Overview

Following on from our Engineer class guide, here we’ll provide you with all the information you need to load out your Engineer and maximize your tanking potential. This build, like our Engineer DPS guide still relies heavily on Volatility Rising alongside several other key AMPs and skills so that obtaining Volatility is never an issue. Without Volatility Rising you'll have great difficulty in maintaining consistent Volatility. Compared to our DPS build, this build has huge amounts of survivability but can take some getting used to if you’ve more akin to dealing damage. Most importantly, you'll need to remember that as a tank you’ll spend the vast majority of your time in the Provoke Exo Suit.

Full Interactive Engineer Tanking Build

Skills

Hyper Wave

Hyper Wave allows you to generate 17 Volatility every 15 seconds but is also a good skill for creating instant threat. It affects up to 5 foes and increases your threat generation by 5%.

Unsteady Miasma

Unsteady Miasma costs 40 Volatility to fire but it’s value is in the fact that enemies affected by its field are afflicted with Blunder which increases your Deflect chance by 25%. I’d recommend you use this when your Volatility is over 70% and if you can, try to keep it as active as possible. 25% extra mitigation is seriously awesome.

Richochet

Richochet is an awesome skill because it has a small cooldown, bounces to 4 additional foes and generates 20 Volatility. Not only that but it generates a good chunk of threat (about 120% extra). Using Richochet at the start of a fight is a great way of quickly generating threat from multiple enemies.

Disruptive Module

When tiered to 4 Disruptive Module increases your shield mitigation by 25% for 6 seconds and also restores shield and Volatility every tick. It has a 12 second cooldown but it’s worth using as often as possible to keep your shield up and mitigation high.

Particle Ejector

Particle Ejector is your bread and butter skill. It should be used as often as humanly possible as it generates threat and at Tier 8 provides a debuff on any enemy you’re hitting. It’s quite significant at 50% armor reduction per tick so you really need to keep it up as it will benefit your entire parties DPS.

Repair Bot

A guild friend of mine converted me to the values of the Repair Bot and it’s primarily because when tiered to 4 it increases Shield Mitigation by 15%. Better still, if you activate the bot it will restore some of yours and your allies shields (quite a significant amount at 50!).

Code Red

Code Red is really your "Oh Shit!" button when you need to guarantee threat. With a 45 second cooldown you'll need to use it when someone else is drawing aggro as then they’ll benefit from the 25% damage reduction it provides to nearby party members.

Personal Defense Unit

Personal Defense Unit, similarly to Code Red, is a lengthy cooldown skill that provides you with Defense, reducing the damage you receive by 25%. I'd recommend you only use it on boss encounters or when the shit hits the fan because it really will save your life.

Tiers

The vast majority of points you’ll need to spend are in the Support tree. With only 1 Tier 8, the rest of your points are spread across your primary attacking skills. The exception to that is taking Repair Bot to Tier 4 for its additional Mitigation. In total, you can achieve well over 50% additional shield mitigation from this build quite easily.

AMPs

There’s still a requirement to spend some of your points in the Assault tree when tanking because the reliance on Volatility Rising is significant. Other than that, the remainder of your points are spent in areas where the damage you take will be reduced or healing on you increased.

Assault

  • Critical Hit Chance III - Increases Critical Hit Chance by 6% (total)
  • Volatility Rising - Between 30 and 70% Volatility gain 7 Volatility every 1.5s

Support

  • Support Power II - Increasing Support Power by 7.5% (total)
  • Deflect III - Increases Deflect Chance by 3% (total)
  • Enmity - Landing a hit grants a Threatening, increasing threat generation by 25%
  • Quick Restart - Reduces Shield reboot time by 2 seconds.
  • Boosted Armor - On taking a heal grants a Defense for 2 seconds, increasing armor rating by 12.5%
  • Disruptive Module - Unlocks the Disruptive Module ability

Hybrid A/S

  • Strikethrough III - Increases Strikethrough Chance by 3% (total)

Hybrid S/U

  • Maximum Shield Capacity III - Increases Maximum Shield Capacity by 6% (total)
  • Dirty Tricks - Landing a Taunt or Intimidate applies a Blunder, increasing your Deflect chance by 15%
  • Helpin’ Hand - Taking damage grants beacon for 30s, increasing incoming healing by 5% (stacks 3 times)

Utility

  • Cooldowns III - Increases Cooldown reduction by 15% (total)
  • CC Resilience - Increases CC Resilience by 30% (total)
  • Reckless Dash - Dashing generates 20% Volatility
  • Deft Restoration - Dashing restores 31% Shield Capacity

Rotation

Similarly to our Engineer DPS Build Guide, this rotation is perhaps a little unconventional as you’re using your Dash before the fight. Using Dash in this way will generate you 40 Volatility the moment you start, giving you a good platform to use skills but to also trigger Volatility Rising. The key difference with a DPS and Tank rotation is the fact that some skills, such as Unsteady Miasma, Code Red and Personal Defense Unit should be used only when needed and dependant on your fights circumstance.

  • Double-Dash to generate 40% Volatility at the start of a fight
  • Exo Suit (Provoke Mode)
  • Richochet to generate a large amount of threat
  • Repair Bot
  • Disruptive Module
  • Particle Ejector
  • Hyper Wave
  • Repeat the process
  • Utilise Unsteady Miasma, Code Red and Personal Defense Unit when needed

Variables

Surprisingly, I really wouldn’t recommend any variables for this build. It’s just an awesome tanking build that mitigates tons of damage, while providing you with plenty of Volatility. If I was to suggest any change it would be to remove Unsteady Miasma (it isn’t a must have) and instead use Obstruct Vision for a 50% deflect chance.


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Last Updated: Mar 18, 2016

About The Author

Lewis is a long standing journalist, who freelances to a variety of outlets.

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