9 TO DIEEngineering Build
What is the Engineering build?
Start on Technical Debt, then aim for Hotfix, Merge Conflict and Works On My Machine from the Engineering pool. Add Balls in the Air and Sticky Notes from the shared skills. Put most talent points into Backend, and the rest into Frontend. Engineering has 125 health and ranks B tier on our arithmetic.
Engineering starts on Technical Debt, a charge that compounds every second until something steps on it. So let it sit. Please do not ask when it will be paid down. It is on the roadmap.
Which skills and passives?
These six skills fill your six slots, and the six passives fill theirs. Passives that evolve one of your skills come first, since a skill evolves only at rank 5 with its partner owned. The remaining passive slots go to damage and cooldown, then whatever else is open.
| Skill | Source | Final dmg/s | Evolves with | Becomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technical Debt (start) | Engineering | 65.9 | The Knowledge Base | Rewrite From Scratch |
| Hotfix | Engineering | 159.3 | None | None |
| Merge Conflict | Engineering | 89.6 | None | None |
| Works On My Machine | Engineering | 72.5 | None | None |
| Balls in the Air | Shared | 1421.8 | Coffee | Juggling |
| Sticky Notes | Shared | 444.4 | None | None |
| Passive | Each rank | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The Knowledge Base | XP gained +10% | Evolves Technical Debt |
| Coffee | Skill speed +8% | Evolves Balls in the Air |
| Grade 7 | Damage +8% | General strength |
| The Phone | Cooldown -6% | General strength |
| The Projector | Extra shots +1 | General strength |
| Headphones | Area +8% | General strength |
How should I spend 51 talent points?
This plan puts points into Backend first, because it holds the most damage and cooldown talents of the three tracks. What is left goes into Frontend, reaching its first milestone. It is a legal spend under the game's own unlock rules, and respecs are free, so nothing here is a commitment.
Your career path has been mapped. It is a circle.
Backend: 35 points
| Talent | Points | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Throughput | 5 | Damage +4% per point. Requests per second, but for pain. |
| Long-Running Job | 5 | Duration +6% per point. Started Tuesday. |
| Rate Limiting (milestone at 10) | 1 | Zones slow everything in them. 429, try later. |
| Horizontal Scaling | 5 | Area +4% per point. Add another one. |
| Caching | 5 | Cooldown -3% per point. Faster the second time. |
| Direct to Database | 3 | Pierce +1 per point. Nobody will know. |
| Message Queue (milestone at 20) | 1 | Hits chain to a neighbour. Eventually consistent. |
| Batch Job | 4 | Damage +4% per point. Runs at 2 a.m. Hits all at once. |
| Redundancy | 5 | Max health +6% per point. Two of everything, including you. |
| Hot Path (milestone at 30) | 1 | Trails burn. Optimised. |
Frontend: 16 points
| Talent | Points | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Fast Paint | 5 | Skill speed +4% per point. First meaningful damage. |
| Pixel Perfect | 5 | Crit chance +2% per point. Off by one. Nobody else sees it. |
| Component Library (milestone at 10) | 1 | Every skill fires one more. Reusable. |
| Responsive | 5 | Area +4% per point. Fills whatever space it is given. |
Which gear sets?
Engineering has five sets, one per rarity from Approved up, and On-Call Rotation is the first you can realistically finish. Wear four pieces for the stat bonus and eight for the change to how things play. Stars add 20 percent of a piece's stats each, so keep them for pieces you will wear for a while.
| Set | Rarity | 4 pieces | 8 pieces |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-Call Rotation | Approved | Health per second +1 | Below 30% health, every skill hits like it is the 31st. |
| Shadow IT | Expensed | Cooldown -10% | Summons double. Matrixed. |
| Remote Warrior | Executive | Move speed +10% | Pickups come to you. Nobody cancels in time. |
| Legacy Maintainer | Grandfathered | Damage +10% | Trails burn. Optimised. |
| Return-to-Office Loyalist | Legacy | Armour +4% | Auras reach further. No walls, no doors, no escape. |