Managed to get the win! You can see my char sheet here if you're curious:
https://te4.org/characters/229407/tome/ ... ab257536d2. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use the update you pushed through for most of my run through the east because the server was down for a long period of time yesterday. Here are some thoughts on my experiences in the east.
-Again, overall I enjoyed the class and the run a great deal. I think Sapper is fun and interesting to play, which is the most important part of any class.
-Polybolos and Scorpio still did damage, but as the game went on, it wasn't really keeping up with enemy hp pools, so they fell into a more support role. Scorpio hit for ~300 and Polybolos for 3x ~100 with me sitting at about 100 steampower. They were still incredibly useful for the defense and utility, and both Salvage and the explosion from Tough Love hit pretty hard. They just weren't taking out enemies on their own like earlier in the game.
-Onager and Ram became my main sources of damage. After I finished investing in siege engines and the utility skills to go with them, I invested heavily in the onager and with heavy boulders it was hitting for 1.5-2k by the end. Ram does great damage throughout, especially if you tap it with Tough Love as you send it out, just have to be smart about placement. Headlocking an enemy and placing a ram on either side is hilarious, but if they get out of it, it's a big waste of resources so I didn't try it very often.
-It turns out rams can be killed . . . by high peak Doombringer randbosses. I didn't stick around to test this extensively.
-Defensively, I felt very strong throughout. I ended up having to fight all of Rak'shor 3 at once because a Rotting Titan destroyed all the walls, and while it pretty chaotic and took a while, I lived and won in the end. My game crashed in the middle of this fight, but I had ducked into a vault for a breather shortly before, so I was able to pick back up and finish it without losing much progress. My siege engines didn't even die to mages that much, probably because I was AM and they inherit your resistances and also I was liberal with using Tough Love to keep them around. The closest I came to dying was when a high peak randboss popped up in a wall with Wraithform and hit me for about 80% of my hp. I had Ring of the Dead ready to go, but I was able to use a ram to get him off me and ended up not needing it.
-One downside to my playstyle was that it was hard to focus fire on ranged enemies. Headlock and Throw require melee range, so I was left with Lay Siege. However, the onager only has range 4 and that was what I needed to do real damage in the endgame, so it could be tricky to get it into position, especially since it will start firing as soon as something is in range by default. On some occasions I had to run around it and switch places so I could get it in range of the enemy I really wanted down. I imagine this is less of an issue with a playstyle that emphasizes melee fighting more.
-In the final fight, I went for A first, because I thought E would be too mobile to track down. This worked well, as I was able to get the onager on A and take her down fast enough that Aerin was still alive with 50% hp to help with E. My defenses were strong enough that E throwing fireballs and such at us from range wasn't much of a concern, and I used Tough Love to keep the onager up.
-Fire munitions helped some with cc, but could still be unreliable with the onager's short range and random targeting. I found the most reliable way to clear a crowd was to project Polybolos and then blow it up with Salvage. When you can summon another with Frenzy, blowing it up right away isn't so painful if it's going to help a lot in the moment.
-Onager drawing a lot of aggro was an issue in areas with high density of enemies like the prides. I ended up in a number of large scale fights, though like I said my defenses were strong enough to handle it. I'd guess this is less of an issue if you use the siege engines as support and fight at the front.
-There are definitely some things I would do differently with this build if I ran it again. I got Fungus because I was AM, but in retrospect I think Augmented Mobility would have been a better use of the cat point, especially since I didn't even use a regen infusion in the end. The global speed from Quick as Thought and movement from TK Leap would both have been more valuable than more hp and regen, both of which I had a ton of already. I also should have saved more points so I could afford both Compact Steam Tank and Supercharge Tinkers. I'd give more consideration to EF as a prodigy choice as well. I had rough luck with respen gear and only had 50% physical pen by the end of the game, which was enough to get the job done, but obviously maxing it would be better. But you learn by trying stuff, and I'm not super familiar with Tinker classes in general.
I actually added Death Tools because Sappers were too squishy ! But i also want to be all up in people's face with summon as a support tool rather than the other way around, so you would feel quite tanky staying in the back row. Especially with double the siege engines ! I plan to think up another locked tree with only weapon strikes so that playstyle is more represented.
I think adding another locked tree along those lines would help incentivize the melee playstyle. Part of my reason for not going that direction was that there didn't seem to be a whole lot to do in terms of active talents, especially compared with the other aspects of the class.
Flex is my obvious first prodigy, in testing i also played around with Giant Leap, Arcane Might, Ethereal Form, Adept. I'm pretty sure some people will use Blighted Summoning, Through the Crowd, Windtouched Speed, Windblade, Mystical Cunning at least, as well as the always good prodigies that i don't even need to list
Yeah, if you go heavily into melee, I think the prodigy choices get a bit more straightforward. Flex for sure.
As far as bugs, I told you about the Dig In thing (which is now fixed), and the crash I experienced using You Shall Not Pass, but I didn't experience anything else notable. I did notice that the talent description of Onager of All Trades says heavy boulders have a 25% stun chance in the talent screen while it says they have a 10% chance to stun when you hover over the hotbar icon for the sustain, but that's the only thing.
I think player toughness is in a decent spot, though engines themselves are a bit too resilient. Good to know E didn't destroy you as i had a few painful experiences myself even after clearing HP in playtesting haha... :'(
so i'm having a hard time seeing what else (if anything) i should rebalance.