I have been spending a lot of time working on the content for these two classes, and I would like to hear what people who play them think about them, as well as let them know what is in store when the Lyceum content is released.

First, Engineer. Right now it seems like people are only using this for the Drone Master benefits. Hopefully that will change soon, as there are quite a few additions coming to help futher encourage using Engineer as a support role as well.

Engineer will have exclusive access to the new Chain Shield Transfers. These healing guns will heal one target and bounce to another damaged friendly target in range, healing half the damage per bounce. Total healing overall will be slightly less than the Shield Monkey specific healing guns.

Engineer will also have access to a series of special shipboard tweak factories. Each factory will produce decay on jump tweaks that can be handed out to a squad. All of these tweaks offer a minor boost for 10 minutes. This means you can make them, pass them out and pop them right before you warp in for a boss fight.

Berserker will also be getting a few boosts. For starters they will have access to more energies like 'Thanar's Astral Fire' at a variety of tech levels. Like the TAF they will be available via missions in the Berserker Halls in Lyceum.

Berserker will also have access to more weapons with lower DPE that are intended to be multifired, as well as overloaders that offer Electric Tempering. Firing multiple weapons is an important part of Berserker, so offering class items that help in that capacity seems a must to me.

Finally, as Berserker are the 'tank' I am considering adding more items to help them control hate if needed, this is where the feedback comes in. How are Berseker handling threat currently and is there a problem with it? How hard is it for berserker to gain threat from multiple enemies?

In general I'd like to hear your opinions on your class if you choose to play one of these two. What do you like, what do you consider to be the biggest issue with your class currently, what could be improved. Overall I am trying to use the Lyceum Class content to address as many issues as possible (since some new items can solve a lot of this), so let me know what you think.

Caelestis

I really like this cool new idea, and i would like to think i use Engineer as a support role / a little extra DPS.
Though i would like to see a bit of variety in drones, tweak factories sound awesome, but i can't help but think, what commods, where do we get them, how does it work?
The Chain Shield transference is a cool idea, would it put the non class specific Rhino Restruct, or Armada Wand out of business?

P.S.
I'd like to see tractors unequippable on the fly

Cael please do not do a OvL a lot of MFs use paxes and a few (like me) use a DS which means we cant take advantage of a new Ovl.

As far as agro goes i just carry as much evil gear as I can.

i really like the idea of engineers being able to make small items. maybe we could have a small on-board construction yard that could be deployed anywhere, and all it could do was make tweaks or deconstruct junk into maybe different fuel types. if engineers could refuel people by deconstructing random comods or items, we'd be so loved. i think have a variety of cute little mini-bases that we could deploy and scoop to make stuff would just be awsome.

From what I have seen when I am with Berserkers, a sniper can easily take agro pretty quickly from a single AI for sure and occasionally a group if it is a team. And when I used to be an MF, catching up with the AI to try and take agro was always a problem. An aura that gives the Zerker hostility while giving negative hostility would be a useful item.



This will also be a nice touch. I found when I was an MF, the only weapons I could effectively MF and power for a long time was Metal decaps and other physical weapons due to their 1:1 or nearly so damage to elec ratio.

Apper that was a great idea.

The ability to fuel other players is sorely needed as prom is so hard to get in w3.

As for the healing function it does seem to be a duplication of the ShM ability.
If is is better Shms are out of business, if it is worse it wont be used as ShMs will do the job.

What does worry me is the proliferation of "support" on uber runs.

There is a limit, if the ratio of support to DPS gets too high then the group becomes less effective. Support HAS to have a force multiplier of greater than 1:1 to justify its existance. With 2 or 3 players (which is what most teams can put together) this is going to be hard to achieve.

Players are pretty intelligent at the top end and they will use the most efficient group compositions if "support" is not efficient, it will not be used.

Good luck its a tough one
(I hope you find a solution, most of my characters are engineers)

The engineers will never be as good as a Shmonk at healing. Even if you augged the engineer the best you could, they just don't have the shield bank or regen to be really useful in that function. Like when I screw around and heal people with my sniper. I do way more healing than I can regen.

Everyone is thinking about support in the terms it is used in game atm. If suddenly an Engineer can dump out a bunch of damage tweaks and provide some healing along with his drones and energy beam, I can seen them being really needed on uber runs. You can then bring one DPSer, one Shmonk, and one Engineer and have almost all your needs covered.

Berserkers have problems keeping up with the massive DPS of classes like sniper and SD so these classes tends to steal the agro.
The main problem with berserker as I see it the lack of good weapons to use. Abs and excoms seems like the best choice to me, they have good spread, decent range and decent tracking. A short range weapon like a immo is pretty much totally useless. So a berserker only excom type weapon that is a bit stronger would be nice, tech 18-19. If gotten through a mission it would of course have to be made repeatable so you can get 5 of them, or the mission could give you 5 at once.
Their ability to tank doesnt seem enough to me, when playing solo or doing DGs with only one healer they can be decent since they are fairly easy to keep alive but when doing ubers in large groups a berserker simply isnt a good choice since the other classes are faster and do more DPS and the healers can keep them alive anyway.

that would be a great addition. allow it to make stuff like Enukes,prom or regular nukes using anything from metals,silicone or nukes. (of corse you cant make nukes outa nukes thats just silly) and a cost to produce each item based on wich material is used. i would make it an energy/material cost. this way you can limit the ammounts produced to small bits at a time to stop abuse. and hey! power it off the engineer energy transference beam or somthing! lol maybe even have little auto-deployed wingship "fighters" that auto-mine the nearest asteroid. then return. deliver their cargo and go out. set somthing like a max limit of 50 or 100 commods to turn into prom,nukes whatever..and make it take more dependant on wich commod is the base commod and give a fraction of the original quantity back to you as finished product.

another thing i see is this..engineer is supposed to transfer energy right? and ShMs are healers..ShMs have sheild boost and regen boost...why cant engineer have a skill based energy bank boost and regen boost? or maybe two seperate skills. just to make use of more sp

and tractors need to be unequipable and reequipable on the fly! theres no excuse for it. reguardless of situation engineer is very inflexable atm because of this. even if it is an engineer only ability being able to remove tractors and switch to another would be invaluable. you trade one advantage for another when you change tractor beams. and switching between a pull tractor or a push tractor realy doesnt help a whole lot ether.. so why not allow us change on the fly?

Maybe add dampeners with a massive hostility bonus to MF. Right now SDs steal aggro way too easy, even seers steal aggro.

I used to be Bezerker for a while..
Its a nice class but it just doesnt work as a tank atm..
Engineers have way more resists and regen then bezerkers..
Others classes like Sniper do more dmg then Bezerkers..

adding a few more energys and more MFable weps for bezerker would be a nice start..

Also i dont know if Bezerker OL's would work. since most use a pax for its resists, hull and wep slots.

zerker should have some sort of "skill" that steals agro

or an item that generates double hostility for the damge done by the user

Yeah, beserkers definately need items to maintain aggro, i managed to steal aggro from most people unless theres is an ass load of people or Nuro is there, damn annoying.

Just a random tangential :

There's already a skill in SS that governs hostility - its found in BiPolar. You can have subtlety (-1% hostility / shot) or hostility (+1% hostility / shot) and you can raise it quite high. Goes for a cheap amount of SP as well.

Um, so ah. Perhaps Zerkers should start investing in this skill which is already in the game? You could have it class specific, so that instead of 1% / level, the zerker class got 2% or even 2.5%.


Just a thought