Post by argeas on Feb 8, 2015 15:50:55 GMT
Engineer <TANK> - Staying in the Zone
What is an Engineer:
Engineer is a tank/dps in Wildstar that wears heavy armor, like WS Warrior. As such they do not need to reach a physical resistance cap like stalker tanks, but physical resist doesn't hurt to get
. Engineers are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where stalkers are the health regen tanks, engineers are the shield regen tanks, having the ability to gain shield back to them actively and passively on a considerable basis. They are also the only range tank, making them very favorable for certain fights in GA and some in, since they can threat mobs from a good 15M or more distance.
What are their stat weights:
Engineer tanks like all other tanks use the following stats primarily-
TECH – Support Power
INSIGHT – Deflect
GRIT - Health
Tech: for all tanks Tech will increase your support power, and subsequently threat. It also increases your personal utility and healing abilities, e.g. disruptive module will heal more shielding the more tech you have, which can be very useful.
Insight: for all tanks this increases deflect/critical deflect. Your target goal is to get 15% deflect critical by the time you are ready for veteran dungeons & raids. This mark is true of all tanks. In addition, if you happen to be stalker tank reading this, for some reason, note that in addition to this threshold, you will also have a physical resistance mark to hit.
Grit: This just increases health. Normally grit would not be desirable at all. Max health increases were by far better. But since the changes with grit contribution and milestones, it is not entirely something to scoff at. IF you have a piece of gear that gives a good amount of grit and gives you a milestone or gets you close, it might be worth investing in over max health.
Threat:
Generally, if you are having threat issues you need more support power. Engineer tanks are arguably the only tank that can consistently, when in five mans, use an LAS without a taunt on there. This is because their damage and abilities, like their dps counterpart, is sustained. It builds and ramps up over time. The longer the fight goes on the more this is evident.
However, if you are having threat issues, since our damage is consistent and channeled, things like crit chance can be helpful, and so can things that apply a debuff even if the percentage is low. To help with threat then I suggest support power of course, but also consider crit chance.
Basic LAS:
Here is a basic LAS that I primarily run outside of raids, its not that different from the LAS in raids minus the interrupts depending.
Particle Ejector – This is your bread and butter, when you get access to this, take it. This is the equivalent of the dps engineers electrocute. You basically spam this all day everyday, in between Miasma, Disruption Module, etc. When you are not doing something you are using PE. It is heavy sustained channeled damage and by 2.45 K support power is easily doing over 1K damage without crits. It also produces a significant amount of threat of 159% at tier 8, down from previous drops, and creates an expose giving your allies a damage increase.
Disruption Module – In previous drops this ability was middle of the road. Now its quite impressive, especially since the last drop. It is in the third tier of the support AMP tree and only cost two (2) amp power. It takes a moment to cast, but when finished does the following: generates 125% threat, restores shields to up to 5 targets, including yourself, within 15 m, and does damage to five enemies hit by it. It is a dot. It also generates a good chunk of volatility over its duration, and at tier 4, while its active, mitigate 25% damage to shields, and this stacks with other abilities that do this.
Obstruct Vision – This ability is good utility. It removes one shield from enemies, allowing a tier 4 Zap, to interrupt a two shields enemy. See interruptor guide for more info on MoO. When tiered to 4 its useful, it grants interrupt armor to you and 4 other allies within 15 m. When tiered to 8 it applies a debuff to enemies hit that after a 6 sec duration, stuns the enemy. Normally this last ability is useless in most fights. But in some fights it is extremely beneficial. Alternative you can use bruiser bot in place of Obstruct Vision depending on how non-retarded the robots are feeling for the day.
Bruiser Bot - Bruiser bot is good for situations where you could use the increase in effective health, essentially this lil' bro adds to your survivability considerably, not withstanding that the currently LAS as depicted here isn't already pretty survival oriented. Bruiser bot generally is a good swap for Obstruct Vision where you can get it because his "taunt" is also an interrupt. The "taunt" can remove any shields though its more like a "bruiser-kick" and so would have to be used after you use something like Zap. Using both Zap and Bruiser "taunt" at the same time will usually guarantee an interrupt since it takes Bruiser bot a minute to process information. The down side is the robot pet AIs are not stellar, Bruiser bot can and will turn mobs and bosses in the direction of your fellow party members resulting in cleaves and sometimes misplacement as Bruiser bot can keep running in one direction with a mob, although this latter bug is rarer with the changes to robots. A further change has also made it so Bruiser bot will not hold threat indefinitely, he will eventually lose threat on something and come back to you even if you are no longer attacking, but sometimes even that doesn't happen, its random. At best he will give you a couple seconds breather which is always nice on some fights if your party can afford or move quickly enough out of the way of a boss turning on you. Tiering up bruiser bot for the added deflect is only truly reasonable if he is going to step up and in most fights he won't. The points can be better spent elsewhere.
Zap – Zap is the interrupt, main interrupt, Engineers get. You get this early on. When tiered to 4 it interrupts twice. Interrupts remove armor and stun, but cannot stun a target that is armored, they can only remove the armor. But in the case of Zap when tiered, it can interrupt an enemy with one armor since it takes off two armor. See interruptor guide for more info on MoO.
Miasma – Ah Miasma. Miasma and I have a love hate relationship, there have been times where I have moved away from it successfully, and other times when I've begrudgingly gone back to its usage. But at the end of the day Miasma is amazing, especially now. Miasma's volatility cost has been dropped to 25 Volatility, cut in half from 40. While tiering Miasma can be useful, each tier up gives one 1% increase chance to blunder on the enemies, the tier thresholds four and eight, are not that great. Still though with the volatility decrease, this ability can be spammed, there really is no time when you can't have tons of miasma down now. While enemies are in Miasma they get a debuff that last three seconds, and this debuff is constantly reapplies while in Miasma. This debuff creates a blunder on enemies making it so their attacks can be deflected by x%. At base with no tiering, this is a minimum 25%. More deflects = more chances at the Feed Back ability for you, which can be very useful. So if you're going to use Miasma it is best to have Feedback. The abilities work extremely well together and you can do a lot more damage on enemies attacking you.
Shock Pulse – This is a great threat generator and volatility resource gain especially when you pull multiple mobs. If all three beams hit, for each beam that's 10 volatility, so against a bunch of mobs you can get 100 volatility right off the pull. This ability also snares targets, reducing movement speed which increases with tiering. (There are only certain circumstances where tiering this ability to 4, even, is useful allowing its CD to be reset by usage of PE) SP also generates threat now 150% per beam, so now its even better! Once you have a good chunk of volatility rolling around and you are “in the zone” you won't have to use SP that much during your fight, but it can be used to give you a nice buffer or just apply another snare. Snaring is useful.
Volatile Injection - This is now a great utility not just for you but 4 other friends within a 15 m radius of you. At base it grants 10% crit chance to you and 4 other allies, and last for 5 seconds. It also increases your critical deflect by the same amount. At tier 4, it gives interrupt armor to you when you use it, so if you know you are about to be cc'd in some way, popping this right before can be useful as well.
Feed Back – Great attack ability. It is almost as much your bread and butter as PE is. It can only be used after deflecting so again Miasma is a great partner for this ability. At tier 4 the usage of FB generates volatility when you are “in the zone”.
“In the Zone”:
In the Zone is a term you will hear most dps and tank engineers throw around. When we are generating volatility, there is a sweet spot, usually between 30 – 70 volatility, where certain abilities, Disruptive Module, Bio Shell, Ricochet, etc, are either now instant, perform an additional ability or do something especial when tiered for it. Certain amps can help you stay “in the zone” and that is discussed below.
AMPS:
Generally, Engineer tanks want most of the amps in the support tree. Now that absorb shields stack and they are also increased by Tech stats, Reboot is incredibly useful in some circumstances if not most. Additionally, Rejuvenative Rain, and Try and Hurt Me, become increasingly useful now that they also scale with Tech. This two abilities allow Engineers to heal passively on health. No direct ability we have allows us to gain health, unlike those shady stalkers, so these passive regens are great given that we can restore our shields and mitigate damage with our shields while this process occurs. Try and Hurt Me though is only active while you are “In the Zone” so volatility management is key, it can easily be a crazy heal for you if managed well.
Outside of these amps, you have your crit amps, take them if you need threat, but even then you will want them to get access to the Volatility Rising Amp in the assault tree. When you hit “the Zone” at 30, this amp makes it so you passively gain volatility while “In the Zone”. This is extremely useful for both tank and dps engineer.
Last but not least, is the utility tree in the south. Points here can be spent to decrease CDs on abilities, especially interrupts, significantly.
Rune Sets:
Technophile – Great for threat and getting some additional tech in your build. Getting this to 4/12 is generally more than enough, any excess is not extremely necessary. If you are a dps engineer, you would probably want more 8/12 or 12/12 altogether depending. For a tank though 4/12 is fine. This ability increase your tech damage and applies a debuff on the target for that purpose. The percent chance is low, but with PE, the odds of that happening on a target are significantly increased due to the channeled nature of the ability.
Shield Specialist - Engineers are the abosrb kings, and the crit monsters, so you want your shields in top notch condition. Shield specialist to 8/12 tends to be the base. The next set bonus 12/12, does not increase shielding significantly from the 8/12 mark.
Preservation Health – Another good 8/12 one to have. This set increases your health, but again the 12/12 set bonus does not have a significant jump from the 8/12 mark, so 8/12 tends to be the base. This rune set also makes it possible to generate health when damaging enemies, it can proc often given the channeled nature of PE and all your dots. (Miasma, Disruptive Module)
In the Zone - An engineer only rune set. Getting this to 11/15 is probably the target, but getting 15/15 if you can get it, would be godly. Since you spend most of your time “In the Zone”, this rune set is perfect. While in the zone you will gain a set amount of armor at around 15/15 this amount is 1.5K. Armor and resistances in game are amazing. The amount contributed to you via stats was nerfed in the last drop, but this is still no reason to avoid them. Armor increases all resistances, physical, magic, and technology, by a certain amount.
What is an Engineer:
Engineer is a tank/dps in Wildstar that wears heavy armor, like WS Warrior. As such they do not need to reach a physical resistance cap like stalker tanks, but physical resist doesn't hurt to get
. Engineers are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where stalkers are the health regen tanks, engineers are the shield regen tanks, having the ability to gain shield back to them actively and passively on a considerable basis. They are also the only range tank, making them very favorable for certain fights in GA and some in, since they can threat mobs from a good 15M or more distance.What are their stat weights:
Engineer tanks like all other tanks use the following stats primarily-
TECH – Support Power INSIGHT – Deflect GRIT - HealthTech: for all tanks Tech will increase your support power, and subsequently threat. It also increases your personal utility and healing abilities, e.g. disruptive module will heal more shielding the more tech you have, which can be very useful.
Insight: for all tanks this increases deflect/critical deflect. Your target goal is to get 15% deflect critical by the time you are ready for veteran dungeons & raids. This mark is true of all tanks. In addition, if you happen to be stalker tank reading this, for some reason, note that in addition to this threshold, you will also have a physical resistance mark to hit.
Grit: This just increases health. Normally grit would not be desirable at all. Max health increases were by far better. But since the changes with grit contribution and milestones, it is not entirely something to scoff at. IF you have a piece of gear that gives a good amount of grit and gives you a milestone or gets you close, it might be worth investing in over max health.
Threat:
Generally, if you are having threat issues you need more support power. Engineer tanks are arguably the only tank that can consistently, when in five mans, use an LAS without a taunt on there. This is because their damage and abilities, like their dps counterpart, is sustained. It builds and ramps up over time. The longer the fight goes on the more this is evident.
However, if you are having threat issues, since our damage is consistent and channeled, things like crit chance can be helpful, and so can things that apply a debuff even if the percentage is low. To help with threat then I suggest support power of course, but also consider crit chance.
Basic LAS:
Here is a basic LAS that I primarily run outside of raids, its not that different from the LAS in raids minus the interrupts depending.
Particle Ejector – This is your bread and butter, when you get access to this, take it. This is the equivalent of the dps engineers electrocute. You basically spam this all day everyday, in between Miasma, Disruption Module, etc. When you are not doing something you are using PE. It is heavy sustained channeled damage and by 2.45 K support power is easily doing over 1K damage without crits. It also produces a significant amount of threat of 159% at tier 8, down from previous drops, and creates an expose giving your allies a damage increase.Disruption Module – In previous drops this ability was middle of the road. Now its quite impressive, especially since the last drop. It is in the third tier of the support AMP tree and only cost two (2) amp power. It takes a moment to cast, but when finished does the following: generates 125% threat, restores shields to up to 5 targets, including yourself, within 15 m, and does damage to five enemies hit by it. It is a dot. It also generates a good chunk of volatility over its duration, and at tier 4, while its active, mitigate 25% damage to shields, and this stacks with other abilities that do this.Obstruct Vision – This ability is good utility. It removes one shield from enemies, allowing a tier 4 Zap, to interrupt a two shields enemy. See interruptor guide for more info on MoO. When tiered to 4 its useful, it grants interrupt armor to you and 4 other allies within 15 m. When tiered to 8 it applies a debuff to enemies hit that after a 6 sec duration, stuns the enemy. Normally this last ability is useless in most fights. But in some fights it is extremely beneficial. Alternative you can use bruiser bot in place of Obstruct Vision depending on how non-retarded the robots are feeling for the day.Bruiser Bot - Bruiser bot is good for situations where you could use the increase in effective health, essentially this lil' bro adds to your survivability considerably, not withstanding that the currently LAS as depicted here isn't already pretty survival oriented. Bruiser bot generally is a good swap for Obstruct Vision where you can get it because his "taunt" is also an interrupt. The "taunt" can remove any shields though its more like a "bruiser-kick" and so would have to be used after you use something like Zap. Using both Zap and Bruiser "taunt" at the same time will usually guarantee an interrupt since it takes Bruiser bot a minute to process information. The down side is the robot pet AIs are not stellar, Bruiser bot can and will turn mobs and bosses in the direction of your fellow party members resulting in cleaves and sometimes misplacement as Bruiser bot can keep running in one direction with a mob, although this latter bug is rarer with the changes to robots. A further change has also made it so Bruiser bot will not hold threat indefinitely, he will eventually lose threat on something and come back to you even if you are no longer attacking, but sometimes even that doesn't happen, its random. At best he will give you a couple seconds breather which is always nice on some fights if your party can afford or move quickly enough out of the way of a boss turning on you. Tiering up bruiser bot for the added deflect is only truly reasonable if he is going to step up and in most fights he won't. The points can be better spent elsewhere.Zap – Zap is the interrupt, main interrupt, Engineers get. You get this early on. When tiered to 4 it interrupts twice. Interrupts remove armor and stun, but cannot stun a target that is armored, they can only remove the armor. But in the case of Zap when tiered, it can interrupt an enemy with one armor since it takes off two armor. See interruptor guide for more info on MoO.Miasma – Ah Miasma. Miasma and I have a love hate relationship, there have been times where I have moved away from it successfully, and other times when I've begrudgingly gone back to its usage. But at the end of the day Miasma is amazing, especially now. Miasma's volatility cost has been dropped to 25 Volatility, cut in half from 40. While tiering Miasma can be useful, each tier up gives one 1% increase chance to blunder on the enemies, the tier thresholds four and eight, are not that great. Still though with the volatility decrease, this ability can be spammed, there really is no time when you can't have tons of miasma down now. While enemies are in Miasma they get a debuff that last three seconds, and this debuff is constantly reapplies while in Miasma. This debuff creates a blunder on enemies making it so their attacks can be deflected by x%. At base with no tiering, this is a minimum 25%. More deflects = more chances at the Feed Back ability for you, which can be very useful. So if you're going to use Miasma it is best to have Feedback. The abilities work extremely well together and you can do a lot more damage on enemies attacking you.Shock Pulse – This is a great threat generator and volatility resource gain especially when you pull multiple mobs. If all three beams hit, for each beam that's 10 volatility, so against a bunch of mobs you can get 100 volatility right off the pull. This ability also snares targets, reducing movement speed which increases with tiering. (There are only certain circumstances where tiering this ability to 4, even, is useful allowing its CD to be reset by usage of PE) SP also generates threat now 150% per beam, so now its even better! Once you have a good chunk of volatility rolling around and you are “in the zone” you won't have to use SP that much during your fight, but it can be used to give you a nice buffer or just apply another snare. Snaring is useful.Volatile Injection - This is now a great utility not just for you but 4 other friends within a 15 m radius of you. At base it grants 10% crit chance to you and 4 other allies, and last for 5 seconds. It also increases your critical deflect by the same amount. At tier 4, it gives interrupt armor to you when you use it, so if you know you are about to be cc'd in some way, popping this right before can be useful as well. Feed Back – Great attack ability. It is almost as much your bread and butter as PE is. It can only be used after deflecting so again Miasma is a great partner for this ability. At tier 4 the usage of FB generates volatility when you are “in the zone”.“In the Zone”:
In the Zone is a term you will hear most dps and tank engineers throw around. When we are generating volatility, there is a sweet spot, usually between 30 – 70 volatility, where certain abilities, Disruptive Module, Bio Shell, Ricochet, etc, are either now instant, perform an additional ability or do something especial when tiered for it. Certain amps can help you stay “in the zone” and that is discussed below.
AMPS:
Generally, Engineer tanks want most of the amps in the support tree. Now that absorb shields stack and they are also increased by Tech stats, Reboot is incredibly useful in some circumstances if not most. Additionally, Rejuvenative Rain, and Try and Hurt Me, become increasingly useful now that they also scale with Tech. This two abilities allow Engineers to heal passively on health. No direct ability we have allows us to gain health, unlike those shady stalkers, so these passive regens are great given that we can restore our shields and mitigate damage with our shields while this process occurs. Try and Hurt Me though is only active while you are “In the Zone” so volatility management is key, it can easily be a crazy heal for you if managed well.
Outside of these amps, you have your crit amps, take them if you need threat, but even then you will want them to get access to the Volatility Rising Amp in the assault tree. When you hit “the Zone” at 30, this amp makes it so you passively gain volatility while “In the Zone”. This is extremely useful for both tank and dps engineer.
Last but not least, is the utility tree in the south. Points here can be spent to decrease CDs on abilities, especially interrupts, significantly.
Rune Sets:
Technophile – Great for threat and getting some additional tech in your build. Getting this to 4/12 is generally more than enough, any excess is not extremely necessary. If you are a dps engineer, you would probably want more 8/12 or 12/12 altogether depending. For a tank though 4/12 is fine. This ability increase your tech damage and applies a debuff on the target for that purpose. The percent chance is low, but with PE, the odds of that happening on a target are significantly increased due to the channeled nature of the ability.
Shield Specialist - Engineers are the abosrb kings, and the crit monsters, so you want your shields in top notch condition. Shield specialist to 8/12 tends to be the base. The next set bonus 12/12, does not increase shielding significantly from the 8/12 mark.
Preservation Health – Another good 8/12 one to have. This set increases your health, but again the 12/12 set bonus does not have a significant jump from the 8/12 mark, so 8/12 tends to be the base. This rune set also makes it possible to generate health when damaging enemies, it can proc often given the channeled nature of PE and all your dots. (Miasma, Disruptive Module)
In the Zone - An engineer only rune set. Getting this to 11/15 is probably the target, but getting 15/15 if you can get it, would be godly. Since you spend most of your time “In the Zone”, this rune set is perfect. While in the zone you will gain a set amount of armor at around 15/15 this amount is 1.5K. Armor and resistances in game are amazing. The amount contributed to you via stats was nerfed in the last drop, but this is still no reason to avoid them. Armor increases all resistances, physical, magic, and technology, by a certain amount.
