Engineer Guide (Mass Effect 2)

The Engineer's strengths are stripping away defenses, dealing direct damage with powers, and distracting or disabling enemies. While weapons are not the primary focus of the class, and squad members are important for combat effectiveness, Engineers can also become good fighters with a judicious choice of bonus power. More importantly, their Combat Drone power allows them to "lock up" at least one enemy continuously, wearing away its defenses and keeping it attacking the expendable drone rather than allies or the player; furthermore, unlike normal crowd control powers, Combat Drone is effective even against enemies who still have their defenses up. Engineers also have Overload and Incinerate to deal with shielded, armored, and regenerating enemies, leaving only barriers to require squadmate or bonus power help. In short, while an Engineer cannot expect to charge headlong into a room full of enemies and win, a bit of tactical planning allows this class to be one of the most capable in the game.

Combat Drone
The Engineer's signature power, and also its most useful one. The short cooldown means that an Engineer can (and should!) have a Combat Drone present on the battlefield at all times. Targeting the power on an enemy causes the drone to spawn next to that enemy and attack immediately; without a particular target, the drone typically spawns next to the player, chooses a target for itself, and moves off to engage. Drones can be targeted against any targetable enemies, including ones behind cover. Once the drone attacks an enemy, with very few exceptions that enemy will focus exclusively on the drone until it is destroyed, ignoring all other threats.

Because of the short cooldown of this power, an Engineer can use it to "lock up" almost any single enemy, keeping a drone attacking it continuously; the only notable enemies against which this tactic is ineffective are Praetorians. The best use of Combat Drone is to target it on the most powerful enemy in a group, and keep that enemy busy fighting drones while dispatching weaker enemies using other powers and gunfire.

Explosive Drone is generally the more useful evolution of this power, particularly if it's used against strong enemies. Strong enemies will often destroy the drone quickly, making the damage output from repeated exploding drones better than that from the Attack Drone.

Incinerate
One of the Engineer's most useful powers, Incinerate is effective against armor and unprotected organic enemies, and also permanently stops regeneration when it hits an unprotected organic. It also makes unprotected organics panic for a few seconds, which causes them to stop shooting and stand up out of cover, or it may knock them to the ground. It is ineffective against unprotected synthetics, though it can be used to destroy the armor of a synthetic enemy. When used by the player, Incinerate can be arced around cover, making it possible to finish off an enemy that has retreated behind cover with a well-aimed blast.

Both Heavy Incinerate and Incineration Blast are useful evolutions; Incineration Blast may be slightly better overall for its ability to panic multiple organic enemies at once, and because even on higher difficulty levels most armored enemies have either little enough armor that even the weaker evolution will destroy it all, or so much armor that neither will burn all the way through. Incineration Blast is particularly useful against groups of Husks, as it can destroy the armor of several Husks with a single shot, leaving them open to instant kills from squadmates' crowd control powers.

Overload
The Engineer's primary counter to shields and unprotected synthetics. Rank 2 of Overload is also required to unlock Incinerate. This power hits its target instantly and cannot be arced around cover, which makes it effective only against enemies who are in the open. Overload is also capable of detonating explosive crates and will make unprotected enemies with flamethrowers explode instantly.

Heavy Overload is generally a more useful evolution than Area Overload, as it will completely remove the shields of weak enemies even on Insanity, while Area Overload may leave a small amount of the shield remaining. Heavy Overload is also a better choice for use with AI Hacking, as its smaller area of effect is less likely to include a hacked enemy.

Cryo Blast
While very useful against unprotected enemies, Cryo Blast is ineffective against protected ones. It can be very useful below Hardcore difficulty, but on Hardcore or Insanity almost all enemies are protected, making it much more situational. Like Incinerate, Cryo Blast can be arced around cover; however, this property is less useful with Cryo Blast, since the frozen enemy will remain inaccessible behind cover.

On lower difficulty levels, Full Cryo Blast is probably the more useful evolution, as a single frozen enemy will probably not survive even its shorter duration. On Hardcore or Insanity, since there are many fewer opportunities to use this power, it is probably best to take only a single rank, or possibly two to unlock AI Hacking; it is a good idea to take a single rank in it early, though, since freezing a charging enemy can be a life saver. It is also worth noting that even a rank 1 Cryo Blast is a one-hit-kill against husks (after dropping their defences on higher difficulties) which is very useful specially on the derelict reaper, abandoned mine and (to a lesser extent) horizon missions.

AI Hacking
AI Hacking is a highly situational skill -- useful against synthetic enemies, but useless against organics. It can be used in two distinct ways: at rank 1 it is primarily useful to stop an enemy from attacking you and cause its former allies to turn on it, dealing it heavy damage, while at the highest ranks the hacked enemy becomes a useful ally in its own right. Since the Engineer has several other useful powers contending for squad points, plus a possible bonus power, AI Hacking is best used in the first role, with only a single point invested.

Tech Mastery
Last but not least, the Engineer's passive class power provides not only the usual bonuses to health, power cooldown, and Paragon/Renegade, but also a reduction in the amount of resources needed for research projects of up to 25%. If you find planet scanning tedious, you should maximize this as quickly as possible. For an Engineer specializing in Incinerate and Overload, Demolisher is the better evolution of this power because of its damage boost; for a Cryo Blast/AI Hacking specialist, Mechanic may be better since both of these powers will benefit from the duration boost but cannot benefit from Demolisher's damage boost. Also worth noting, however, is that most powers (Overload, Incinerate, Combat Drone) benefit from both duration and damage, and in the case of incinerate, both increase it's damage output. As such, it may be worth looking at mechanic regardless of playstyle as it recieves larger bonuses elsewhere, namely health, of which the engineer has precious little to begin with.

Notable Bonus Powers
While the Engineer is a powerful class even with its basic power set, it suffers from a few significant weaknesses:


 * Low weapon damage output
 * No powers useful against biotic barriers (Other than evolved Assualt Drone)
 * No defensive powers

These weaknesses can be addressed with bonus powers. There are two additional considerations to keep in mind with bonus powers, though. The first is that the Engineer is a squad point hog. With a large number of useful powers, two of which have other powers as prerequisites, putting many squad points into a bonus power will make some character builds difficult or impossible. The second is that most of the Engineer's existing class powers have cooldowns, which means that any bonus power must compete with the class powers for cooldown time.

Ammo Powers
Ammo powers are particularly useful to an Engineer since most of class' powers have a long cooldown; this time may as well be spent shooting the enemy rather than just hiding behind cover, especially since the Engineer can distract enemies with a combat drone to decrease the amount of incoming gunfire. Ammo powers also have the advantage of not requiring cooldown time except when they're first activated.

Of the available bonus ammo powers, Warp Ammo has the added benefit of doing extra damage against barriers, compensating for the lack of class powers useful against barriers as well as improving the Engineer's weapon damage output against all types of target except shields. The only drawback of Warp Ammo is that its damage bonus is quite low until it is evolved to Heavy Warp Ammo, making it a huge drain on squad points; despite this, it is highly recommended.

Of the other bonus ammo powers, Armor Piercing Ammo lacks Warp Ammo's damage bonus against barriers, but delivers a higher damage bonus at all ranks. If you are willing to rely on squadmates' powers to take down barriers, this power can be a good way to either boost damage output against armor and health even higher than with Warp Ammo, or reduce the number of squad points spent for the same damage bonus, allowing a more to be spent on the base class powers.

Finally, Shredder Ammo, while delivering a very high damage bonus, is too special-purpose to be a good choice, especially since an Engineer can use Incinerate on an unprotected organic enemy, then get in an extra second or two of unopposed fire while the enemy is incapacitated.

Defensive Powers
A shield boost, such as provided by Geth Shield Boost, Barrier, or Fortification, is helpful to overcome the Engineer's lack of defensive powers and improve survivablity in combat. All three provide shield boosts, but not only is Geth Shield Boost the "Tech" version, capable of benefiting from the same tech upgrades as the rest of the Engineer's powers, but its Improved Geth Shield Boost evolution grants a 10% weapon damage boost in addition to the boost to shields.

Other Powers
Reave is another option for dealing with biotic barriers. While as an active power it is stylistically more in line with the Engineer, it competes with the Engineer's other powers for cooldown time. Its life-draining effect can improve survivability in combat, but it requires an unprotected organic enemy to work, limiting its utility.

Dominate is also an interesting choice for a bonus power. With the combination of AI Hacking and Dominate, an Engineer can mind-control almost any enemy in the game, with potentially amusing results. It is also useful even at low ranks, freeing up squad points for other powers.

Squad Members and Useful Abilities
Due to the Engineer's difficulty in dealing with with barriers, companions with maximized Warp like Miranda or Thane will be very valuable assets; once Samara is loyal, her Reave power can serve the same purpose. Jack can also be a useful choice with her Warp Ammo, especially evolved to Squad Warp Ammo.

An Engineer specializing in Cryo Blast may prefer Grunt because he often charges nearby enemies with his melee attack, which can easily shatter them if they are frozen. Grunt's high health, armor and regenerative abilities allow him to be the team's tank, as well as an effective damage dealer with his Incendiary Ammo. Grunt's M-300 Claymore heavy shotgun is probably a waste of platinum, as he can be roughly equally effective with the M-22 Eviscerator; his Krogan Vitality upgrades, on the other hand, are worthwhile.

If Grunt's charge isn't called for, Jacob is also a good tank and close combat specialist once he becomes loyal and gains Barrier; Grunt is generally a better choice than Jacob, but both of them together make a good squad on extremely combat-intensive missions such as the acquisition of the Reaper IFF.

Tech specialist squadmates are generally redundant and should not be picked outside of specific tech-oriented missions where synthetics will be the main opponent. However, the ability to swarm enemies with three combat drones at once can be amusing, even if it is not necessarily an effective tactic. Legion can also be very useful in combat after its loyalty mission, with its Geth Shield Boost and its M-98 Widow sniper rifle, and Garrus is an excellent choice for providing both firepower and an extra source of Overload on missions with many shielded opponents.

Weapons and Upgrades
Naturally, an Engineer's first priority for upgrades should be Tech Damage. If you have the Kasumi DLC, completing Kasumi's loyalty mission should be an early priority, both for the Tech Damage upgrade found there and for the M-12 Locust submachine gun. Since most of the Engineer's powers have a long cooldown, getting three Tech Damage upgrades in order to unlock the tech cooldown reduction upgrade is particularly important.

Since an Engineer's light weapons will be restricted to Heavy Pistols and Submachine Guns for much of the game, it is important to also prioritize upgrades for these weapons, at least with a more combat-oriented style of play. In particular, the submachine gun will be the Engineer's primary weapon in most situations; given this, it is important to acquire a good weapon such as the M-9 Tempest or the M-12 Locust as soon as possible. Fortunately, both of these submachine guns are found on missions that are well-suited to an Engineer's skill set.

When the time comes to choose a bonus weapon type, Sniper Rifles are probably the best choice, since the Engineer's powers already favor keeping at a distance from the enemy. Because Engineers do not have a time dilation ability like Infiltrators or Soldiers, they will miss more often, making the M-97 Viper the best choice of sniper rifle due to its higher magazine capacity. Assault Rifles are also a good choice, in which case the M-15 Vindicator is probably the best choice due to its high accuracy and damage output; the other assault rifles are functionally very similar to submachine guns, to which the Engineer already has access. Shotgun is a very interesting choice. Given that the Engineer has Combat Drone and Cryo Blast to keep the enemy distracted/locked, if used prudently, shotguns can be very rewarding. But this requires a very tactical playstyle, so it is generally not advised.

While an Engineer will often work with biotic squadmates, biotic upgrades are less important than tech and relevant weapon ones. There are generally better uses for the credits, although if Element Zero is plentiful, there's no reason not to spend it on biotic research projects.