Engineer changes in 1.2

The Engineer was not affected nearly as much as some other classes in the upcoming 1.2 patch. There are some buffs and nerfs though, lets take a look:

Coordinated Fire. This tactic has always been broken and now it is fixed. It seems as it will increase damage 15% on a single target when using Signal Flare. Since it has never worked, it is hard to be sure. There has been much debate about whether or not this will be an overpowered skill.

Concussive Mine. This tactic has always been broken and is now fixed. With it, we can add a disorient effect to our Land Mines. I had been wanting this ability to work for a long time now. It would have been very effective before 1.2 but with the changes they are making to disorients, it remains to be seen how useful they are.

Lightning Rod. Made slightly less damaging. This skill was not very useful to begin with, so no major loss.

Hollow Points. Now multiple Engineers can apply this DoT without resetting the DoT. Any extra damage is nice, although this one is pretty low. The wardb tool-tip is incorrect and it is closer to 400 over 9 seconds.

Electro Magnet. Magnet will no longer pull people directly on top of the Engineer (or Magus). This should help with people getting stuck on each other.

Sticky Bomb. This ability will now deal Corporeal damage. By using an Acid Bomb first, we should now get a bit more damage out of it depending on the targets resistance.

Rune of Forging. Now absorbs more damage. I'm not sure if anyone really uses this tactic. Keeping my turret alive is one of my last priorities.

Those are the direct changes, minus some other uninteresting changes. Here are some of the other changes that will affect us:

Ground Target. The ground target reticule should no longer get stuck at our feet. It will be nice not having to do the ol'mouse shake to free it.

Disorient Change. Disorients will no longer stack or affect instant cast abilities! This will be huge as AoE disorients were out of control. Sadly, it will also affect our concussive mine tactic, so Destruction will never know our pain.

Immovable timer. The immovable immunity timer has been increased to 20 seconds. This affects Knockbacks and roots... two of our forms of CC. This one is pretty big, as it will be tougher to keep melee off of us. the real question is, why is the unstoppable timer not being increased too? We can't knock folks back as much, but we can still be knocked down just as much. Knockdowns are much worse than knockbacks.

Resistance Changes. Diminishing returns have come to resistances. Once you reach 40%, they kick in. Also talismans that have resistance reducing effects have been cut by 50%. This should help Engineers out with a bit more damage due to lower resistances across the board.

Terrible Embrace. Marauders can now use their pull ability on the move and its cast time has been reduced to 1 second. This means a whole lot more pulling and no real way for us to escape.

Overall, the Engineer was left pretty much alone. They fixed some bugs, which is all I really wanted. Hopefully they will take a look at the mastery tree in 1.3 and make all three trees viable. The Immovable and Terrible Embrace changes are pretty worrisome but we will have to see how they play out. Speaking of which, the public PTS opens today, so go test the changes!

Posted in: patch,WAR