The Engineer's Survival Guide

[Hullukko]

After reading the posts about this, I went and bought one of the 25 Plat rifles. It definitely increased my healing but I also got aggro from the Vular and ended up dying in a Guardian run with no tank. It was my own fault for not realizing I had the Vular's aggro until too late but be aware if you trade your DPS gloves for a rifle.

You'll draw plenty of aggro with 6transferance, 6empathy, 6leech and 5wither with a repulsor. Good for your team if you can take it, not so good if you can't.

Vulars are not really a problem. Use pain on them and move about cleverly. Hit empathy before they jump at you so that you start getting healing ticks during their rather strong initial assault. Reserve transferance for a more immediate health boost when needed. Once you get the hold of it's stun cycle with pain the team will grind it to pieces in no time. Moving and pain are the key elements there.

Guardian is a different matter. Unless there are good commandos available (in recent times they've been a rere commodity iun), or I screw up, I tank him the entire time. But to do that the sunwalkers doesn't cut it, not without potting. You're gonna need the plat armor, too. It gives you plenty of dodge, which will come in handy. I walk past him and zap pain, empathy, transferance and leech to get his attention and then walk to the edge making sure that battle takes place in the far end next to the cliff. His initial assault, before the team gets into full swing, can be a bit harsh, so a pot or two of the red kind might be needed there no matter how you time you skills, but after that it's just a matter of hitting the transferance, leech and pain properly when needed so that the health never dips too low, while pounding wither and pain as much as possible. As a rookie I jammed every skill whenever they cooled out, but that doesn't work against the guardian. He hits too hard and too seldom. You need to reserve the trasnferance and sometimes pain, too, to toe-to-toe him without potting health. (and for the record, since his attack is this strange directed blast, it's also a good idea to tank him next to wall so that you don't fly back, and away from your team mates so that they don't take the same damage)

The choice of implant for the guardian is not trivial. Outside of guardian I tend to use the mana regen implant to save mana pots, unless the team is short of people/skill/damage, in which case I switch to damage implant and pot my mana. But at guardian the mana regen doesn't cut it. I maintain my mana level nicely with that and rev, but the shortage in healing power of empathy, transferance and leech I feel I need to pot more health. With the damage implant I run out of mana pretty quickly and have to pot that. Recently I've always switched to damage implant for the guardian.

Other more experienced engineers might have corrections and ideas that I wouldn't mind hearing.