f13.net

My 60 hunter was herbs/alch for a long time.  Then I dropped herbs in order to make ammo (pre-wicked arrows), so became an engineer.

Now, however, I find no reason whatsoever to remain an engineer, since rep reward arrows are as good or better and far cheaper than crafted.

Is there any reason to remain an engineer?

No.

We got proper fucked.

Forget it.

You can make nice guns later on and potion injectors which uh...save bag space and let druids use potions in animal forms. That's about it.

I'm sticking with it, because Fuck Blizzard.

Also, I have some rare schematics already and that's part of the fun for me as a profession -- getting all the schematics.

Glad I'm not the only engineer that noticed that Blizz doesn't give a crap about engineering. Or more properly, they don't know what to do with the profession.

It'd be nice if they did the no more specialty thing for it, like they did with Blacksmithing and Leatherworking.

It'd also be nice if the mats to make one stack of bullets didn't cost more than just buying the stack of bullets from the vendor.

So far, the new schematics I have seen have not impressed me. I'd certainly like to see more fun stuff.

I keep hearing that specialties were removed from leatherworking but I noticed a ton of new recipes on the specialty vendors, so what's up with that?

Old speciality recipes were made generic, new speciality recipies were added.

Keep in mind that all the previous toys [reflectors, MC hat, rocket helm, etc] won't really work above level 60. I dumped engineering on my 'lock, went tailoring [shadoweave] / enchanting.
Haven't regretted it since.


-- Z.

My pet dragons and chickens have been perma-bagged for DPS trinkets that do more, so really I just keep it because of all the work I put into it, and the jumper cables (on a rogue) can be very useful. Well, in the old dungeons they were. Not sure how that will pan out. Teleporting is handy, though.

You spend a primary profession to be able to teleport to tanaris and toshley's station. Deal with it.

I'm holding onto it for a bit because I spent buckets of gold grinding it out. Was good for PvP for a bit, but looking ahead about the only things I see as useful are the Gadgetzan port (until I've grinded mining from 250 to 300 in Un'guro) and the upcoming portable mailbox. If they don't vamp it in a few months, and I've got my flying mount, I'll probably dump for just two collection profs. I suck at crafting. I just don't care enough about it.

And cables.  God love those cables.

But then I'm a hunter.  I don't die in instances.*


*Unless one of you idiot group mates DRAGS THE FUCKING AOE MOB OVER TOP OF ME.  :mob:

No fucking shit. We had a full wipe because of that. Some idiot clothie trying to outrun a boss drags his ass over all four of us hunters -- three of us engineers. All with cables. (Someone aggroed the bloody boss while we were recovering from a wipe -- nobody was set with soulstones or had time to DI).

People need to listen to "Just sit down and die, please."

I've never understood the whole running from bosses/ instance mobs thing.   You'd think after 60+ levels people would learn you can't outrun instance aggro, AND if the boss is on you and the tanks are dead, so are you.   And yeah, it's always a clothie.  :-(

So true about the clothie thing. And the cables FTW thing. And the Engi sucks ass thing.

Depends on where you are, but most likely that's true. There are rare exceptions in BWL and Naxx where bosses will reset if you get out of range. Chrommagus for one is easily resetable where we fight him in the top level of the suppression room by just jumping down to the bottom level. Of course, if both tanks die, this can cause a late problem where he resets during the last 5% much to everyone's chagrin.  :cry:

You fight Chromag in the sup room? That's a hell of a pull.

Huh. Why? There's a perfect little alcove right below the spiral ramp...

Bad training -- it all goes back to the paddle wheel in the Deadmines. Makes people think they can break aggro somehow.

Two reasons, One is the easy reset value if the fight goes shitty early. Two, healers on the bottom level are focused on the tank on the edge 100% of the time and are also never in breath LOS.

And the pull is easy, you summon a hunter, he yanks the crank, he accepts the summon. Chromie blows one breath on the way down before he ever gets to the tank. It's really quite nice.

I think a lot of problems would be solved if trinkets were made into general use items, like potions.

Or they gave us two more trinket slots. We can carry five whole 18-slot bags with us, with halberds and horses and lumber, and yet we can only wear two measly trinkets?

(yea, I know, it's a game mechanic issue, not a realism one... just sayin').

What would fix Engineering though? Not sure. I'm not much of a pro. I took it for the cool foozles for when my timers were up during PvP matches. Not PvPing lately, the only time I get any use out of anything is the underwater breathing thing and if I get counterspell'd/silenced by a mob so need to use the Thorium Grenade or the Death Ray (which can crit for me as high as 1.9k. Not sure how it's calculated). I' used the target dummies in the earlier days, but don't need it now for soloing, and it wouldn't last long anyway. Otherwise, It's a bunch of crap only an Engineer can use because everything else they could sell is outclassed by quests and drops.

I don't know about yall, but I really like my +45 stam trinket as a warrior.

My net gun is godly in pvp.   :-D

Back to herbs, then.  I'll regrind engineering if they add anything useful.  I heard the portable mailbox was taken out.

Yeah -- back before cross-server BGs, when I was first learning to PvP I got lots of advice from Horde players in WSG on how to play better. Why did they remember a crappy newb hunter in a BG they steamrolled every five minutes?

Netguns, death rays, and shrink rays -- and mithril frags. I needed to learn to play my Hunter better, but I apparently was quite good at making myself a serious nuisance. If I couldn't netgun the runner, I'd snag his pocket priest. I'd shrink the decked out warriors, death-ray the low-stam clothies, and if I saw a group of Horde chasing our runner I'd drop an trap, throw a bomb, and give our runner a huge head start.

Engineering is fun in PvP -- problem was later when I had much better passive trinkets. Engineering, looking at the schematics, looks to be designed for clothies. Hell, I think the Death-ray actually crits based on your spell crit chance. If you're a low-level clothie, engineering can give you nice headwear 10 levels ahead of anything you can get anywhere else, and a variety of tools for doing a bit more damage or keeping enemies off you.

Hunters take it for FD/cables, more than anything.

Crap. That alone would suck almost enough for me to drop the prof altogether.

Netherweave Nets :P

And ammo, before the patch that changed everything.

There's better craftable ammo that can be made with engineering but most of the rep vendors from Zangarmarsh on will sell you ammo that's just as good when you hit honored+. Also, if you get in really good with the keepers of time you can buy epic ammo.

My rogue's kept it because of the port to Tanaris, the Jumper leads, Parachute cloak, deepdive helmet. That's pretty much it - a few utility devices for a non-caster.

Rocket boots were ok in WSG on occasion, my mecha-chicken and dragonlings are sadly now pretty much redundant due to my sustained-dps trinkets. Bombs are a bit of a waste of time for me really, especially considering the mats they use to make.

New stuff? I can't see any point continuing to level the skill up right now. I like the few utilities mentioned above but I can't see a point for the rest of it really.

Yes, that's why I said before the patch that changed everything (when the vendors started selling Wicked Arrows a few weeks before the expansion).

When the game launched, the big selling point of engineers was to be able to make ammo.  Blizzard has completely forsaken that aspect of engineering with the expansion.

Other than fighting robots for the sheer novelty, I don't see why anyone would want to bother with engineering now.  It's the biggest pain of the crafts.

I largeley suspect that the 'nerf' to engineering ammo is to shut up the damned "ZOMG I WANT TO MAKE ARROWS THAT R AS GUD" spam.   Rather than implementing some way of producing decent bow arrow, let's just stop producing decent gun ammo.   Whatever.

Engineering has always been mostly a novelty enterprise.  The creative folks got creative with the few nifty trinkets out there, but Blizzard's response to "make it more useful!" has always been one of, "No, because then everyone will take it."   Now, they should add a few more novelty items (like tonks!) and let a few more things be usable by non-engineers, but as far as combat effectiveness & Engineering I think we've seen its heyday.

Bombs!

Lots (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=56452) of big explosives (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=54326) and chicken (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=54284)!

In extreme PvP situations, having a big ass grenade on you always helps.

I rerolled from engineering to blacksmithing, figure the weapon chain will be worth it.

Only bomb I routinely used in PvP was the mithril frags -- big area stun. Helped clear a tunnel of pursuers. Throw that and your runner has 3 seconds to heal, get healed, and move without spell interruption. Drop a trap there too, and he's almost certain to get up the tunnel and cap the flag before the Horde can get line of sight on him again.

I did see someone drop an Arcanite bomb into a crowd of Horde clothies once. Funny, but expensive as all hell. The only reason I don't drop engineering is because I have the shadow and flame reflectors schems as well as the Accurascope schem -- although parts for that are going to be a bitch, with no one running MC these days.The only other engineer I have is a priest, and he's a tailor/engineer -- might turn him to jewelcrafting, though.

I haven't gotten engineering up to 375 yet, because I have to get my mining up (i had enchanting/engineering, enchanting for disenchanting - but now that they've changed it, i haven't had a chance to rank up mining).

My favorite bombs were the Iron Grenades. Cheap to make, and the best part - the casting bar would fill up, even if you were moving.

Grenades for the shaman on the move.

Yeah, I never really saw the value (personally) in bombs outside of important PVE fights. As PVP life and death is essentially pretty much meaningless I don't bother with explosives or any other kinds of consumable outside of bandages. Sometimes I'll use poison on my rogue but thats about it.

I do like the look of that Poultryiser though. +45 sta is nothing to sneeze at.

In the grand tradition of the Spider Belt and Green Whelp Armor, I give you the first item in BC to be PvP nerfed:

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=54288

Both the cooldown and absorption on that are horribly, horribly wrong.  I want one.

I doubt it'll be nerfed. Engineers fucking need something, and 4k for level 70 is peanuts. Plus the stats are for shit -- you're giving up a real belt to wear that.