrior Priest in Serpent’s Passage. I healed for 220k, which was a respectable number, considering I died a couple of times and Destro was tank-heavy. I probably could have done better, but I was satisfied. At the end of the scenario, I was shocked to see my guildmate top the damage charts at just shy of 400k damage with his Grenadier-spec Engineer. I shook my head and congratulated him in guild chat, only to have him come back and say that it was an average performance. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but the thought of that kind of damage output at the end-game makes me drool.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what my Dwarf can do in Tier 3 and above. I’m going to be paying close attention to the differences in play-style as I level up both my Engineer and Swordmaster and I’ll post a more in-depth comparison at a later date. In the meantime, if you have an Engineer, do you feel like your class is effective or lacking in some way? What are its strengths and weaknesses, from your perspective, and which spec path is the most effective? If you have a 40 Engineer, how does the class play at the end-game? Is the class the difference-maker it seems to be in the lower Tiers? I’m curious, and I’d love to hear from you.