Guild Wars 2

I want to start off by saying I have played every class and have them all to 80, while my primary time in game is spent in WvW, My engineer is the only class I take in PvE. I love my engineer the most, but end up playing my Mesmer or Thief in WvW, Mesmer for the timewarp and portal (great utility class to run with groups) and my thief to roam solo queueing upgrades, escorting dolyaks. I used to play my Engineer a lot more, but with it being very lack-luster, I felt my time could be better spent on another class.

RULES
1: We have plenty of ranting and complaining threads, this one is meant to be constructive and helpful. If you cannot offer a solution to a problem, please don’t bother ranting.

2: Lets make sure we aren’t getting a bit overzealous, I would like to see some ‘buffs’ for my Engi, but seeing it turn in to the next Thief would be a joke and would not be taken seriously by anyone at A-Net. I dont want to see posts ‘Make Rocket Boots Immobilize enemies, do 5k damage, apply burn, cloak me, and I get to choose the direction it goes. AND I want a passive buff of 25% movement speed.’

3: Try to keep repetition to a minimum. If you see someone else has stolen your idea, quote them and give it your blessing, or better yet, take that idea and try to balance is as much as possible.

4: Try to stick to with what we have been given already in game. No new kits, and no new talent trees, modifications are great, lets keep the overhaulin’ in the Dev’s corner.

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

I recently decided to try out my engineer again and went all out flamethrower with 30/20/30. I eat the Omnom food and I am pretty happy with the build so far. I would like to see:

FT #1: We know it misses. I turned OFF Autotargeting through Options > General Options > un-check Autotargeting, and saw a VERY DRASTIC improvement in the ability. Possible to unleash the animation and ability to locking on to a specific target as a solution.

FT #2: Collision issues, we all know of it. The animation and ability are glitchy, at best. Not sure whats going on there. Possibly unleash it similar to #1, so it doesnt collide with the ground and obstruct every time. If it were unleashed, I would use it a bit more occasionally. Would prefer an explosion on impact with anything in the missiles trajectory, but this would be hard to implement. Would be happy with just unleashing it so it does not fire in to the ground.

FT #4: I don’t know if it is just me, but I do not use this as much as I would like to, the field is so small it makes combo-ing a bit of a trick, possibly change this to a circular field the size of the Guardian marks that give speed buffs.

I will have more for the other kits, but I would like to hear everyone else chime in before I give all I have!

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

Then move the special abilities they generate to the main bar or? What problem does this solve? I think that would be convenient, but maybe you can elaborate, sorry, I am not the sharpest knife.

benjamin.5346:

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

Then move the special abilities they generate to the main bar or? What problem does this solve? I think that would be convenient, but maybe you can elaborate, sorry, I am not the sharpest knife.

Remove the special abilities most of them were kitten anyways, make it so kits dont have to waste one of your utility slots. We aren’t versatile because we don’t have enough room to take the things we need / want for a build.

NaturalPortman.9562:

benjamin.5346:

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

Then move the special abilities they generate to the main bar or? What problem does this solve? I think that would be convenient, but maybe you can elaborate, sorry, I am not the sharpest knife.

Remove the special abilities most of them were kitten anyways, make it so kits dont have to waste one of your utility slots. We aren’t versatile because we don’t have enough room to take the things we need / want for a build.

4 kit slots up top, and 3 customizable buttons below?

benjamin.5346:

NaturalPortman.9562:

benjamin.5346:

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

Then move the special abilities they generate to the main bar or? What problem does this solve? I think that would be convenient, but maybe you can elaborate, sorry, I am not the sharpest knife.

Remove the special abilities most of them were kitten anyways, make it so kits dont have to waste one of your utility slots. We aren’t versatile because we don’t have enough room to take the things we need / want for a build.

4 kit slots up top, and 3 customizable buttons below?

Look at the ele class mechanics. Something alot like that. Right now it’s stupid that we need to equip the kits.

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

Then we really should just change our name to Elementalist-lite. If the Engineer loses the toolbelt skills, I’m hanging up the class for good.

Havent tested much the Engineer as bunker or Direct dd glass , but as a condition glass roamer i would apriciated 1 of the 2 :

1) Small Buff : Make Sharpshooter an 100% chance on cit , with 2 sec internal cd .

Personaly i would love to replace my Superior Sigil of Earth – (Accuracy in offhand) , with the sigil of Hydromancy for an extra cc , or the sigil of Fire/Air/Strength for some extra damage

2) Extreme OP Buffs : Giving the Enginner a weapon swap mechanic .
Giving him an extra Utility with Net shot-Overcharge Shot and the ability to adapt , using a mix of Hip Shot(dd direct attack) and Explosive Shot( mix of direct-contition attack) when needed

GoZero.9708:

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

Then we really should just change our name to Elementalist-lite.

I dont even nkow why they made elementalist like that. imo they shouldve gave them element based utility skills and keep it at that.

7 utility slots.
You heard me, turn those cruddy toolbelt skills into something we can actually put something in.
Oh wait, that would actually make us versatile, goggles AND rocket boots WITHOUT sacrificing 66% of your versatility? oh nos, can’t have that.
Theres different tiers of traits too, maybe be limited to 2 of each tier except for the first, where you can use 3.

While I like new ideas, I feel like were just asking for more, without giving something up. If you give us 4 tool kits up top and 3 abilities that gives us way too much versatility and would be shot down before we even talked it out. What do we give up when we get the ability to switch between 4 different weapon sets? I am not saying this is a bad idea, it DOES bring us in line with Elementalist.

7 utility slots is a bit much, how about merging the goggle and boots, or something creative. Asking for more without giving anything up or at least attempting to balance what ideas we would implement would make us sound like a kid asking for more candy.

I hope I don’t discourage you from posting more ideas, and I don’t want to be too controlling. Please keep the ideas coming, but make sure you try to balance it out as if you were NOT an Engineer, and you had to think of the other classes holistically.

- Remove random effects from Elixirs (the elite one can keep it since it’s a gimmick anyway).
- Apply weapon stats to our kits.

I do believe that applying the weapon stats to our kits without any nerf for “balance” would actually be enough to make the engineer viable as a DPS, ending most of the complaints that the class gets.

Vekthor.8914:

- Remove random effects from Elixirs (the elite one can keep it since it’s a gimmick anyway).
- Apply weapon stats to our kits.

I do believe that applying the weapon stats to our kits without any nerf for “balance” would actually be enough to make the engineer viable as a DPS, ending most of the complaints that the class gets.

Hmm, I have heard this one as well, at least the ‘Apply Weapon stats to our kits.’ part. I’m interested to see how this would change our damage output. Is there any data regarding how MUCH it would increase or decrease the damage of each kits auto-attack?
(I feel the special abilities can be tweaked to bring them in-line if they are too powerful/not powerful enough)

I would really like to be able to use toolbelt skills, my current build has throw exlixir H, grenade barrage, incendinary ammo (which doesn’t like to work), and our oh so lovely healing mist that is usurped by super elixir alone.
I would much rather be able to replace the toolbelt skills with SOMETHING useful, I’m looking at gadgets specifically, and I don’t see too much of a problem as having the toolbelt skill made up of gadgets.
I do disagree with your “we should give something up” statement, since we’ve received nerf after nerf after nerf, I would really like a buff at some point in the future.

How do we fix Engineer? Half our skills are either buggy or almost completely worthless. I think it’s pretty summed up in the Thumper Turret: a turret that puts pressure on a local AoE area. That sounds reasonable to have but really let’s break it down…

Assuming we don’t waste Trait points to get Metal Plating or Rifled Turret Barrels:
•About 30% less damage than Hip Shot from the basic attack. It only activates every 3 seconds. At level 80 and 1960 power, that’s 107 DPS. I wish I was making this up.
•240 range. That’s about double the range of basic one-handed melee attacks.
•Can’t take any sort of pressure. How bad is it in this particular category? In pitting the Thumper Turret against the Fireflies near the Lion’s Arch/Gendarren Fields port with no support from my Engineer, a single Firefly ANNIHILATED the Thumper Turret without losing 1/3 of its health from the Thumper Turret. Let me repeat, a single firefly destroyed the Thumper Turret without losing one-third of its health. Surely I’m making this up now, surely I jest. No. I recorded it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7cPmZ8q6n8&feature=youtu.be
And the utter irony of it? The Thumper Turret is described as “high-health”.
•Oh and a certain entirely useless Toolbelt skill called Shockwave that does 311 damage (again less than Hip Shot) on a 90 second cooldown. But don’t worry it’s a freaking blast finisher.

It’s clear in cases like this that more thought was put into thinking up the Thumper Turret than was actually put into making it. It’s absolutely pathetic in terms of offense, defense and usability. I feel like this describes half of our so called “walking arsenal that carries everything need to dominate the battlefield”. We have no thought put into our profession and it increasingly seems like ANet is unwilling to make enough of a change to the Engineer to actually make it on par with the other classes.

Fix bugs.

Make stats apply to kits.

Perhaps a tiny buff to attack speed on rifle and pistol auto-attack.

Have picking up turrets reduce overall CD, and take a look at reducing some of our CDs in general by a small amount.

Boom, fix’d. At least from a sPvP perspective.

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

Moka.9641:

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

Turrets just need CD adjustments IMO for sPvP, they are already viable unless you try to run a full turret spec, which has a single purpose with accelerated turrets trait, and that’s about it, and that’s turning a node into a living minefield.

aydenunited.5729:

Moka.9641:

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

Turrets just need CD adjustments IMO for sPvP, they are already viable unless you try to run a full turret spec, which has a single purpose with accelerated turrets trait, and that’s about it, and that’s turning a node into a living minefield.

I don’t play sPvP at a high level and I don’t really know about the metagame, so maybe i’m asking for too much. But, I would love to see a full turret spec viable and have turrets where they are supposed to be :
“Turrets
Engineers can also deploy turrets, immobile devices that help defend and control an area. (…)” , quoted from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/

I don’t feel they can help defend and control an area, at all.

Make rifle spec a viable play style…at the very minimum on par with rifle warriors. Turrets should be as hard to kill as a treb or arrow cart in wvwvw…and have no CD on placing them.

Moka.9641:

aydenunited.5729:

Moka.9641:

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

Turrets just need CD adjustments IMO for sPvP, they are already viable unless you try to run a full turret spec, which has a single purpose with accelerated turrets trait, and that’s about it, and that’s turning a node into a living minefield.

I don’t play sPvP at a high level and I don’t really know about the metagame, so maybe i’m asking for too much. But, I would love to see a full turret spec viable and have turrets where they are supposed to be :
“Turrets
Engineers can also deploy turrets, immobile devices that help defend and control an area. (…)” , quoted from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/

I don’t feel they can help defend and control an area, at all.

Also? I think the word they are looking for is or, as in, they can use kits, elixirs, gadgets (hah, that was funny, right? gadgets), OR turrets.
It seems that arena.net is oblivious to the fact that one turret does not hold an area, but they presume that we can somehow be effective with a kit, a elixir, a gadget (haha…) AND one turret.
That isn’t being the jack of all trades, that’s being the dunce of all trades…

Moka.9641:

aydenunited.5729:

Moka.9641:

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

Turrets just need CD adjustments IMO for sPvP, they are already viable unless you try to run a full turret spec, which has a single purpose with accelerated turrets trait, and that’s about it, and that’s turning a node into a living minefield.

I don’t play sPvP at a high level and I don’t really know about the metagame, so maybe i’m asking for too much. But, I would love to see a full turret spec viable and have turrets where they are supposed to be :
“Turrets
Engineers can also deploy turrets, immobile devices that help defend and control an area. (…)” , quoted from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/

I don’t feel they can help defend and control an area, at all.

With Accelerated Turrets trait, they can keep people without the benefit of stability off of a node in sPvP for quite a prolonged amount of time, especially in a full turret build, but most bunkers will never run this, simply because, as powerful as it should be, stability boon completely undoes it’s entire usefulness.

But in general, if you lower the CD of turrets, it means you can place them back down again faster. The nice thing about turrets is that they are independant of your stats, because you can build completely defensive, and they still do good damage, and since they are meant to be defensive, this is good. The main thing is, there’s no realistic way for us to manage the turrets, because to me, “skill” would come into play in managing your turrets when they are low on health, and picking them up (for a reduced CD) rather than letting them expire or detonating them. As it currently stands, there’s no benefit to picking up turrets… at all. I don’t even see why it’s an option. I can only assume it’s a bug, like several that we have, because you might as well detonate the turret for a chance at damage over picking it up and getting nothing, not even a reduced CD.

Also, the toolbelt skills that go with turrets have some use, especially in a Static Discharge build, but the CDs are rediculously high on some of them, especially like the thumper turret. 90 seconds for a single blast finish makes no sense.

So in light of those things, I agree with the Anet strategy of not overshooting underpowered things by buffing them too much, and I think CD adjustment would be the only necessary thing initially to make turrets more viable, and I’ll be willing to bet we see those types of changes before we see any major damage adjustments either to or from the turrets before then.

Ok the engineer was my first class and after a brief break to a thief It is back to being my most played and invested in.

From a minimal understanding of the math behind it all, little to no PvP and WvW this is what I have noticed from trying most of the skills in open areas and dungeons.

I am by no means an expert, just a player who stating what i have seen (or thought i saw).

So please, feel free to educate me and give me tips. Everyone knows i can get much better.

Rifle is the best base damage weapon and utility wise (with the net and kick It’s easier to stay alive than P/P or P/S). Pistol seems to be the best with condition type damage (poison, bleed, burning), shield is good in a pinch with it’s bubble power and shocking block but the cool-downs really hamper this as they seem a little long.

I am a turret junkie, I admit it. Unless I am trying to run past foes and have the time to swap to elixirs and such for speed/stun break My 9 will always be my rocket turret and my 8 vaires depending on my mood but it will be a turret. 6 is the HP turret. For My 0 I keep either Elixer X for random CC needs for or if I just wanna Tornado/Hulk OM NOM NOM something, or supply drop for more turrets.

Either way i do wish that turrets would either last as long as the necromancers minions or just do more damage, But I still love them for their distraction and support value.

Mortar is neat but i cannot speak for it’s effectiveness because the only time I could use it without it breaking after about 2 seconds was the Lost Shores against the Karka because there were lots of others to keep Karka happy. I loved how it’s cool-down being equal to it’s lasting time though, seemes fair.

As of now My 7 is the grenade kit. I want to say I am running a… 30/0/30… and some points somewhere else. either way all traits are for grenades or turrets, they vary. Damage is the best I’ve seen with bleed/poison stacking like nuts.

Armor is the full whisper’s set (wanting to get the SE medium with power/precision/toughness) of the afflicted (way more bleed/poison damage).

Thoughts? Tips? slaps to my face? post a reply or message me

Username: XerxesBlack
Engineer name: Beaks N Talons

Thanks for reading :b

- buff turrets the damage must be equal with phantasm damage, or make the more usefull mybe stealth detect or something. Make Stats influence the Damageoutpout
- no Random on throwing elexiers i want to be more usefull in group play
- Pistol #1 needs longer Bleed
- Stats from the Weapon on Kits or gave Kits Stats like the Ele elementweapons which they can drop
- More melee options

-A new trait:
“Gain quickness for 2 seconds when ever you equip a kit. This effect cannot trigger more then onve every 5 seconds.”

It’s a form to mitigate the extra clicks.

No new kits, and no new talent trees, modifications are great, lets keep the overhaulin’ in the Dev’s corner.
Oops! late…

Lot of fine ideas here, my personal top 3 (after fixing the blasted bugs) are:

1. Change Elixir Gun’s Super Elixir field type from Light to Water.
2. Remove random effects from potions.
3. Give Hidden Pistol to all Engineers, it is superior to Rocket Boots in every respect and fills the same function. While obviously all Engineers should be Charr, this skill really does mean that if you aren’t a Charr you’re doing it wrong (something I’d only ever said in jest before).

I love my toolbelt skills and am really only just (at this late stage) starting to really see what they’re capable of, so please don’t get rid of them!

Moka.9641:

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

This. I like the idea of a trait for making turrets able to move, not really sure how it would be handled in relation to Deployable Turrets – and we’re not supposed to go making up new traits, anyway, so, moving on.

Toolbelt skills: These are what the class should be evaluated on, being the class’s one unique ability besides bad mimicry of others via randomized effects and ability pastiche kits or spammable AoE effects via Bomb and Grenade kits.

How I’d handle improving them: All of them need re-evaluated, rebalanced and/or replaced. All of them. Aside from that…it would be excellent to have them not be bound to the things in the utility slots. Keep Toolbelt skills and Utility skills separate, but able to be swapped around – want to have a Healing Turret, and Bandage Self? go for it. Full turrets, Healing Mist, Analyze, Regenerating Mist and Throw Elixir R? Whatevs, bro. However: In the event that a turret is placed, it still replaces that toolbelt skill with the Detonate Turret ability.

Additional idea (probably absolutely terrible one): Allow the placement of kit attacks, unaltered, into the Toolbelt, with the exception of the 1 skills – which would be altered by adding a short cooldown.

Edit: Also: allow kits, one at a time, to be equipped as secondary weapons. For the Engineer, every skill slot counts – which is why I rarely run with a Toolkit, or Power Wrench, despite being, primarily, a Turret Engineer. It feels like a waste – either I can have another turret, or I can have a lackluster repair skill with a few nifty abilities in close range combat.

A simpler solution would be to implement most gadgets into kit skills.

This allows us to keep the current system without totally redesigning the engineer UI and all that.

Kits could do with stunbreakers and better escape options.
Bombs and grenades could do with some variety in mechanics anyhow.

Making several toolbelt skills into a mixture of it’s current effect, combined with a very good gadget mechanic, could result in pretty strong and versatile kits.
Other normal kit skills could be redesigned towards gadgets as well.

Slick shoes, rocket boots, goggles… they all could fit in a kit without much hastle.
By focusing on the tool belt skills, we avoid adding too much damage as such. Even with the kit not equipped, those tool belt skills would always give superb utility without being pure damage.

copying what I said about this in another topic, it overlaps but might explain it better:

2 principles used:
– kits provide the utility we are supposed to have
– gadgets are the skills we all want, but hardly ever have room for.

For example: imagine having Rocket Boots as tool belt of the Flamethrower.
You always have Rocket Boots handy, but you get to use Flamethrower as well if you want.

Slick Shoes for Elixir Gun, Goggles effect added to Big Old Bomb or whatever…
Just using Elixir gun would immediately give you slick shoes (random example); leaving you open with 2 slots to use for other kits, turrets, elixirs…

Basic idea is this: the kits all get a truely usefull gadget added as tool belt skill.
These tool belts are focused on utility first, not damage as such.

The tool belt is usable with whtever weapon or kit you have equipped, so it doesn’t take kit swapping to reach them.

But at the same time you don’t lose a slot on a gadget alone, you always get a full kit with it.

By adding things like stunbreakers and escapes to kit tool belts, we create truely versatile builds. Without sacrificing slots we can use for elixirs, turrets or more kits…

But what if you don’t like kits? For example: I dislike them. I honestly do. Partly due to their taking-up-a-utility-slot and partly due to how easy they make things compared to my usual, and favored, setup. (That’s right, I dislike them because I feel they’re easy-mode. You read that right. They’re not that hard.) I’d like to be able to match my kit-wielding brethren Engineers on the field without having to use kits.

tl;dr: If all modifications are to improve Kits, then either Kits need to move to somewhere everyone will have access to at least one at all times, whether it’s on their utility bar or not, or the modifications need to not just be to kits.

Turrets themselves could have such effects.

Currently turrets overcharge abilities are weak and slow.
And several of the tool belts are weak as well, or have totally silly cooldowns.

So some gadget effects could be used in both kit effects as in turret effects.
After all: we currently have stunbreaker in BOTH elixirs as in gadgets, we already can equip 3 stunbreakers if we want.
No one does, so no one will use a kit AND a turret with the same effect either…

And look at it this way: you might hate kits, but do you hate gadgets too?
By equipping a ‘gadget’ for the tool belt, you simply get a kit added to it that you may or may not use a lot. You don’t have to…

Just like many toolbelts now aren’t worth using as much as the main skill (several elixirs, kits, gadgets… suffer from this problem).

I focused my suggestion on kits, but turrets could be part of that just the same.
it’s not like turrets are that good at the moment.
They could do with having usefull effects here and there.

For example: EVERY turret should knock back if detonated, you shouldn’t have to trait for that… especially not in a trait line that has ZERO other effects for turrets!

Just the same we could add stunbreakers, vulnerability stacking, knock back oil, etc… to the turrets tool belts and overcharge abilities.

I do NOT ask for damage abilities, I simply ask for VERSATILITY in our design.
The way to do that is to merge more of what we have acces to.
Working in gadgets into kits and turrets, is one way I see open to achieve that.

Gadgets take up a full slot, and that’s too much in a ‘versatile’ profession!

It would be pretty cool if both kits and turrets got a bit of the Gadgetry going. For Turrets, if Kits get the Toolbelt, I’d suggest the Turrets incorporate some Gadget into their Overcharge – it would be interesting to have the Thumper Turret lay down a Mine Field, the Rifle Turret to drive enemies back a little per shot, Flame Turret to splat out an oil slick, etcetera.

…I’m not sure how, precisely, that’s supposed to-maybe I’m misunderstanding. Your suggestion about toolbelt skills being gadgets, and linked to kits in place of their current toolbelts, works as follows, if I’m understanding correctly: Equip Kit as Utility, gain Gadget as Toolbelt? If that’s how it works, then…it’s still the same end result, namely that I would have a toolbelt skill I’d equip a skill just to get, instead of using just about anything else.

I do agree with the remark about the Accelerant-Packed Turrets trait, and it’s probably the best functional Turret trait at the moment. I’d probably still have thirty points into that traitline were it not there, but that’s partly because Turrets only get bonuses from traitlines and partly because I could really use the Power boost.

Skills and improvements

Toss/consuming elixirs now creates an AoE cripple and bleed on all enemies not wearing shoes when the bottle hits the ground. To compensate, Engineers will be billed 1 silver littering fee for every bottle dropped.

Turrets health and damage output have been doubled. The turrets are now heavier give themselves stability when deployed and to the engineer when stowed. However, the engineer experiences a 25% loss in overall speed movement for each turret stowed. Careful if you’re holding 4, you will be the unmovable statue.

New Turret: Tripod Camera: allows enemies to create screen shots of themselves after they successfully stomp the engineer.

Trait line improvement for tools. Scattered Toolbox: As your fumble around looking for parts, the engineer creates 3 seconds of fury and 3 seconds of self inflicting confusion when toolkit is equipped.

Pistol #1 no change, but a little flag comes out the end saying “Bang”. Pistol #2 has been fixed. It now misses with every shot as intended.

Weapon stats now effect kits which means the overall damage output of kits must be tweaked to compensate.
Grenades now have pins to pull making cast time 2 seconds and if caught by enemy player may
be thrown back at the casting engineer.
Flamethrower works under water (yay just like elementalists who can still attune to fire underwater) creating extreme heat and boiling water around enemies. Enemies are relaxed, regain HP, but are too lazy to actually attack you.
Flamethrower #2 is now a targeted AoE, but instead of exploding hands out sticks with marshmallows to all in range. Flamethrower #1 now causes fuel leak igniting the engineer on fire allowing for those with cooking of 325 or higher to cook marshmallows on engineers burning body.
Bomb kit explosions now can be traited to work 75% faster, but they can damage the casting engineer and allies.
Elixir gun #2 has been replaced with Snot Rocket covering the enemy in a green sticky ooze. Enemies flee in terror for 3 seconds. Engineer is forced to /laugh for 5 seconds after cast.

All elixirs now have same 30 second CD and create random abilities. We don’t even know what they do, we closed our eyes and just coded blindly on this part. Have fun.

Static discharge has been changed to compensate for the extreme burst. After each cast the engineer gets a 10 second stack of “Charged”, at 3 stacks the Engineer becomes fully charged and all enemies are pulled to the engineer and cannot be removed without jumping in water.

Gadgets now have passive skills. Goggles allow the engineer to see the enemies without any armor. Rocket boots now play “Rocket man” constantly in the background. Slick shoes now give you the appearance of Data from the Goonies movie. Battering ram turns into a small mechanical ram that can be ridden (50% movement decrease, 100% fun increase).

Monsterboy.2490:

I would really like to be able to use toolbelt skills, my current build has throw exlixir H, grenade barrage, incendinary ammo (which doesn’t like to work), and our oh so lovely healing mist that is usurped by super elixir alone.
I would much rather be able to replace the toolbelt skills with SOMETHING useful, I’m looking at gadgets specifically, and I don’t see too much of a problem as having the toolbelt skill made up of gadgets.
I do disagree with your “we should give something up” statement, since we’ve received nerf after nerf after nerf, I would really like a buff at some point in the future.

There are a lot of requests so far to change the Toolbelt skills so far, more than I originially thought. I personally like the idea of the Toolbelt skills, but I would agree some of them are sub-par with other classes F1-? abilities. When we look at Mesmer for instance, their Function abilities can grant a specific condition including high spike damage, Confusion, Daze, and even invulnerability. Warriors get high spike damage or the ability to greatly weaken their foes. Necromancers get a second life, etc. I think if we were to compare what A-Net was going for with our Function abilities, we would come to the conclusion that they were going roughly along the lines of Elementalist. They wanted our F keys to be our versatility. The Elementalist can change their attunement and unlock a whole new set of 1-5 abilities. If we are to compare ourselves to that, putting our kits up top does make more sense. I think originally they wanted to have some sort of distinction between Engineer and Elementalist, so they put the kits down below and gave us ‘Special cooldowns’ based on our customizations. I think the problem with that is our Function abilities are now so Diverse that very few of them are actually as reliable and dependable as other classes. Again, I do like them, and they are neat, but they are no-where near as powerful as others. I think it has to be one way or the other, The Elementalist way gives us great versatility, but no true ‘slightly better than your normal skills’ as other classes have. If we go the route of buffing our current Function keys, we must accept that our kits will take up some of our customization slots below, giving up a bit of versatility for some buffed ‘slightly better than your normal skills’.

You also mentioned that you disagree with my ‘we should have to give something up’. Maybe that came out wrong, I don’t agree that everything has to be a 50 give 50 take deal. I think we deserve more buffs than nerfs, but I am afraid of people going off on posts like the one below mentioning: ‘Turrets should be as hard to kill as a treb or arrow cart in wvwvw..and have no CD on placing them.’ This would effectively be making our turrets a second person on the battlefield, and with no CD, we could effectively spam them over and over, netting everything, shooting flames and rockets at them without having to actually play a class. I don’t want Turret AI to play the game for me. (I do agree turrets need a buff, but this is a stretch). If we were to make them this hard to kill, the damage needs to be reduced to something of a nuisance, and they SHOULD have an incredibly long CD, only forgiven if you recall the turret, maybe cutting the CD down by half.

Sorry for the long replies, I am going to make it my mission to reply to as many people as possible today!

GoZero.9708:

How do we fix Engineer? Half our skills are either buggy or almost completely worthless. I think it’s pretty summed up in the Thumper Turret: a turret that puts pressure on a local AoE area. That sounds reasonable to have but really let’s break it down…

Assuming we don’t waste Trait points to get Metal Plating or Rifled Turret Barrels:
•About 30% less damage than Hip Shot from the basic attack. It only activates every 3 seconds. At level 80 and 1960 power, that’s 107 DPS. I wish I was making this up.
•240 range. That’s about double the range of basic one-handed melee attacks.
….

Wow. This is good at identifying a specific problem. Thank you.

‘Half our skills are either buggy or completely worthess.’ Is what I am trying to avoid, you gave a great explanation of the Thumper Turret and I’ll get to that in a second. Explain some of the bugs and a possible way to fix or patch them.

I am worried that when you mention ‘Assuming we don’t waste Trait points to get Metal Plating or Rifled Turret Barrels’ makes or breaks the deal. If when you take those skills it makes the turrets worth while, I would say those aren’t wasted points and are doing their job. It’s the same as me not putting points in to shattering skills on my Mesmer then making an issue when my shatters aren’t very powerful, but as we have seen in WvW lately, when you DO put point in shatter, it becomes pretty powerful. Now that the negative is out of the way… Yea, 107 DPS is a bit pathetic. And only every 3 seconds. And the turrets can be eliminated pretty easily. How about a high health turret as the name implies, say about 25k. A increased rate of fire to every second with a slight buff to damage, 250 damage-ish, OR the buff to health, rate of fire at 3 seconds, at 250 damage-ish, but a much larger area-of –effect. Either would be a solution that gives this turret utility. It would be one to be avoided because of it’s constant damage that adds up quickly (making it to a bunker of sorts), or for those that don’t want to kite around your turrets and want to ‘drop and run’ the same rate of fire, but can hit a lot more people, making it something to be powered through, targeted, and destroyed, but wouldn’t single handedly change the face of the battle.

aydenunited.5729:

Fix bugs.

Make stats apply to kits.

Perhaps a tiny buff to attack speed on rifle and pistol auto-attack.

Have picking up turrets reduce overall CD, and take a look at reducing some of our CDs in general by a small amount.

Boom, fix’d. At least from a sPvP perspective.

I cant speak to Pistol and Rifle right away, I will below, but:

I agree with the picking up turrets should reduce overall CD. I actually think that piking it up (walking up to it and clicking) should eliminate the CD, but retain its health. I think that destroying or recalling it should reduce it’s CD significantly (50%+, possibly scale with how long it has been deployed).
I was almost going to say that destroying them should reset the CD to about 5 seconds, to be in line with Mesmers who can constanly pop AI and shatter them, but they can only do this because of the incredibly low health and toughness that clones and phantasms have. If we reduced turret CD so low, they would have to be pretty weak defensivly to compensate. I think the defining line between Mesmer clones and phantasms vs. Engineer turrets could be that turrets aren’t as disposable as clones.

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

If you mean F7-F9 then that would work however it would mean we would remain the only class in which we have to play the piano to fight normally and would cause more headache.

I suggested doing this and possibly adding a 2 bar system to Engis in which each of the buttons of 1-5 could be changed to include the choice of which kit we’ll be using to attack with for that button. IE Bar B can use button 1 toolkit 5 attack, button 2 could be the toolkit crowbar attack, button 3 could be the EG 3 attack, button 4 could be the FT 4 attack, and button 5 could be the net attack. This system would switch to the kit we chose when we use that ability. Like the EG3 on button 3 we would press button 3 and it would switch to that kit for that attack.

So it would look like this.

Bar A would be the standard equipped weapon.
Bar B would be the 1st set of abilities
Bar C would be the send set of abilities

We’d get a switch ability that would more accurately use the sigils, we’d keep the ability to switch and get the AOE effect from using kits, and we’d have to press fewer buttons to handle the class, and instead of using the 7-9 buttons for kits we’d be able to equip essential utilities for survival and would be dying as often due to horrible 1-4 downed abilities.

My other suggestion is make the abilities that do condi damage do an initial hit of a percentage of the damage. This isn’t in the tooltips of the ranger traps or the necromancer’s marks but you can easily and clearly see that there is an initial hit of damage before the actual condition damage ticks begin giving their condition abilities the ability to kill more quickly. This doesn’t happen on anything that the engineer has save the flame thrower, and even the FT struggles because of the miss problems and the nerfs.

My ranger in blues can three shot enemies in condition build just by using 2 traps and throwing a torch even with my pet on passive, my engineer must spend all day channeling sometimes it take 5-6 attacks even with the FT shoot about 10 tranq shots and use 2 fumigates on my EG, and sometimes it takes about 30 grenades to do the same job and my engineer is in all exotics. There’s a clear problem here.

I appreciate this thread, and tried to put in my own ideas.

But let’s face it: they don’t lack ideas.
They lack the will, if anything. For whatever reason they have, be it time limits or resources, or a different view on balnce than we experience.

tigirius.9014:

NaturalPortman.9562:

I think this change alone would be enough.

Make kits our F skills.

If you mean F7-F9 then that would work however it would mean we would remain the only class in which we have to play the piano to fight normally and would cause more headache.

I suggested doing this and possibly adding a 2 bar system to Engis in which each of the buttons of 1-5 could be changed to include the choice of which kit we’ll be using to attack with for that button. IE Bar B can use button 1 toolkit 5 attack, button 2 could be the toolkit crowbar attack, button 3 could be the EG 3 attack, button 4 could be the FT 4 attack, and button 5 could be the net attack. This system would switch to the kit we chose when we use that ability. Like the EG3 on button 3 we would press button 3 and it would switch to that kit for that attack.

So it would look like this.

Bar A would be the standard equipped weapon.
Bar B would be the 1st set of abilities
Bar C would be the send set of abilities

We’d get a switch ability that would more accurately use the sigils, we’d keep the ability to switch and get the AOE effect from using kits, and we’d have to press fewer buttons to handle the class, and instead of using the 7-9 buttons for kits we’d be able to equip essential utilities for survival and would be dying as often due to horrible 1-4 downed abilities.

There’s nothing wrong about “piano” classes. Look at the ele class, it’s doing just fine. People are scared of more buttons, but in reality it isn’t much harder.

XerxesBlack.5892:

Ok the engineer was my first class and after a brief break to a thief It is back to being my most played and invested in.

From a minimal understanding of the math behind it all, little to no PvP and WvW this is what I have noticed from trying most of the skills in open areas and dungeons.

I am by no means an expert, just a player who stating what i have seen (or thought i saw).

So please, feel free to educate me and give me tips. Everyone knows i can get much better.

Rifle is the best base damage weapon and utility wise (with the net and kick It’s easier to stay alive than P/P or P/S). Pistol seems to be the best with condition type damage (poison, bleed, burning), shield is good in a pinch with it’s bubble power and shocking block but the cool-downs really hamper this as they seem a little long.

I am a turret junkie, I admit it. Unless I am trying to run past foes and have the time to swap to elixirs and such for speed/stun break My 9 will always be my rocket turret and my 8 vaires depending on my mood but it will be a turret. 6 is the HP turret. For My 0 I keep either Elixer X for random CC needs for or if I just wanna Tornado/Hulk OM NOM NOM something, or supply drop for more turrets.

Either way i do wish that turrets would either last as long as the necromancers minions or just do more damage, But I still love them for their distraction and support value.

Mortar is neat but i cannot speak for it’s effectiveness because the only time I could use it without it breaking after about 2 seconds was the Lost Shores against the Karka because there were lots of others to keep Karka happy. I loved how it’s cool-down being equal to it’s lasting time though, seemes fair.

As of now My 7 is the grenade kit. I want to say I am running a… 30/0/30… and some points somewhere else. either way all traits are for grenades or turrets, they vary. Damage is the best I’ve seen with bleed/poison stacking like nuts.

Armor is the full whisper’s set (wanting to get the SE medium with power/precision/toughness) of the afflicted (way more bleed/poison damage).

Thoughts? Tips? slaps to my face? post a reply or message me

Username: XerxesBlack
Engineer name: Beaks N Talons

Thanks for reading :b

I agree with you. I actually think the rifle is a decent setup as it. It has a knockback, low CD immobilization, a point blank shot with extra conditions, and a pretty nominal autofire. With the right traits, the rifle becomes a pretty formidable weapon. I think rifle is fine for now. I also agree with you on Pistol/Shield. The shield has far too long of CDs to be worth while, the abilities are fine, but a bit much on the CDs.

I’m going to skip turrets for now, since we have touched base on them a bit. I believe they at least need a health buff, and some sort of CD work to make picking them up, or recalling/destroying worth while.

Mortar is unique. I don’t mind it as is. It’s very situational. I actually use it in wvw to take out siege on the top of towers and such, but it doesn’t last long if someone notices me. Maybe tie the health to your stats, and make it only usable by the engineer. I can only use it when no enemies are around, otherwise it gets eliminated pretty fast.

benjamin.5346:

XerxesBlack.5892:

Ok the engineer was my first class and after a brief break to a thief It is back to being my most played and invested in.

From a minimal understanding of the math behind it all, little to no PvP and WvW this is what I have noticed from trying most of the skills in open areas and dungeons.

I am by no means an expert, just a player who stating what i have seen (or thought i saw).

So please, feel free to educate me and give me tips. Everyone knows i can get much better.

Rifle is the best base damage weapon and utility wise (with the net and kick It’s easier to stay alive than P/P or P/S). Pistol seems to be the best with condition type damage (poison, bleed, burning), shield is good in a pinch with it’s bubble power and shocking block but the cool-downs really hamper this as they seem a little long.

I am a turret junkie, I admit it. Unless I am trying to run past foes and have the time to swap to elixirs and such for speed/stun break My 9 will always be my rocket turret and my 8 vaires depending on my mood but it will be a turret. 6 is the HP turret. For My 0 I keep either Elixer X for random CC needs for or if I just wanna Tornado/Hulk OM NOM NOM something, or supply drop for more turrets.

Either way i do wish that turrets would either last as long as the necromancers minions or just do more damage, But I still love them for their distraction and support value.

Mortar is neat but i cannot speak for it’s effectiveness because the only time I could use it without it breaking after about 2 seconds was the Lost Shores against the Karka because there were lots of others to keep Karka happy. I loved how it’s cool-down being equal to it’s lasting time though, seemes fair.

As of now My 7 is the grenade kit. I want to say I am running a… 30/0/30… and some points somewhere else. either way all traits are for grenades or turrets, they vary. Damage is the best I’ve seen with bleed/poison stacking like nuts.

Armor is the full whisper’s set (wanting to get the SE medium with power/precision/toughness) of the afflicted (way more bleed/poison damage).

Thoughts? Tips? slaps to my face? post a reply or message me

Username: XerxesBlack
Engineer name: Beaks N Talons

Thanks for reading :b

I agree with you. I actually think the rifle is a decent setup as it. It has a knockback, low CD immobilization, a point blank shot with extra conditions, and a pretty nominal autofire. With the right traits, the rifle becomes a pretty formidable weapon. I think rifle is fine for now. I also agree with you on Pistol/Shield. The shield has far too long of CDs to be worth while, the abilities are fine, but a bit much on the CDs.

I’m going to skip turrets for now, since we have touched base on them a bit. I believe they at least need a health buff, and some sort of CD work to make picking them up, or recalling/destroying worth while.

Mortar is unique. I don’t mind it as is. It’s very situational. I actually use it in wvw to take out siege on the top of towers and such, but it doesn’t last long if someone notices me. Maybe tie the health to your stats, and make it only usable by the engineer. I can only use it when no enemies are around, otherwise it gets eliminated pretty fast.

Rifle is great, not sure why they designed it like a shotgun though.

binidj.5734:

Lot of fine ideas here, my personal top 3 (after fixing the blasted bugs) are:

1. Change Elixir Gun’s Super Elixir field type from Light to Water.
2. Remove random effects from potions.
3. Give Hidden Pistol to all Engineers, it is superior to Rocket Boots in every respect and fills the same function. While obviously all Engineers should be Charr, this skill really does mean that if you aren’t a Charr you’re doing it wrong (something I’d only ever said in jest before).

I love my toolbelt skills and am really only just (at this late stage) starting to really see what they’re capable of, so please don’t get rid of them!

? I like all of your list. It’s weird that the field is not water. Randomness is not a good thing when your class is supposed to be versatile or flexible, perhaps they thought more options was a good thing, but were worried that it would be a bit too overpowered togive all of the said effects. I wish I could speak to the Hidden Pistol talent!

One solution that would give us much more versatility (which is supposed to be our strength) would be to:

1) give us the ability to place a utility skill into our elite skill slot.
2) increase the tool belt slots to five (F1-F5)
3) redesign the current elite skills to have a tool belt effect

This would allow us to be much more versatile without having to have lots of new key-binds or mechanics (this adds one key – F5 and only requires that they redesign our elites to have a toolbelt skill).

Edit: Also – a minor point – one of our elites should be a gadget. Our heals are elixir, turret, kit and our elites are elixir, turret, turret. It would be nice if our elites were elixir, turret, gadget.

I’d also like to see the napalm ability from the toolbelt skill for the flame turret turn into a fire zone because if you are using a turret build then you need more combo zones to do more things. I suggested in another thread that our Acidic Elixirs turn thrown elixirs into damaging combo zones and that the randomness from being thrown be fixed so there’s not more confusion. S always gives stability B always giving retaliation for example. These zones would do damage over time but not add condition damage, just ticks if they remain in the area of effect much like what we see with grub poison fields and Skale spit.

Anymras.5729:

Moka.9641:

I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :

-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)

Any other ideas?

It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/

This. I like the idea of a trait for making turrets able to move, not really sure how it would be handled in relation to Deployable Turrets – and we’re not supposed to go making up new traits, anyway, so, moving on.

Toolbelt skills: These are what the class should be evaluated on, being the class’s one unique ability besides bad mimicry of others via randomized effects and ability pastiche kits or spammable AoE effects via Bomb and Grenade kits.

How I’d handle improving them: All of them need re-evaluated, rebalanced and/or replaced. All of them. Aside from that…it would be excellent to have them not be bound to the things in the utility slots. Keep Toolbelt skills and Utility skills separate, but able to be swapped around – want to have a Healing Turret, and Bandage Self? go for it. Full turrets, Healing Mist, Analyze, Regenerating Mist and Throw Elixir R? Whatevs, bro. However: In the event that a turret is placed, it still replaces that toolbelt skill with the Detonate Turret ability.

Additional idea (probably absolutely terrible one): Allow the placement of kit attacks, unaltered, into the Toolbelt, with the exception of the 1 skills – which would be altered by adding a short cooldown.

Edit: Also: allow kits, one at a time, to be equipped as secondary weapons. For the Engineer, every skill slot counts – which is why I rarely run with a Toolkit, or Power Wrench, despite being, primarily, a Turret Engineer. It feels like a waste – either I can have another turret, or I can have a lackluster repair skill with a few nifty abilities in close range combat.

That’s how I feel. Classes get a lot of their unique-ness from their Function abilities. Everyone knows that the Necromancer’s function ability is their second life. Everyone knows that Mesmr’s function ability is their shatters, Elementalist’s are their attunements, Warrior’s are a build-up super attack, the Thief can steal and requires Adrenaline, etc. I don’t know if our toolbelt is as unique as intended. It could be, but I don’t know if it were implemented as well as it could have been. I wouldn’t be against evaluating every skill that can go in to the toolbelt, but to save A-Net some work, lets not overhaul, but I would like to hear what you suggest on modifying the abilities.

You recommended keeping the toolbelt abilities separate from the utility skills, I hadn’t thought of that, and it would be pretty versatile and neat to be able to customize our toolbelt. I’m worried that it’s soo complex that there would be some sort of broken combination that would make us incredibly feared, but I would like to try it out, and have A-Net fix whatever comes out as unbalanced.

Allowing players to put abilities from any kit down on their main bars I think would be a bit overpowered, think of all of the combos we could pull off without having to switch attunements, or having some sort of recourse. Plus smacking your rifle or flamethrower against a turret to repair it would be really weird. (As if throwing a wrench magically repairs it either, but we get the idea)

I’m not sure what you mean by your edit, come back and clarify it a bit, or maybe I’ll read it again after a bit of coffee.

I’d like to see a buff to our support capabilities, since that’s where the devs seem to be trying to steer us. Possible options include:

- Stuff all of our elixirs into one kit and make them all throwable rather than drinkable. Anybody in the area of effect gets the entire elixir effect, not some random component thereof. Toolbelt for this kit, however, could be “Throw a random elixir” to grant a weaker version of a random elixir buff.
- Scale our heal-other skills a bit better with Healing Power (self-heals scale pretty well, excluding the turret). For example, we currently get 0.08 points increased heal per point healing power invested on a bomb-heal. That’s ridiculous.
- Make elixir-infused bombs actually infused with elixirs. So Bomb Kit #1 might grant a thrown Elixir H buff when used, in addition to its heal (including HGH and 409 effects if traited). Bomb Kit #2 could grant a thrown Elixir B effect, and so on. Boon durations would have to altered accordingly so we can’t just stack them up to the moon forever and ever.

Engineers wouldn’t have to get all of the above buffs, but the devs clearly think of us as a buff/debuff/support class. It’s impossible to reliably buff a group when your buffs require your team to be both stationary to accommodate thrown elixirs’ flight times and bunched up to accommodate the necessity of ground targeting, to say nothing of the completely random nature of thrown elixir buffs. “Hey guys, stand still and pile up (read: make yourselves into sitting ducks), and I might be able to give you Protection. Oops sorry, you got Swiftness instead.” That’s a really lousy support mechanic. If we’re meant to be a support class, we need more viable tools than just Super Elixir.

It’s my feeling that the Engineer was originally intended to be more similar to the Elementalist, with kits taking the place of attunements, and then was changed to being…well, whatever it is now, leading to the emphasis on Kits throughout the class’s traitlines, etcetera – the Toolbelt isn’t even mentioned in the Class Balance Philosophy. There’s all sorts of little indicators. However, now that the Engineer’s unique thing is the Toolbelt, it’s not been thought out very much at all, especially compared to kits.

My suggestions on fixing the Toolbelt skills primarily revolve around making them more predictable (Mine Field’s mines are placed randomly; this can make it difficult to make proper use of, just as the Elixirs, with their RNG effects, are difficult to properly capitalize on; I would fix Mine Field by making it fall in a particular pattern around the Engineer, and the Elixirs by making their effects 1) not rips of other class’s abilities and 2) not RNG, but context-sensitive to things like health, stats, and profession), faster to cool down (except for Surprise Shot, ten seconds is quite fast enough), and more powerful (with some exceptions).

I’m sure there’s some broken thing we’d be able to manage – but that’d get fixed. Maybe it’d involve a bit of see-sawing, but if we want improvements, we can’t be afraid of getting nerfed if the improvements accidentally go too far. My best example of a broken combination (Analyze+Grenade Barrage+Steel-Packed Power+Rocket/Rifle/Flame Turrets) is something that’s easy to accomplish now, with the proper traits; it’s entirely possible that I’m not seeing the possibilities inherent in the idea.

Yeah, that’s why it’s marked as ‘probably absolutely terrible – ’ it’s just not a very good idea.

Okay, uh, explanation of edit. Wow, I worded that badly, originally. Here we go. Currently, Engineer can only equip Kits in Utility slots, and cannot equip a second weapon due to this. The idea of the edit is to make it so that, while we still would not be able to equip a second weapon set, we’d be able to equip a kit without using any of our Utility slots, by equipping the Kit into the second weapon set slot. In this way, an Engineer – let’s say a Turret Engineer, for convenience – could have two Pistols for main weapons, a Toolkit as his secondary, Healing, Rifle, Rocket and Flame Turrets, and Supply Crate. For those Engineers who prefer kits, it would allow them to have yet another kit available. It would not, however, give a toolbelt skill.

Also: As far as making the Engineer a support profession goes…I’m against it. It feels like that would be resigning ourselves to being sidekicks.

Kimbald.2697:

copying what I said about this in another topic, it overlaps but might explain it better:

2 principles used:
– kits provide the utility we are supposed to have
– gadgets are the skills we all want, but hardly ever have room for.

For example: imagine having Rocket Boots as tool belt of the Flamethrower.
You always have Rocket Boots handy, but you get to use Flamethrower as well if you want.

Slick Shoes for Elixir Gun, Goggles effect added to Big Old Bomb or whatever…
Just using Elixir gun would immediately give you slick shoes (random example); leaving you open with 2 slots to use for other kits, turrets, elixirs…

Basic idea is this: the kits all get a truely usefull gadget added as tool belt skill.
These tool belts are focused on utility first, not damage as such.

The tool belt is usable with whtever weapon or kit you have equipped, so it doesn’t take kit swapping to reach them.

But at the same time you don’t lose a slot on a gadget alone, you always get a full kit with it.

By adding things like stunbreakers and escapes to kit tool belts, we create truely versatile builds. Without sacrificing slots we can use for elixirs, turrets or more kits…

I think this goes along the line of keeping the toolbelt separate from the utility bar. I honestly can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. I really do like this idea, and I think it would give us the versatility that you expected when you picked Engineer as your class.

The way I see this in my head is that the toolbelt would stay up top, but instead of the skills being auto determined by your Utility slots, you can now selectively choose what you put in your toolbelt, and customize it to fit your playstyle. The toolbelt would contain of lot of the abilities it already has, and we could then fix each ability on it’s own if it were determined underpowered or unbalanced.

If this is the route we go, I have questions. First, do toolkits remain as a utility down below, or do we put them in the toolbelt? Second, turrets should remain below, but what would be the way we can recall/destroy turrets, and would that over-ride a toolbelt skill?

dirtyshame.1863:

Skills and improvements

Toss/consuming elixirs now creates an AoE cripple and bleed on all enemies not wearing shoes when the bottle hits the ground. To compensate, Engineers will be billed 1 silver littering fee for every bottle dropped.

Turrets health and damage output have been doubled. The turrets are now heavier give themselves stability when deployed and to the engineer when stowed. However, the engineer experiences a 25% loss in overall speed movement for each turret stowed. Careful if you’re holding 4, you will be the unmovable statue.

New Turret: Tripod Camera: allows enemies to create screen shots of themselves after they successfully stomp the engineer.

Trait line improvement for tools. Scattered Toolbox: As your fumble around looking for parts, the engineer creates 3 seconds of fury and 3 seconds of self inflicting confusion when toolkit is equipped.

Pistol #1 no change, but a little flag comes out the end saying “Bang”. Pistol #2 has been fixed. It now misses with every shot as intended.

Weapon stats now effect kits which means the overall damage output of kits must be tweaked to compensate.
Grenades now have pins to pull making cast time 2 seconds and if caught by enemy player may
be thrown back at the casting engineer.
Flamethrower works under water (yay just like elementalists who can still attune to fire underwater) creating extreme heat and boiling water around enemies. Enemies are relaxed, regain HP, but are too lazy to actually attack you.
Flamethrower #2 is now a targeted AoE, but instead of exploding hands out sticks with marshmallows to all in range. Flamethrower #1 now causes fuel leak igniting the engineer on fire allowing for those with cooking of 325 or higher to cook marshmallows on engineers burning body.
Bomb kit explosions now can be traited to work 75% faster, but they can damage the casting engineer and allies.
Elixir gun #2 has been replaced with Snot Rocket covering the enemy in a green sticky ooze. Enemies flee in terror for 3 seconds. Engineer is forced to /laugh for 5 seconds after cast.

All elixirs now have same 30 second CD and create random abilities. We don’t even know what they do, we closed our eyes and just coded blindly on this part. Have fun.

Static discharge has been changed to compensate for the extreme burst. After each cast the engineer gets a 10 second stack of “Charged”, at 3 stacks the Engineer becomes fully charged and all enemies are pulled to the engineer and cannot be removed without jumping in water.

Gadgets now have passive skills. Goggles allow the engineer to see the enemies without any armor. Rocket boots now play “Rocket man” constantly in the background. Slick shoes now give you the appearance of Data from the Goonies movie. Battering ram turns into a small mechanical ram that can be ridden (50% movement decrease, 100% fun increase).

Haha. This made me smile, I totally could see an engineer doing all these things in a cartoon style.