Jump to content

Quarterly Producer Letter for Q2 2024 ×

Virulence or Engineering ?


Gamemaniax

Recommended Posts

Engineering is highly undervalued. Mostly because it is a bit more difficult to pull off effectivly and the tanks have to help you a bit by limiting boss movement.

 

Both are good diciplines and I often swap between the 2 to keep both styles appealing to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Engineering is very Boss Dependant. If a boss does not move often, you can play Engineering to get max DPS. if a boss moves a bit, but has adds that group up often, you can roll Engineering to help kill adds. If a boss has alot of movement, and adds that move often, avoid Engineering. Virulence is good for fights that have a boss that moves often, but you stick on him for a long time. Marksmanship is good for fights with tons of target swaps or low HP adds.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Virulence is very good, if you can double-/multi-dot, talking Walkers, Master/Blaster, Bestia and such.

 

As already has been pointed out: Engineering is best, if you need to move a lot and the boss won't. Raw average single target dps on Engineering is actually higher than on Virulence, even though Virulence has better top parses on parsely. But those are just extremely lucky on dot crits and thus energy management, allowing a rotation you will neve be able to reliably recreate on bosses.

 

But: To pull off good Engineering you really need to know the encounter beforehand: When do you skip your positional AoEs and replace them with Snipes? Talking "When will Bulo jump away" e.g.

 

That's why for progression raiding Virulence is the "safer choice", cause all your dps is "locked on target" and thus Virulence is considered superior by top players.

 

(Also if there's a lot of target switching going on and strong burst required, Marksman is always the way to go.)

Edited by Ardarell_Solo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally prefer Engineering because of the mobility and stability.

 

I often found my Virulence parses to depend on luck with DoTcrits for the best parses where I do pretty much the same good DPS every time with Engineering.

It's also a lot easier to adapt to red circles etc with Engineering without losing too much DPS but if you play your class really well, chances are Virulence (especially 3 cull) will do more DPS than Engineering can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Virulence is very good, if you can double-/multi-dot, talking Walkers, Master/Blaster, Bestia and such.

 

As already has been pointed out: Engineering is best, if you need to move a lot and the boss won't. Raw average single target dps on Engineering is actually higher than on Virulence, even though Virulence has better top parses on parsely. But those are just extremely lucky on dot crits and thus energy management, allowing a rotation you will neve be able to reliably recreate on bosses.

 

But: To pull off good Engineering you really need to know the encounter beforehand: When do you skip your positional AoEs and replace them with Snipes? Talking "When will Bulo jump away" e.g.

 

That's why for progression raiding Virulence is the "safer choice", cause all your dps is "locked on target" and thus Virulence is considered superior by top players.

 

(Also if there's a lot of target switching going on and strong burst required, Marksman is always the way to go.)

 

While I enjoy the hell out of engineering and it's mobility is def better then virulence i do disagree that the top parses are only better because of luck. For example the top parses for engi/saboteur are at 5,1 or 5,150 which are obviously good numbers. With presumably the same gear (aka bis) that's my average on virulence. A good virulence parse for me is 5,2 or above and 5,1 would be my average parsing wise.

 

But yeah about engineering, to pull off good numbers you do indeed need to really know the fights and be able to think ahead in terms of where the boss is gonna go. All 3 specs are viable for all fights imo but if we're talking about highest dps, it's virulence for most of the fights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While I enjoy the hell out of engineering and it's mobility is def better then virulence i do disagree that the top parses are only better because of luck. For example the top parses for engi/saboteur are at 5,1 or 5,150 which are obviously good numbers. With presumably the same gear (aka bis) that's my average on virulence. A good virulence parse for me is 5,2 or above and 5,1 would be my average parsing wise.

 

But yeah about engineering, to pull off good numbers you do indeed need to really know the fights and be able to think ahead in terms of where the boss is gonna go. All 3 specs are viable for all fights imo but if we're talking about highest dps, it's virulence for most of the fights.

 

I tend to disagree, I'm under the impression that just not enough top players of the AC really give Engineering a go. Partly because historically that spec was the odd man out and not viable for single target encounters except for wallbang or roll in place trick. I'd bet that top Virulence players could pull off more with Engineering on many fights.

 

As for parsing: My Saboteur parses (best at 5167) are actually generally 5100+ (that's totally reliable) and I'm not even BIS, I lack one modification ;-) Meaning I think records are higher in Virulence but I bet averages are higher in Engineering given BIS and equally skilled players in both sepcs. But: The difference will be marginal.

 

I still think Virulence is rightly considered the best progression spec, though, and I can see how one wouldn't want to spend a lot of effort to master a "farming spec"...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tend to disagree, I'm under the impression that just not enough top players of the AC really give Engineering a go. Partly because historically that spec was the odd man out and not viable for single target encounters except for wallbang or roll in place trick. I'd bet that top Virulence players could pull off more with Engineering on many fights.

 

As for parsing: My Saboteur parses (best at 5167) are actually generally 5100+ (that's totally reliable) and I'm not even BIS, I lack one modification ;-) Meaning I think records are higher in Virulence but I bet averages are higher in Engineering given BIS and equally skilled players in both sepcs. But: The difference will be marginal.

 

I still think Virulence is rightly considered the best progression spec, though, and I can see how one wouldn't want to spend a lot of effort to master a "farming spec"...

 

Fair enough, i do admit it's been a while since i put some work into engineering. Ironically i started my sniper as engineering and i loved it just soo much. Kinda hated virulence but because of progression gave it a go (was at walkers back then iirc) and it was just better so i kinda stuck with it. I do really love the spec tho, maybe i'll try it some more again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While i do still think that virulence average is better than engineering average (my virulence average is somewhere between 5150-5200), it only took me 3 tries after looking up an engineering guide to get my top parse and i think that it has a far higher cap than it currently shows.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.