Steam Community :: Guide :: Engineer Skill GuideBy Omnisciurus

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Steam Community :: Guide :: Engineer Skill Guide

By Omnisciurus

7 - 8 minutes

Flame Hammer

Your weapon crushes foes it strikes, creating four flaming splinters that seek out enemies within five meters. If available, a charge is consumed to generate two additional blasts.

The splinters are separate from the main hit and account for most of the Flame Hammer’s damage. Each splinter does half of the skill’s listed DPS % as fire damage, so any +% fire damage bonuses – as well as the damage bonus from Focus – apply in their case. Each splinter could end up dealing way more damage than the actual hammer swing itself.

Seismic Slam

Your mechanically-assisted stomp stuns and burns all enemies in a four-meter radius around you.

Pure elemental damage skill, only improved by Focus and +% fire damage bonuses, not by Strength. Quite useful as crowd control when leveled up to a decent AOE and stun chance, but nothing special in late game when you’re clearing whole rooms with Flame Hammer or Emberquake, both of which easily surpass the damage of Seismic Slam.

Ember Hammer

You deliver a powerful sidelong swing which channels ember energy into a wide, 270 degree arc, destroying shields. Ember Hammer does not gain charge.

The weaker cousin of the Flame Hammer. Although the ability to break shields is nice, there is no real contest when it comes down to picking the better DPS skill between the two "Hammers". The damage of a maxed-out Flame Hammer far surpasses a maxed-out Ember Hammer, even with the Ember Hammer’s full charge damage bonus.

Onslaught

You leap forward, slamming your melee weapon into the ground. Foes at the point of impact are damaged and slowed significantly. Onslaught gains half of normal charge.

The main mobility skill of Engineers, basically a leap attack. The rank 5/15 Onslaught actually costs less mana than the rank 1/15 skill, and its debuffs last for a decent amount of time, so I’d definitely put at least 5 points into it. While it’s a nice skill to initiate combat with, it’s also not really a skill I’d bother maxing.

Ember Reach

A focused surge of energy draws a foe into striking range. You gain a 20% chance to stun for three seconds for every charge you have, but the skill itself neither gains nor expends charge.

Essentially a grappling hook that allows you to yoink enemies closer. In reality, there is hardly ever a use for this skill because enemies are more than happy to get up in your face. Note that the 100% stun chance of a fully-charged Ember Reach does not guarantee a stun every time, because each enemy has at least some level of stun resistance.

Storm Burst

A blast from your pack rockets you swiftly forward, knocking back foes. Three bolts of energy discharge from your suit on impact, striking remote enemies. Every enemy hit also recharges your mana by 5%, for up to five targets.

The second mobility skill of Engineers. Helps you quickly escape enemy mobs, although the short dash distance and 2-second cooldown can be a real hindrance. It’s usually better to stick to Onslaught, unless you’re playing a cannoneer and lack a melee weapon to use Onslaught with.

Heavy Lifting (Passive)

Your skill with giant weaponry allows you to attack faster and adds a chance to stun your foes.

Engineers are naturally disposed towards using two-handed weapons, which of course makes Heavy Lifting a very useful passive, because it not only increases the attack speed for auto-attacks, but also the damage output of DPS-based skills like Blast Cannon, Emberquake, etc. Although the tooltip does not specifically mention staffs, Heavy Lifting also works with those.

Supercharge (Passive)

When you hit foes with a melee weapon, you have a chance to direct excess energy into your weapon and then discharge it during your attacks over the next ten seconds. While supercharged, you gain additional charge.

Supercharge can only trigger off auto-attacks and any melee skill that deals damage as "% of DPS". Supercharge is probably one of the most misleading skills in the game. Although it can proc off many skills,

the actual damage bonus is only applied to auto-attacks

. Unless you plan on making an auto-attack build, stay away from Supercharge.

Coup de Grace (Passive)

When you hit a stunned target, an electrical surge helps you finish the foe off. This ability cannot trigger more than one time per second.

Coup de Grace is a skill that looks great in theory, but really isn't. First off, it only triggers off stunned targets, making it completely pointless against champions and bosses, who are virtually immune to stun effects. It does nothing to help your initial attack, only becoming effective after – and if – you manage to stun the enemy. Sadly, the only weapons in the game that have a remotely decent chance of stunning enemies are cannons, which heavily restricts the use of Coup de Grace. Plus, the damage of the skill heavily depends both on Strength and Focus, which means you need very high stats to make Coup de Grace viable.

Emberquake

A huge overhand strike sends eight ember-charged fissures radiating out towards enemies.

One of the most damaging AOE skills in the game. Unlike Flame Hammer, there is no main "hit" for Emberquake, so all fissures deal equal damage. Sadly, this also means that you can’t bind Emberquake to the left mouse button.

Flame Hammer vs. Emberquake

So which of these two is the better DPS skill? This question has been asked ad nauseam on the official Runic forums and resulted in dozens of pages of arguing and spreadsheets. I’ll try to keep this simple, so here goes.

Let’s assume an Engineer who has both skills maxed at rank 15/15. The Engineer has 1000 Strength (+500% weapon damage), 200 Focus (+100% elemental damage), maxed Fire and Spark (+75% fire damage) and no other damage bonuses. He has a pure physical damage two-handed weapon with 1000 damage and attack speed of 1.0, so the weapon’s listed DPS is 6000.

15/15 Flame Hammer

Initial hit: 124% of 6000 = 7440

Splinters: 62% of (1000 + 500% + 100% + 75%) / 1.0 = 4805

Total damage: 7440 + 7 * 4805 = 41,390 (51,000 if a charge is used for two extra splinters)

15/15 Emberquake

Fissures (DPS-damage): 63% of 6000 = 3780

Fissures (fire damage): 1518 + 100% + 75% = 4175

Total damage: (3780 + 4175) * 8 = 63,640

Overall, Emberquake certainly looks far better on paper. It does have the drawback of becoming available only at level 42, so you’d pretty much need to play through the entire game with auto-attacks until you can start using Emberquake. Also, unlike Flame Hammer, Emberquake benefits a lot more from Focus rather than Strength, so you’d need to juggle both stats in order to get the most damage out of Emberquake and still have enough Strength for a high crit bonus.

Bottom line, pick Flame Hammer if you don’t intend to progress to new game plus, and pick Emberquake if you want a cookie-cutter late game build.