Thoughts and strategy on the Pyro Engineer

[Dabor]

Unlike with a combat Paladin or Berserk, I've played a lot with Engineers already, so I feel somewhat qualified to comment on what the Pyro engineer package seems to offer.

First off, the Pyro Engineer Relic seems fantastic for a Hydra. Running a single Hydra as my core heavy-hitter, I can definitely say it's a boon to her, and arguably gives her the push needed to have her fire damage be able to hit Magma Carapaces reasonably in direct fire. Even if you're not opting into the Pyro Engineer, the addition of that Relic is a pretty big deal.

The Pyro Turret is an interesting case, and I'll get to how it fits into builds later. For now, I can say that it feels like it benefits from leveling more - the basic turret is always mainly good at stalling and killing squishies, but the Pyro turret needs to be a killer and have its special ability be strong, consistent fire to do its job. If you're not running a dedicated turret engineer, then you can still easily throw in level 1 turret, if not only because it can contribute valuable delaying via the overwatch movement cost. With the Pyro Turret, it's mostly worth using if you're seriously planning to go into it.

Manual Vent is complicated. I'd feel a lot more love for it if it was either unlimited in use OR scaled better with levels. As it is, it feels like something you throw one point into to have just-in-case, but isn't really worth building around. If you'd sink a lot of points into it, may as well just be running a normal engineer.

The actual Hand Flamers perform adequately, although being short range and single target still just means they push engineers from "kind of bad" to "kind of okay." Running up, shooting once and dropping a Pyro Turret is where their burst of flame power comes from - in fact, the range gained from "drop a turret one space away and use the tip of the AoE from it" matches heavier flamethrowers pretty well.

Now going into how all of this works together. On Closed Deploys (and open deploys where it's a while before you can call in support), I can happily say that I can see various cases for the superiority of the Pyro Engineer over a Regular as an outright support troop. First off, you can use, say, Level 10 Pyro Turret + Level 1 Normal Turret on a single soldier. In most missions, this means they create a fantastic defensive line, the normal turrets keeping enemies from running through the fire at full speed barely-alive, with a fair of pyro turrets being able to murder their way through nearly anything. Dropping them as two separate pairs of pyro-normal works plenty well, and the pyro turret can easily solo keep a spawn point disabled for ages, or just act as a nuke to drop in-combat for its two powerful immediate shots.

If you can't access cross-heat sinking, then Manual Vent is generally better in a short term sense, and definitely more effective for a single point. On a 5-templar Closed Deploy, venting the other 4 at low level is likely to be 100 points across them. For a single talent point, it's something of a steal - heat sink pretty much needs to get to at least level 3+ to seriously contribute.

I can definitely see a case, especially at lower levels, for making a Capture engineer a Pyro - more shooting, and more capable of immediately dropping a full defense line solo, and that's ignoring better direct shooting.

Honestly, if I weren't so big on Cross-heat sinking, I'd probably consider Pyro engineers generally better, but that specific strategy feels like too profound a loss. I also don't see myself starting a third engineer. I have a Turret engineer (with heat sink and power field), a capture engineer (with heat sink and fortify position), and making a Pyro for use specifically in closed deploys would mean they wouldn't get enough levels to keep up.

If we get a feature where we can save and load talent+gear setups, I'd probably be willing to swap my main engineer back and forth depending on open/closed deploy, but as it is, I'm just a little bit too lazy.

If I had requests for changes, I'd like to see some alternate direct attack with an AoE that you can only use with a hand flamer - something like what Arc Fire is to a commander. Without access to raking attacks naturally, a Pyro Engineer can't really do a Hydra's job - only their turrets can.

I'd like to see Manual Vent feel more worth pouring talent points into. Especially with its own Heat cost going up at the highest levels, it feels like it gains a lot less from talent points than other abilities do. Making it infinite would edge it into overlapping with Heat Sink, but is the alternate way to make it feel worthwhile. As it is, putting a single talent point into Manual vent is the consolation prize for losing access to Heat Sink, when the Pyro Turret is pretty much the main draw. On the same note, Turret Stance feels like a "throw in a point" skill, but I'd rather just pour points into their more "core" buffs if I'm investing somewhere - and that's if I already have pyro turret 10, turret 1, manual vent 1 and the like.

I think it works well overall, and I can especially see its appeal to keep a Capture-focused engineer contributing to combat, or adding depth to a defensive line without needing a Hydra to drop by once in a while and lay down a Napalm field for the normal turrets to synergize with.

I don't feel a support-focused Pyro engineer is really worth losing Heat Sink (and the scoped revolver's 5 range instead of 3), but maybe I haven't tried the right thing yet. I'd be interested to hear if anyone's made something like that work. I also won't really be seeing its performance at low levels, although I imagine just having access to low levels of pyro *and* normal turret in closed deploys will make engineers a really tempting grab, even when they can't put their capturing to work.

[Trese Brothers]

@dabor - thanks for posting such an in-depth analysis. Always great to hear how different players are approaching new avenues for Templar builds. Great to see how you think some things work, and others don't fit your play style / aren't attractive enough to try.

Look forward to hearing other player's thoughts as everyone has more time with the specialized build.