Engineer changes in 1.05

The patch notes for WAR 1.05 have arrived! They were pretty massive as Mark had eluded to. There is really so much to go over and I am sure many other blogs will be taking care of that duty. So what I want to talk about is the changes to the Engineer class.

Admit it, other than the magnet, you never really worried about the Engineer. Sure I could top damage in scenarios, but it was all DoT's and spread out. Usually had very little solo kills or killing blows. The only class I could solo was a Sorceress with 0 Dark Magic built up. The Engineer needed some help and it got it.

• Root effects will now properly have a chance to break whenever a player takes ANY damage. This includes individual tics of Damage over Time spells.

This one has me a little worried. The grenade mastery line, which I am, is all about Damage over Time. I am a grenade chucker, it is what I do. I try to get as many DoT's on as many people as possible. This change will make me the anti-root. My own Barbed Wire root would seem useless. I will reserve final judgement until it is tested on the test server.

• Point Blank will now correctly ignore Knockback and Knockdown immunity, as well as not trigger it.

Sweet! I hated when Point Blank did nothing.

• Flak Jacket: Magic Damage will no longer reduce Armor counters.

Great, hopefully the longer our Flak Jacket stays up, the less squishy we will be. I was hoping for some less annoying mechanic for this, because it is something I have to cast every time I spawn. No big deal though.

• Gun Blast: The damage of this ability has increased.

I don't use this ability anymore (grenades), but this should be pretty good. A 2 sec cast time should be worth more damage.

• Many damage increases.

I won't go through each one, but they sound good. We really did need some more damage.

• Self Destruct: This ability has had its cost removed, the reuse timer has been increased significantly, and now deals damage in addition to knocking down.

This is a bit disappointing. I liked to use it but rarely got the chance since it had a 1 min cooldown and the time it takes to set up a turret. Battles move too much. I could care less about the damage, as the knockdown is worth much more. With instant cast on turrets (tinkerer), I could see how it could be a bit much, so no big deal.

• All Turrets: Gun, Flame and Bombardment Turrets have had their cost greatly reduced and their auto attack damage greatly increased. In addition they are now core abilities and will match the level of the player’s rank when summoned.

You mean my turrets won't just be there to annoy people with their sounds? I really hope this makes them useful, as self-destruct was starting to be the main reason I was deploying them. Will have to wait and see what the damage is.

• Electromagnet: This ability has undergone significant changes. The cost of the ability has been significantly reduced while the cooldown has been increased. In addition the build time has been increased, the ability can no longer be cast on the move, and the maximum number of targets affected by this ability has been decreased and it can now be defended against. Lastly this ability will grant immunity to knockback effects.

Had to happen. It should still be useful in certain situations though. This should be the end of the magnet/rift saga, yay!

• Barbed Wire: This abilities cost has been decreased, the cooldown has been increased and the ability is now available at rank 12.

Increased cooldown? Not sure why, but it doesn't really matter. DoT's are so prevalent that roots will be breaking almost immediately.

So basically Engineers got more damage and hopefully a little more survivability. The new public test server will hopefully work out the kinks, but the real test will be when it hits live. Can't wait :)

Posted in: patch,WAR