Guild Wars 2

In my opinion, this Kit is badly designed. I’ve never played an engineer but the skills this Kit offers ranges from absolutely insane to completely worthless.
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Here are the skills that in my opinion, are a bit unbalanced.

• Gear Shield – Block attacks. 3 Second Duration. 20 Second Recharge.
  Basically a 3 second invincibility every 20 seconds, it’s not much of an issue as Engineers don’t have the same recovery as Warriors but when it comes to waiting on skills recharging, it’s a God send.

• Magnet – Pull your target to you. 5/4th Casting Time. 25 Second Recharge. Range: 1,200
  The range is absurd. It is the longest CC skill in the game but the casting time makes it very situational. Too situational, it’s a powerful skill but is the long casting time combined with the long range really ideal?
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  Now the skills that are lackluster:

• Pry Bar – Confuse your foe by smacking them with a pry bar. 5 Stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds. 1/2 Second Casting Time. 15 Second Recharge.
  The confusion and damage is really good but why the 15 second recharge?! It’s basically asking, “Please use me with Concussion Bomb or I’m pretty useless.”

• Box of Nails – Scatter nails that bleed and cripple foes.
  IT’S CALTROPS. I’m not even bother going into other details. It’s freaking Caltrops for Engineer.

• Throw Wrench – Throw a wrench that returns to you, striking foes each way.
  This is self explanatory. It’s damage is less than Dancing Dagger, a wasteful 1/2 of casting time.
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  There are a lot of traits, utilities, elites and weapons that need redesign, this one could use some much needed love. How about something that buffs turret damage or actually build something.
  As of right now, the Tool Kit is less about using Tools and more about using a Shield.

Magnet is single target and has a long casting time.
Staff Elementalist and Staff Mesmers have both CC options at 1200 range, both with a shorter casting time and AoE. Even Mesmer’s Focus has a longer range, considering that you can place Temporal Curtain in 900 range which pulls every enemy in a 600 radius toward it (so it’s basically 900+600=1500 range, aoe). LB Rangers, when traited, have a CC option at 1200 range too. Necro’s fear are 1200 range too, istant cast.
So you are completely wrong about Magnet being “the” longest CC skill in the game.

That said, the Block is awesome and it’s the main reason why Engineers take Tool Kit.
Pry Bar is a really good skill even without concussion bomb: 5 stacks of confusion will either mean that your opponent will not attack for 5 seconds (so more survivability for you) or that he will kill himself with 1k HP drained every action he performs (if you are condi specced).
Box of Nails is garbage mostly for the long casting time, but the cripple is nice so I don’t mind using it from time to time. Throw Wrench is awesome as a projectile finisher to proc an extra burn (if you have bomb kit) or poison/regeneration. It can even proc 2 times if you are lucky.

I think that Tool kit is fine as it is. The upcoming change in Box of Nails, with a reduced cast time, is what will make it even more balanced. I don’t think it is a “must have” for every engineer, but it surely has it uses.
100% ok with Tool Kit.

EDIT: I forgot about Mesmer’s Pistol when traited (1200 range stun+daze) and Guardian’s Line of Warding (1200 range)

I’m sorry but 1/4s cast time reduction on box of nails will not suddenly make it caltrops… it will help a “meh” skill be very slightly less “meh” though. Caltrops stacks longer bleeds, longer cripples, and the field lasts longer.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Box_of_Nails

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caltrops

Aberrant.6749:

I’m sorry but 1/4s cast time reduction on box of nails will not suddenly make it caltrops… it will help a “meh” skill be very slightly less “meh” though. Caltrops stacks longer bleeds, longer cripples, and the field lasts longer.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Box_of_Nails

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caltrops

It’s reasonable considering that Caltrops uses a whole Utility Slot, while with Tool Kit the Engi gets 5 new skills.
Making Box of Nails=Caltrops would be totally bad. It’s good on Choke Points and to stack some cripples to cover your conditions (as there are not many sources of cripple in the Engineer array), but that’s basically it with this skill.

1 is a chain auto — find stealthed punks
2 is an escape augment — run thru choke point and drop it to help yourself run
3 is a solid hit in both power and condi builds
4 is very versatile and useful. keeps you out of combat, blocks most immobs, keeps you running for your tower portal thru 20 people… endless possibilities.
5 is for pick offs.

tk is a solid pick for utility. it brings a lot. none of the skills are worthless, but everything except pry bar and throw wrench is situational. thats not bad design. its very good design.

It is the synergy that bothers me with tool kit versus the individual skills. Likewise, many things these skills do, can be done much better with other kit skills.

The auto attack chain isn’t compelling versus a bomb because it doesn’t get the extra damage that almost any explosion will have in conditions.

Box of nails simply is the last of the viable escapes compared to glue shot, e-gun Elixer F or glue bomb especially with the differences in animation. Just not differentiated enough to be compelling.

But then come 3-5.

3. Massive hit and condition damage.
4. Best block period (I sooo wish I could use a kit for a weapon to have room for this)
5. Long range pull just has so much single engie and small group utility.

In a zerg, I don’t find that tool kit scales to the size of the battle much at all. But that is true of so many skills and builds.

The tool kit skill is solid (but not in comparison to grenade barrage, BoB which is arguably OP, and healing mist as a stun breaker).

Great kit. Use it frequently in non-condition builds.

My only thought would be to replace the turret heal capability of the auto attack chain with something a bit more useful right now.

Box of Nails is IMO quite good. It’s a third as strong as Caltrops, on a third the cooldown. Makes it less hit&miss.

“I’ve never played an engineer”

I stopped reading after that.

hihey.1075:

Aberrant.6749:

I’m sorry but 1/4s cast time reduction on box of nails will not suddenly make it caltrops… it will help a “meh” skill be very slightly less “meh” though. Caltrops stacks longer bleeds, longer cripples, and the field lasts longer.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Box_of_Nails

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caltrops

It’s reasonable considering that Caltrops uses a whole Utility Slot, while with Tool Kit the Engi gets 5 new skills.
Making Box of Nails=Caltrops would be totally bad. It’s good on Choke Points and to stack some cripples to cover your conditions (as there are not many sources of cripple in the Engineer array), but that’s basically it with this skill.

Oh I wasn’t trying to imply that it should be… just that it isn’t caltrops like the OP said. It could use some more love than a 1/4 cast time reduction though. If it needs a longer CD to be stronger, then that’s fine with me. Right now the very short duration bleed/cripple field isn’t that great imo.

No, no, get this… Prybar lackluster due to 15 seconds cooldown and shield is OP because of the 20 seconds cooldown.

Not to mention, how buggy Magnet is. GG.

Nova Stiker.8396:

I’ve never played an engineer

Well its a little hard to take your opinion seriously like that.

But anyways I think that since you have only been on the receiving end of the tool kit, you just end up noticing some skills more than others and end up believing those are unbalanced.

And as for lackluster skills I’ll agree with previous posters on the fact that tool kit is probably our more balanced/useful kit and with the upcoming buff to box of nails, I don’t see any lackluster skills on it. Maybe just magnet getting bugged and not pulling all the way.

Tool kit is actually really really good, especially with the trait (3s block on a 16s cd is amazing). Magnet needs to be fixed so it doesnt bug and do nothing but still go on cd, and the auto attack could be tweaked but it still hits fairly hard if youre in a power build and can manage to stay in melee range long enough.

The problem is that condi builds just do so much more damage than power that people usually ignore most of the kit except the block/pull, which by itself is worth the utility slot in some cases but a lot of the time people ignore it.

hihey.1075:

Magnet is single target and has a long casting time.
Staff Elementalist and Staff Mesmers have both CC options at 1200 range, both with a shorter casting time and AoE. Even Mesmer’s Focus has a longer range, considering that you can place Temporal Curtain in 900 range which pulls every enemy in a 600 radius toward it (so it’s basically 900+600=1500 range, aoe). LB Rangers, when traited, have a CC option at 1200 range too. Necro’s fear are 1200 range too, istant cast.
So you are completely wrong about Magnet being “the” longest CC skill in the game.

That said, the Block is awesome and it’s the main reason why Engineers take Tool Kit.
Pry Bar is a really good skill even without concussion bomb: 5 stacks of confusion will either mean that your opponent will not attack for 5 seconds (so more survivability for you) or that he will kill himself with 1k HP drained every action he performs (if you are condi specced).
Box of Nails is garbage mostly for the long casting time, but the cripple is nice so I don’t mind using it from time to time. Throw Wrench is awesome as a projectile finisher to proc an extra burn (if you have bomb kit) or poison/regeneration. It can even proc 2 times if you are lucky.

I think that Tool kit is fine as it is. The upcoming change in Box of Nails, with a reduced cast time, is what will make it even more balanced. I don’t think it is a “must have” for every engineer, but it surely has it uses.
100% ok with Tool Kit.

EDIT: I forgot about Mesmer’s Pistol when traited (1200 range stun+daze) and Guardian’s Line of Warding (1200 range)

First off, Doom is the only legitimate CC skill that matches Magnet and in my opinion a impassable wall is not CC. Yeah, it stops people from moving but so does an actual brick wall, it’s barely control as you can easily play around it. As for traits to increase range, no, by that logic of alternatives to increase range, the catapult has the longest CC in the game.

Secondly.
I’m not asking for a nerf or a buff, by design, the Kit is fine ONLY because the Engineer ISN’T.
Like the way Mesmers are trapped into Deceptive Evasion. Elementalists are trapped into Water Magic and Arcana as the other traitlines are absolutely worthless/boring.
Lets not forget the Warriors get out of damage free cards.

But with the RNG going away with the Engineer (HOPEFULLY) this kit could possibly have more use than a block or a pull that works whenever it wants too.

I hope this Kit doesn’t get overlooked in the “in every build” problem ArenaNet is trying to address.

Like what was said earlier: “little hard to take your opinion seriously”. Trapped? Engineer has some of the most varied builds I know amongst the professions. It is typically those new to engineer that take on the popular or cheese build.