The fieldineer
Melee:
You’ve got several options if someone comes into melee range:
- Drop a poison field and blast it for weakness.
- Drop a smoke bomb for blinds.
- DPS them – you’ve got Rifle 3+5 and most of your bomb kit to dish out damage. Try to get a prybar in too.
- Use BoB or OCS to put them back at range.
- Stealth and reengage at range
Ambushing:
Toss elixir S and close, then magnet from stealth. You could also blast a smoke bomb for stealth, though it’ll be a bit more obvious. Once you’ve magneted your foe, use prybar->net shot->jump shot->orbital strike (use twice if available)->glue bomb->blunderbuss->confusion bomb.
Enemies quick on their condi clear/stun break will be able to break this combo – follow up with OCS and move to the ice-at-range strategy. Don’t use orbital strike unless you’re reasonably sure it will connect – the blast finishers are too useful to waste.
Defense and disengage:
So many options:
- The ice field can be used to stop enemies getting close and/or delay pursuers. Similarly, glue bomb, box of nails and net shot when they’re at closer range.
- The ever-trusty gear shield is as good as ever.
- You’ve got 2 stun-breaks – 1 from reactive lenses, 1 from elixir S. Don’t use the latter unless you have to.
- You’ve got tons and tons of condi clear:
- Transmute, as always, is your first line of condi defense.
- Med kit 5 will clear any condition and give you resistance, 2-4 will clear specific types.
- Mortar 5 clears 1 condition
- You’ll get a condi clear for free at 75% health from hidden flask
- Drink or throw elixir S to clear a condi.
- Drop the light field under your feet and use mortar 1/throw wrench on melee range attackers to clear pretty much anything you have on you.
- Lots of stealth:
- 6s from toss elixir S (possibly 12 with kinetic charge) every 42 seconds
- 12s from comboing smoke bomb (BoB->Smoke->OS->Jump shot); you can follow this with another 6s of stealth 20s later with Bob->Smoke->Jump shot.
- You can blind at melee range with the smoke bomb, or combo it with mortar 1 to blind at range.
- You can blast the poison field for weakness.
- All your usual CC goodness from BoB and OCS to launch people away.
Healing:
In the first instance, use bandage self and medkit #2. This plus your backpack regenarator can take care of light damage. If in need of greater healing:
- Drop that 8.25s water field and blast away. For extra safety, immediately drop a smoke bomb after the water field – you’ll still blast water, but anyone nearby will be kept blinded while you do it. Note that if you have an enemy in melee range, you can also fire at them with mortar #1 for regen, though blasts should take priority.
- Spam the rest of your medkit. This is a last-resort – you want to keep the condi clear available if possible.
Zerg backlining:
Besides firepower, there are three (maybe four) things you can give to a zerg:
- Healing: Drop that long, long water field on wherever the pin is and quad-blast it with OS. You don’t even have to be nearby.
- Might: BoB->fire bomb->OS->OS (kinetic)->toss elixir S will grant 18 stacks of long-lasting might (24s). This will only work prior to contact – you need to be in melee range to do it and this build is not suited to being in the zerg frontline.
- Ice: Drop this on the contact point and blast – your zerg gets the very useful ice armour, enemy zerg gets constantly reapplying chill.
- Reveal: We don’t know exactly how lock on works yet – it may only reveal a single target (in which case, not so useful here), or it may reveal whoever’kitten by the attack – in which case you can bring 5 people out of veil stealth.
Weaknesses:
The main weaknesses of this build are:
- CC chains – both your stun breaks have long CDs and you have no stability, so concentrated CC will lock you down.
- Reflects – a lot of this build involves using the mortar kit at range; if you encounter a WoR then you’ll have to wait it out, close to melee range, or go around.
- Mobility – you should be able to get permaswift (and then some) from your runes, but you’ve only got one leap, and not an especially quick one at that.
Fun things to watch out for
- Reapers being unable to get close to you because of chill (IRONY) – their adept duration-reducing trait won’t help because you’re constantly reapplying it.
- Revenants traiting Eye for an Eye. It’s supposed to mess you up by taunting you when you try to magnet or OCS them, but what it will actually do is trigger transmute (and possibly also reactive lenses) and give you stability instead.
- The salty, salty thief tears.
Sounds like a reasonable backline supporter.
Sadly I can’t comment on this, nor give good recommendations since we don’t have the final numbers for all the traits and skills so far. Still the traits and utilities chosen seem to have decent synergy, so I guess I’ll try it out at some point.
Anyways, thx for the build & have fun with it.