Protection

[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.

[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.