Traits and skills for leveling up an Engi

[SunTzu.4513]

Greetings guys,

 

starting my second attempt to get a into engineer. I used tomes on my last one and got pretty overwehlmed at max level. This time i want to level without any boosts and stuff like this to explore all the kit's and stuff an engi has to offer.

Atm i'm pretty uncertain wich traitlines are good to use first. Also i want to ask wicht skills are fun/worth to look into while i'm leveling up aside from bomb/nate kit? I remember those rocket boots were a pretty fun thing.

[Taril.8619]

**Pistol/Pistol

Firearms

Healing Turret

Bomb Kit

Flame Turret

Rocket Boots**

 

That's the most effective leveling build in my opinion.

 

Run at things, set them on fire, run to the next thing as they melt.

 

Other specs and elite skills aren't important, so you can experiment as you go. Eventually, you can even drop Bomb Kit when you don't need Fire Bomb + Smoke Bomb to help deal with things and can rely more on just Blowtorch + Glue Shot to melt through multiple enemies.

 

A fun build if you like high APM gameplay is;

**Tools

Healing Turret

Rifle Turret

Personal Battering Ram

Rocket Boots**

 

Where your goal is to be spamming toolbelt skills a bunch and triggering Static Discharge to zap things. For secondary spec post level 45, Firearms because it's literally Engie's best core spec. After 70 pick whatever, nothing else really has much synergy since there's no Explosives for Explosives, Inventions is whack and there's no Elixirs for Alchemy...

 

Finally, you can do the standard meta Power build;

**Rifle

Firearms

Explosives

Healing Turret

Rifle Turret

Grenade Kit

Bomb Kit**

 

Which is more focused around switching into Grenade Kit for Shrapnel and Poison grenades, swapping to Rifle for Blunderbuss and Jump Shot and then using Bomb Kit as filler for auto attacks. 3rd spec post 70 is again, whatever due to lack of synergy.

[steki.1478]

I wouldnt call firearms the best core spec (like the comment above suggested), especially if you have access to only one or two specs early on and have low stats. Minor and condi traits are pretty bad for leveling, the only big benefit you have from it is increased crit chance and might on bleed (yet you dont have many bleeds and you lose the precision trait by taking the might one). Fury is also inconsistent.

 

Explosives have consistent dps buffs, amazing minor traits, great fury uptime and adds to burst damage with passive procs so it's definitely the strongest spec for direct damage. 2nd best I'd say is tools because your swiftness uptime is non existent without tools (your only decent option is elixir B, which doesnt give you 100% uptime without traits). Tools also come with good dps traits so it's pretty relevant until you get elite specs. You might even want to get tools first just because of swiftness since 10-20% extra damage that you lose from explosives isnt very relevant when open world mobs melt anyway. 3rd choice is firearms since other 2 are more utility/defense based which you dont need in pve for the most part.

 

As for weapons and skills - rifle, bombs, nades, rocket boots and whatever has good synergy with traits you choose. You have good mobility and damage with those as well as decent CC and blinds to keep you alive.

[Taril.8619]

> @"steki.1478" said:

> I wouldnt call firearms the best core spec (like the comment above suggested), especially if you have access to only one or two specs early on and have low stats. Minor and condi traits are pretty bad for leveling, the only big benefit you have from it is increased crit chance and might on bleed (yet you dont have many bleeds and you lose the precision trait by taking the might one). Fury is also inconsistent.

 

Condi traits from Firearms are amazing. Chemical Rounds for 33% extra duration on your Pistol conditions (When you won't have access to Runes/Sigils/Expertise to get duration while leveling), Thermal Vision for bonus Condi damage and Expertise for using your primary Condition, more bleeds and more crits against bleeding targets (Pistol 1 is bleed and with Chemical Rounds you're getting free 66% duration on its bleeds) then Incendiary Powder for burn on crits and 33% burn duration (Meaning now your Blowtorch has free 66% duration)

 

For power builds, you get your free 15% crit from High Caliber, 10% crit from bleeding targets (Which you'll have high uptime from due to Blunderbuss and Shrapnel Grenade as well as the occasional Sharpshooter proc), some Fury uptime from No Scope. It's only the GM traits that are kind of meh for a leveling Power build, but even then Incendiary Powder does some decent damage because 8s Burning with 33% increased burning duration is still quite strong even without stacking what little Condi Damage you can get from leveling gear.

 

> @"steki.1478" said:

> Explosives have consistent dps buffs, amazing minor traits, great fury uptime and adds to burst damage with passive procs so it's definitely the strongest spec for direct damage.

 

I'd say Explosives is significantly worse while leveling than Firearms.

 

Glass Cannon sucks because you can easily be hit below the threshold, Explosive Temper sucks because you won't have high crit chance (Only 20% from Fury if you took Short Fuse and then a few percent from whatever Precision you can scrounge together on leveling gear), Shaped Charge sucks because you won't be stacking Vuln particularly high (Most trash mobs will die too quickly) and Big Boomer has a lot lower impact when your leveling and so damage isn't high to begin with (Not to mention, the times where it'll be useful, strong mobs, are times where it's easy to get hit low and no longer have it active)

 

At level 80 when you have a build together, Explosives becomes really good, but Firearms is easily the best core spec because it provides a strong foundation of condi duration and crit chance (The crit chance can then be used by Explosives to fuel Explosive Temper getting those crits with the bonus Ferocity and then using Shaped Charge and Big Boomer to help take out Champs/Legends in higher level events)

 

 

[steki.1478]

> @"Taril.8619" said:

> > @"steki.1478" said:

> > I wouldnt call firearms the best core spec (like the comment above suggested), especially if you have access to only one or two specs early on and have low stats. Minor and condi traits are pretty bad for leveling, the only big benefit you have from it is increased crit chance and might on bleed (yet you dont have many bleeds and you lose the precision trait by taking the might one). Fury is also inconsistent.

>

> Condi traits from Firearms are amazing. Chemical Rounds for 33% extra duration on your Pistol conditions (When you won't have access to Runes/Sigils/Expertise to get duration while leveling), Thermal Vision for bonus Condi damage and Expertise for using your primary Condition, more bleeds and more crits against bleeding targets (Pistol 1 is bleed and with Chemical Rounds you're getting free 66% duration on its bleeds) then Incendiary Powder for burn on crits and 33% burn duration (Meaning now your Blowtorch has free 66% duration)

>

 

That's only useful for pistols and even then you'd mostly kill stuff with direct damage from skills (unless you use condi gear which I wouldnt suggest for leveling since there's many things that cant be damaged with conditions in core game).

 

> For power builds, you get your free 15% crit from High Caliber, 10% crit from bleeding targets (Which you'll have high uptime from due to Blunderbuss and Shrapnel Grenade as well as the occasional Sharpshooter proc), some Fury uptime from No Scope. It's only the GM traits that are kind of meh for a leveling Power build, but even then Incendiary Powder does some decent damage because 8s Burning with 33% increased burning duration is still quite strong even without stacking what little Condi Damage you can get from leveling gear.

>

 

Damage modifiers will always be better than crit chance. Also whats the point of bringing up both pistols and rifle, you cant use both in a same build. IP has big cooldown so I wouldnt rely on it. You also need to be in melee range for 15% crit chance and mobs would die from your ranged stuff anyway.

 

> > @"steki.1478" said:

> > Explosives have consistent dps buffs, amazing minor traits, great fury uptime and adds to burst damage with passive procs so it's definitely the strongest spec for direct damage.

>

> I'd say Explosives is significantly worse while leveling than Firearms.

>

> Glass Cannon sucks because you can easily be hit below the threshold, Explosive Temper sucks because you won't have high crit chance (Only 20% from Fury if you took Short Fuse and then a few percent from whatever Precision you can scrounge together on leveling gear), Shaped Charge sucks because you won't be stacking Vuln particularly high (Most trash mobs will die too quickly) and Big Boomer has a lot lower impact when your leveling and so damage isn't high to begin with (Not to mention, the times where it'll be useful, strong mobs, are times where it's easy to get hit low and no longer have it active)

 

You'd use short fuse for perma fury which is more consistent precision and uptime than firearms. Explosive temper requires no crit chance and big boomer has pretty much permanent uptime as well as gives some sustain so you dont need to spec for it elsewhere.

>

> At level 80 when you have a build together, Explosives becomes really good, but Firearms is easily the best core spec because it provides a strong foundation of condi duration and crit chance (The crit chance can then be used by Explosives to fuel Explosive Temper getting those crits with the bonus Ferocity and then using Shaped Charge and Big Boomer to help take out Champs/Legends in higher level events)

>

>

Level 80 is a different story since bleeding from shrapnel has great synergy with whole firearms spec, but early on there's no point of focusing on condies and long cooldowns because they are slow and not as impactful as direct damage.

 

I'd still take tools over both since playing with no swiftness is just terrible, unless OP has mounts at which point I'd go for explosives>firearms>tools.

 

 

[Taril.8619]

> @"steki.1478" said:

> That's only useful for pistols and even then you'd mostly kill stuff with direct damage from skills (unless you use condi gear which I wouldnt suggest for leveling since there's many things that cant be damaged with conditions in core game).

 

Which is actually still pretty good... Pistols are decent for leveling.

 

Heck, you can power level in 3-4 hours with just P/P and Firearms and condi gear.

 

Also, there aren't that many things immune to conditions in the core game. It's mostly just destructables, but you can just plop down a Rifle Turret to deal with them.

 

> @"steki.1478" said:

> Damage modifiers will always be better than crit chance.

 

No?

 

A crit is literally a 100% damage modifier baseline.

 

So 15% crit chance is literally equivalent to 15% damage modifier.

 

This continues up until you reach 100% crit rate in which crit chance no longer scales and damage modifiers will become more potent.

 

> @"steki.1478" said:

> Also whats the point of bringing up both pistols and rifle, you cant use both in a same build. IP has big cooldown so I wouldnt rely on it. You also need to be in melee range for 15% crit chance and mobs would die from your ranged stuff anyway.

 

Because I mentioned Power and Condi builds?

 

Condi builds would use Pistols. Power builds would use Rifle.

 

You don't need to rely on IP's (10s) CD, it's just an added bonus. Just like Explosive Entrance (True, you can at least force additional procs by dodging for that, but it's also way less damage)

 

Being in melee range for the crit chance is a negligable downside when Blunderbuss and Jump Shot both want you to be in melee range to deal the most damage.

 

> > > @"steki.1478" said:

> You'd use short fuse for perma fury which is more consistent precision and uptime than firearms.

 

And it's only perma-fury if you're constantly swapping to Grenade/Bomb kit every 4s to get an explosion.

 

> @"steki.1478" said:

>Explosive temper requires no crit chance

 

It most certainly does. Ferocity does NOTHING if you don't crit. Since all it does is increase the damage of crits.

 

> @"steki.1478" said:

> big boomer has pretty much permanent uptime as well as gives some sustain so you dont need to spec for it elsewhere.

 

Unless you get hit by Champs/Vets to below their current health.

 

Also it's sustain sucks. Plain and simple.

 

All of your sustain will be coming from Healing Turret, especially if you use it properly and detonate it during its Water field for additional heals.

 

 

> @"steki.1478" said:

> Level 80 is a different story since bleeding from shrapnel has great synergy with whole firearms spec, but early on there's no point of focusing on condies and long cooldowns because they are slow and not as impactful as direct damage.

 

I disagree. Condi's are plenty strong, especially Burning. They can take things out very fast and quite safely.

 

Having leveled up many characters without boosts, Condi's are the superior way of leveling. They just perform much better overall. They kill at about the same speed for equal level mobs, kill far faster against higher level mobs and allow for better chaining of kills because of how much less you need to interact with enemies.

 

Heck, the last Engie I leveled, at about level 30ish, I literally just ran up to a mob that was 9 levels higher than me, used Blowtorch, ran up to the next mob, used Napalm and Glue Shot and rinsed and repeated constantly chaining kills against enemies 9 levels higher something that is literally impossible as a Power build (Because you do only Glancing damage) and killing them really fast.

 

Not to mention, as OP wants to play around with Engie, Firearms is the optimal spec for them to start with, because it is so useful for both Condi and Power builds, meaning they can focus on putting points into Firearms and then can put points into different utilities and use Rifles/Pistols as they pick them up to get a better feel for the class as a whole.