Protection

[Archyx]

Link does not work Shan.

[piyoni1]

imo may be in near future updates protection should give dodge bonus, and force shield should absorbs the dmg.

[shannong]

Link does not work Shan.

Tested the link when I made the post and again just now after reading your comment. Works fine for me. Tested in Chrome on Mac OSX and also in Mobile Safari on iPad.

[Raulur]

I disagree with the consensus. What is your goal, and why do you play engineer? Are you:

1) Trying to keep the team alive and doing their job?

Or 2) Only engineer because you can heal yourself.

In the case of (1), protection IS worth it. Your teamates will spend less time wondering if they will have to use stims, and more time using their skills. Without protection they will be concentrating on staying alive, wondering when they will have to spam stims next. You are trying to help the tanks, not make them leave because they ran out of stims.

You can attempt to overheal, but you will most likely not be able to keep up. I've seen it when on my alts too many times. The only thing that annoys me more than an engineer without protection is one that doesn't heal.

In the case of (2) then you should probably play another class or go back to PL. You are obvoiusly infected with PL mage syndrome, and engineers are NOT mages.

Seriously though... what else are you going to spend the skill points on? Shield rarely lasts long enough to regen the energy spent, making it worthless. Pain doesn't benefit much from extra points. Sonic boom has a rediculous cooldown. The first skill is ok now, but you can get it to a decent level without dropping protection. Leech doesn't heal enough at high levels to be considered, imo. So that leaves supression, which can be useful in rare occasions. Mostly it is just annoying because it changes your target, and the first aoe will cancel it out anyway.

[Hullukko]

Seriously though... what else are you going to spend the skill points on? Shield rarely lasts long enough to regen the energy spent, making it worthless. Pain doesn't benefit much from extra points. Sonic boom has a rediculous cooldown. The first skill is ok now, but you can get it to a decent level without dropping protection. Leech doesn't heal enough at high levels to be considered, imo. So that leaves supression, which can be useful in rare occasions. Mostly it is just annoying because it changes your target, and the first aoe will cancel it out anyway.

Leech deals damage akin to wither, and as such is a rather decent skill. The healing part of it is just an irrelevant bonus.

Other than that, to me it's a clear cut case of choosing between "puny little per-hit damage reduction that's helpful against little critters and horrible against anything that hits harder than my daughter" and a "decent damage skill".

They just might change it though. It's odd that the protection and force shield are both in such a terrible condition that no one who has had an in depth look at them use them at all.

[IBNobody]

their skills. Without protection they will be concentrating on staying alive, wondering when they will have to spam stims next. You are trying to help the tanks, not make them leave because they ran out of stims.

...

The only thing that annoys me more than an engineer without protection is one that doesn't heal.

That's why we put 1 point in it. It's unfortunate that we have to waste 1 of your 8 skill slots on a feel-good placebo, but it that's how people react. You're just proving it.

Seriously though... what else are you going to spend the skill points on? Shield rarely lasts long enough to regen the energy spent, making it worthless. Pain doesn't benefit much from extra points. Sonic boom has a rediculous cooldown. The first skill is ok now, but you can get it to a decent level without dropping protection. Leech doesn't heal enough at high levels to be considered, imo. So that leaves supression, which can be useful in rare occasions. Mostly it is just annoying because it changes your target, and the first aoe will cancel it out anyway.

Leech heals for about 1/4th-1/3rd of Empathy per tick. That's significant, and its your only other source of healing besides TF and Empathy.

Wither does decent damage on long-lasting enemies, too.

If you have to choose between a skill that mitigates a handful of damage and skills that improve your survivability when you get aggro and reduce the duration of long boss fights, what would you choose? It's not about being selfish. It's about being smart.

[Raulur]

I'm not debating wither being useful now, I dropped shield and reduced my points in pain/revive to pump it up to 5. It is clearly worth it on high hp critters like vular / guardian. I'm just not convinced that leech is any better than protection.

Leech dot damage is still reduced by armor, right? So how much damage does it really do against the gaurdian? Is it really more than sonic boom would do, even with the long cooldown?

The armor study was done assuming everyone is 25/26 with green gear. Not all players have that gear. Also once the cap is raised, these maps will be ran by mostly sub 25 toons with much less armor. Much like Delta 7 is being ran by mostly 15-18 toons with lesser gear than what most of us had at that time. I'm sure I don't need to remind anybody of the pains of helping guildmates with the Miner. I also regularly help players with the last 2 cycorp maps. At those levels, every bit of armor helps. So now you can easily see why I'm sticking with protection, as it doesn't start to lose it's worth until 25.

One last thing. Those of you with 1 point in protection are not fooling anyone. The only thing you really do is hurt the party when someone with the skill maxed shows up. Do not be so arrogant as to assume nobody will notice. You know what they say about people who assume...

[kamikazees]

The armor study was done assuming everyone is 25/26 with green gear. Not all players have that gear.... I also regularly help players with the last 2 cycorp maps. At those levels, every bit of armor helps. So now you can easily see why I'm sticking with protection, as it doesn't start to lose it's worth until 25.

The armor study I completed was done with toons that were level 25 and 26, but with various levels of gear, including none. My control measurements were taken with 2 armor (the least I could get).

In the last part this quote, you indicate that level may play into armor as well. I haven't done any tests to see whether armor in Cycorp, for instance, protects a level 15 chracter better than a level 25 character. I unfortunately don't have any spare character slots to find out. Hmm maybe someone else can do it...

[WhoIsThis]

I disagree with the consensus. What is your goal, and why do you play engineer? Are you:

1) Trying to keep the team alive and doing their job?

Or 2) Only engineer because you can heal yourself.

In the case of (1), protection IS worth it. Your teamates will spend less time wondering if they will have to use stims, and more time using their skills. Without protection they will be concentrating on staying alive, wondering when they will have to spam stims next. You are trying to help the tanks, not make them leave because they ran out of stims.

The thing is, with protection, the amount of damage reduced is so little that you are doing your job more effectively for the team by investing in something with more a better effectiveness to skill point ratio.

Against low hitting opponents where it is reduced by 1 damage with +60 armor, well, you don't need protection. Against harder hitting opponents where protection can reduce by maybe 3 - 4 points per hit; well if they hit that, 3-4 extra damage per hit is not significant.

Empathy and transference, unlike protection are useful skills and are powerful enough to make a real difference. They should be maxed on any 20+ engineer.

Perhaps the reason is because when I do guardian runs (you really don't need protection expect in the harder levels of Numa and perhaps the last 2 levels of Delta 7 at this point), the majority of my guildies are armed with top notch armor, but I have seen even the ones with the lower level Neutronics (or the op and and commando equals) are still able to hold their own without protection in Guardian.