Return of Reckoning

Greetings All!

I have just returned to the game... for the SECOND time (having been here for a few weeks a couple of years ago).

Anyways, historically, I've played dwarf Engi's as Snipers. But now I've got an Engi that I want to mold into a DPS Grenadier.
So, I was at a keep defense last night... the first one where I was no longer playing like a Sniper... and I really wasn't sure what to do with myself.

Trying to shoot from the walls just made me a good target for Sorcs. (I suppose I could have fought back more like a Sniper, but I just chose not to.)
And I see that they fixed the old bug where I could plant myself right behind the door and spawn my turret OUTSIDE the door. <Ah well, t'was fun while it lasted!>
I did try lobbing lots of grenades at as many Destro were close to the walls or on the ram, but those were mostly tanks anyways, so I knew they weren't really going to go down anytime soon.

How should I be fighting during a keep defense while the door is still up?

Since I'm low-level anyways (20, I believe), I ended up guarding postern, which worked out well, because nobody else was doing it...and I managed to catch 4 or 5 melee sneaking in.
Seemed like an okay solution for level 20, but obviously, I'm sure I can contribute more than that on down the road.

Thanks!

So RoR and WaR before it are designed in a different way to most modern MMOs. Part of this design is that some classes dont receive their "essential" tools for a spec until certain milestones, be they gear or renown or level in your case. The issue youre experiencing is that grenadier feels less impactful with aoe than rifleman feels when you kill confirm a guy with your raw dps and at level 20 you dont really have the mastery points to get the tools you need to make your build shine. Grenadier is never going to have the same feel good moments of rifleman where you pick a target and thats your guy for the next 5-10 seconds and you drop him and bam, quick gratification. Grenadier focuses more on area damage over time at shorter range. The value of grenadier over marksman is that a grenadier can keep an entire group of people at 60-80% hp due to dot pressure which translates to lowering their effective HP and makes them an easier kill for all of your allies, particularly when they push a choke point. Killing 1 guy here and there as a rifleman only for them to get resurrected 10 seconds later doesnt actually help your team take a keep or defend the keep. The make or break moments of keep sieges are the chokepoint holds/pushes and that is where grenadier has more value than rifleman. In smallscale pvp and scenarios rifleman feels better a lot of the time because its upfront damage and very straightforward, it also has a much lower barrier to entry in terms of when the toolkit becomes available to actually be effective at that role. My advice to you would be to play whichever one is most fun for you right now and around level 31-33 go back to grenadier when you can have throwing arm AND napalm and see if you dont like the spec then.

All in all it doesnt really matter how the spec feels to you while leveling because with decent gear and a max level character with all his tools, it will feel very different.

^^ This comment helps!! I'm a lvl 26 Gren build and I feel absolutely useless in a group. I'll keep chugging but I feel like a selfish leach.

The long range Grenadier comes available when you have 5 pieces of Invader gear and Onslaught gloves.

Which both combined give +15 range. Add the range increase from the gunturret on top and you will be capable of throwing AoE up and down from keep walls.

Especially if a Magus put his pet on the edge of a wall you can use it to apply AoE on that area with the pet as an anchorpoint.

Also reminded: several ground AoE effects like napalm and mortar doesn't stack. So if the door area is hit by one or 20 doesn't matter. Keep your acid and frag grenades up. They stack on targets and BWs love the debuff.

Especially useful is the flashbang to AoE interrupt moral drops and channels.

Instead to sniper you can ignore WS and can and should go with BS to 1050 and then take care of more survivability.

Few questions since there is wisdom in this thread.

Should I be swapping out my Renown ballistics for more toughness/wounds as a gren spec? I'm maxed on current lvl SC gear (Soldier) and I am much more tankier but I've had some good heals at the same time.

Also, is there any PQ or PvE quests along the way that reward decent engie gear? Onslaught and invader gear feel like a long time away.

Beskern wrote: Thu Aug 27, 2020 7:41 pm So RoR and WaR before it are designed in a different way to most modern MMOs. Part of this design is that some classes dont receive their "essential" tools for a spec until certain milestones, be they gear or renown or level in your case. The issue youre experiencing is that grenadier feels less impactful with aoe than rifleman feels when you kill confirm a guy with your raw dps and at level 20 you dont really have the mastery points to get the tools you need to make your build shine. Grenadier is never going to have the same feel good moments of rifleman where you pick a target and thats your guy for the next 5-10 seconds and you drop him and bam, quick gratification. Grenadier focuses more on area damage over time at shorter range. The value of grenadier over marksman is that a grenadier can keep an entire group of people at 60-80% hp due to dot pressure which translates to lowering their effective HP and makes them an easier kill for all of your allies, particularly when they push a choke point. Killing 1 guy here and there as a rifleman only for them to get resurrected 10 seconds later doesnt actually help your team take a keep or defend the keep. The make or break moments of keep sieges are the chokepoint holds/pushes and that is where grenadier has more value than rifleman. In smallscale pvp and scenarios rifleman feels better a lot of the time because its upfront damage and very straightforward, it also has a much lower barrier to entry in terms of when the toolkit becomes available to actually be effective at that role. My advice to you would be to play whichever one is most fun for you right now and around level 31-33 go back to grenadier when you can have throwing arm AND napalm and see if you dont like the spec then.

All in all it doesnt really matter how the spec feels to you while leveling because with decent gear and a max level character with all his tools, it will feel very different.

I just wanted to say: Thanks very much for this explanation!

(I hadn't seen a response in the first few days after my original post, so I gave up checking on it. Just now found this.)
This explains a lot of why the toon "felt" so different than my past Riflemen at that level.

I ended up slogging through it. I'm now at level 40 / RR69.

I've actually moved slightly away from AOE... just a bit... and added a few rifle-burst-damage into my rotations, especially at shorter range. I had been relying on Phosphorous Shells a lot during keep defenses, thinking that was the pinacle of my AoE. But now I don't use that as much, since it "feels" so terribly slow sometimes. I didn't know about the non-stacking property it has (which someone else mentioned here), so I guess it's a good thing I did.

Had a keep defense last night where, during door-rushes, I threw AoE, but then I'd focus on individuals, one-by-one, until they were down. Unless it got crazy, in which case, I just kept the nearest Destro targeted. And that worked out VERY well. Door defenses are definitely where my build shines the best right now.

On keep takes, I still have a lot of trouble, but it's mostly because of range issues.: The game seems VERY inconsistent on what point of a keep's wall I can and can't hit from minute to minute. I can stand in the exact same place and hit a spot no problem for a few minutes. Then, suddenly, I can't hit it, even if I move closer. And yet what turret I have down and my range to it hasn't changed. And this is even with my gun turret up instead of my bombardment turret.

Fortunately, a lot of times, there's plenty of Destro dropping to ground level or coming out of the doors to keep me busy.

I did end up going the way of the Tinkerer a bit, just to get the Crit bonus tactic. That and the Renown Crit bonus have helped me a lot.

So, you grind through, you read, you experiment with rotations, you learn.

I'm now at that point where it seems to take forever for you to get to the point where you can put on some new gear or raise a stat or skill somehow. Feeling kinda grindy.


Thanks!