I've been messing around with a few classes on my free account, and thinking of giving an Engineer a try. I'm wondering how they play compared to Bureaucrats and Meta-Physicists (I haven't played either, but I hear they get a robot/charm nano and some kind of rage manifestation thing for pets). I also know that some classes lean towards particular weapons, do Engineers lean towards either shotguns or grenade launchers (just because when I think engineer I think of these weapons for whatever reason).

And while I'm asking, I want to role as either a Solitus or Opifex. I'm wondering how these breeds compare to each other as Engineers for PvE and PvP.

I appreciate any info :)

Engineer bot's are permanent. That's to say you spawn one and until it is killed, you log out, or you shut it down it remains, 'Crat and MP pets have lifespans. MP pets will not respond if they are significantly higher level than the player character. 'Crat pets I know little about. If you can twink on a 220 'bot via trader and mp nanos in order to spawn it then you can use it even after the nanos expire.

Engie 'bots cannot hold aggro off you unless they are a lot higher level than you and/or you 'hide' from the battle. The 'bot heal nano you get relies on Nano skills that are not the primary three of Matter Creation, Time & Space,and uhh whateverthethirdoneis so it often lags behind other nanos in level and thus effectiveness. You'll still want it though.

Like most professions the Engineer can use any weapon. The weapon it's 'supposed' to use is the pistol but melee and shotguns are also popular.

I don't know anything about PVP other than you will still be the primary target not your bot(s) and are thus fairly squishy.

Actually, of the 3 pet classes, engi's pets hold aggro off the best. Well, the crats are pretty good as well, but as an engi is dam easy to have the mob sticking to your pet (surely much easier than with an MP, which pet really can't hold aggro at all).

Also, they're permanent, as the previous poster said, so that allows you to get a much higher lvl pet through wrangles and other buffs and keeping it with you for a good while. That's also the selling points of engis probably: it's quite easy to get a hold of a much higher lvl pet, so it's much easier to solo.

As far as weapons go, it really depends on what you like, engis are not really narrowed to a single weapon. If you're sticking with a free account, then probably pistols. Relatively easy to level and there's a good choice of pistols to use till lvl 200. If you have SL (not sure about LE, played through it, but not with an engi), then there are a good choice of perks that improve grenade weapons, and also a very good 1 that can be crafted for engis, I remember people lvl 210+ using it. I knew several engis that would go pistols till lvl 200ish, then get a hold of the grenade weapon (can't remember the name sry, haven't played in quite a while) and respec for it.

Edit: Uhm...Opi would help with evades for PvP, for PvE Solitus would be the way to go. Nano is a good boost early on since it lets you use better bots early on, but at end -game it won't matter as much and the lack of Con and HP will hurt.

PvP...err...not really sure, though I remember alot of people complaining that LE nerfed engis in PvP really hard.

And about the bot, it's true you can wrangle/mp buff/etc to use a higher level bot, but OverEquip rule for gear still applies, meaning that if your skills go below 75% of the req, it'll stop listening you until you bring it back to 75% or higher.

Thanks for the info.

While I'm asking, what does SB stand for? I keep encountering it in guides and don't know what it's refering to.

SB usually refers to Shadowbreed, and doesn't come into play until you're level 205 or higher.

While engi bots do last until you shut them down or they die, the MP and Crat pets all last for 2 hours nowadays(even the level 1 pets on the island) and most MP's and Crats make use of wrangles to fire up pets comparable in level to engi pets.  They just make sure to get rebuffed and recast every 2 hours.

Engies have some aptitude/buffs/perks/gear to help with using both pistols and grenade launchers and those are the 2 most commonly used weapon lines.  Pistols are more practical (as there are lots of buffing pistols around) but there are some outstanding grenade launchersout there, and they usually have really cool sound and visual effects when used.  Nothing like using a QL 50 Red Line Grenade Launcher and getting some normal (non-crit) hits of 600-700 pts on mobs when you are still level 20-something.