Sup, Baal Archimonde here. I'm a huge PvP player and have fallen in love with the Engineer class ever since I began leveling an Engineer. This will be my standard PvP Engineer Tank guide. I also made a DPS Engi guide on this website as well if you want to delve into that aspect of Engineer too. With that being said, let's get right into our LAS.


Our standard Volatility builder and infamous ability to annoy poor souls at nodes they wish to capture. Every Engi Tank should run this, no questions.


Thresher is our main way of regenerating health while fighting enemies. The more people you fight, the more it will heal due to it being AoE. This ability after the Hyper Wave nerf is mandatory to take in my opinion, or you have no way of legitimately tanking anything anymore. I highly recommend running this T8 now.


Very good CC ability to annoy the enemy team with. Adds 20% increased chance to be deflected debuff on enemies around you. Great for running into the enemy team to distract them and allow your team to get free damage in. Zap is also a good substitute for this due to all the stalker tanks you see in BGs. Run whichever one you want here.


Our shield regeneration ability. We run this at Tier 8 due to Unsteady Miasma receiving so many nerfs. Before the nerf, Unsteady Miasma was a must-have. Now I think Unsteady Miasma is way too nerfed to warrant running it at all. The radius is too small, the volatility cost means you can't spam Thresher as often to heal/tank otherwise you're just gimping yourself from tanking people at this point. Anyways, back to Disruptive Module. We run this at T8 just so we are able to tank better after all the nerfs Engi Tanks received. At T8 while in the 30-70 zone, we can regenerate about 2.2-2.3k shield every second while instanced in a BG. This helps us tank a lot especially if you run a high mitigation shield (I run a 62.50%, t4 DM increases it to 87%). Keep in mind, it hits 5 people but the shield regen only works on one tick, not 5, so you can't regen like 10k shield per second.


Since Unsteady Miasma has received a ton of nerfs and we've removed it from our LAS, I've put Energy Auger in it's place because of how useful of an ability it is. Everyone has seen an Engi Tank run masks in Walatiki with this, but you can also jump across points in Halls with Energy Auger in the 1st and 2nd rooms. The first room you can jump from middle over to any side by sprinting on Energy Auger. In the 2nd room, you can jump from side to side with Energy Auger while sprinting. This ability is very useful to have as an Engi Tank, especially now since Miasma is nerfed because you are able to kite with Auger pretty well. Sometimes I also use this ability to stop people from picking up unearthed masks in Walatiki whilst tanking a bunch of people.


Our other form of Volatility building besides Disruptive Module and Flak Cannon, this ability is the bread and butter of any Engi player's ability setup. Builds our Volatility up, and also gives us a very hefty increase in Glance chance, your most important tank stat next to Critical Mitigation and Glance Mitigation. Every Engi, DPS or Tank, should be running this in their ability setup. Both 8% increases are extremely beneficial.


Like every class, this is our CC break. Also gives us an absorb shield. Get this always.


The 3rd absolute most important ability in our ability setup, T8 PDU. This ability at t8 gives us 50% DAMAGE REDUCTION for 5 seconds, a crazy good self-heal, and afterwards gives us a crazy amount of shield absorb for another 5 seconds. We have 2 charges of this, so use them wisely. I tend to use a charge once my shield drops and I see my health go to about 85-90%. The heal from the t8 upgrade + Rejuvenating Rain AMP if I have to use it will pop it right back up to full and Disruptive Module's shield regen will bring my shield back up a small amount usually. However, I highly recommend to not use the 2nd charge right after the first mainly because you want to buy time for the charge to come back up and tank longer. Let me explain. Let's say you use a PDU charge, and then PDU again. You now only have your Innate left, and your Innate doesn't give any absorb shields, or a heal, only flat damage reduction which PDU already gives but with many more utility aspects to it. Your Innate however does give you a gigantic amount of Volatility gain and removes the 30-70 Volatility zone thresholds on our AMPS/abilities, but it's cooldown is a lot longer than PDU. So, if you are taking a bunch of damage such as solo tanking 5-6+ people, do this rotation of your defensive abilities to tank for a longer period of time. I have been able to tank enemy groups consisting of about 5 dps, sometimes 6 even, for over a minute alone on multiple occasions (EVEN POST-NERF).

PDU -> Innate -> PDU -> PDU. The only time you will really get bursted down is if you're against good players and they drop shield overloads/CC on you and try to blow all their burst on you there before you can CC break out and PDU. All while you are maintaining this rotation, use Energy Auger to kite away from melee dps or use it as a juke on Charged Shots even if you have no dashes left. The speed boost can be quite surprising to most players. Once all of that is over, you've either tanked long enough for your team to do something beneficial in the BG (hopefully), or your team has been given enough time to come and save you/kill the enemy team and cap the point/node/mask etc that you were trying to defend. Remember this rotation and practice it in many many BGs. PDU -> Innate -> PDU -> PDU. If you can learn how to use PDU wisely by only using it when necessary and not having to rely on it 100% of the time to tank, and also learn how to kite with Dashes pretty well (this is why I run Acrobat), you will become a ton harder to kill. There's reasons Engi Tank players stand out from the others, Steel Inquisitor being the main one for me that comes to mind almost always when I talk about this. He was my inspiration to start playing this class.

IMPORTANT NOTE: After the PDU nerf, I highly suggest running the Ruinous Blood Jinx gadget that gives you 3 IA for 5s and running an IA potion, (or running the 2 IA potion if you can get someone to make them for you, or maintaining Protection By Deflection in your AMP tree if you want to use a different potion. Be warned though, this will not proc very often even with the static 9.5% deflect engi tanks get with my setup). This is to counter the PDU nerf which removes PDU entirely on stun/knockdown. You use the gadget on the 1st PDU charge and use the IA potion on the 2nd PDU charge (if you are using this potion) while using your Innate in-between charge 1 and 2 when tanking normally as I posted above.




Let's go over your Runes. The runes I run are all over the place to be quite honest, but the sets you need to be using are Alleviation/Defiance/Lockdown (your class set). It's up to you to decide which stat you want more. Don't blindly just go 6/6 Alleviation 6/6 Defiance in each piece of gear, you can combine both sets in one piece of gear and get much more bang for your buck. My current stats out of BG are 54.30% Glance Mitigation, 26.41% Glance Chance, 107.18% Critical Mitigation, 9.01% Deflect Chance (I suggest not getting any deflect runes as their scaling isn't very good compared to glance/crit mitigation and how well engi tanks scale with high glance). Deflect runes aren't completely off the table if you want to try them and make a fun deflect only build, I just personally don't like to run them in my build. So experiment with rune sets, there's no clear cut 100% best rune set combinations. I re-did my runes about 9 times before I was satisfied with my current build. Most Engi Tanks will run Glance/Crit Mit as their primary stats because of their superior scaling and how well their AMPs interact with Glance Chance/Glance Mitigation. I have also experimented with Armor runes finally just to test them out, and they aren't a bad choice if you prefer having a bit more % damage mitigation up 100% of the time. The extra armor rating gives me an extra 2.5-3% in all my mitigations with the set I tried and the t3 AMP which increases armor up to 12.5% while in the 30-70 zone scales harder since I have an increased flat amount of armor. Quite worth in my opinion if you want to give it a shot. Once again, it's all up to you to decide what you want. I just have found the best success for myself with Glance/Crit Mit. You can mix in some armor if you so choose, it's not bad by any means.





My current Fusion runes are as follows:
HEAD: IMPERVIOUS - Gives us Glance Mitigation when we Glance an incoming attack, which is almost always. Synergizes the best with an Engi Tank out of all the head fusions.

WEAPON: SUPPRESSION/VENOM - After the changes in Drop 8, I have switched over to Venom over Suppression. The reasoning as to why I gave up Suppression again is that the new Glance changes are actually pretty good with the new minmaxed rune setup I have constructed. I feel like I do not need the extra damage reduction unless I am against a very heavy DPS team with known/skilled players and no Stalker tanks in sight. Suppression is still plenty viable to run over Venom if you wish to be able to take even less damage. It's just personal preference and some team analyzing to determine which one you want and/or need for the match.

CHEST: SHRUG IT OFF - When we take Critical Damage, this fusion increases Glance Mitigation on a 5 stack system. Best chest fusion for Engi Tank to run in my opinion. Extremely good boosts on some of our most important tank stats.

GLOVES: NONE - I don't run a glove fusion simply because all the ones I looked at aren't very good. Just use the extra slot to maybe complete a rune set or something. Up to you. The ONLY glove fusion that you could run and it wouldn't be terrible would be Enrage. I don't run it because I feel like it doesn't scale very well even with how much damage Thresher can do on any amount of given targets. I already heal enough as it is with it and adding an extra 6% onto let's say a 3000 damage Thresher is only adding 180 extra damage, and only siphoning 30% of that additional damage. It's very weak in my opinion, but still it IS slightly higher healing on your Thresher, so you could run it if you'd like. Up to your personal decision here.

BOOTS: SPEED BURST/QUICK FEET/ACROBAT - Speed Burst gives 25% increased movespeed for 5 seconds whenever you approach an enemy player. Not a bad fusion at all. Quick Feet is an extremely good Fusion rune for Engis, we get a 15% movespeed increase when we dash, and Engis dash a ton. After the nerfs, I have switched to Acrobat for the extra dash to maintain good volatility building even though we run 3 volatility builders in our kit. This is to stay in the 30-70 zone easier for T8 DM and to keep using Thresher when tanking. Also since I run Auger permanently in my LAS now, I don't feel the need to have the extra movespeed from Quick Feet/Speed Burst anymore. I suggest using Acrobat, but it's up to you. All 3 are still good, I just personally think Acrobat has taken much more of a necessity post-nerf. Also, since Miasma is super nerfed and not viable anymore imo, Acrobat has become much better because you need the extra Dash to kite effectively and cover more ground faster. You can rely on Auger for movespeed when kiting teams as well.

AMPs

Alright, so now that we have our LAS out of the way and general rune stats/sets you want, let's get into the AMP tree. I will outline every AMP I take and explain why each major AMP is important.

SUPPORT

Tier 1:

- 3/3 Support Power, Critical Mitigation, Deflect


Tier 2:

- Quick Restart: A decent absorb shield on a 10s cooldown when we glance any form of damage.
- Rejuvenating Rain: Our only self-healing AMP since the nerfs, this gives us a small 2k heal to us and a couple allies around you when you glance an attack on a 5s cooldown.

Tier 3:

- Try and Hurt Me!: A total of 12.5% increased armor, 2.5% per stack, stacked up to 5 times while maintaining your Volatility in the 30-70 zone. This synergizes very well with having to maintain 30-70 volatility for T8 Disruptive Module's massive shield regeneration. This AMP increases our damage mitigations by around 4% which is very substantial for how long we can survive.

- Disruptive Module: 2 point AMP to unlock one of our main abilities to tank with. T8 this ability last though if you do not have capped ability points, T8 PDU and T8 Thresher are more important.





HYBRID S/U

Tier 1:

3/3 PvP Defense


Tier 2:

Defense Protocol: Gain 4% Glance Mitigation and 4% Glance Chance for 8s when your absorb shield is destroyed. This is just a nice AMP to have for a little bit of extra tank stats that we thrive on.

Helpin' Hand: Increase incoming healing by 15% whenever your absorb shield is destroyed. This AMP helps us heal more with Thresher when we are facetanking a bunch of players. We have at least 4 absorb shields that will most likely be destroyed quite fast so this AMP is usually always active.

Tier 3:

Protection by Deflection: When deflecting an attack, gain 1 Interuppt Armor for 5 seconds. This has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds per proc. I'll go in-depth over as to why I still take this even without Unsteady Miasma in our LAS anymore, so prepare for a bit of a read here. I believe that if we aren't running Venom in our weapon and have basically no DoT other than Disruptive Module, this extra IA will help us avoid some key CC that we would otherwise not if we didn't have this when defending/tanking on masks/tanking on halls panels if you really want to. If you run the 3IA gadget, an IA potion, this AMP, and space them out correctly, you can be quite annoying to try and CC. This also helps us keep Thresher spam going since we will be avoiding more CC than we normally would and help us tank longer in theory. A good alternative if you really want to be a bit tankier is Hardened Resolve in the Utility tree. You have to remove some basic AMPs in T1's so it's too weird for me to go, but you can try that if you really want to. For my personal recommendation, I would go with this AMP when comparing it to any other AMP in the 3 trees we spec into. We still get close to 10% deflect in BGs anyway, and when we're a tank we're supposed to take a LARGE influx of damage, so most likely this will proc more often than you expect it to.

Survival Instincts: The new absorb shield after the nerfs. This gives us a 7508 absorb out of BG, 8k+ while in BG for 10 seconds with a 20 second cooldown. This AMP used to give us a HoT basically like T8 PDU's self-heal which I wish they kept, but I believe this is still a necessary AMP to take when you are tanking. Blocking 8k+ damage out of nowhere like this is basically like having an extra PDU absorb shield which is pretty important.



UTILITY

Tier 1:

3/3 Cooldowns, 2/3 Dash Regeneration


Tier 2:

Reckless Dash: This is a very important way to build Volatility while kiting so you can keep spamming Thresher. This is one of the most important AMPs an Engineer should take, both tank and DPS.

Runing your Gear

In this section, I will be going over how I have runed my Engi Tank exactly. This is what I have found the most success on so far after all of the nerfs, but I do have a couple more ideas in mind that I am going to experiment with. If I find one of the two to be better, I will update this section ASAP.

Weapon- 3/6 Alleviation, 2/6 Defiance, 2/8 Lockdown, Venom Fusion Rune.
+269 Glance Rating (Defiance), TWO +269 Critical Mitigation (Alleviation), +269 Glance Rating (Lockdown)

Helmet- 2/6 Defiance, 3/6 Alleviation, 2/8 Lockdown Impervious Fusion Rune.
+269 Glance Rating (Defiance), TWO +269 Critical Mitigation (Alleviation), +269 Glance Rating (Lockdown).

Shoulders- Lockdown 8/8
+134 Armor, +269 Glance Rating x2, +269 Critical Mitigation x2

Chest- 2/6 Defiance, 3/6 Alleviation, 2/8 Lockdown, Shrug It Off Fusion Rune.
TWO +269 Critical Mitigation (Alleviation), +269 Glance Rating (Defiance), +269 Glance Rating (Lockdown).

Hands- 3/6 Alleviation, 3/8 Lockdown, 2/6 Defiance.
TWO +269 Critical Mitigation (Alleviation), +269 Glance Rating (Defiance), TWO +269 Critical Mitigation (Lockdown).

Legs - 2/6 Alleviation, 3/8 Lockdown, 3/6 Defiance.
+269 Critical Mitigation (Alleviation), +269 Critical Mitigation AND +269 Glance Rating (Lockdown), TWO +269 Glance Rating (Defiance).

Boots- 3/6 Alleviation, 2/8 Lockdown, 2/6 Defiance, Acrobat Fusion Rune
TWO +269 Critical Mitigation (Alleviation), +269 Critical Mitigation (Lockdown), +269 Glance Rating (Defiance).

My current stats as of this update with these runes are as follows.

Physical/Magic/Technology Mitigation: 45.57%

Glance Mitigation: 30.77%

Glance Chance: 41.14%

Critical Mitigation: 96.08%

Deflect Chance: 9.01%

Opinions about other Engi Tank abilites that I sometimes see.

I sometimes see Engi Tanks run this ability in PvP. My opinion on this ability is that it is useless. This ability is basically the tank version of Electrocute, but a really REALLY bad one. Also, you aren't meant to be cleaving people as a tank, you're meant to tank them, not kill them. Also, running this ability means you dump your Volatility into something that isn't Thresher. This hinders your ability to tank by a huge amount and you become very squishy. The only time you should run this ability is if you are doing a MH based support DPS build which is viable now due to the Drop 8 changes to our tank stance with the correct build.


This ability if you want to be an actual tanky engi tank, is not worth going. It can actually do substantial damage and synergizes with Glance so it's up a lot, but it's not worth taking. You sacrifice too much tankyness to replace this with anything in your LAS.


I have actually seen Engi Tanks run this ability over Flak Cannon. Never do this. Flak Cannon is superior to this ability in every way. Flak Cannon hits 6 times in a cone and is spammable and doesn't have a cooldown. It's the perfect ability for building Volatility and stopping captures compared to Ricochet. One build that does exist with this that I was testing is dropping Disruptive Module to base and replacing Energy Auger with this ability and buffing it up to T8. The 10% damage reduction is practically permanent and offers some nice upfront damage reduction. Personally, I think t8 DM is stronger though, but this is a viable secondary option if you do not want to be more shield based in your tanking.


The sad story of a once absolutely amazing ability, Hyper Wave. This used to be our gigantic source of self-healing before it got nerfed into oblivion. I miss it a lot because Thresher just feels weird to run as an alternative. If the GCD of Thresher was reduced like they did with Unsteady Miasma, I wouldn't be so against this nerf. It shoehorned our class into having to run Thresher. Don't run this ability until it for whatever reason becomes good again for PvP.


Another nerfed ability like Hyper Wave, the radius of this ability was greatly reduced and doesn't cover nearly the amount of ground it used to. The volatility cost is still the same and the GCD is lower, but guess what, it costs Volatility, the resource you need to spam Thresher and stay alive. With Hyper Wave gone, you can't afford to spend any volatility into another ability that isn't named Thresher unless you want to die twice as fast. Don't run this ability.


DON'T RUN THIS IN PVP ESDOUKIFGOIUARGISDJRGIOSDJOIG

Post-Nerf Engi Tanks in PvP, are they still viable Baal?

This is a question I have been getting as of the past couple days, and to answer it, yes. PvP Engi Tanks are still perfectly viable, they are just nowhere near as godmode invincible as they were pre-nerf when Hyper Wave + Miasma existed. Thresher is just not as good of a self-heal ability like Hyper Wave was (nowhere close actually), but Thresher is our only way of actually tanking effectively in BGs currently. If I had a choice of a buff onto Thresher, I would reduce the GCD to 0.75 like they did with Unsteady Miasma so we could proc the heal faster whilst tanking due to the fact that 1 full second of tanking for an Engi Tank is usually a buttload of damage compared to a slinger sitting in the backline spamming QD. Another buff that I wouldn't mind would be either an increase in the % heal scaling of the T8 to 35% or increase the damage of it a bit. Originally, I wanted the initial Volatility cost to be 40 instead of 50 when I was thinking of ways to make this ability feel better, but I think for an ability that you can spam as much as Thresher, it might be too lenient of a cost since the T4 makes it drop down to a 25 Volatility cost. Now with all of that said, you can still tank like a boss if you know how to. I'm still able to 1v4 1v5 1v6 1v7 etc quite well, just not as long as I could before. I can sometimes go for over a minute which is past the time of my entire tanking rotation of 3 PDU's and my innate being used up. That usually happens when I'm auger kiting well and hitting almost everyone I'm tanking with Thresher. Pre-nerf Engi Tank would be able to do about 15-20 seconds longer than this on average, at least in my experience of how I play/tank enemy teams. So don't worry, the class is still perfectly fine for tanking, the playstyle is just different now.

In addition, we can still kite decently, just that Energy Auger has taken the place of Unsteady Miasma in our LAS. Instead of slowing the enemies, you speed yourself up instead with Energy Auger and outrun them. You can even use the speedup to juke Charged Shots or any ability for that matter, it's quite satisfying and funny sometimes. Engi Tanks certainly have a higher skillcap for PvP now which I like. The class felt way too braindead easy when Hyper Wave and Unsteady Miasma was around, so even though these nerfs are harsh, they are in the right direction to line up some hopefully good compensatory buffs that us small amount of PvP Engi Tank players could get used to.

To elaborate on how the classes skill-cap has increased with the LAS I have outlined in this guide which I will always use and never change, we would almost never have to manage our volatility in the 30-70 zone. The only thing that synergized with "the zone" is the "Try and Hurt Me!" AMP (to my knowledge that is, the nerfs were a few months ago so my memory is a bit shot). Now we have to manage 30-70 volatility for the AMP plus T8 DM. Even letting one tick of DM go out of the zone is detrimental to tanking because of the difference in shield regen. Also, getting in melee range of Thresher while trying to defend unearthed masks in Walatiki is quite difficult if you aren't running Venom. You have to maintain damage on people who are trying to pick up the unearthed mask all whilst being smacked by ranged dps, so you have to find the sweet spot where you can heal a good amount with Thresher AND maintain some damage on the mask grabbers. It's quite interesting how much challenge has been created after these nerfs, and I personally enjoy the challenge we have been given.

TL;DR: Engi Tank is still plenty viable. Relatively same skill floor, much higher skillcap (albeit still a low one due to being a tank), more tactics to learn how to be a good Engi Tank in PvP with new LAS.

General FAQ

So for a while I've been getting some of the same questions that I'd like to outline here for all of you interested tanks. Some of these questions/answers may have already been covered in the chapters above, but it's never bad to have a refresher. So without further a do, here we go.

#1 Why does everyone play a Stalker tank over an Engi tank these days?

I've been getting this question as of recently, and to put it lightly, Engi tanks are not in a very good state right now. The nerfs they received quite literally gutted them, BUT don't take that too hard. They are still perfectly fine for tanking. The reason Stalker tanks are seen much more now is that Engi tanks have dropped in tier of reliability in being the most reliable tank. The fact that Thresher is a melee range Volatility dump that we need to use to self-heal is the main reason. It's just not a good ability for self-healing. Hyper Wave was much more reliable (and broken, but it could have been nerfed instead of destroyed...). If Thresher was ranged or even had a lower GCD say at 0.75s instead of 1.0s, it would be much more reliable since you would dump your Volatility faster and heal yourself faster, giving you more uptime to generate Volatility with Disruptive Module up with Flak Cannon and have a bit of an easier time managing Volatility for the newer Engi tank players. Also, Unsteady Miasma's nerfs were very harsh so Engi tanks have lost out on a good amount of free Deflect from not being able to spam that ability anymore, therefore reducing their ability to tank as well as they could before. In short, Engi tanks got a much higher skillcap than they had previously and a slightly higher skill floor and have received a lot of big nerfs. This is why Stalker tanks are a lot more prominent. Much lower skillcap and a lot more reliable to the average player due to not receiving substantial nerfs...yet.

#2 What is the general rotation to tank people reliably besides the PDU -> Innate -> 2x PDU rotation?

This is generally situational. When you are tanking, you have to switch up your playstyle depending on the classes you are against. I'll give you two contrasting examples. Let's say for a moment that you are 1v6ing on the unearthed mask in a Walatiki Temple match. Two of the DPS are spellslingers, two are Espers, and the other two are a Medic and a Warrior. 4 of the 6 players in this scenario are ranged (Medic is semi-ranged I guess.) The general way to tank these guys is to tag the melee with your Venom with Flak Cannon/any other LAS ability you can hit them once with, run to the ranged for about 2 seconds, spam 2 threshers to heal a bit, Energy Auger back to the mask to outrange any incoming Charged Shots/Birds/TK Storms/etc and remain in range of the mask to stop any possible ninja caps. This buys you valuable time before they eventually force your first PDU. While they're railing into you, you can DM the melee and spam Threshers on them all while keeping eyes on the mask in case a Stalker tank tries to stealth cap under your nose if you are unable to run to the ranged and annoy them. Proceed with the regular tanking rotation as usual in this scenario, but attempt to repeat what I outlined above to annoy the ranged. You can also use your Blind as you run up to them for the most free of Thresher uses and annoy them with the visual effect + add a bit of Deflect on their abilities. Also make sure you are keeping eyes on their telegraphs for any Charged Shots you can side dash from while tanking on the mask or closer to the ranged if you happen to be closer to them.

The other scenario is if you are against more melee than you are ranged. This is generally easier as you do not have to cover as much ground, but the melee classes in this game tend to be a lot more damage heavy (Warrior Ripsaws/Stalker burst through a no shield Engi tank, almost instantly forced PDU if they manage to land Impales on you whilst shield is overloaded. Also Annihilation Medics can be a bit of a torture to tank with high Multi-Hit.) The general way to tank these types is to really just tank normally and spam Thresher in their face, keep DM when you can, Dash out of melee range of incoming Ripsaws/CCs/Impales, perhaps Blind them and wait 1 second to use Energy Auger to kite away from them and buy a few seconds worth of denying DPS done to you to buy time for any PDUs you might have on CD that you need up. Even with these tactics though, Engi tanks can get burned at a decent pace through these types of debuffs, Ripsaw especially. That is an Engi tank's worst nightmare is to get hit with one of those while trying to tank people. The Ripsaw T8 damage can actually proc on Thresher's self-heal, so basically your heals are completely cancelled out while you spam it. This is generally when you would want to use your Blind and Auger kite away to buy time for the debuff to wear off, then you can attempt to Dash the Ripsaw when it comes off cooldown. If you manage to do that, you can tank a LOT easier. Of course, if there's more than one warrior and they both have Ripsaw, it will be 2 Ripsaws you'll have to try and Dash juke, but that's a best case scenario. I sometimes am able to pull it off, but some warriors are smart enough to CC you first and then apply it so they have zero chance to screw it up.

#3 Why do you rune for only Glance and Critical Mitigation? Is armor/max hp/deflect just bad?

This is a pretty easy question to answer as I've tested about 25 different rune setups combined on both of my Engis. A lot of the rune sets were just for fun to mess around with and see the hilarious amount of jumbled stats I'd have, but about 6 of them were legit. Max HP just doesn't really do anything for an Engi tank like it does a Warrior tank. They have Health Sponge which will constantly make your Health pool scale harder the more Health you rune for. Engi tanks do not have this luxury, thus the smaller Health pool. We don't really need extra Health anyway since we run with about 49-50k on average in BGs. That's plenty for a tank in my books.

Deflect is a great stat, but a no go for Engi tanks these days. The runes don't scale very well at all, and there's almost no AMPs that proc well for Deflect. The only one that does is Protection by Deflection which nowadays can help you a lot, but runing for a lot of Deflect just to proc 1 IA is not worth losing a ton of Glance/Crit Mit over. You'd become a lot less tankier than you think.

Armor is also another stat that I do not think scales well enough for Engi tanks to take for in PvP. Stalker tanks rune for it because their stance increases the scaling, just like Warrior tanks have the 12% Max HP scaling AMP. They can take it because they scale well with it and it benefits them a lot more than it does an Engi. Engi tanks do not scale well with it in PvP, even with the two armor AMPs at T3 for us. One of them gives us a +12.5% boost to our Armor Rating if we stay within the 30-70 zone for 5 seconds. This is a decent buff, but not enough to warrant runing for Armor in my opinion. The other AMP is also a 12.5% boost to our Armor when we take on a heal and it procs for a 5 second duration, but the big thing about this AMP is that it DOES NOT proc on our self-healing at all. It only procs on other players healing you. My philosophy with this is that, if an Engi tank has a healer healing him, that 12.5% Armor increase isn't gonna do a thing. An Engi tank is already still hard to kill even with the nerfs the class took months ago. Having just one healer healing him is enough to keep him alive and the 12.5% Armor boost is pretty much negated and useless to spend 6 AMP points in. You might think otherwise and you can take the AMP if you'd like, I just personally do not see that enough of a gain for me to take it. I'd rather have my Protection by Deflection AMP. Blocking any extra CC these days is a huge bonus.

For all of you babies out there...

Engi Tanks are pretty hard for me to actually kill myself when I don't feel like playing one. What are the main counters I should know about to counter your ridiculous class?

Contrary to popular belief, there are actually fairly easy counters to killing an Engi Tank in PvP. They won't die as fast as any other squishy DPS class, but you will notice how much squishier they can really be once you actually catch them red handed. The first and most obvious counter would be the stun/knockdown when a PDU charge is used. When you hear the PDU charge go off, make sure that they don't have any IA pots/IA gadget popped on them, otherwise your CC is completely wasted. Good Engi tanks will use the IA gadget first for the first charge of PDU, and follow up the next PDU with an IA potion. If it's only the +1 IA potion when he gets to the 2nd PDU, you can probably use one CC to drop it and hope your teammates use another CC. It is at that point if he has no CC break that you will start to notice him take a significant amount of damage.

The next counter is simple, range. Ranged classes are among the strongest that can fare against an Engi tank, primarily because of how the new LAS is due to the tank nerfs of old that have come and gone. In the old LAS, Hyper Wave would be able to take care of any ranged class no problem, but our selfhealing is basically melee range now and the heal only starts to be noticed until about 3+ people start trying to kill you. This is where being ranged becomes a "counter" in a sense. You can maintain a good distance from Thresher so the Engi can't heal himself back up, however he can still regenerate his shield with Disruptive Module, and this is where the next counter comes in.

Healing debuffs and/or Shield overloads. These are probably the strongest counters to an Engi tank since there's almost no chance of a deflect occuring on your abilities that you use for this. Shield overloads negate a lot of our tanking and force PDU's early, and also completely negates T8 Disruptive Module for however long your shield overload lasts. Healing debuffs are pretty self explanatory. Thresher heals less, therefore increasing the strength of your team's numbers into trying to kill an Engi tank due to the decreased Thresher healing. Also, T8 Ripsaw can proc off of Thresher's healing. Unstable Anomaly is probably the strongest though due to it being ranged, a healing debuff, and a shield overload all in one ability.

I'll mention one more thing, and that is CC chaining. It's pretty well known that CC wins games, but it also shits on Engi tanks. You get enough Espers on your team against one Engi tank, you could probably pick that mask up no problem with all of the roots/disarms/knockbacks/knockdowns they can provide. Spatial Shift is pretty annoying as well.

So that's pretty much it for Engi tank counters, make sure to keep your eyes open for any of these that you will most likely always come in contact with every day you PvP and learn how to play against it. Foresight is very important when you are in extremely big solo tanking fights, so keeping these counters in your mind is crucial. The more you practice, the better.

Drop 8 Engi Tank Changes Summary/Thoughts

Just wanted to add a little sidebar here to talk about the Drop 8 Engi Tank changes in-depth. I'll list off all the changes that affected us either negatively or positively.

- PDU cooldown increased by 15 seconds. (HUGE nerf, you cannot triple PDU in a tanking rotation in PvP anymore.)

- Glance Rating number scaling buffed hard, Glance Mitigation base 50% nerfed to 30%, but number scaling up. Glance Chance softcap increased to 60%. (BUFF)

- 20% of damage done reduced while in "Mode: Provoke" REMOVED. (BIG buff)

These are really the only changes you have to take into account when considering playing an Engi tank in Drop 8 in PvP. The PDU nerf is absolutely gigantic, yes, BUT we do have a lot of upsides to counteract it where Carbine gave us a good shift in power. We glance a lot more often and with Shrug it Off and Impervious fusions active while fighting, our Glance mitigation goes up to about 44-46% with at the very least 48-50% Glance Chance before any procs. In the overall scheme of things, I believe the Glance changes were actually a good buff rather than a nerf, at least in the PvP aspect of Engi tanking. With the correct rune setup, you can Glance practically anything.

The other big change is the stance change. Thresher dealing 20% more damage flatout is probably the most gigantic buff I could've expected to happen to Thresher. I've had teamfights where I actually healed 20% per use of Thresher. That is almost old T8 Hyper Wave level retarded.

In conclusion, out of all these changes I do believe we were nerfed SLIGHTLY due to not being able to triple PDU anymore. We do, however, have a good shift in power from our PDU into upfront damage/healing in Thresher and a much higher chance to Glance, which, in theory, gives us almost a permanent PDU while fighting due to how often we are glancing attacks.

Matrix Abilities

So now that the Matrix has been out for a little bit, let's talk about Black Hole. In my opinion, Black Hole is currently the strongest PvP CC in the game, and you should at LEAST have a separate LAS that includes it if you're the only Engi on the team.

Currently, the reasoning to have Black Hole on an LAS at all times is the sheer power/control you have over the enemy team. It has a GIGANTIC pull range, and the benefits of this pull is huge since this game's PvP has a lot of potential cleaving. The benefits of Black Hole are...

- All enemies are pulled into a single point and has a 10 player target cap. Comboing this ability with Zap allows you to get a buttload of free TARGET CAPPED Threshers if you hit the entire enemy team with it. Your self-healing gets a buff due to this.

- You have the best setup for your team to burst the enemy team when you Black Hole -> Zap your enemies. This ability allows Engis to shine with well placed Black Holes. These are easy to do though because the pull range makes Drop 6 Unsteady Miasma look like a bitch lol.

Now, the real question here is, what do we trade off of our LAS for Black Hole? Well, it's gonna be a hard choice to make, but if you wish to run Black Hole which I highly recommend you do, you have to drop Energy Auger for it and replace Obstruct Vision with Zap. Yes, I said to drop the speed carpet. It hurts to do especially as an Engi Tank, but the power of Black Hole outshines the utility Energy Auger gives currently. You get more potential self-healing when in a solo tanking situation by pulling the enemy team together, allowing yourself to target cap Thresher for at least two casts. Also, Zapping them after Black Hole stops dps for a little bit from them, allowing this self-healing to stick for longer than it would normally when people would otherwise continue spamming builders into you whilst spamming Thresher.

TL;DR: Black Hole is the best CC in the game for PvP right now, drop Auger for it if you want to be tankier when tanking. 100% worth dropping the utility of Auger for it. Replace Obstruct Vision with Zap for better BH synergy.

Closing

In closing, I hope you all enjoyed this guide I have created for any aspiring Engi Tanks in PvP. I made this guide because I felt like one PvP Engi Tank guide should be out there for people to use as a resource, and I really like to help people learn how to play games/classes in anything I play. I'll list my characters below that you can find me on if you have any questions to ask me. Don't hesitate to whisper me, I'm happy to help :D. Have fun being the Engineer Tank you've always wanted to be!

Characters

- Baal Archimonde (Dominion Engi)
- Emperor Baal (Exile, Main Engi Character)
- Baal Warhound (Exile Slinger)
- SPINTOWIN WHIRLWINDBOT (Dominion Warrior)
- Doctor Baal (Exile Medic)
- Baal Ross (Dominion Slinger)
- SIRBIRDCHUCKIN CCSPAMALOT (Exile Esper)
- BaaL III (Exile Stalker)