spotlight on the engineer

In their series of articles about Warhammer Online, Massively now starts to give us some information on classes in a bit more detail, concentrating on the goblin shaman and the dwarf engineer (I know someone who co-writes this blog who will be mightily interested in the latter!). Since we’re much bigger fans of Order here, I’ll start with the Engineer and what struck me as interesting from the article.

First, backpacks instead of cloaks. Definitely a good idea. Something that many have adopted in LotRO with the cosmetic slots for back items, for some classes a backpack just works better and an Engineer is definitely one of these.

Second, turrets! Flaming turrets, gun turrets and landmines that stealth once placed. Come on, what’s not to love? It’s like having pets that don’t answer back or have pathing issues. They also get a barb-wire net which roots opponents for a few seconds, which adds some crowd control elements to their ranged dps. And best of all, a barrel of ale that has AE heal on it! Actually, come to think of it, this class is beginning to appeal even to me (and I’m terrible at playing both ranged AND dps classes, go figure!).

Ok, so the Engineer may not have the mobility of some of the other classes, since turrets etc have to be placed, but they allow quite a lot of tactics from both sides. As a skilful player, you have a chance to leap out of the way, and as a skilful Engineer you have every opportunity to turn the tide of a skirmish with your tricks.

The article then goes on to cover some of the mastery skills available to Engineers (such as the awesome sounding Snipe), it also glances briefly at the Engineer’s mirror class – the Magus who gets to summon demons instead of turrets (again, I would argue that turrets are more likely to do what you tell them!).