Have engineers been forgotten?

[Uaintseenme]

This is almost certainly the reason WHY engies have not had the same "rebooting" that most of the other prof's have had in this latest test patch, there is far more involved in the process of ruining all our engies than just nerfing some nano's.

it requires nano changes, symb changes, perk changes and a whole bunch of itemisation before it even becomes a viable option to simply test them.

As for it being an option of picking trade skills OR nanoskills, I've looked all over and i still only see traders getting this option, while all the info i can find, squarely forces engies in to a trade skill required state.

possibly the dumbest idea ever by the way, since when it happens we'll all have to completely refarm our setups... "Yay for making all my friends drag a 100% useless toon around all the high lvl raids and pf's so i can get back in to a semi usable state!", also, when it happens, i hope everyone enjoys blaming the devs for not being able to get thier combined armour made due to half the engie population flat out quiting and the other half being too broken to actualy do anything.(while it would have been an option to have a trader do this instead, having seen how they are being mutilated, i doubt any of them will stick around either)

[Tryptophy]

I went back and looked around, this post is the first official mention of this possibility I think. Here you can infer that most engy nanos will only work with tradeskills because he specifically says:

Pet Warp/Pet Remove Debuffs/Pet Resist Buffs: These nanos will work off of both Nanoskills OR Tradeskills, to support Engineers.

I swear though I remember them backing off of this, but that would be hard to find buried somewhere. If not, I was wrong. Still, even though most people have a very low estimate of FC's intelligence (which I do not share, for the most part) I seriously doubt they would *cripple* any profession like that without a seriously long and explicit warning.

[Novaelis]

hmm what about for an uber pvp nemesis nano to ruin engineers skills : tradeskill shutdown, -2000 to all tradeskills ?

oh my...

[Gimpeline]

I really hope engies are forgotten in the process so I have alteast one playable carracter if I ever return.
Just read the MA changes. What a joke

[alfora]

Where was all this stuff posted? I've been searching for a lot of this stuff being stated in an official capacity but haven't found anything first-hand

What stuff? About the tradeskills instead of MC/TS?

This is documented in the "Balance discussion" in
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=583662

There is also a link to an Excel worksheet where you can see all new nanos, i.e., OLD nanos because the document is from January 2011.

[lunarmyst]

Its not hard to build a high DD engi and still be able to make 300CC you just have to swap all your armor, all your hud's, utils, chips,back,shoulder,and neck piece plus do the DB quest for the +200 nano and use the city :P

[Ciassene]

The thing about that change is that it is such a big change which would be pretty challenging to implement, and it's hard to see whether it would be worth all the effort.

From what i can remember, the main benefits of changing all engi nanos to require tradeskills would be:

- Reduced IP cost (maybe? it depends on the new requirements they decide on) so engis could max evades/inits and aimed shot while still tradeskilling.
- Being able to go NR perks.

Considering all the effort it would take to change the entire engi toolset from nanoskills to tradeskills, is the outcome really worth it? Could they not just address the IP cost issue in other ways, e.g. by changing our nanos that require MM / PM / TS / BM so that all nanos just need MC/TS?
And the second outcome, increased NR, could be achieved by changing one of the engi perk lines to give a massive boost to NR or by adding some new engi only items that buffs NR.

Excuse me if there are any other major benifits to the change that I have missed, it's just hard to see what the point is.

I can see some IP problems with an engineer! I don't have those. Tho, I use Remod/Sloth and still can tskill QL300 AI armors on the spot while being able to cast all of the nanos and being in max hp/hd build

[doctorgore]

New heavy weapons and support would solve ip problems.

[Brofist]

Its not hard to build a high DD engi and still be able to make 300CC you just have to swap all your armor, all your hud's, utils, chips,back,shoulder,and neck piece plus do the DB quest for the +200 nano and use the city :P

Psychology is the hard part if you are in a non-TS monkey setup.

[doctorgore]

Psychology is the hard part if you are in a non-TS monkey setup.

Not really important anymore though everyone has an alt with it high enough. I could careless engie having it.

[Tryptophy]

Its not hard to build a high DD engi and still be able to make 300CC you just have to swap all your armor, all your hud's, utils, chips,back,shoulder,and neck piece plus do the DB quest for the +200 nano and use the city :P

One might say this is all fine just because you probably don't make 300CC all that often. But it is just part of a larger problem with engi - the fact that it is possible to do x,y,z with 20 swaps means it is expected of you.

If nanoskills were based on tradeskills, and pets were insta or 1s capped (with local cooldown), and recharges on buffs were down to 1-2s, then engi would be comparable to other profs. But all of this is just luxury compared to the real problems the game faces, so I can only dream.

[lunarmyst]

One might say this is all fine just because you probably don't make 300CC all that often. But it is just part of a larger problem with engi - the fact that it is possible to do x,y,z with 20 swaps means it is expected of you.

If nanoskills were based on tradeskills, and pets were insta or 1s capped (with local cooldown), and recharges on buffs were down to 1-2s, then engi would be comparable to other profs. But all of this is just luxury compared to the real problems the game faces, so I can only dream.

Yeah I only make it for myself really, its a super pain in the ass to swap all that gear around, but I wanted to be able to do both. And as said before the psychology can be an issue, but I can actually make 300 without the city buff and I still have ip I could put into Aimshot or something if I felt like doing some pvp.

Dont get me wrong I can't use any of the DB quest nanos or cast my bots for that matter without swapping 4 things, or getting 8 hour monchams so there's that :P

[Brofist]

Not really important anymore though everyone has an alt with it high enough. I could careless engie having it.

Well he said to be able to do it all as an engineer. Currently with AS maxed, and an AS eye imp in, my engie can do everything 1800+ easily except psychology, mostly because it's dark blue so it eats IP and a lot of the common hotswap TS items don't really buff it at all. And all I really sacraficed to do it was not IPing duck. Which is whatever, because engineer evades are a joke anyways. Everything else is super trimmed and optimized though, only way I can see doing it is to sacrifice evade close or dodge range.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

speaking of engi evades being a joke....

the amount of damage engie's eat these days in PVP is also a joke.

the number of profs that can chew us a new one from their perk alpha is nuts.

my normal mode of play is to watch my blockers and get my coon ready as soon as I see my blockers going to 1-2, but lately if I wait that long, I'll be dead before my coon pops.

Even vs some relatively innocuous profs like advy and fixer with those FA perks it's kinda like, yah, sure, you wait for your blockers to run out (you expect your HP to have dropped a bit, like 75% remaining or whatever) but if you wait that long you'll have only 20% remaining and you'll have just eaten an entire perk alpha. If 13% proc doesn't go you could be dead by the time your blockers are out.

That's just retarded.

I kinda think engi base reflects need a small boost to 35% or something.

[Brofist]

Which is an unfortunate flaw low evade professions have to deal with. Kinda silly that an evade profession can basically ignore someone 10 levels lower than them because they will never hit/perk them.

But Soldiers/Docs/Engies/Enfos, all have to treat a lowbie as a threat because they can atleast unload perk damage on them, which really adds up.

[erozc]

hmm what about for an uber pvp nemesis nano to ruin engineers skills : tradeskill shutdown, -2000 to all tradeskills ?

oh my...

What are you gonna do, ask them to maek crab first and cast nano next?

[Ophiuchus]

Noooo! Our ability to combat-carb-craft...

[Cratertina]

;D Seriusly? Anyone has an engi without basic tradeskills atleast on same level as nanoskills?

Gimps I say! The lot of you.

Give engi tradeskill perks, tradeskill pets, tradeskill nanos, maybe some nanos aswell, but tradeskilly damage, tradeskilled epicness. Maybe even tradeskill attackrating... like 100 pistol +5% each tradeskill, reward people for having a tradeskiller toon.

Maybe give Engineers weapon that check against intelligence instead of defense ratings... etc.

And who ever said traders were nerfed? Traders are awesome in 18.7. So suck it up!

[Platypus135]

Wel.... if there's one thing we can all agree on, it is that implementing this change would be ridiculously time consuming for the AO dev "team".

Summarising the changes:

1) To allow low and mid level engis to be able to tradeskill stuff without being completely gimped in PVM.
2) To allow end-game engis to tradeskill and cast their nanos WITHOUT having to switch an entire backpack full of gear whenever they want to tradeskill or cast nanos.
3) Allow engis to go NR perks since they no longer need nanoskills! (as a pvper this idea entertains me).

Surely you could reach the same end goal with a lot less effort by doing these things:

1) a) Reduce the IP cost of tradeskills/nanoskills at lower levels, giving them more IP to spend in other skills.
b) Change the requirements of nanos (such as Pet Aggression Buffs, Auras, and AC buffs) to require only MC/TS. No more MM/BM/TS/PM plz!

2)a) Lower the nanoskill requirements of endgame engi nanos by 50-100 points so we don't need to swap out a nano HUD unit or equivalent.
b) Buff tradeskills more through perks, research lines, or items.

3) Give engis some sick mid/end game items that buff nano resist, so we don't need to go NR perks.

[Brofist]

Being able to perk NR would be awesome. Because engineer perks suck for the most part anyways, I think I have well over 10 perks invested into generic lines because there is nothing better to invest into. Being able to be immune to all nanos would be funny.

Especially considering I cry butt tears every time I'm rooted or snared. And it's pretty much a guranteed death if you get feared because chances are you will have atleast 1 enfo and shade ganking and chain stunning you to death.