Guild Wars 2

One of the main problems with the Engineer proffession is how unreliable some skills are due to their random results.

For Example, Elixir U’s tossing ability is usually very usefull and it can ether create a reflecting wall, a line of smoke, or a line that turns you invisible. Yet it’s use in battle can be very limited, as you might toss it in order protect your self from projectiles, and have the invisibility wall come up, or toss it to have your party blind a slow-but-hard hitting enemy, and have the reflecting wall come up with the oposite effects of what you want.

Now most of these skills are elixirs, and I believe there should be a way to fix this, but it’ll need one extra animation for the character.

What if those elixirs where chargable?
Charging an elixir would cause you character to shake the elixir before throwing/drinking it in order to get specific results. Here is another example of implimentation.

Drinking Elixir H:

• Drink it instantly: Heals some ammound and grands a random boon between protection, regeneration or swiftness.
• Charge it 1/4 before drinking it: The elixir will always grand protection.
• Charge it 2/4 before drinking it: The elixir will always grand regeneration.
• Charge it 3/4 before drinking it: The elixir will always grand swiftness.
• Fully charge it before drinking it: The elixir will grand all the above boons. (this last charging level takes double the amount of the others.)
• Similar results are expected fron throwing it.

Throwing Elixir U:

• Tossing it without charging will give a random result as it currently does.
• Charge it 1/3 before throwing it: The elixir will always make an Illusion wall. (this first charge will take triple time thant the rest)
• Charge it 2/3 before throwing it: The elixir will always make a smoke line.
• Charge it 3/3 before throwing it: The elixir will always make a reflection wall.
• Fully charge it for 3 hours before throwing it: The elixir will summon a magical God that kills all the enemies and elder dragons in Tyria and then bans your character for cheating.

This charging method sucrifice time for precision (I don’t mean the stat). The amount of time it takes for each elixir to charge to the various levels, and it’s cool down should depend on game Balancing.

This is actually a really good idea. I was suggesting perhaps that having the “better” buffs like protection on a longer cooldown so you have to sacrifice your attacks for a short while to get them over something like Swiftness, but maybe having 100% Protection and Wall of Reflection on 1/4th second charges might be the buff engis need.

Kite.2510:

you might toss it in order protect your self from projectiles, and have a line of smoke come up,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smoke_Screen

other than that; it could be nice, but i dont use elixirs enough to comment extensively (the cast time on some things that other professions get instantly;along with the randomness annoys me)

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kite.2510:

you might toss it in order protect your self from projectiles, and have a line of smoke come up,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smoke_Screen

other than that; it could be nice, but i dont use elixirs enough to comment extensively (the cast time on some things that other professions get instantly;along with the randomness annoys me)

I’ve been playing this game ever since the second beta yet I never noticed this.
It must be because the skill description on the potion sey “casts a random spell”.

My point is that Random skills are unreliable, and none of the good Engineers use them!
The Proffession is already considered weak, so I see no point not to impliment this, aside from having to give a “Shaking potion” animation to all races!

Kite.2510:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kite.2510:

you might toss it in order protect your self from projectiles, and have a line of smoke come up,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smoke_Screen

other than that; it could be nice, but i dont use elixirs enough to comment extensively (the cast time on some things that other professions get instantly;along with the randomness annoys me)

I’ve been playing this game ever since the second beta yet I never noticed this.
It must be because the skill description on the potion sey “casts a random spell”.

My point is that Random skills are unreliable, and none of the good Engineers use them!
The Proffession is already considered weak, so I see no point not to impliment this, aside from having to give a “Shaking potion” animation to all races!

id seen thieves use it in dungeons before; but didnt know what it did (except for a smoke field) until i decided to figure out a build for my thief (for which i looked at the wiki; alot) and the lack of information on most tool tips makes it understandable (i spent ages on my first ‘main’; ranger trying to work out what opening strike did xD)
but agreed; randomness sucks; and seems very anti engineer to me "/

Nice to see more people hate and avoid the curent Engineer’s random skills!
That means that there is a better chance to get rid of this randomness in an upcoming patch.

An alternative to the Elixir H charging is:
Drink it instantly: Heals some ammound and grands a random boon between protection, regeneration or swiftness.
Charge it 1/3: The elixir will always grand protection.
Charge it 2/3: The elixir will always grand protection and regeneration.
Charge it 3/3: The elixir will always grand protection, regeneration and swiftness.

I haven’t played an elementalist, so I don’t know how charging skills work, but I asume they work like my shield skill and you can release them the right moment for the result.