Lethality and Engineering in Solo Ranked

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Hi, I'm looking to start maining a sniper/gunslinger. Pre 3.0, I used to run lethality with pretty good success and engineering was amazing with the double roll/shield probe reset. Now that I'm picking the class back up, I'm curious, how do these specs fair in solo ranked now? I know that Marksman has good burst with the on demand crit of ambush, but I'm more interested in playing either lethality of engineering. Edited May 6, 2015 by Jinre_the_Jedi

[BaineOs]

I can't speak for lethality and I haven't done much ranked at all since 3.0 but when I did in pre-season 4 the damage engineering did was not the problem, it was surviving long enough in order to do the damage. To be honest I can't imagine that anything has changed and that would be similar I'd think for lethality as well.

 

If they gave us back our engineering 2.10 defences then we would be in a good spot (although the class as a whole would still have defensive issues which need sorting).

[PiRunner]

The thing that Engineering has over marksman is better overall damage (sustained), better mobility, and a lot of crowd and situation control (PP hinder spam on melee). The reason why people much prefer Marksman over Engineering is because the burst is actually possible to get off before you die, whereas with engi you hardly get through laying on your dots before you have to play defensively and, before long, die.

 

understand that, as a dedicated engi main in solo ranked, I highly recommend you take up marksman if you want the best rating. Its not that snipers are a bad class, its just not having good enough defensive abilities and nothing to force a target switch means we are heavily reliant on our team to preform well. In granked and certain solo comps any sniper can preform effectively; that is, a good healer and a tank guard will let you use what DCDs you have effectively, and engender less focus. However, solo ranked viability should assume the worst comps, all DPS vs DPS. In these situations, its who melts whos face first. Most other classes have defensive or self-healing cooldowns to stay alive through that massive dps; we dont. So, the only real viable spec is the one that will take someone down before you go down, marksman,

 

But since you say you don't want to play marksman, I'll first applaud you; I like people who don't push the burst meta. So, between Lethality and Engi, I'd have to say I like Engi better in PvP even while admitting i'm no where near as knowledgeable of lethality. As I understand it, lethality has the least burst of the disciplines, but the most sustained as its the one that most heavily relies on dots and such. Its mobility is somewhere between marksman and lethality, so if you know how to move and when really carefully you'll have a better time of it.

 

Engi, my main, Is somewhere between lethalities sustained damage and marksmans burst. you have three sizeable dots to stack on a single target and Exp. probe into-SoS does moderate burst. After that, you have Plasma Probe to keep people traped, and if you take certain cc utilities and get good at geting the stun on PP-EMP, you can get really good at controling people ans situations. Combine with the how hard it is to LoS an engineer because our EMP skill doesn't need LoS and our AoE skills (made considerably stronger by AoE buffs in our tree) shoot around nooks and cranies, you can always keep up a steady stream of DPS. Again, our biggest drawback is that snipers have so little survivability while engi needs to survive long enough to really warm up. If you play sniper, you need to get good at utilizing your defensives to the max. If you play engi, you need to be even better at it. Also, fight the urge to always be in cover, you have all those instant casts for a reason; fight and kite and los.

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Thanks a lot for the information you two, I've been putting these things to practice with varying measures of success, hopefully I will fine tune my skill before the end of the season. Thanks again guys.