Hello,
I’ve played engineer as my main since release. Although I’ve tried many classes (many of which I felt were better at filling the roles in the game) I stuck with him because he was fun. After seeing the graphs indicating that Engineer is the least played class in the West, and recently he is also the least played class in China, I’ve been trying to think of ways to help us fulfill our role better, to let give us a special way that allows us to play and give us a position in groups without knocking out another class for that role.
Engineers should receive buffs and debuffs depending on their position in battle. An engineers play would change and his buffs/debuffs would change depending on factors that account into his position in relation to things on the battle. This will greatly compliment the adapt playstyle that the engineer is advertised as having.
Here are some examples
Turrets- Turrets will buff each other based on other turrets on the field. So a Rocket turret + flame turret means that it shoots flares instead of rockets which do less physical damage, but have increase fire damage. Its overcharge is now Flare Barrage which will reveal stealth targets and do fire damage and a small amount of physical damage. Flame turret would not shoot out blobs of napalm which would create a blast finisher, do a good amount of physical damage, and a small amount of fire damage. However its attack speed is slower. Its overcharge would be shooting napalm out in all directions around it. This is just an example I quickly thought up to demsontrate what I mean. Then the Engineer himself would receive boons based on which turret he is closest too. Why is this good? This would not only help compliment our playstyle of adaption, but it would also compliment little used skills such as healing turrets with our toolkit, using jumpshot on our rifle for movement instead of on top of us, and the trait that lets us throw turrets.
Gadgets- gadgets right now deal heavily in the CC department, I have two ideas. One would be making the traits heavily deal with debuffs/buffs given to the engineer based on the position of enemies and allies on the field. This would compliment gadgets greatly in their current state, but also make the tree overpowered. Another idea would making gadgets themselves act differently depending on the position of enemies and allies. An example would be PBR. If PBR is used on an enemy who doesn’t have any allies (other enemies) near him, it would stun instead of knockback. However if it is used on him near other enemies it would just do a simple knockback. That is just an example again.
Trait Ideas- I feel like there should be more traits dealing with the position of a engineer, allies, and enemies. Some examples, not balanced but just to demonstrate the idea
Scope- If you are 600 range aware from your target, your crit chance increases by 25% however you attack speed slows by 15%
Pass the Drink- When throwing elixirs, if you are hit by the boon the effect it will cause the default effect you see, however if thrown and it hits only other allies; the effect will be 25% more potent. If only enemies are hit by it, enemies will receive the boon’s condition brother (so basically how corrupt boon causes conditions based on what boons you corrupt, this would be like that except it will be from the actual application. I wouldn’t recommend this if you plan on fixing the boon/condi spam meta however).
Last Stand- Rifles abilities receive a cooldown reduction of 30% and a damage increase by 20% if there are more enemies than allies within 300 yards of you for 20 seconds (30 second CD). However, if this effect starts and ends while you’re still alive; you will receive a debuff that increases the CD by 15% and reduces damage by 10% for 10 seconds.
Mechanical Support- Turrets will now also offer buffs to allies so long as the engineer is not in the raidus of the turret. This is to the turret idea above, so that those buffs I talked about the engineer getting? Those will be given to teammates as long as the turret itself isn’t next to the engineer. So that means the engineer wont get the buff, but the allies will.
Those are just examples. Basically I feel like the Engineer has a lot of CC and some great mobility; however the traits and skills don’t compliment this at all. I think that in order to correctly show that engineers are useful and are not outclassed by the other classes (which is what is going on right now and why we see they are the leased played). To show that they have something to bring to the table that others can not. The ability to adapt and benefit teammates based on the battlefield and not based on personal stats/boons/buffs.
If any players/none developers read this; I’d also love to hear your ideas on the concept and any other ideas you may have.