ME3 Character Guide: Human Engineer

As promised, here is the first character guide. I decided to do a build for the human engineer. Why? Well, there are several reasons. I wanted to choose a class that is friendly to inexperienced players, but also one that is viable on Gold difficulty, which is what all my builds will be balanced around (I don't know much about Platinum yet, so we'll see how that changes things). Someone who is new to the game can start multiplayer right out of the box with the human engineer and still be of some assistance to the team, theoretically even on gold with the right build. I don't think that was the case prior to the buffs Bioware bestowed upon the human engineer, but since then the combat drone is actually useful.

Obviously a good weapon helps, but since it will take a long time to level up those rares, and especially ultra-rares, this class can make due with a basic arsenal. In my opinion this is one of the few classes that can be an effective team member using only powers. The others that I can think of would be the Asari adept because she has great powers, either Ex-Cerberus class because Smash is very good, the Salarian engineer simply because of decoy, and the human vanguard. Most of these require unlocking (though I suppose most people have them all by now), and the human vanguard is a... special class. I'll cover them later.

So... my take on the human engineer is as follows: I use two different builds. One uses incinerate, which is generally better against Reapers. The other uses overload, which works against all factions, but I spec it to deal with Cerberus. For today, I will be covering the overload build:

Human Engineer (30 Oct 2012)
Combat Drone: 4-detonate, 5-shock, 6-chain lightning
Incinerate: N/A
Overload: 4-chain overload, 5-neural shock*, 6-shield damage*
Alliance Training: 4-damage & capacity, 5-power damage, 6-weapon damage*
Fitness: 4-durability, 5-shield recharge, 6-fitness expert

*These powers are more flexible. Obviously, neural shock doesn't affect Geth. Shield damage is less important against Reapers. Finally, if you like heavy weapons or 2 weapon load outs, consider weapon weight.

Personally, I use the Claymore X with Smart Choke and either High-Caliber Barrel or Shredder Mod (for pesky Guardians). All your weapons, equipment, and gear are optional. I would recommend that you take a high-damage weapon for tougher enemies though, since combat drone and overload are great crowd-control for grunts and lieutenants.

Which brings me to what I believe is this character's greatest strength: crowd control. Combat drone is highly spam-able. The detonate evolution ensures that your short-lived drone goes out with a bang that does pretty good damage over 5m. Not bad. The shock effect does moderate damage, but the most important part is that it stuns up to 4 enemies at a time. The buff also increased the force and radius of the effect. If I remember correctly, it does something like 1000N of force, which can stun Phantoms. To emphasize: this thing can stun an entire mob of Phantoms. Your teammates will thank you. I will thank you. Your government leaders will thank you for saving us from the Phantom Menace. Because that movie was terrible. But I digress.

I pass on incinerate in favor of fitness. It's optional, I guess, but incinerate is really limited against non-Reapers. It's feasible against Phantoms when it works, but in my opinion it's not worth forgoing durability. Overload is such a great power. It does it all: puts grunts to sleep, crowd control, drains shields. Enough said. And fitness is self-explanatory, so there you have it.

On another note, I would like to credit Stardusk and his Youtube videos for insight on the human engineer class. I would also like to thank my two readers. Questions? Comment. Thank you!

Edit: Balance changes a while ago cause "pets" to be much less effective at distracting enemies, especially melee enemies. Unfortunately, this directly affects the Human Engineer's viability on higher difficulties.

-MACave11i