Guild Wars 2

Evening, everyone. Got a simple thought for you.

Engies apparently have a bit of a problem with kits, and the way they don’t use stats, sigils, and other bonuses associated with weapons. Leaves the poor things a tad underpowered and restricted, and that won’t just do. They also have this annoying little restriction on mainhand weapons, regardless of what the player wants to equip. But what if both problems could be solved quite easily?

Use weapons to “build” kits.

Give the Engineer four weapon slot pairs in his inventory, the first corresponding to his main weapon choice and the others as placeholders for kit recipes. Condense the kit utilities into three skills corresponding to the three slots (Backpack, Satchel, Knapsack, or something like that). Make the Engineer’s Inventory screen operate a little differently from everyone else’s. When a normal set of items is added (pistol+pistol, pistol+shield, rifle), the Engie’s weapons would act as normal. However, when certain combinations of items are added, they become a kit instead.

For instance, put a pistol and a torch into the same set, and it is treated as a flamethrower that derives its stats from those two items. Replace that torch with a pistol, and you have an elixir gun instead. By simply adding in recipes for every kit (some of which may be a little abstract, not much corresponds to grenades), the game can easily ensure that every kit can be customized to the same degree as weaponry.

It would also have additional benefits.

1) It could allow the equipping of kits to the main weapon slot. Balance permitting, engineers could use a kit as their sole weapon by equipping a recipe combination to their main loadout.

2) Anet could use it as a foundation for Kit Aesthetic customization. Different kits could have different appearances based on the item (for a flamethrower, for example, the nozzle would depend on the pistol, and the backpack correspond to the torch). This would help the engineer’s sense of character growth and let them match skins to their armor.

3) It could seamlessly integrate any number of future kits. Since the mechanic would use three standard utility skills (which would provide relevant tool belt skills and a swap as normal), Anet could update the engineer with as many kits as necessary by simply adding in a new recipe combination.

Constructive criticism/improvements on the idea are welcome.

This is a cool idea, a bit complicated but one of the best suggestions I’ve seen at this point. It would definitely fix the scaling issues, and that is the main concern after all.

Some issues:
1) It would require a whole rework of engineer, since the only way to access more than one sets in this case would be via a function key (or a complete UI rework), which then conflicts with the current toolbelt functionality. (I’d imagine it would work somewhat similar to how rangers work actually: one or two keys for equipping kits, and two for toolbelt usage, a seperate UI to actually equip said kits) (or on further thought, the UI can just be used to equip kits and toolbelt skills seperately, where your toolbelt skill options are directly related to what kits you have and/or your utility skills)
2) It would still NOT entirely solve the issue of weapon stats in the manner you described. Unless again they somehow rework the toolkits to not function as environmental weapons, which again, would require a major UI and system change.

Frankly, I think the solution is a lot simpler: make toolkits function similar to elementalist element changes. Using a toolkit creates a non-removable permanent buff on the engineer, which changes their current weapon skills to the “toolkit” weapon skills. This would also fix the issue of autoattack (since it’s a skillset change, as opposed to equipping an environmental weapon), though might cause issues with the current grenadier set (since autoattack doesn’t work with grenades). Using the toolkit again removes the buff, or if a different toolkit is used, change the buff. This also would fix some odd issues like being able to use toolkits in town clothes (since it changes the skills on a weapon, it can’t do anything when there’s no weapon equipped), along with some other nifty things like having slightly different toolkits depending on your weapon selection.

A simple solution would be to give the engineer a permanent status effect that gives you power/precision/condition damage when you are using a kit, and make the effect scale with comparable stats for weapons of your level.

lorazcyk.8927:

A simple solution would be to give the engineer a permanent status effect that gives you power/precision/condition damage when you are using a kit, and make the effect scale with comparable stats for weapons of your level.

Technically there already is such an effect: your weapon power increases when you wear a kit, dependent on level. Still doesn’t help with customizability.

Your weapon power? What do you mean? If you have an active kit, you’re no longer using your weapon stats, are you?

lorazcyk.8927:

Your weapon power? What do you mean? If you have an active kit, you’re no longer using your weapon stats, are you?

Look at your hero stats when you wear a kit next time. Kits all gives your character a fixed weapon power, regardless of what weapon you have, or even if you weren’t wearing a weapon.

You’re right. It’s fixed regardless :S

So couldn’t they just buff that status effect to be powerful enough compared to weapons of your level? (with power precision condition damage)

lorazcyk.8927:

So couldn’t they just buff that status effect to be powerful enough compared to weapons of your level? (with power precision condition damage)

No. Some Engineers may want to build toughness or vitality or healing power. One of my favorite builds for dungeons is moderate condition damage and moderate healing. I take pistol/shield and the Elixir Gun. When I swap to the Elixir Gun, it’s either to cripple, stack vulnerability, leap backwards, or AoE heal. I could care less about offensive stats – I just want to maintain the defense my shield provides. Furthermore, I would like to see my “chance to heal” and “chance to remove boon” sigils work when I use the kit.

A lot of people gripe about kits being underpowered, but the real issue here is a lack of customization.