Pros

•Pets work really well, and make for interesting tactics.

•Overall fun class. Could be way more fun. Has a ton of potential but a few major cons are holding it back, see below.

•Cool abilities. Love 'em.

•Awesome Utilities that could be really useful in the end-game.

Cons

(This is the important bit)

•Engineers feel too "clunky". This is the biggest issue I have with them, and I know why it is: Engineers have no instant autoattack. Having no instant autoattack means you're doing a LOT of standing around waiting.

My suggestion: Make Flak Cannon instant cast, make it only fire once, remove its passive thing, and give it a quick global cooldown. So you spam it like a machine gun or an actual Flak gun (Or just hold the key) and you feel WAAAAAY more responsive. This is the most important thing I want to get out of this thread; I love Engineer, but I might not roll it in the end unless something like this is done. Autoattacks should be instant or at least very quick, or else your class ends up feeling clunky, unresponsive, and boring to play. Not having a fast, responsive spam ability is like playing with lag or something, and it would be sooo easy to fix Flak to work like this.

•Pets are very large and obtrusive. Having two out at once seems like a bit much unless they are scaled down. Two bots plus a pet like a Scanbot and you're got an army of things following you and invading your personal space.

•The pet bar and Volatility bar are EQUALLY large and obtrusive. Volatility plus having a pet out means I can't see a third of my damn screen.

•"Pulse Blast" SFX are way too loud. I like Flak Cannon more anyway, but until I got Flak I had to deal with the crazy loud and ear-grinding sound effects from Pulse Blast. Yuck.

•The Innate is UGLY. I don't even use it because I can't stand seeing my character wearing that fugly suit. Bleeeeeecccch. I get what you were going for with the mech suit thing but I don't want to be seen in it nor do I want to look at my character in it. A couple things would fix this for me... One would be buffing it but making the Cooldown reeeaaaally long, just so I don't have to look at it so much. Another would be making the suit more attractive or something, maybe less bulky, or in the opposite direction, an entire suit of badass power-armor. And a third option would be just... Remove it.

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I have been playing the engineer as well, Im impressed by its design an skills, I think its a really fun class thou I only reached lvl 11 so far, so thats all I can comment on atm.

And so as not to repeat all you have said.

Allow me to comment on your comments.

-Engineers feel too "clunky". - Agree

Im not sure what ability to change but it does feel a bit slow at times.

•Pets are very large and obtrusive. -Disagree

I would only argue the Artillery bots AE explotion effect is too much.

I think the size makes them look cool, but maybe a option to reduce the size to ppl that want that.

-The pet bar and Volatility bar are EQUALLY large and obtrusive - Disagree

maybe you have a small monitor or low res ? Im running 1920 - 1080, I dont have this problem. I only see that extra dismiss pet button as a problem.

•"Pulse Blast" SFX are way too loud. - Somewhat Agree

It may have a weird charge up sound, but the effect and the feeling of a powerful attack is what I think they are aiming for, and I get that.

•The Innate is UGLY. - Somewhat Agree

It think the idea is damn cool, but I see what your getting at and I think it could be improved visualy.

My CONS

-Eletrocute

Too Weak Sound and Graphic. It Needs something more distinct, it sounds like a broken lamp....

The graphic is blurred and not very telling of a surge of power being shot at your enemy, it could be much more awesome..

-Volatility bar

It looks clunky and is not easy too read. It needs some improvement.

The way it jumps from one location to the next on the bar is not the best, it needs too be a more smooth or maybe have a better indication.

-Artillery bot (Barrage ability) & Bruiser bot (Blitz)

Sometimes it dosent react... maybe because its out of range? Even thou they are attacking my target ?

So I keep spamming the button, and nothing happens, then suddenly after a few seconds or more it fires. Whats going on here ?

-Urgent Withdrawl

The 8 meters jump backwards feels too short of a distance.

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-Engineers feel too "clunky". - disagree

I don't even use the flake gun. the slow build-up from my pulse gun is awesome

•Pets are very large and obtrusive. -Disagree

I think the pets are way too small especially the tanky one

-The pet bar and Volatility bar are EQUALLY large and obtrusive - Disagree

pet bar is fine to me, volatility bar is perfect for an engineer to me.

•"Pulse Blast" SFX are way too loud. - disagree

It's awesome, makes me feel like a robot

•The Innate is UGLY. - Disagree

It's quite cool on an exile character, though I do hope you get more than just boots and a backpack at latter levels

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The bots FUNCTION just fine in terms of actual combat, but their Aggro has some issues, namely, if you have your bot on Assist and do something like use a Quest Item on a monster, the bot will attack and break the channel. In addition, mining a node with your mining laser will also cause the Bot to attack, breaking your channel. It's possible to keep bots on Defensive so they don't do this, but it'd be nice if they didn't aggro nodes and when using quest items unless told.

There's also the problem that they'll aggro monsters while you're trying to travel, and fight them for ten minutes straight, keeping you stuck in combat and never catching up to you, forcing you to despawn your bot and respawn it. A fix for this would be having your bot Teleport to you if you were far enough away from it and break combat.

I personally think the bots are a bit too large. It's not a huge issue, the bigger issue is how damned intrusive the pet bar is. They really need to remove the huge despawn button, because there's already a despawn button on the bar.

I just wish they would change Flak Cannon a bit. The "Channel AA" is just so clunky. You can't use your damn abilities if you cast your autoattack unless you dash and break the channel! That's so unresponsive and just plain useless compared to Pulse. If you're using a tank build, you need to be able to use your other abilities on demand for managing threat and breaking interrupt armor, etc. And if you're stuck channeling and have to waste a dash charge just to end it... Yuck. Plus, having no instant auto is such a pain in every part of the game. It's needed in PvP and PvE for quick Volatility, and it's needed when tanking to be able to use other skills on demand. The current design for Flak is just not good.

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I wonder if Flak Cannon would be better if it were like the Esper skill where you summon charges of sword attacks. The first shot fire instantly, but you have to push the button more to get the rest of them. Then, the deflection bonus is up for the duration of you time to use the charges. I feel like this might be the best of both worlds.

The only other things I really want for the engineer is a change to the UI and a flamethrower. C'mon, we can shoot bolts of electricity but not hose down some guys with fire? I'd like a DoT ability for the class that isn't laid on the ground, and I feel like a flamethrower skill could be it.

The UI stuff is things everyone has mentioned already. The art for Volatility is kind of ugly, though. I think either the bar needs to look actually volatile or be painted yellow and black like construction equipment. Then they could ding it up to show some of the metal under the paint.

The other idea I had was more like a meter where you start in green, and as you build up the Volatility the needle pushes over farther (with a numerical display at the base) and it changes color to be more red. Then you could have little effects like steam shooting out of the sides or little warning lights when you hit maximum. I feel like little effects like that could make it easier to judge visually without needing to read a number.

Otherwise, I'm extremely pleased with my engineer. I'd just like more information on power scaling (assault or support) in the tooltips.

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I agree with Xlug. Once you've unlocked a few extra slots around level 15, you'll find that every other skill in both trees (aside from Energy Auger, which is a nice builder with good damage) is worthless for DPS in PvP and killing mobs in PvE. I'm working towards a Hybrid build that will let me use some of the Support abilities a little better, mainly for all the cool status effects they give, ex: "Give 'em the Gas" is an instant ranged AoE that makes enemies in the area take damage over time and lowers their chance to hit. That's pretty cool. However, even with stacked support power, the damage is just miniscule. Meanwhile your spammer attack Pulse Blast does more damage per hit than most of your other abilities do total.

Some abilities like Unstable Anomaly are just worthless, only good when you're fighting a healer in PvP, as it costs tons of Volatility and does almost no damage. Bio Shot does terrible damage and has a THREE SECOND cast time; you could get off at least three times as much damage with any other ability in that time, and the tiny Tech Resistance debuff just isn't worth the three second cast.

I like the look of Tactical Strike, but that's AMPs only, so we can't use it yet. I'll keep leveling up my Engie (I'm level 19 now) to test all the other skills, but as it is now:

• Flak Cannon is completely useless in all scenarios. It needs to be changed from a channel to an instant cast or it will remain useless.

• Pulse Blast has obnoxiously loud SFX and is your most damaging ability in the game so far, and it's your spam attack.

• Unstable Anomaly is a worthless Volatility dump, it's only useful trait is that it's instant and works okay against healers.

• Give 'em the Gas is similar to Unstable Anomaly; it's a worthless Volatility Dump that does almost nothing for its cost.

• Hyper whatever is a tanking only skill, I guess? There's no point to it otherwise.

• Bio Shot has a three second cast time and deals almost no damage, even with it tiered up and with high support power.

• Electrocute is your only viable way of dealing damage and dumping Volatility, everything else is a waste.

• Pets are overpowered, plain and simple, namely Bruiser Bot and Artillery Bot. Anyone can see that they're too strong, really, it's hard not to see what they can do in both PvE and PvP and not be in awe of it.

• Energy Auger is pretty much your only other decent ability that I've seen so far.

• Quick Burst is buggy and sometimes just doesn't work.

• Kinetic whatever has some decent burst if you fully charge it, but what's the point when you can do more damage by spamming Pulse Blast and Electrocute? It has no purpose when your autoattack does way more damage.

• The Innate is ugly and looks like a box lifting maintenance suit rather than destructive power armor. But that's just my personal opinion.