Apparently, I am in the extreme minority here, as shown by statistics from 2013. While I found the engineer class to be the most fun to plan, only 5% of players agreed with me. Now, this could have changed over the course of the last seven years, but I highly doubt it. I’m not really the Magnus Rushes In type of player, anyway, so engineer matched with me pretty well.

In the first game, it was always awesome when you were exploring a planet and you didn’t have to worry about having Tali, Garrus, or Kaiden with you. I can’t tell you how many times I cursed the screen when I was another class because it told me my decryption or electronics skills were too low; I was sure as hell not coming back down to get whatever I was just going to sell to the guy in the cargo bay, anyway. It didn’t bother me that I couldn’t wear heavy armor, since I rarely ever got into situations where I’d need it, and I seemed to do fairly well with my little pistol.

ME2 solidified my love of the engineer because I finally got a fucking combat drone. I adore those little things. And I always specialized in sniper rifles when I boarded the Collector vessel because … why would you pick any of the other ones??? Okay, shotguns are actually pretty awesome, but I am not as adept at using them to their fullest capacity. I tend to flail a lot and then die, which … well, not a good look.

And then ME3 came along and gave me a goddamn sentry turret. Weight capacity be damned, this is the best game to play as an engineer. Overload then incinerate is the best combo ever (tied with a good biotic explosion, of course), and sabotage makes me giggle each time somebody’s gun backfires on them. While this doesn’t really have anything to do with the single-player game, I will admit that each class in multiplayer has awesome characters within in (all the krogan and batarians, the N7 Fury and Destroyer, the asari vanguard and Justicar, the drell vanguard, and even the little volus adept), but my favorites to play are the engineers. I kicked major ass with the salarian and quarian engineers, and I actually played a gold level to completion solo with my turian Saboteur. But I’m digressing.

Anyway. I’m okay with being in the minority. The engineer class required an element of strategy that the other classes didn’t, even though the infiltrator and sentinel came close. The shields weren’t as durable and, in the third game, weight capacity would have been an issue if I carried more than two guns ever (I rarely did, even when I wasn’t an engineer), but I was more focused on creating a cohesive team instead of just barreling into a fight like a soldier or vanguard would. Plus, I’d like to think that an engineer Shep would just sit around and geek out with Garrus and Tali in their off time.

I may have thought about this a bit too much.

And just in case you were wondering, here is my Official Top Three Class Rank List:

1. Engineer – see above.
2. Vanguard – This is kind of contradictory to my statement above that I don’t like to rush into the fray, but the vanguard is super fun to play, especially when you get to the third game. SCHOOOOOM KAPOW! (That’s what I say whenever I charge. I’m not kidding.)
3. Infiltrator – The infiltrator and sentinel are tied for the third spot, basically, but the infiltrator has cloaking starting in the third game, which gives it an edge in some situations. I like being sneaky.

Art Credit: eTeknix