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Outcast Engineer DLC Guide

By Royale w/ Cheese and 1 collaborators

Guide for Outcast Engineer mechanic/talent, two DLC weapons, and some build theory.

Award

Created by

Royale w/ Cheese
Offline

Dame Arstor
Offline

Category: Achievements, Characters, Classes, Co-op, Gameplay Basics, Multiplayer

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

19 Nov, 2020 @ 5:40pm

9 Dec, 2024 @ 1:42pm

18,599	Unique Visitors
395	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Career General Overview

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part I)

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part II)

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part III)

Crank Gun Firerate, Bullet Cost & Regen

New Weapons Overview - Cog Hammer

New Weapons Overview - Masterwork Pistol

Sample Builds - Legend

Sample Builds - Cataclysm

Comments

Career General Overview

Career Orientation

A range backline with strong horde clear tool and decent range buff.

Pros: Consistent long-term range damage. One of the highest range uptime career in the game. Have range kits that can deal with most types of enemies in one build.
Cons: Fairly low moveability. Heavily relies on teammates to provide space. Super Armour damage is lackluster without certain weapons.

Basic Stats

Base HP: 125
Unusable Weapons: Dual Axes, Crossbow, Throwing Axe

Perks

Gunsmith

Increases max Ammo by 50%

Spotter

Increases Ranged Power of nearby allies by 10%, has range of 10 units.

Utility Belt

Bardin can carry up to 3 Bombs (of any type) at one time. Pressing the Bomb keybind cycles between them.

Career Skill & Passive

Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II)

Unleash the fearsome firepower of Bardin's custom creation. Shots reduce the Ability Bar. Any accumulated Pressure is lost upon firing.

The base version of the Crankgun is similar to the Shotgun pellet. High Infantry/Berserker damage, low armour damage, can not damage Chaos Warrior without crit or headshot. The difference is it does decent Monster DPS while sacrificing some of the cleave.
When you are holding the Crank Gun, you have 1 dodge count and 110% dodge distance. Any attack speed bonus also increases your firerate.
Hold right-click before shooting will pre-spin the Crank Gun till it reaches maximum speed. Hold right-click during/after shooting can retain the current Crank Gun shooting speed.

Build Pressure

Holding reload with the Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II) equipped builds Pressure. Each stack of Pressure lasts for 12 seconds and gradually restores the Ability Bar. Stacks up to 5 times.

By default, Engineer does not lose Pressure stacks upon firing Crank Gun, only over time. When he loses Pressure stacks, he will lose all stacks at once.
If you keep cranking within 2 second of reaching max Pressure, you will be burned and receive a debuff that prevents you from cranking for a 5 seconds. It does not deal damage, however, only causes an animation, and the animation can be cancelled by weapon switching or firing the Crank Gun.

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part I)

LeveL 5 Row

Engineer's Resolve

Staggering enemies with a melee attack grants temporary health. Health gained based on stagger strength.

Should be used with shield weapons.

Morgrim's Enthusiasm

Damaging multiple enemies in one swing with a melee weapon grants temporary health. Max 5 enemies.

Should be used on most of melee weapons.

Pouch of the Good Stuff

Healing yourself with a First Aid Kit or a Healing Draught also heals your nearby allies for 20.0% of their maximum health. Clears any wounds.

Should be avoided most of time, since Engineer is a squishy backline.

LeveL 10 Row

Ingenious Ordnance

Bardin crafts a Bomb every 80 seconds. Crafted Bombs are less effective than normal bombs. In addition, Bardin's explosives no longer damage his allies.

Limited usage utility tool
Crafts a special Engineer Grenade every 80 seconds. Bombs can be given to teammates. When Bardin already have 3 bombs, it will reload cooldown again, however it does not provide another bomb when inventory is available even if the cooldown reload is finished, but requires another new reload of cooldown.
Removes Friendly Fire of all explosion from Bardin, including Bombs/Trollhammer/Explosive Barrels/Overcharge explosion(Bardin still dies to it).
The Engineer Grenade functions as a weaken version of Frag Bomb. It has half the radius/quarter the area effect of regular Frag Bomb, deal half the Monster damage and fraction of stagger power, but deal twice amount of Super Armour damage. Cannot stagger Boss at all. On Cataclysm can't stagger Chaos Warrior overhead consistently, and need to land direct hit to free people from hook.
Due to its low stagger and AoE effect, the Engineer Grenade's function really depends on your Trinket traits. Explosive Ordinance can make it works as a decent crowd control tool against none Chaos Warrior/Boss enemies, while Shrapnel makes it an ok damage boost against Boss/Lords for the team.

Armour Piercing Slugs

None-explosive Ranged Attacks pierce 1 additional enemy.

Huge DPS boost on horde clear weapons/Utility tool on sniping weapons
Guaranteed cleave through one extra unit, doesn't matter if the first unit has armour or a shield. For a horde clear weapon your DPS will increase by a lot thanks to the extra cleave & bullets won't be stopped by armour/shield. On special sniping weapon like Handgun, you will no longer worry about killing a hook rat behind a Mauler, or one-shot multiple Storm Vermin in a patrol fight.

Bombardier

Bardin's Bombs gain the effect of both regular Bombs and Incendiary Bombs. Bardin now begins a mission with 2 Bombs.

Specialized damage boost with decent resource generation
Grants 2 regular Bombs at the beginning of a level, including every single Chaos Waste level.
Increases bombs effectiveness drastically, and making every bomb useful in all situations. One or two full bombs can easily delete a patrol, or kill a boss super fast, or makes some hard end of map event way easier.

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part II)

LeveL 15 Row

Bulwark

Enemies that you stagger take 10% more damage from melee attacks for 2 seconds.Deal 20% more damage to staggered enemies. Each hit against a staggered enemy adds another count of stagger. Bonus damage is increased to 40% against enemies afflicted by more than one stagger effect.

Does not benefit a range based career. Should be avoided.

Mainstay

Deal 40% more damage to staggered enemies. Each hit against a staggered enemy adds another count of stagger. Bonus damage is increased to 60% against enemies afflicted by more than one stagger effect.

Does not benefit a range based career. Should be avoided.

Enhanced Power

Increases total Power Level by 7%. This is calculated before other buffs are applied.

Increase both your melee and range damage. Should be picked most of time.

LeveL 20 Row

Full Head of Steam

While at 5 stacks of Pressure, Bardin gains 15.0% Attack Speed.

Comprehensive buff that focus more on Crank Gun DPS
The Attack Speed buff lasts indefinitely as long as you have 5 Pressure stacks.
This talents help you in both melee and range combat, as Attack Speed also affects Crank Gun, allowing you to shoot faster which makes you gain fire rate faster through shooting too, benefit greatly to all versions of Crank Gun except Linked Compression Chamber. However it requires you to stay at max Pressure, which requires you to crank every 12 seconds, making it bit annoying on melee focus build compared to a more Crank Gun focus build.

Perilous Overclock

Building Pressure at Max stacks restores 25% charge and grants 8% Critical Hit chance but damages Bardin. Each Overclock increases damage suffered.

Pure Crank Gun focus buff
When crank again within 2 second of reaching max Pressure, you will also gain/refresh Overclock stacks along with fresh the Pressure stacks. Gaining/refreshing Overclock will restore 25% max charge and damage the player. Each stack of Overclock gives the player 8% crit chance, stack 3 times to 24%, applying to both melee and range. Gaining/refreshing Overclock at 1/2/3 stacks will deal 4/8/10 damage to the player.
Allows you to shoot Crank Gun on demand as long as you have spare HP. Although you take more damage with higher stacks, higher Crit Chance can save you bullets/HP by increasing your DPS, at max stacks 24% extra Crit Chance can significantly boosts your time to kill on armoured specials and Storm Vermin. While the Crit Chance does apply to both melee and range, a big part of this talent(cooldown refund) only benefits Crank Gun. You also lose all Crit Stacks at one go, making it harder to maintain compare to other lvl20 talents if you don't have Crank Gun in your hand most of the time, so overall this talent a hyper Crank Gun focus option.

Superior Gaskets

Pressure is now lost when firing instead of over time. Each stack of Pressure grants 4% Power.

Comprehensive buff that focus more on none Crank Gun DPS
Increases your Power Level up to 20%. Losing 1 stack of Pressure every 1.5 seconds after firing Crank Gun.
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave. Since the Pressure lasts indefinitely, crank once and you're guaranteed to get your Career Skill bar filled, requiring very little attention compared to other talents. But most importantly, you can keep the 20% Power Level bonus easily, increasing other damage you do, especially melee/Trollhammer/Drakefire weapons/bombs as they deal majority of your damage outside Crank Gun and all benefit from Power Level greatly.

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part III)

LeveL 25 Row

Ablative Armour

Every 5 seconds Bardin gains a stack of Damage Reduction. Stacks up to 5 times. Each stack reduces damage taken by 5%. Taking damage removes a stack.

Fairly consistent Damage Reduction
Provides up to 25% damage reduction.
It does not reduce the self damage from Perilous Overclock and still consume stacks.
This is mostly useful to reduce the trash hit you took accidentally or survive one elite overhead. But since each damage taken will remove 5% of damage reduction(including self-inflicted damage like venting drakefire weapon), it's almost useless to reduce multi-instance damage source (gas, blight storm, surrounded by horde etc.).

Combined Arm

Melee Power is increased by 10%. Each 5 Melee kill makes Bardin's next Ranged Attack grant 15% Range Power for 10 sec.

Decent Melee boost with situational range damage boost.
Unlike talent description, it only requires hit enemy 5 times with melee attacks, instead of melee kill. Hitting multiple enemies with one swing only grants 1 stack.
The melee power increase boost Engineer's melee damage, cleave and stagger. The range bonus part, although the number is decent, its duration and trigger condition makes it not very consistent. Should be used on heavy melee or melee/range hybrid build.

Piston Power

Every 15 seconds Bardin's next Charged Attack gains massive stagger and restores all stamina.

Melee utility tool
Works on a melee weapon and shotgun bash. The stagger can stun boss and put everything that is not a boss into heavy stagger, similar to Foot Knight Career Skill. It also generate 6 stagger THP per target hit with Piston Power attack.
However, the amount of enemies you can stagger are also limited to your weapon's cleave, ie. you still need to be able to cleave them in order to stagger, but you can bypass it by using shield bash or shotgun bash. Should be used on a build that you use your melee fairly often to increase its uptime.

LeveL 30 Row

Gromril-Plated Shot

Reduces the Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II)'s rate of fire, but increases Damage and Armour Penetration.

Storm Vermin/Bestigor/Armored Specials
Reduce your fire rate significantly but gain a lot more armor damage. You can also damage Chaos Warrior with this version of Crank Gun, but the damage is not great. Your ability to deal with normal armored units & specials increase by a huge margin by trading a good chunk of horde/Monster damage.

Linked Compression Chamber

The Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II) starts firing at full speed, rather than taking time to ramp up.

High instant burst/Short Term Monster DPS
Crank Gun no longer has a speed wind up period, and increase shooting speed by 30%.
You can switch to your Crank Gun and delete a Mauler/Berserker/Unarmored special very quickly. On Monster, the fast ammo dump can help you switch between shoot & kite more easily while giving you a good initial DPS boost.

Innovative Ammo Hoppers

Increases Bardin's Ability Bar by 50%. Killing a Special makes the Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II) not consume the Ability Bar for the next 4 seconds.

High sustain/Horde clear/Long Term Monster damage
A longer Career Skill bar means you can utilize potions/Pressure stacks more. You can also kill horde with one uninterrupted burst without cranking easily. For Monster, if you have a safe position this version of Crank Gun can deal the highest damage. The free shoots from killing a special is mostly a small bonus since it's inconsistent and only last few second, but is more impactful on higher difficulty.

Crank Gun Firerate, Bullet Cost & Regen

Universal Trait

Pressure regens 0.4 sec of Career Skill per sec per stack.

After stop firing without holding right-click, Crank Gun lose 1.5 RPS per second.

Hold right-click before firing increase 20% of your Initial Firerate per second till reaching Max Firerate.

Hold right-click right after firing will preserve your current Firerate.

Gromril-Plated Shot

Linked Compression Chamber

Innovative Ammo Hoppers

Round cost

2 sec/round

0.75 sec/round

Total rounds
for full Career Skill bar

30 rounds

80 rounds

120 rounds

Resourceful Combatant
& Sharpshooter regen

1.5 rounds/proc

4 rounds/proc

6 rounds/proc

Initial Firerate

2 RPS

15.6 RPS

4 RPS

Max Firerate

3.6 RPS

15.6 RPS

12 RPS

Firerate gain per shot

0.2 RPS/shot

0 RPS/shot

0.2 RPS/shot

Rounds to reach Max Firerate

8 rounds

0 rounds

40 rounds

*RPS = Round Per Second
*Attack Speed affects all versions of Crank Gun RPS

New Weapons Overview - Cog Hammer

Career Accessibility
All Bardin careers
Basic Stats
Stamina:
6 stamina/3 shields
Dodge:
100% dodge distance, 2 dodge count
Block/Push ability:
Same as normal weapons.
Crit chance:
No extra crit chance.
Mass modifier:
Light attacks have Tank.
Additional notes:
Light attack 1/4 has extra stagger power & distance.

Cog Hammer is the new king of two-handed well-rounded weapons. It can be described as a heavier version of Dual Hammers: the attack pattern is simple, attack speed is very fast in general, it has great crowd control as well as superb single target damage. Its heavy attack has the same damage/headshot multiplier as Executioner Sword, meaning that headshots deal devastating single target damage. Its only significant downside is lacklustre dodge capability as it is a two-handed weapon, and the light attack chain has a huge movement speed penalty.

Pros: Good cleave. Good crowd control. Heavy attack has very high headshot damage.
Cons: Low dodge(though same as other two-handed weapon). Monster DPS is fairly low.

Recommended Weapon Combo:
Against horde:
When fighting horde, use chain light attacks.

Against elite:
When fighting elites, use chain heavy attacks.

Against monster:
When fighting monster, use chain heavy attacks.

New Weapons Overview - Masterwork Pistol

Career Accessibility
Ranger Veteran, Iron Breaker, Outcast Engineer
Basic Stats
Dodge:
125% dodge distance, 100 dodge count
Armor Piercing:
Pierce normal armour. Does not pierce Super Armor without headshot/crit.
Crit chance:
No extra crit chance.
Mass modifier:
No mass modifier.
Additional notes:
Long-range damage drops off very early.

Masterwork Pistol is a close-range bodyshot focus weapon. Its base damage except monster damage is the same as Handgun, meaning you're able to oneshot bodyshot most specials and a lot of elites with correct breakpoints. The alt-fire mode can also shoot very fast, doing some high Monster damage in a short burst. Plus the huge ammo clip and fast reload, on paper it seems a very good all-rounded weapon for all careers. However, the long charge time of left-click/low accuracy of right-click means you cannot react to situations as fast as Handgun or Crossbow. And the early damage drop off on both attacks often make you spend more than 1 ammo to kill the special, let alone tankier elites. This requires Masterwork Pistol to be used on career that has high ammo sustain for more shots & can always maintain a good position to charge the pistol to compete with Handgun/Crossbow.

Pros: High close range damage. High short term Boss DPS. High ammo clip and capacity. Fast reload. High dodge.
Cons: Early range damage fall off. The default mode has wind up and alt-fire mode has lower accuracy. No Super Armor damage without headshot/crit.

Default mode(left-click):
Hold left click, charge up and fire.
Should be used for long-range single target kill.

Alt-fire mode(right-click):
Hold right-click into alt-fire mode. Then click left-click to instantly fire once, or hold left-click to spray your bullets.
Should be used for close-range single target kill. Or used for close/mid-range multi targets spray. Or used for close/mid-range Monster burst.

Sample Builds - Legend

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034609078

Sample Builds - Cataclysm

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1832306381

81 Comments

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Royale w/ Cheese [author] 23 Jan, 2022 @ 10:31am

while it's personal flavor, all top tier players on high difficulty use superior gaskets + Innovative Ammo Hoppers. ppl even finish cata true solo with this set up.

Archdeacon Monseigneur 23 Jan, 2022 @ 4:39am

followup:

i tried experimenting with experimental steam capacitors + gromril shots/LCC, but it seems inferior to the superior gaskets/ammo hoppers talent combo even if you keep the cranks up to full, because every 10 seconds you are essentially disabling yourself since you need to crank, and the fact that you need to keep an eye on crank stacks also takes your focus away from more important things, like your immediate surroundings.

anyone who says they can maintain focus on their surroundings and focus on keeping 5 cranks consistently are liars, because that's multitasking, and multitasking by definition means you will pay less attention to both problems because that's just how the human brain works.
you can fool yourself into thinking you've got both aspects covered 100% of the time, but you just don't.

Archdeacon Monseigneur 23 Jan, 2022 @ 4:37am

some of the talents in this guys kit are just mandatory which is a shame because it always feels like you're trading one slightly better talent for a 'potentially' better one depending on the situation.
taking gromril shots over ammo hoppers, your gun is drained so fast for very little tradeof vs. armored enemies whereas with ammo hoppers you can spray all day long and just finish off the remaining armored afterwards.

superior gaskets therefore also seems like a mandatory pick, since you won't have to bother with cranking every 10 seconds and can simply use main and sidearm while the bar fills with a 10% increased attack speed passively, which is really good with 2x 5% attack speed properties + swiftslayer for a total of 20-40% attack speed consistently, which will gain you insane amounts of THP from melee spam.