Returning Player Build - Level 47 Engi

I leveled my engi to 46 when it was the cap, maybe a year ago, quit playing and just returned to the game this week. He is level 47 now. I did a lot of research to test each skill and here is the build I settled on as well as the way I have my skill tabs set up.

Skills:
Wither 6
Leech 6
Empathy 6
Revive 3
Force Shield 0
Suppression 6
Protection 0
Transference 6
Pain 1
Sonic Boom 6
Decay 6

Skill Tab 1
Empathy
Pain
Transference
Sonic Boom

Skill Tab 2
Decay
Wither
Leech (or Suppression - see my note at the very end of this post)
Revive

Note: sometimes when soloing, I will replace Revive with Suppression if I am not have mana regen issues.

I did a lot of research on the defensive and offensive skills. Here are my results.

Both "defensive skills" are worthless: Force Shield, Protection.

The +2 Mana Regen that level 4 Force Shield gives could be useful, but with only 8 spell tab slots, this extra skill will be rarely used if ever. For mana regen, you are better served raising Revive to 3 instead of leaving it at one. The reduced casting cost provides an extra 10 mana per minute. I find I rarely run out of mana even without an implant that provides extra regen. I have one that provides +2 if I need it, but I almost always use one that give me extra damage instead. On the rare occasions I run low, I simply use a stim.

Protection is worthless. At best, maybe it would allow you to take 1 extra hit. At best.

For offensive skills, I calculated the amount of damage they would do in one minute, to make a fair comparison:

1. Decay, 420 damage/min
2. Wither, 300 damage/min
3. Leech, 180 damage/min, plus 180 healing/min
4. Pain, 37.5 damage/min at level 1, plus 150 area damage/min; 97.5 damage/min at level 6, plus 150 area damage/min
5. Transference, 84 area damage/min, plus 96 healing/min
6. Sonic Boom, 42 area damage/min

My most important/favorite skills: Pain is the most effective offensive skill you can have because of the 3 second stun and it only needs 1 point. Transference - there is nothing more beautiful than casting it in the middle of a crowd of hostile mobs and watching every member of your party go from almost dead to full health. Decay - most damaging single target skill, great for bosses.

Lastly, Suppression. I love it because it is the only mez spell in the game. It often is not needed, but it is very nice to have in two situations. First, if you want to solo fast, run into a large crowd of mobs and freeze them all, then pick them off one by one until they unfreeze. Secondly, and probably most important, when your whole team died right underneath a spawn of nasty monsters, run into the middle of the crowd, freeze them all with Suppression, cast a quick Revive, and run back out of range. Note - Unless I have already switched in Suppression because this has happened previously in the same session, this latter tactic does require that I stop and swap out Suppression in place of Leech in my skill tabs.

Explain why you have rev on 3?

Good question! Here's the answer:

I had 2 skill points to use.

Option 1: Lower the casting cost of REVIVE from 20 mana to 10 mana. In addition to the ability to revive dead people, REVIVE also provides +1 mana regen for one minute. When it costs 20 mana to cast, it provides 40 mana every minute (60 – 20). If it costs 10 mana to cast, it provides 50 mana every minute (60 – 10).

Option 2: Raise FORCE SHIELD to level 2. The armor buff (+40) would be so small as to be useless, and goes away after taking 35 damage, which is one hit from any enemy when you are level 47. The +1 mana regen seems useful, but has a whopping 45 second cool down; but to make calculations simpler, let’s assume I would cast once every minute. If so, it would provide an extra 20 mana/minute (1 mana per second for 30 seconds minus the 10 casting cost). Combine that with REVIVE at level 1 and you have a total of 60 mana/minute regen (40 from REVIVE calculations above + 20 calculated here). If you actually were on top of things enough to cast it every 45 seconds instead of every 1 minute, it would provide slightly more. HOWEVER, 50 mana/minute by raising REVIVE to 3 rather than 60 mana/minute by cobining REVIVE level 1 and FORCE SHIELD level 2 is a better tradeoff for me. Why? Because (1) I do not have mana regen issues very often and (2) My 8 skill slots are already filled up and there is no sense in training a skill that will rarely if ever get used because I know I will not take time to swap it in to use it.

Option 3: Raise PROTECTION to level 2. It is my opinion that Protection at level 6 (+60 armor) is nearly useless. At level 2 (+20 armor) it would do nothing. And again, my 8 skill slots are already filled up with other skills. I would never take “swap time” to use this skill.

Option 4: Raise PAIN to level 3. It would increase the initial damage output from 2-8 to (5 on average) to 4-12 (8 on average). It would not affect the AoE damage. I am disappointed by how little damage is increased by putting points into this skill. Still, I use this skill A LOT, so this would be a decent option. The main reason I use this skill is for the 3 second stun, which is the same no matter at what level it is trained. By my calculations, it does 37.5 damage per minute at level 1 (60 seconds in a minute/8 second cool down * 5 point average damage). It would do 93.75 damage per minute at level 6 (60 seconds in a minute/8 second cool down * 12.5 point average damage). The damage is 5 – 20 at level 6.

Option 1 and 4 are both viable options. And in fact, I plan to pursue both of them. I chose to raise REVIVE to 3 first to get the extra mana regen. I see no benefit in raising it further. I am now level 48 and raised PAIN to 2. By the time I reach the current level cap of 51, PAIN will be at level 5. And that is where things will sit until the level cap is raised further.

In my first post, I was rounding up the average damage that PAIN level 6 does to 13. It is actually 12.5. That is why my first post lists the per-minute damage at 97.5 and my second lists it more accurately at 93.75.


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