Engineer Guide (Mass Effect 2)

Engineer is a magician in Mass Effect 2 as much as Adept which means rather than shooting enemies he will distract and eliminate them using his powers. Having a good set of crowd control and damage-dealing powers it's a very interesting choice to make.

Overview
Engineer has to rely on his powers more than his guns (SMGs and Heavy Pistols) to get the job done. He doesn't have as good crowd control as Adept and doesn't have quickly recharging damage-dealing powers like Pull and Throw used together which means most of the combat time has to be spent in hiding and enemies should be kept at medium to long distance. Finding a sweet safe spot and launching one Incinerate or Overload after another from its cover is the most common tactics for Engineer in combat in ME2.

Engineer Overview
Engineer Pros and Cons

Pros: Cons:
 * Engineer’s powers are made to distract or control enemies through use of AI hacking, Cyro blast, and Combat Drone.
 * Combat Drone will distract any kind of enemy, even bosses.
 * The short cooldown period of the Combat Drone means that while the drone is active, you can focus your other powers on the distracted enemies.
 * Overload(for shields) and Incinerate(for armor) are great for stripping the defenses of any heavily fortified enemy.
 * Enemy Assault Rifles and submachine guns will eat through an Engineer’s defense if facing the enemy head on.
 * Limited to heavy pistol and submachine gun for good majority of the game.
 * This class is highly tactical. Don’t expect to rush into a room of enemies and fight them head on.
 * Careful planning is a must.

Notable Bonus Powers
With Overload and Incinerate dealing with shields and armor, the only protection type an Engineer can't deal with is Biotic Barrier. This means taking Warp Ammo and using SMG to bring down Barriers is strongly advised for all Engineer builds. Picking team version of Warp Ammo will allow you to deal with Harbinger and other protected enemies, especially on higher difficulty levels much easier.

Squad Members and required abilities
Due to lack of ability to deal with Barriers, companions with maximized Warp skill like Miranda or Thane will be very valuable assets for a team led by an Engineer. Mechanics with leveled up Cryo Blast will like Grunt a lot since he often charges close-by enemies with his melee attack, Incendiary Ammo and Krogan shotgun and a well aimed Cryo strike in advance of his charge can allow him to thin enemy ranks very fast. Not to mention his inherent abilities to be team's damage sponge, tank and damage dealer. Jack is also an interesting choice with her Warp Ammo (especially team version) and Shockwave.

All technical companions are redundant at best and shouldn't be picked outside of very specific tech-oriented missions where synthetics will be the main opponent. However the ability to swarm enemies with three combat drones at once can have its uses at times.

Weapons and Equipment
Engineers get unique discount when researching equipment so upgrading is very easy.

If Miranda and Thane are chosen to be the companions for their Heavy Warp skill, upgrading SMG to maximum and getting stronger version of it from Tali's recruitment mission is a very cheap and easy route to bring squad's damage up pretty fast.

It's also crucial to get all the techs that reduce cooldown of Engineer abilities since all of them except for Cryo Blast are on a very long in combat conditions 6s cycle. Tech damage is a no-brainer. To strengthen biotic allies, Biotic damage and cooldown upgrades also can't be neglected.

Finally if Grunt joins the team to charge at frozen enemies, it's required to get him a better shotgun or assault rifle as well as upgrade his vitality.

The Carnifex hand cannon is also useful because it is fairly effective agains barriers.