Engineer Guide



The Engineer is the tech specialist of Mass Effect. They use tech talents to effectively de-buff enemies and neutralize them. Engineers are great at using their tech talents to weaken their opponents and then have their squad finish them off while providing support with their pistol.

Talents

 * Pistols- Very essential to the class. After using a tech talent against an enemy you will need to follow up with a barrage of fire from your pistol. Increases damage and accuracy for each talent point. Unless the player has added the Assault Rifle talent, Pistols will be neccessary.
 * Basic Armor- You will need to put quite a few points into this talent as the engineer does not have very much health or protection from enemy fire, and the shield boost ability is a very useful ability to have once you increase your shield strength. Talent points increase damage resistance and hardening.
 * Decryption- The base of the Engineer class. It is extremely useful to deactivate an opponents weapon as soon as you meet them so you have the advantage. Also allows the player to unlock crates and containers, amongst other things. Increases damage done by the explosion of all tech abilities.
 * Hacking- Allows the ability to turn synthetic enemies against each other, which can be useful once you upgrade it a bit, but don't rely on it too much. It's more useful purpose is to reduce the recharge time on tech talents.
 * Electronics- Increases shield strength and unlocks Overload which is very useful as it disables shields, allowing you to directly attack an enemies health, which is very helpful to use on higher level enemies with tough shields and health. Increasing your shield strength is very very important as you will need to rely on your shields to defend yourself.
 * Damping- Important to use because it increases the radius of the tech talents explosion. It allows you to use the ability to disable enemy tech and biotics, which can be useful when fighting asari or higher level geth.
 * First Aid- Increases health returned when using medi-gel and lowers cool-down time for it. It is not very important to the class, except if you plan to do most of the work and take the brunt of the damage dealt to your squad, so you might need it to heal yourself.
 * Medicine- Reduces cooldown time on medi-gel and allows you to use Neural Shock which can be fairly effective against organic targets.
 * Spectre Training- Grants the very useful Unity which, unless you are planning to specialize as a Medic is the only way to revive KO'd squad mates. Also generally improves weapon damage.

Bonus Talents
When creating a new career, if any weapon or ability achievements are unlocked, an option will be available to select one of the corresponding talents that Engineers do not already possess. This choice will open new strategic options, alter the play style of the Engineer, and generally enhance Shepard’s abilities in some way.

Weapon abilities are a strong choice as the Pistol becomes relatively weaker later on in the game. Weapon abilities can also offer a completely different play style. Assault Rifles are similar in range to the Pistol, but will deal out much more damage. However, Assault Rifles in the early game (the Avenger, Banshee and Lancer models) are very inaccurate. Shotguns could be used but the risk of being melee'd, which for an Engineer can mean instant death, is quite high. Sniper Rifles may seem unwieldly for an Engineer but if the player prefers a support role, they may find themselves in the perfect position to dish out long-range damage, while squad members close in.

Biotic abilities can complement tech talents but be aware that the Engineer does not have a Biotic Amp slot. This alongside a lack of other complementary biotic abilities can make them a weaker choice. However, the additional damage protection offered by Barrier can greatly increase the survivability of Shepard. The biotic attacks such as Throw and Lift are less useful as the Engineer is already capable of debuffing enemies sufficiently.

Combat guide for the Engineer
First off, you should probably not be an Engineer on your first playthrough. Engineers are somewhat weak compared to the other classes as the amount of damage that they can deal and receive is considerably lower than the other classes.

Getting into fights as the engineer is all about de-buffing. Right when you get into the action use some of your tech talents such as Sabotage to stop them from firing at you (especially against enemies that deal more damage) or Overload to take down their shields so you can thin their ranks in the first few minutes of combat. Make sure you try to target groups to affect as many enemies as you can, but sometimes it is better to target bigger threats. For example, a Geth Prime may be a better target than three Geth Troopers. You should target the priority threat as to stop it from doing much damage. This problem of choosing targets to de-buff is easily solved by putting more points into damping which increases the radius of most tech talents' explosion.

The damping ability is most effectively used on biotic enemies, because most of them are weak in close combat and it stops you getting thrown down and losing precious seconds during the fight. Damping also disables tech abilities, but it can be hard to target the most annoying tech-using enemies, like the Geth Hopper.

Increasing your pistol talent points is also important because it is what deals damage to the enemies that you just disabled using your tech abilities. Accuracy is fairly important as you should be able to be a fair distance away from your enemies when you use your tech so that your squad mates can do most of the firing. Ergo, you should have an accurate weapon so you can fire from a medium distance away.

With the pistol talent you also gain the marksman ability, which greatly increases the damage output by granting increased accuracy and additional shots per second. With a fully maxed out pistol talent, enabling the master marksman ability, the pistol is about equivalent to the assault rifle regarding damage output.

Therefore adding Assault Rifle, Shotgun or Sniper Rifle as a bonus talent is not really necessary but it's great if it fits to the character's style. Assault Rifles have a similar range as the pistol so they only bring more damage dealing power, though this is not a bad thing. Adding the Shotgun is not recommended as the Engineer does not have the damage protection necessary to fight effectively in close quarters with stronger opponents, although it is also for this reason the shotgun is added.

One thing to make sure you do is increase your shield strength and find armor that has a high amount shields and damage protection so that you can adequately protect yourself. Increasing your Electronics talent is crucial. Adding the Barrier talent will also increase your survivability, but it will not be as powerful for an Engineer. You should have no trouble finding armor and other upgrades because of the Decryption talent which allows you to access hidden items in locked containers.

Also, between the AI Hacking (30%), Engineer (14%), and Operative (an additional 14%) talents, cooldown reduction for the engineer blows all other classes away, especially after garnering the loyalty achievements for Garrus (10% on Sabotage and Damping) and Tali (10% on AI Hacking and Overload). Coupled with the proper armor upgrades, it is only too easy by late game to cap the recharge time on abilities (about 90%) and reduce your two primary abilities, Sabotage and Overload, to about 4 second cooldowns. This makes most any fight pretty easy, especially on Hardcore and Insanity difficulties, really only leaving charging krogan and the "zombie" enemies (husks, creepers, etc.) as difficult. This is easily countered by either Liara or Kaiden, Lift and Singularity each dealing with these problems quite nicely.

Lastly, take advantage of the squad commands. The Engineer is one of the only classes where it is sometimes necessary to send squad members ahead or to attack an enemy. This is useful even if you have added a weapon ability; an Engineer with a Sniper Rifle can send squad members ahead to distract opponents while taking long-range shots, or an Engineer with a Shotgun can send squad members ahead and then follow, using them as a shield.

Squad Composition
In order to be an effective fighting force as an Engineer, your squad members should be powerhouses. As the Engineer is primarily for support, chosen teammates must be strong attackers. Premium choices would be Ashley, Wrex, and Garrus. They can deal vast amounts of damage and Wrex's biotic powers can be very handy. Both Ashley and Wrex have a high amount of health which means they can take the heat off you and have them be your line of defense. Garrus has many uses because of his ability to both deal damage and debuff enemies. Liara can also be useful due to her strong biotic abilities. She has access to Singularity, which is great for getting enemies close together for a Sabotage or Overload attack. Kaidan is not recommended for this purpose as his biotics are not as strong, and his tech skills overlap unecessarily with the Engineer's. This can be mitigated through focusing Kaidan on his Biotic abilities, although his biotics will still not be as versatile as Liara's, especially due to his lack of the very useful Singularity. Tali is also not recommended as her similarity to the Engineer makes the squad too weak in combat. This effect is very pronounced on harder difficulties.

As the Engineer has the Decryption and Electronics perks available, they can let the other tech characters focus more on combat talents. Or Shepard can focus on one of them, say Decryption, and have Liara rank up in Electronics. Either way the player can have access to all the locked items and computer stations necessary, freeing up the squad slots for Combat focused characters.

The Engineer's squadmates should be high in the First Aid talent, so that the engineer doesn't have to waste more points on it than are necessary to get access to Neural Shock.

Engineer Specialization Classes

 * Operative- Specializes in Sabotage and Overload as well as reducing recharge time on tech talents.


 * Medic- Specializes in recharging medi-gel and increasing its effectiveness as well as increasing the effectiveness of the Neural Shock ability. With this specialization fallen squad members can be revived during combat without using the Unity ability.