36 réponses à ce sujet

[Astalder]

Any tips on how you use Cryo blast, and what do you sacrifice for it?

[blueTrance]

SuperVaderMan wrote...

Cryo blast is actually EXTREMELY useful. It's saved my arse more times than I can count from charging enemies (damn krogans). Oh and, get this, it kills husks INSTANTLY!

Agreed. It's one of my favorite skills in the game, and yet it gets no love. 

[SuperVaderMan]

Astalder wrote...

Any tips on how you use Cryo blast, and what do you sacrifice for it?

Don't use Cryo blast on enemies behind cover, they'll just fall over and you won't be able to shoot them anyways.  You'll mostly want to use it against charging enemies to trump any flanking attempts, and again it kills unarmored husks INSTANTLY as in they just shatter upon freezing.  It's also great for preventing boss-level humanoids, like blue sun commanders and even Eclipse vanguards from restoring their protections.  Occasionally you'll be able to catch someone out of cover, but don't count on it.

And if you have Attack Drone, ALWAYS spawn one before using Cryo Blast, as the cooldown for the Drone is much shorter than for Cryo.  And the Drone takes precedence over all your other powers if you're trying to keep a boss busy and he keeps blowing the Drone up.

I gave up AI hacking and most of incinerate (still have 1 point in that, just to stop regening enemies) for it.  Though I guess in my build you could give up Attack Drone for Dominate, whichever you prefer.

[Haasth]

Engineers are awesome. First time I went through this game was as an Engineer. Loved it.

Second time was as a Sentinel in fact. Loved that too but I like the more specialized classes. My vote goes to Engineer.

[themaxzero]

lessthanjake9 wrote...

themaxzero wrote...


I don't generally get Dominate for my Engineer simply because I do have Drone. Why whittle an enemies defense down just to Dominate him? Cast Drone and he is under your control (for a few seconds at least) regardless of protection. There are not too many situations where I couldn't use 2 Drones to match one Dominate.

I dont think the drone draws aggro as well as a Dominate does. The drone obviously draws aggro from the target, but not as well from everything else, I believe. Thus, you can't completely unload on the enemy that is out of cover because everything else will be shooting you. If you dominate something, suddenly virtually all aggro is not on you AND everything is out of cover. You can unload on stuff with no fear of being shot.

Dont get me wrong, Combat Drone is great. But for groups of enemies, Dominate really outdoes the drone in every way. The CC is better because you draw A LOT of fire away from you, rather than 1 or 2 guys' fire and because it lasts longer (it takes longer to kill the Dominated thing than the drone). It does more damage because the Dominated guy will get killed without you touching him AND do lots of damage himself. And it allows you to do more damage because it will draw more stuff out of cover while keeping more fire away from you. So it is the superior CC weapon for groups, while Combat Drone is the ultimate CC weapon for strong single targets as its low cooldown and ability to work on enemies with defenses makes it the perfect weapon to lock down a single target.

Okay so I decided to give Dominate a real chance. I ran all the missions from post Horizon to the Collector ship.

The missions where:

Thane recruitment
Samara recruitment
Tali recruitment
Jacob Loyalty
Grunt Loyalty
Mordin Loyalty (run these two at the end and you get an extra mission in before Collector ship as long as you don't reboard Normandy)
Collector Ship

How it went:

Well Tali and Jacob's missions were a write off since they are pretty much nothing but mechs/Geth.

Thane and Samara's missions were not too much better, a mix of Eclipse (Barriers) and Bots. While your teammates can remove Barriers (I ran with Miranda and Thane once I got him) the long CDs and the weaker damage do show.

Grunt and Mordin's missions are the only missions where it was useful. Worked well on the Krogan and the Rachni (or whatever they are called now).

Special mention to collector ship. The difference between having Reave and not was like night and day. The points I saved by going with Reave (since you still need a Armour breaker with Dominate) went into gettting Demolisher. Another -20% recharge and +15% damage was damn nice.

[Jaekahn]

I'm going into my NG+ Insanity run with my Engineer and I intend to check which playstyle is more beneficial. My hardcore run was pretty easy with the Heavy Incinerate/ Overload combo while maintaining my explosive drone. I'm wondering how well AI Hacking / Cryo / Dominate works.

[lessthanjake9]

themaxzero wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

themaxzero wrote...


I don't generally get Dominate for my Engineer simply because I do have Drone. Why whittle an enemies defense down just to Dominate him? Cast Drone and he is under your control (for a few seconds at least) regardless of protection. There are not too many situations where I couldn't use 2 Drones to match one Dominate.

I dont think the drone draws aggro as well as a Dominate does. The drone obviously draws aggro from the target, but not as well from everything else, I believe. Thus, you can't completely unload on the enemy that is out of cover because everything else will be shooting you. If you dominate something, suddenly virtually all aggro is not on you AND everything is out of cover. You can unload on stuff with no fear of being shot.

Dont get me wrong, Combat Drone is great. But for groups of enemies, Dominate really outdoes the drone in every way. The CC is better because you draw A LOT of fire away from you, rather than 1 or 2 guys' fire and because it lasts longer (it takes longer to kill the Dominated thing than the drone). It does more damage because the Dominated guy will get killed without you touching him AND do lots of damage himself. And it allows you to do more damage because it will draw more stuff out of cover while keeping more fire away from you. So it is the superior CC weapon for groups, while Combat Drone is the ultimate CC weapon for strong single targets as its low cooldown and ability to work on enemies with defenses makes it the perfect weapon to lock down a single target.

Okay so I decided to give Dominate a real chance. I ran all the missions from post Horizon to the Collector ship.

The missions where:

Thane recruitment
Samara recruitment
Tali recruitment
Jacob Loyalty
Grunt Loyalty
Mordin Loyalty (run these two at the end and you get an extra mission in before Collector ship as long as you don't reboard Normandy)
Collector Ship

How it went:

Well Tali and Jacob's missions were a write off since they are pretty much nothing but mechs/Geth.

Thane and Samara's missions were not too much better, a mix of Eclipse (Barriers) and Bots. While your teammates can remove Barriers (I ran with Miranda and Thane once I got him) the long CDs and the weaker damage do show.

Grunt and Mordin's missions are the only missions where it was useful. Worked well on the Krogan and the Rachni (or whatever they are called now).

Special mention to collector ship. The difference between having Reave and not was like night and day. The points I saved by going with Reave (since you still need a Armour breaker with Dominate) went into gettting Demolisher. Another -20% recharge and +15% damage was damn nice.

Well first off, if you are going for Dominate, you should also go for AI Hacking so that you can use the same playstyle on mech-heavy missions.

Secondly, I think you are playing this type of engineer in the wrong way. You aren't supposed to be attacking using Incinerate and Overload. That takes away much of the purpose of Dominate. Dominate gets stuff out of cover. This allows you to SHOOT them a bunch, which will do more damage than powers can. If you are focusing on Incinerate and Overload then there is no need to get stuff out of cover, as you can mostly use your powers to get around cover.

As I said, though, sustained shooting does more damage than powers, so if you CAN get them out of cover, you should shoot instead of use powers. Dominate allows you to do this. That is the point. You constantly put yourself in the situation where your squad can do the most damage (shooting enemies while they are out of cover).

You mentioned problems with cooldowns. This shouldnt happen. Once you use Dominate, it really should be all about shooting. You just need to occasionally use Dominate on another guy or throw out your Combat Drone to keep fire away from you. That is all. Cooldown is not an issue in that case. It only becomes an issue if you are using Dominate/Combat Drone and ALSO trying to have your offense be Incinerate/Overload. But you shouldnt be doing that.

What you should be doing is this. Take Assault Rifle as your bonus weapon once you can. On any given mission, take an ally with you that can apply a good squad ammo power for that mission. So if you are going on Tali's recruitment mission with a bunch of geth, take Zaeed for the Disruptor Ammo. If you expect a lot of armored enemies, take Garrus for AP Ammo or someone with Incendiary Ammo, and if you expect a bunch of barriers, maybe take Jack for Warp Ammo. Make sure to also have allies that have powers to quickly strip off defenses for the situation of the given mission. As much as possible, you also want allies that just do a ton of damage with their weapons, because they will have a lot of open shots.

Let's say you are going on Tali's recruitment mission. You will be facing geth. Geth have shields. You might take Zaeed and Garrus with you. Between a Combat Drone, Garrus' Overload, and some shots you can strip one geth of shields quite quickly. Use AI Hacking on it. Have Zaeed and Garrus snipe away on the distracted geth (allies with snipers do a ton of damage) while you assault rifle them down. Squad Disruptor Ammo will make this go even faster. Use AI Hacking again and again until the battle is over to keep fire away from you.

The point is, if you leverage the abilities of your squad correctly you can create a squad that has no problem taking down the defenses of an enemy quickly, even if you aren't super well equipped to do it yourself. With that same squad you can get heavy firepower and ammo powers that will allow your squad to take maximum advantage of the open fire opportunities Dominate/AI Hacking give. I am not even mentioning the fact that you hardly even need allies with specific powers for the defenses. All you need to do is throw a combat drone on a guy, and focus fire on him for a second. Any defense will go down quite quickly from this, allowing you to Dominate/Hack. Taking assault rifle as a bonus weapon makes this even more true, as assault rifles are great vs all defenses.

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 11 février 2010 - 10:45 .

[themaxzero]

lessthanjake9 wrote...

themaxzero wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

themaxzero wrote...


I don't generally get Dominate for my Engineer simply because I do have Drone. Why whittle an enemies defense down just to Dominate him? Cast Drone and he is under your control (for a few seconds at least) regardless of protection. There are not too many situations where I couldn't use 2 Drones to match one Dominate.

I dont think the drone draws aggro as well as a Dominate does. The drone obviously draws aggro from the target, but not as well from everything else, I believe. Thus, you can't completely unload on the enemy that is out of cover because everything else will be shooting you. If you dominate something, suddenly virtually all aggro is not on you AND everything is out of cover. You can unload on stuff with no fear of being shot.

Dont get me wrong, Combat Drone is great. But for groups of enemies, Dominate really outdoes the drone in every way. The CC is better because you draw A LOT of fire away from you, rather than 1 or 2 guys' fire and because it lasts longer (it takes longer to kill the Dominated thing than the drone). It does more damage because the Dominated guy will get killed without you touching him AND do lots of damage himself. And it allows you to do more damage because it will draw more stuff out of cover while keeping more fire away from you. So it is the superior CC weapon for groups, while Combat Drone is the ultimate CC weapon for strong single targets as its low cooldown and ability to work on enemies with defenses makes it the perfect weapon to lock down a single target.

Okay so I decided to give Dominate a real chance. I ran all the missions from post Horizon to the Collector ship.

The missions where:

Thane recruitment
Samara recruitment
Tali recruitment
Jacob Loyalty
Grunt Loyalty
Mordin Loyalty (run these two at the end and you get an extra mission in before Collector ship as long as you don't reboard Normandy)
Collector Ship

How it went:

Well Tali and Jacob's missions were a write off since they are pretty much nothing but mechs/Geth.

Thane and Samara's missions were not too much better, a mix of Eclipse (Barriers) and Bots. While your teammates can remove Barriers (I ran with Miranda and Thane once I got him) the long CDs and the weaker damage do show.

Grunt and Mordin's missions are the only missions where it was useful. Worked well on the Krogan and the Rachni (or whatever they are called now).

Special mention to collector ship. The difference between having Reave and not was like night and day. The points I saved by going with Reave (since you still need a Armour breaker with Dominate) went into gettting Demolisher. Another -20% recharge and +15% damage was damn nice.

Well first off, if you are going for Dominate, you should also go for AI Hacking so that you can use the same playstyle on mech-heavy missions.

Secondly, I think you are playing this type of engineer in the wrong way. You aren't supposed to be attacking using Incinerate and Overload. That takes away much of the purpose of Dominate. Dominate gets stuff out of cover. This allows you to SHOOT them a bunch, which will do more damage than powers can. If you are focusing on Incinerate and Overload then there is no need to get stuff out of cover, as you can mostly use your powers to get around cover.

As I said, though, sustained shooting does more damage than powers, so if you CAN get them out of cover, you should shoot instead of use powers. Dominate allows you to do this. That is the point. You constantly put yourself in the situation where your squad can do the most damage (shooting enemies while they are out of cover).

You mentioned problems with cooldowns. This shouldnt happen. Once you use Dominate, it really should be all about shooting. You just need to occasionally use Dominate on another guy or throw out your Combat Drone to keep fire away from you. That is all. Cooldown is not an issue in that case. It only becomes an issue if you are using Dominate/Combat Drone and ALSO trying to have your offense be Incinerate/Overload. But you shouldnt be doing that.

What you should be doing is this. Take Assault Rifle as your bonus weapon once you can. On any given mission, take an ally with you that can apply a good squad ammo power for that mission. So if you are going on Tali's recruitment mission with a bunch of geth, take Zaeed for the Disruptor Ammo. If you expect a lot of armored enemies, take Garrus for AP Ammo or someone with Incendiary Ammo, and if you expect a bunch of barriers, maybe take Jack for Warp Ammo. Make sure to also have allies that have powers to quickly strip off defenses for the situation of the given mission. As much as possible, you also want allies that just do a ton of damage with their weapons, because they will have a lot of open shots.

Let's say you are going on Tali's recruitment mission. You will be facing geth. Geth have shields. You might take Zaeed and Garrus with you. Between a Combat Drone, Garrus' Overload, and some shots you can strip one geth of shields quite quickly. Use AI Hacking on it. Have Zaeed and Garrus snipe away on the distracted geth (allies with snipers do a ton of damage) while you assault rifle them down. Squad Disruptor Ammo will make this go even faster. Use AI Hacking again and again until the battle is over to keep fire away from you.

The point is, if you leverage the abilities of your squad correctly you can create a squad that has no problem taking down the defenses of an enemy quickly, even if you aren't super well equipped to do it yourself. With that same squad you can get heavy firepower and ammo powers that will allow your squad to take maximum advantage of the open fire opportunities Dominate/AI Hacking give. I am not even mentioning the fact that you hardly even need allies with specific powers for the defenses. All you need to do is throw a combat drone on a guy, and focus fire on him for a second. Any defense will go down quite quickly from this, allowing you to Dominate/Hack. Taking assault rifle as a bonus weapon makes this even more true, as assault rifles are great vs all defenses.

Yes but you need to get those defense down first before you can Dominate. Assault Rifle is AFTER the collectors. Garrus AP ammo is AFTER the collectors ship. What do you do before that? Especially since you won't have a self ammo power and will have to rely on squad powers. Considering that Zaeed is the only decent Insanity team member with a Ammo Power pre Collector ship.

You say to get teammaters that give squad Ammo, strip defences and do good weapon damage. So I basically have to take Loyal Garrus and Thane on every mission? Good squadmates should be a peak not a nessesity.

I would really like to see videos of someone skipping Overload and Incinerate and focuses on purely AI Hacking and Dominate. Not doubting but would like to see it first hand to see how it works.

Modifié par themaxzero, 11 février 2010 - 11:33 .

[lessthanjake9]

themaxzero wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

themaxzero wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

themaxzero wrote...


I don't generally get Dominate for my Engineer simply because I do have Drone. Why whittle an enemies defense down just to Dominate him? Cast Drone and he is under your control (for a few seconds at least) regardless of protection. There are not too many situations where I couldn't use 2 Drones to match one Dominate.

I dont think the drone draws aggro as well as a Dominate does. The drone obviously draws aggro from the target, but not as well from everything else, I believe. Thus, you can't completely unload on the enemy that is out of cover because everything else will be shooting you. If you dominate something, suddenly virtually all aggro is not on you AND everything is out of cover. You can unload on stuff with no fear of being shot.

Dont get me wrong, Combat Drone is great. But for groups of enemies, Dominate really outdoes the drone in every way. The CC is better because you draw A LOT of fire away from you, rather than 1 or 2 guys' fire and because it lasts longer (it takes longer to kill the Dominated thing than the drone). It does more damage because the Dominated guy will get killed without you touching him AND do lots of damage himself. And it allows you to do more damage because it will draw more stuff out of cover while keeping more fire away from you. So it is the superior CC weapon for groups, while Combat Drone is the ultimate CC weapon for strong single targets as its low cooldown and ability to work on enemies with defenses makes it the perfect weapon to lock down a single target.

Okay so I decided to give Dominate a real chance. I ran all the missions from post Horizon to the Collector ship.

The missions where:

Thane recruitment
Samara recruitment
Tali recruitment
Jacob Loyalty
Grunt Loyalty
Mordin Loyalty (run these two at the end and you get an extra mission in before Collector ship as long as you don't reboard Normandy)
Collector Ship

How it went:

Well Tali and Jacob's missions were a write off since they are pretty much nothing but mechs/Geth.

Thane and Samara's missions were not too much better, a mix of Eclipse (Barriers) and Bots. While your teammates can remove Barriers (I ran with Miranda and Thane once I got him) the long CDs and the weaker damage do show.

Grunt and Mordin's missions are the only missions where it was useful. Worked well on the Krogan and the Rachni (or whatever they are called now).

Special mention to collector ship. The difference between having Reave and not was like night and day. The points I saved by going with Reave (since you still need a Armour breaker with Dominate) went into gettting Demolisher. Another -20% recharge and +15% damage was damn nice.

Well first off, if you are going for Dominate, you should also go for AI Hacking so that you can use the same playstyle on mech-heavy missions.

Secondly, I think you are playing this type of engineer in the wrong way. You aren't supposed to be attacking using Incinerate and Overload. That takes away much of the purpose of Dominate. Dominate gets stuff out of cover. This allows you to SHOOT them a bunch, which will do more damage than powers can. If you are focusing on Incinerate and Overload then there is no need to get stuff out of cover, as you can mostly use your powers to get around cover.

As I said, though, sustained shooting does more damage than powers, so if you CAN get them out of cover, you should shoot instead of use powers. Dominate allows you to do this. That is the point. You constantly put yourself in the situation where your squad can do the most damage (shooting enemies while they are out of cover).

You mentioned problems with cooldowns. This shouldnt happen. Once you use Dominate, it really should be all about shooting. You just need to occasionally use Dominate on another guy or throw out your Combat Drone to keep fire away from you. That is all. Cooldown is not an issue in that case. It only becomes an issue if you are using Dominate/Combat Drone and ALSO trying to have your offense be Incinerate/Overload. But you shouldnt be doing that.

What you should be doing is this. Take Assault Rifle as your bonus weapon once you can. On any given mission, take an ally with you that can apply a good squad ammo power for that mission. So if you are going on Tali's recruitment mission with a bunch of geth, take Zaeed for the Disruptor Ammo. If you expect a lot of armored enemies, take Garrus for AP Ammo or someone with Incendiary Ammo, and if you expect a bunch of barriers, maybe take Jack for Warp Ammo. Make sure to also have allies that have powers to quickly strip off defenses for the situation of the given mission. As much as possible, you also want allies that just do a ton of damage with their weapons, because they will have a lot of open shots.

Let's say you are going on Tali's recruitment mission. You will be facing geth. Geth have shields. You might take Zaeed and Garrus with you. Between a Combat Drone, Garrus' Overload, and some shots you can strip one geth of shields quite quickly. Use AI Hacking on it. Have Zaeed and Garrus snipe away on the distracted geth (allies with snipers do a ton of damage) while you assault rifle them down. Squad Disruptor Ammo will make this go even faster. Use AI Hacking again and again until the battle is over to keep fire away from you.

The point is, if you leverage the abilities of your squad correctly you can create a squad that has no problem taking down the defenses of an enemy quickly, even if you aren't super well equipped to do it yourself. With that same squad you can get heavy firepower and ammo powers that will allow your squad to take maximum advantage of the open fire opportunities Dominate/AI Hacking give. I am not even mentioning the fact that you hardly even need allies with specific powers for the defenses. All you need to do is throw a combat drone on a guy, and focus fire on him for a second. Any defense will go down quite quickly from this, allowing you to Dominate/Hack. Taking assault rifle as a bonus weapon makes this even more true, as assault rifles are great vs all defenses.

Yes but you need to get those defense down first before you can Dominate. Assault Rifle is AFTER the collectors. Garrus AP ammo is AFTER the collectors ship. What do you do before that? Especially since you won't have a self ammo power and will have to rely on squad powers. Considering that Zaeed is the only decent Insanity team member with a Ammo Power pre Collector ship.

I would really like to see videos of someone skipping Overload and Incinerate and focuses on purely AI Hacking and Dominate. Not doubting but would like to see it first hand to see how it works.

Can't you start using the Assault Rifle IN the Collector Ship? You get access to it there, but I forget if you can actually use the weapon you choose right away. And of course, one might be just importing the character back in, in which case they can use an assault rifle from the beginning.

Yes AP Ammo is after the Collectors ship, but before that you got a couple allies with Incendiary Ammo. Why not use Grunt? Grunt does a ton of damage. His problem on higher levels is survivability, but that is where Dominate comes in. If they aren't shooting him from close up, he can stay alive while still dealing gigantic damage and providing you with a good ammo power and Concussive Shot for Barriers. I would say that a Dominate Engineer has more synergy with Grunt on higher difficulties than any other character. It is the best way to keep him alive, while still having him do all his damage up close. And Grunt is doubly good on the Collector Ship because he is great against husks.

Anyways, I do not have any videos, but it definitely can be done. It MIGHT be useful to take points in Overload and Incinerate early on before you get the assault rifle and then spec them out later. I wouldnt do that myself because I think you are fine with just a heavy pistol and smg, but it could be done to help strip off defenses quickly. It would work just fine because you dont actually need to dump a ton of points in ai hack/dominate for them to work well.

I just don't see the point though. If you are using Dominate/AI Hack, then all getting an assault rifle does is up your damage output. It doesnt drastically change what you are able to do. The only reason to use Incinerate/Overload is if you find yourself running out of ammo too much with just a heavy pistol and smg.

[themaxzero]

lessthanjake9 wrote...

Can't you start using the Assault Rifle IN the Collector Ship? You get access to it there, but I forget if you can actually use the weapon you choose right away. And of course, one might be just importing the character back in, in which case they can use an assault rifle from the beginning.

Yes AP Ammo is after the Collectors ship, but before that you got a couple allies with Incendiary Ammo. Why not use Grunt? Grunt does a ton of damage. His problem on higher levels is survivability, but that is where Dominate comes in. If they aren't shooting him from close up, he can stay alive while still dealing gigantic damage and providing you with a good ammo power and Concussive Shot for Barriers. I would say that a Dominate Engineer has more synergy with Grunt on higher difficulties than any other character. It is the best way to keep him alive, while still having him do all his damage up close. And Grunt is doubly good on the Collector Ship because he is great against husks.

Anyways, I do not have any videos, but it definitely can be done. It MIGHT be useful to take points in Overload and Incinerate early on before you get the assault rifle and then spec them out later. I wouldnt do that myself because I think you are fine with just a heavy pistol and smg, but it could be done to help strip off defenses quickly. It would work just fine because you dont actually need to dump a ton of points in ai hack/dominate for them to work well.

I just don't see the point though. If you are using Dominate/AI Hack, then all getting an assault rifle does is up your damage output. It doesnt drastically change what you are able to do. The only reason to use Incinerate/Overload is if you find yourself running out of ammo too much with just a heavy pistol and smg.

I'm sure it is viable but not sure whether is especially effective. My Reave Engineer needs no particular squad mates, can strip any defence and can benefit from squad ammo as well (but he hardly need to shoot). There have been several occasions where all my teammates have died and I finished off the boss fight by myself (the final boss fight in Samara recruitment and Garrus Loyalty come to mind).

Modifié par themaxzero, 11 février 2010 - 11:56 .

[lessthanjake9]

themaxzero wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

Can't you start using the Assault Rifle IN the Collector Ship? You get access to it there, but I forget if you can actually use the weapon you choose right away. And of course, one might be just importing the character back in, in which case they can use an assault rifle from the beginning.

Yes AP Ammo is after the Collectors ship, but before that you got a couple allies with Incendiary Ammo. Why not use Grunt? Grunt does a ton of damage. His problem on higher levels is survivability, but that is where Dominate comes in. If they aren't shooting him from close up, he can stay alive while still dealing gigantic damage and providing you with a good ammo power and Concussive Shot for Barriers. I would say that a Dominate Engineer has more synergy with Grunt on higher difficulties than any other character. It is the best way to keep him alive, while still having him do all his damage up close. And Grunt is doubly good on the Collector Ship because he is great against husks.

Anyways, I do not have any videos, but it definitely can be done. It MIGHT be useful to take points in Overload and Incinerate early on before you get the assault rifle and then spec them out later. I wouldnt do that myself because I think you are fine with just a heavy pistol and smg, but it could be done to help strip off defenses quickly. It would work just fine because you dont actually need to dump a ton of points in ai hack/dominate for them to work well.

I just don't see the point though. If you are using Dominate/AI Hack, then all getting an assault rifle does is up your damage output. It doesnt drastically change what you are able to do. The only reason to use Incinerate/Overload is if you find yourself running out of ammo too much with just a heavy pistol and smg.

I'm sure it is viable but not sure whether is especially effective. My Reave Engineer needs no particular squad mates, can strip any defence and can benefit from squad ammo as well (but he hardly need to shoot). There have been several occasions where all my teammates have died and I finished off the boss fight by myself (the final boss fight in Samara recruitment and Garrus Loyalty come to mind).

My Dominate Engineer doesnt NEED anyone to be effective either. The point is that getting enemies out of cover vastly increases your squad members' DPS too. To make the most of that, you want a squad with high damaging characters and a good ammo power for the situation. This way, the amount of damage your squad will do on the distracted and out of cover enemies will be maximized.

But, really, the Engineer could easily do the same strategy with a squad that doesnt fit the profile I just outlined. He could also do it by himself quite easily. All it takes is this:

Combat Drone an enemy and fire on him when he stands up. If you have a fully upgraded Drone, itll do some damage as well (either from its attack or from explosion). Once the guy's defenses are down from your fire/drone, use dominate. Then just shoot a ton at guys, and keep Dominating new guys as it cools down. It would work quite well. It just works better with a squad because the whole squad will benefit from being able to freely open fire (and because you might run out of ammo if you tried to do an entire fight like that yourself).

As for finishing off bosses by yourself, that is also quite possible. The drone allows the engineer to totally own bosses because it can distract them indefinitely. Is an engineer who has upgraded Incinerate/Overload going to be able to take down a boss who is distracted by a drone moderately quicker than my engineer would? Yes (although youd have to be careful that you didnt have yourself on cooldown from incinerate/overload when you need your drone to be used again), but the drone really means it is just a matter of time, so my engineer still shines in this situation.

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 11 février 2010 - 12:10 .

[Miths]

I'm two hours into my engineer game (hardcore) now. I'm still intent on using AI hacking and probably later Dominate (I went with Reave as my initial bonus power), as well as Cryo Blast for a crowd control play style - but I suspect I'll probably be respecing more than once along the way.



Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions.