Ok guys, trying to get into the Engi, as I’ve read he’s got one of the few and still reliable Power rotations for Fractals, and they say it’s a very fun and damaging class!
However I can’t seem to get past level 10 with him… Here are my questions.
1.- Which is the best kit to level him up? I find I take a long time to kill anythig with any weapon…
2.- How viable is Scrapper for “casual” PVE, like low level fractals and open world? Is the damage higher or lower than power Reaper?
3.- Is it worth to invest in Rampager gear while I grind to get the condition gear?
4.- Outside of Raids, is it needed to have a “pianist” rotation to be good?
Most of my questions surround zerk Engi/Scrapper btw.
Thanks!
1: Grenade or bomb kit should do the job well. They are integral kits for both power and condi builds, so it is probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with them while you are leveling.
2: Scrapper can get the job done in casual pve. Honestly, it doesn’t really have superb damage, but it does enough to get the job done without having you break a sweat. Although I haven’t done/seen any benchmarks from the hardcore pve community, I think there is a general understanding that scrapper does less dps than a condi reaper. Scrapper is sort of designed to perform better at pvp than pve, since it has good bunkering capabilities, CC, sustain, and gyros (although gyros have been getting nerfed to oblivion lately). IMO condi reaper also has a better edge when it comes to open world because of epidemic (despite the recent changes, it is still powerful as heck in open world).
3: IMO it would be better to get sinister gear instead of rampager. You’ll get much better mileage out of sinister compared to rampager. The problem however, is that sinister armor and weapons are obtainable through crafting only, much like viper gear. If you already have 400 crafting, then sinister should be really cheap to craft now since they have fallen out of the meta. I think it will be a worthwhile endeavor to roll sinister gear while you work towards viper. If your end game goal is to do condi engi at end game content such as raids and t4 fractals, you’ll need some time to master what I believe is the most complex and frustrating rotation in the entire game. A lot of condi engi rotation boils down to playing it long enough to the point where you just develop an internal clock since you will be juggling 4 kits and you can’t see which skills from which kits are about to go off cooldown.
4: That is a sort of yes and no answer. Power engi builds don’t need that at all. Power engi is more of a ‘spam 1 skill till the end of time’ sort of build. That is not the case for a condi engi. To achieve the max possible dps, a pianist rotation will be necessary. None of condi engi’s skills are particularly bursty in terms of condi dmg. A condi engi’s dps comes from spamming a ton of skills, that individually do little condi dmg, in rapid succession so you end up stacking a lot of conditions. This requires really good manual dexterity as you have to move through your kits/rotation really quickly to ramp up/maintain the stacks of bleeds, burns, and poison. The ‘pianist’ way is unfortunately the only good way to play a condi engi. Otherwise, you’ll be doing more dps on a power engi. Condi engie is a sort of a weird one, in that either you got the rotation down and do terrific damage that melts down mobs, or you don’t have the rotation down and you struggle to do decent damage even in open world standards. Good news is, there are much less complicated condi engi rotations that you can find on youtube. Some of these rotations allow you to get really close to the benchmark dps of 35K without having to give yourself carpal tunnel and aneurysms every time.
