Suggestion:
Remove the kit-specific global cooldown introduced to Engineer’s Kit Refinement trait in the 26 Feb patch, and replace it with 1s (or at most 2s) global cooldown across all kits that occurs only when a Kit Refinement effect actually procs.
Background:
The Engineer’s Kit Refinement trait, which procs an effect when swapping to a Eng Kit, was broken in the 26 Feb patch. The patch added a hidden global cooldown triggered by swapping to a specific kits which occurs even when the Kit Refinement effect itself does not proc. This was on top of the existing hidden cooldowns specific to each kit. This trait now has hidden but overlapping global and specific cooldowns on the Eng equivalent of weapon swapping – try tracking that in combat!
The effect is that the Kit Refinement Trait, which was previously considered the best designed Engineer trait, went from being a logical complement to multi-kit Engineer builds to an unreliable mess in play for these builds. Instead of rewarding kit swapping (which this trait is meant to do), the more an Engineer swaps between kits in combat, the less likely it is that this trait will proc at all.
The only reason why the 26 Feb change to this trait hasn’t caused even greater protest on the Eng forums is that the change wasn’t implemented for the Engineer’s most powerful kit, the Grenade Kit, despite being specified in the release notes that it would do this.
Did the original Kit Refinement need changing?
As originally implemented, in certain builds it was possible to use the Kit Refinement trait to damage, burn and bleed nearby enemies, get an instant 380 heal, remove two conditions and drop a 10s light field with 140/s healing – all in under a second and all without triggering cooldowns on any skills. If not OP in the first place, the fact that this could be repeated every 20s was. Unfortunately, the 26 Feb fix for this was a mess.
About the suggested change
- Applying a 1s (or at most 2s) global global cooldown on all Kit Refinement proc effects (in place of the current broken global cooldown) will prevent the problem of sub-second spamming of multiple effects.
- 1s (or at most 2s) is a short enough global cooldown that it will fit into the rhythm of play and not require players to dedicate specific attention to tracking it. (Kit Refinement already has kit-specific hidden cooldowns up to 20s in duration- that’s more than enough for players to track already.)
- A global cooldown that applies to all Kit Refinement procs is easier for players: If a Kit Refinement effect proc’ed the global cooldown applies. (No more having to track whether or not a particular kit-swap triggered the global cooldown.)
- Applying the global cooldown only when a Kit Refinement effect procs will prevent non-procing kit-swaps from blocking Kit Refinement.
- If, after all this, some Kit Refinement effects are still considered OP then fix that by balancing the relevant Kit Refinement effects themselves only.