The Engineer's Survival Guide

[Horsethe]

This is a very nice looking build, I will have to try it out.

The only thing I am hesitant about is the 1 point of Force Shield. This seems a little pointless IMO since FS (Force Shield) only gives you the buff/armor when it is active. The second a mob hits you and you loose the shield, it goes away, and with higher leveled mobs they can take the level 1 shield away in one hit.

I upped my force shield to 6 for 2 reasons; First, it doesn't matter what any other character is, it always stacks on top of all other buffs with a +20 armor per level (up to 120, which is larger than BOTH level 5 and 6 protection skill combined). Second, it provides you "invincibility" for as long as the shield is up. If you are a high level, the shield can take FAR more damage, and remain up longer, in turn giving you a better armor buff than protection ever could. Also, most other players have Protection maxxed/lvl 5, so even if you had protection 5 or 6, it would be useless in a run for others already give you the buff for that level.

I have tried force shield at 6 points and even then, while the extra armour is significantly higher, the amount of damage it could withstand imo was quite poor. The reason I place 1 point into force shield atm is to gain that 1 regen per second in between fights. Stack that with the revive buff and the need to use potions during a run is minute. While the amount of armour gained from Protection is less, it has 2 advantages, the first being that it is a party buff, then second being that it lasts for the entire duration of the buff, with no chance of removal.

NOTE: I currently run with the same build that bronislav84 listed.

PS: This is also just my thought, it's fun to debate and learn different ideas and ways of thinking.