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Engineer Strategy Dicussion

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Urz:
You said nothing while we were in the lobby. We got in, you noticed I had a buff hammer, and told me to get below deck. I said I was fine on hull, to which you replied "fuck this" and left. The balloon possibly had one stack of flame on it.

Since everyone seems to be on the anti-buffmain train, I'll try to clarify some of my reasoning. One misconception is that if something is on fire, you need to drop what you're doing and put it out. This is rarely the case, if the balloon or hull have a few stacks it's generally fine to let them burn for a bit. On the Galleon, for instance, I feel it's much more important to have the fire tool downstairs, where fire damage has a much faster impact on the effectiveness of guns and turning engines.

Hull brings more situations where you have pockets of "downtime": while it's on mallet cool-down. Again using the Galleon as the example, the lower deck engineer is not going to have as many opportunities to keep those components charged. Time-critical balloon buffs I foresee becoming relevant with the decreased effectiveness of hydro.

Hull buffs after rebuild are also very useful for staying alive. There are many factors which will lead to subsequent incoming volleys being less effective: changes in terrain positioning, falling out of arc, damaging their guns, better cool-down timing, teammates assisting, etc. Hull buff out of rebuild is a straight 30% heal which bypasses cool-downs. I've often found it the deciding factor between surviving and not.

There are pros and cons to each side, but it seems there's a general lack of understanding of certain (effective) buffing styles.

RearAdmiralZill:
I know what you're trying to do with it, but you will never convince me that you not having spray/extinguish is ok or more effective than wrench/buff/spray or extinguish. There are too many guns that cause fire on their own, and that's just free compounding dps, forcing you to come back and repair through the fire instead of stopping the dps there. You force the other engie to prioritize fire more, which also isn't ideal.

Fire is this extra thing that needs to be taken care of before it increases into a component break. No it doesn't have to be immediately, like one stack on a gun. The gunner can repair during reload till it gets doused. You repairing through it or letting it pop, followed by rebuilding it, cannot possibly be more effective than stopping it. Sure the buff will save you in a few occasions, but you can do it with a pipe wrench just fine. I would think you would have more unfavorable situations with one guy putting out fires vs two, when both variations are still buffing.

Urz:
The pipe wrench is significantly less efficient for hull tanking. I'm kind of surprised you would even suggest that.

Helmic:
It's certainly more effective than mallet/spanner/buff as even a level 2 fire will outstrip any extra repairs per second you're getting out of a mallet.  Again, that balloon caught a high level fire and broke before I could reach it to extinguish it, followed shortly by our death, that'd be painful on any ship but on a Galleon especially you're relying on the bottom deck engineer to take the longest route in the game to extinguish the balloon for you.  The balloon is weak to fire damage, it's going to catch fire more than just about any other component.

You're just being a dick to that other engineer when you go for something like that unannounced when simply taking the bottom deck and just buffing the hull during lulls in action would be SO much more effective, especially when you can buff the guns as well.  They might go down due to a fire, but it's much easier and safer to rebuild a gun rather than something more critical like a hull or balloon.  The galleon just isn't a good ship for mallet/spanner/buff period, it's so vulnerable to fire as it is so unless the ship's going triple engineer there's just too much to lose by not bringing an extinguisher.  Maybe the gunner could bring one, but then you don't have any help whatsoever with repairs and you're responsible for six components that have a tendency to take damage simultaneously.  Two pipe wrenches in two people's hands are going to do more for overall repairs than one person with a mallet and spanner.

RearAdmiralZill:

--- Quote from: Urz on May 02, 2013, 02:10:41 am ---The pipe wrench is significantly less efficient for hull tanking. I'm kind of surprised you would even suggest that.

--- End quote ---

And taking your toolkit makes you as an engineer less efficient because you simply neglect a very damaging component to the game. I don't expect you as a buffer to camp the hull. You're running around buffing components that give me an edge over the enemy in engagements, so we have a higher chance of survivability vs raw repair.

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