Guild Wars 2

All righty. We all know Engineer needs some improvement. Some believe the class is worthless, but most think the class just needs a bit more love. I want to combine everyone’s favorite suggestions into one place, maybe make it easier for our voices to be heard.

This thread is for serious suggestions only, no haters, no nay-saying, no flaming, no trolls, and no nut-shots. And no “fix bugs.” There’s already a bug thread.

General
- Allow Engineers to equip a kit into a “Swap Weapon” slot. Kits are why we don’t get a second weapon, but they also limit our utility choices. This would let every engineer equip a kit, without feeling like they’re being taxed for it.
- Allow Engineers to choose their toolbelt skills. They’d still learn the associated skill from learning utilities, but could pick and choose what goes on the toolbelt independently of what’s on their utility and heal skill slots. Versatility, buddy.
- Give each trait line a third stat that gets increased by putting trait points. These stats would be unique things for Engineer utilities. Such as Firearms also increasing Turret Damage (power, precision, condition damage) sort of like how Rangers Beastmastry line increases pet stats.
- OR give Engineers a second set of minor trait points, called “Tinker Points” or something, that lets us customize our utilities to compliment our build.

Weapons
- Mace or Hammer for a little extra choice in the melee department. Something tankier would suit Engineer best, and give an extra option for use with shields.
- Increase Explosive shot bleed to 3-4 seconds.
- Either tighten Poison Dart Volley into a proper single-target attack at max range, or turn it into a spread like Splitblade or Poison Volley (Ranger). Random spread makes people sad.
- Increase Blunderbuss to 600 range like Blowtorch. Having to be inside average melee range makes Blunderbuss hard to use optimally.

Heals
- Make Medkit into a melee range AoE kit with channeled “bandaging” skills. Replace “Packaged Stimulants” with “Triage” that increases the effective AoE and reduces recharge by 20%.
- Make Elixir H give Regen and Protection simultaneously, instead of a random boon. RNG makes people sad pandas. Especially when Healing Turret can do 95% of what Elixir H does, but on a more optimal 15 second cooldown.
- Healing Turret needs to do something else when it pulses regeneration. Even a small heal, or a condition conversion, would make players consider whether to keep it out, or pick it up for a faster big heal.

Kits
- Make kits only benefit from the MH sigil, and increase damage accordingly to compensate for previous sigil-based nerfs. Rifle becomes sub-optimal for any set relying on kits otherwise. (Since Rifle can only have one sigil, but kits are balanced around having two.)
- Increase Tranquilizer Dart’s damage so Elixir gun isn’t just for show.
- Increase Super Elixir’s healing coefficient on the secondary pulses. Players should get greater benefit from being restricted to a small area.
- Add an “aiming cone” to Flame Jet, so that players are more able to accurately use the weapon. Also applicable to Fumigate, Blowtorch, and other sustained cones.
- Make Flame Blast ground-targeted or detonate on impact.
- Increase Magnet range so people can get pulled off WvW walls like with other single-target pull skills.
- Increase Bomb Kit effectiveness through longer condition durations and higher damage. People should be punished for staying next to a ticking time bomb.

Gadgets
- Give Rocket Boots “soft” landings, so players can get back into the action faster, and not get shot to swiss cheese while flat on their back.
- Reduce cooldown on Utility Goggles. It’s a good package, but it needs a small nudge in the right direction.
- OR replace the blind immunity on Utility Goggles with an AoE debuff that bestows Revealed for 10 seconds to counter Thieves and Prismatic Understanding Mesmers.
- Increase Slick Shoes to a 360 degree area of effect, making it comparable to Stomp. Reduce cooldown to compensate for no damage and no Blast Finisher.
- Make Mines (and other Traps) invisible to enemy players until they go off. They are traps after all.

Turrets
- +100% Hit points in general, as well as greater AoE resistance. These things are really fragile, even when kitted out with traits.
- Apply stats/items/sigils to turrets in the same way as other utility skills.
- On pickup, reduce cooldown by percentage based on remaining turret HP for quicker set-up of new firing lines. (Minimum of 15 seconds on all to prevent abuse of Healing Turret deployment.)
- Rifle Turret, half damage, but double firing rate.
- Net Turret, reduce time between shots to 5 seconds, reduce immobilize to 1-2 seconds. It should be disruptive, and annoying, to motivate others to kill it.
- Thumper Turret should create an PBAoE pull towards itself (slowing fire rate), to annoy enemies and provoke them to attack the turret.
- The ability to mobilize turrets. Perhaps through a Grandmaster Trait.

Elixirs
- In general, all Elixirs should have more standardized results. Random effects, as fun as they can be, become quickly unreliable in tense situations.
- Elixir U should not have the possibility of Frenzy. Engineers don’t have the same HP pool, nor toughness potential, that Warriors have, and subjecting Engineers to 50% more damage is far more dangerous to them than Warriors.
- Elixir B should do more. Consider “For Great Justice!” Which is a shout. It grants Fury for 8 seconds, and 3 stacks of Might for 25. On a 25 second timer. To allies and themselves. Elixir B grants only 1 stack of Might for 30 seconds, and slightly longer Fury, on a 40 second timer. So not even the Might is permanent. For a single person buff, this is lacking in a lot of areas, even with retaliation and swiftness.
- Elixir C shouldn’t do random boons, but rather boons that mirror the conditions cured. Confusion grants Retaliation, Weakness grants Might. That kind of thing.

Toolbelts
- In general, kit toolbelt skills need to be buffed to match the power of utility skills. We’re giving up a utility slot to have a kit, so it needs to be compensated somehow.
- All Throw Elixir “Letter” skills need to hit bigger areas. Radius 240-300 would make them a little better, but not step on the toes of radius 600 shouts.
- Toss Elixir H suffers from the same problem as Elixir H, random effect, too little to care about. If it was Regen and Vigor, we’d have something great for teams.
- Regenerating Mist needs a lower cooldown, or a larger effect. Water fields are great, but not worth a 6 second cooldown. Especially since the field doesn’t last long enough for anyone to notice it most the time.
- Toss Elixir B, RNG problems, Ahoy! You could have easily made this a throwable version of “For Great Justice!” and it would have been great. Or to make sure it has it’s own flavor, perhaps 2 stacks of Might for 20 seconds, 8 seconds of Retaliation, 20 second cooldown.
- Toss Elixir C does too little. Make it convert 2 conditions, maybe? Or create a field that pulses a three times, converting one each time?
- Toss Elixir S… Why not Stealth and Stability? I mean… It’s only 4 seconds, which is pretty small for Stability time, especially with the cooldown.
- Toss Elixir U could have been really unique. How about making it a smoke combo field that pulses allies swiftness? It’d be somewhere between Smoke Screen and Symbol of Swiftness, retaining the Quickness flavor, and crating a very useful field, even if on a long recharge.
- Analyze needs a shorter cooldown. Consider “On My Mark,” doing the same thing, but with only 3/4 the recharge, and for 25% longer.
- Mine Field needs something. I dunno what, but it just feels lacking. Bigger damage and trigger areas would probably help. Maybe also a set, predictable pattern of deployment.
- Throw Napalm should have a shorter recharge.
- Net Attack should have HALF (or less) the recharge time.
- Rocket should have a shorter recharge.
- Shockwave should have HALF the recharge time.
- Incendiary Ammo is horrendous. Make it a signet sort of deal. Passive: Burning lasts 25% longer. Active: Burn your foe for 3 seconds for the next three attacks.

Traits
Explosives
- Evasive Powder Keg doesn’t really do much. Enemies don’t stick around. They chase the engineer, leaving the keg to blow up “back there.” Make it something like Shockwave or Rocket Boots PBAoE damage effect (minus the blast finisher) and have it count as an explosion for all those explosives traits.
- Reserve Mines, similar problem. Maybe a PBAoE knockback when you hit 25% would make for some good “breathing space.”
- Acidic Elixirs is just bad. These are teammate boosters, not damage abilities for the most part. But it they gave enemies a few small (5s) stacks of Vulnerability, we might have something great for team support.
- Combine Explosive Powder and Short Fuse. 20% Recharge traits feel more like taxes on the player than real traits, and should come with a little something extra.
- Combine Accelerant-Packed Turrets, and Deployable Turrets. Play Borderlands 2, as Axton, and take both Nuke and Mag-Lock. You’ll know what I mean, and it is glorious.
- Autodefense Bomb Dispenser should also drop a smoke bomb on downed status, just to mess with stompers.

Firearms
- Target the Mained should be bumped to 10%, like most Grandmaster damage buffs.
- Combine Rifled Barrels and Hair Trigger, again with the 20% recharge tax.
- Napalm Specialist is adept-level, not master. Perhaps add 5% damage to burning foes?
- Fireforged Trigger should increase Flamethrower damage by 15% and reduce it’s recharge by 20%, essentially combining it’s two halves of Fireforged and Deadly Mixture.
- Coated Bullets makes pistol bullets bounce instead of pierce, granting Static Shot an extra bounce, while making Poison Dart Volley and Explosive Shot less ridiculous in a tight mob.
- OR Coated Bullets should increase pistol conditions by 50%, since all the pistol skills have conditions that benefit nicely from the duration increase.

Inventions
- Automated Medical Response should trigger Healing Turret’s initial heal effect instead of recharging the heal skill. Or use Bandage Self. Engineer has low cooldown healing skills, so this trait is usually pretty weak as is.
- Protective Shield should grant 10 seconds of Aegis instead of Protection and trigger on 10% health loss in a single hit. Rename it Ablative Armor. How hilarious would it be to troll Mug-Backstab Thieves?
- Metal Plating should give more turret HP, AoE resistance, or something to make the difference in damage reduction noticable.
- Stabilized Armor should either not exist, or do more. Standing still is counter to Guild Wars 2’s combat style, and shouldn’t be encouraged without sufficient reason.
- Elite Supplies should reduce Elite skill cooldowns by 20%.
- Autotool Installation should also heal allies near a turret for a small amount, compounding if they are near multiple turrets. This would be a great support tool, similar to Phantasmal Healing.
- Elixir-Infused bombs should have a slightly higher healing coefficient.
- Rifled Turret Barrels could also grant turrets a slightly faster attack speed. And it would be awesome. Like Phantasmal Haste.

Alchemy
- Transmute, 20%. Do eet. It’s just not that noticable right now in normal situations, and in spammy situations, it’s not at all enough to truly help.
- Energy Conversion Matrix should grant 2% per boon, not counting multiples of the same boon of course. Again, high level damage traits should be worthwhile. Engineers already suffer in damage coefficients, regular percentiles will still reflect that lower coefficient just fine.
- Combine Fast-Acting Elixirs and Potent Elixirs, 20% recharge needs to be less taxxy.
- Acidic Coating should grant 5 stacks of Vulnerability on the enemy when they crit the player instead of giving a pitiful amount of Poison. Acid eats through armor.
- Merge the Elixir Gun half of Deadly Mixture with the same part of Fireforged Trigger, renaming it something appropriate. Maybe “Super Soaker.”

Tools
- Enduring Damage should increase damage when Endurance is not full, encouraging players to move and dodge enemy attacks.
- Always Prepared should trigger Big Ol’ Bomb on Downed state. Out with a BANG!
- Speedy Gadgets should also grant Swiftness on use of a gadget. 20% tax baaad.
- Scope should change to grant Fury at the end of a dodge roll. Probably get a rename too, but standing still should not be rewarded.
- Leg Mods should be 25%, and probably do something else too, since it’s pretty lame. Maybe jump higher! Reduce falling damage (non-stacking with the other one.)
- Armor Mods should be something much more inspiring. I’d say allow Engineers to war Heavy Armor, but that’s a bit much. Maybe a scaling +40 to all stats for the Engineer and nearby allies? (Vitality, Toughness, Healing Power, Power, Malice, and Precision)
- Adrenal Implant should be minor level. To make it better, perhaps gain 2 stacks of Might for 5 seconds when you gain Vigor?

The greatest and most comprehensive suggestions thread I’ve read in a long time. Sections like Elixirs and turrets are the kind of thing that devs need to read and see merit in. Engineers have been begging for stronger turrets and RNG-less elixirs very fervently for a while now, and it’s not something that would make engineers overpowered or go against the design philosophy. In fact, it would actually make those abilities more reliable, allowing for more versatility in play.

The way turrets and elixirs are now, there’s no way I’d take them over kits. Turrets just get three shotted by trash mobs and the benefit of most elixirs (except s) don’t outweigh the value of the slot they take. Just looking at the “boons keep you alive” thread is enough to see that many consider elixirs to be inferior to warrior and guardian utility skills. The fact that elixirs are too unreliable for support always gets mentioned.

I believe that the general and weapons suggestions will probably never happen, although I’d like to see it, and some of the trait suggestions seem too good (under the impression that all classes have some useless traits). Other than that, everything else seems like a great suggestion. The suggestions about gadgets, toolbelt skills and heals would definitely make engineers into a more complete profession.

On Healing.

People may argue that medkit is just fine, but one has to look at what the skill is meant for and if it does that well. Looking at the skills it looks like its meant for offering heals to a party and one’s self, which would mean it should be used to self heal and support others. When was the last time some other player actually sought out one of our medibags we drop? There needs to be a bigger indicator to where these heals are dropped and a better reason for others to get them. The channeled aoe heal would also make this kit serve a better utility.

When it comes to elixir H I tend to choose everything but it, on land and underwater. I don’t see it as a useful heal when our other healing abilities do a good job on shorter cooldowns.

Healing turret is currently bugged, and the only time I debate whether to keep it down or pick it up is when I desperately need that bug to not punish me. When I pick up healing turret I get stuck with this long unstack-able useless regen. Most of my healer engineer abilities consist of stacking regen, but the healing turret pick up punishment overrides this.

All of the gadgets and kit suggestions make the respective abilities more attractive, which would result in more people using and enjoying them. I’d consider these great changes, but they might seem a little too good when implemented.

To other posters.

After having read all of the suggestions made in this thread, I have to say that a good number of these are really good and deserve consideration. Wasdclick has been very detailed and methodical in his suggestions to better the numerous problems and lackluster abilities that the engineer possesses. This deserves praise.

Further, please don’t be to harsh about the suggestions that seem overpowered, in fact it would be good to point these out and propose alternatives so that devs may see what the engineer community would like to be the most. Hopefully we can help construct a list that if viewed seems to ask for fair changes that won’t overpower us.

I should say… This isn’t about “make ALL these changes happen.”

It’s just everyone’s more sensible or creative ideas. “Buff grenades by 40%.” Wouldn’t show up here, but small merges, alternate skill ideas and the like will crop up. Some may be too powerful, but that’s what playtesting and refinement is for.

The point of this thread, is just for everyone to share their creative ideas. If we’re lucky, we’ll see some of them someday, and one of us might even be able to say “That was my idea… You’re welcome.” XD

So just discuss things, civilly of course. What’s good, what’s bad, what would just be really super-special-chocolately-covered-supreme-awesome-fudge-cake-bonanza-extreme to see implemented.

well ive had a suggestion after getting my engineer to 80 , havent particularly worked it out , but as i noticed we have 2 kits basedo n aoe explosives (grenade and bomb) i was thinking , why not replace one (bomb most likely) and replace it with a new type of kit dedicated to more strong and competitive single target dps , sort of like an experimental rifle. and this is aimed more at PvE , having it worked out in pvp might be a different thing. But as with what i called it , Experimental Rifle keeps it in line with the engineer theme , inventing new gadgets , weapons , toys , etc. lets face it engineers lack a strong single target dps , grenade lobbing is solid aoe dmg + condition stacking , though generally not enough to full blown down someone unless your sitting ontop of a wall in WvW. But also adding some diversity between kits , 2 kits based around aoe explosive ? needs to change 1 of them , flamethrower (cone attacks rather then a single target dmg , much less actually GOOD damage and more focused on Control) , Elixir Gun (more of a support kit) which does virtually nothing in damage , though ive still managed to pull it out in pve to do some healing. But just a thought.

@Wasdclick +1
Sums it all up Totally agree – get a job with NCSoft it’s the only way the proffession will survive – the devs have a BIG LACK of vision/care/understanding of this class (I’ve often wondered what dev plays engineer in pvp)
SADLY engineer is a very broken proffession . . . and when kicks start happening PURELY because of proffession it raises the question: are engineers misunderstood or totally understood?

Absolutely. Wasdclick +1 indeed!

I’m a fan of small, but effective changes to the functionality of the various kits/elixirs/turrets. The ones you listed are well thought out. Just a few tweaks, some synergy with traits/elixirs/kits/turrets and we’ll become the Flavor of the Month, hehe…just as D/D Elementalists are…

As for mines, I would LOVE to see more of this utlity skill, instead of something that was just ‘thrown in there’. Adding a ‘proximity’ and ‘stealth’ component to mines would be nice. Most see ’em, and just…move around them, considering the blast radius is minimal…perhaps a magnetic mine with a Targeted AoE effect?

At any rate, great post. Us die hard Engineers love the variety the class has to offer, and know that this class will be great. Even after all the nerfs, I still hold out that the Engineer will be the breakout class to play.

This is a good list, but I just want to add one thing about the Utility Goggle. I hope the suggestion does not changed the direction of this thread. I’m lazy to create a new thread for the discussion on Utility Goggle.

First, I do not understand why it has the 10 sec immunity to blindness. Blindness is probably only applied by human players.

Going with the Anet balancing philosophy, I assume all conditions/CCs have counter to it. Fear counter stability (correct?), stability counter knockback/pull/knockdown, stunbreak counter stun.

So the question is, why is there no counter against stealth? One can say stealth is not a damage CC, so it does not need counter. But that gives a certain class full of stealth mechanics a upper hand in the fight.

Now it gets to my point of Utility Goggle. I “think” maybe Anet wanted to use Utility Goggle as counter to stealth during design phase. Imagine Utility Google as Infrared Goggle, when stealth is activated, pop UG, you can scan and detect the stealth players. This is logical. We are engineer, we should be able to counter something as simple as stealth. If not, what is the use of our gadgets? But midway Anet scrap the idea and just randomly put blind immunity to the Goggle.

Well then, you would say it limits engineer to always use UG to counter stealth. Well, not every class has Fear. We do not have fear so we cannot counter stability. Engineer is heavy CC, when Guardian pop stability, all your CCs are useless. You can also argue it makes the stealth class useless. Well Utility Goggle is not 100% uptime. Once UG is off, stealth can be reapplied by stealth class and laugh away.

To even tone down UG, make it that only engineer with UG can see the stealth player (allies can’t see it). This would make it 1 v 1 fight, instead of stealth player laughing happily in stealth mode while all other classes trying to guess where he/she is. If allies are smart, they when they see the engineer fighting an invisible air, they can AOE that area to kill the stealth player.

*typo correction

I have an idea for you to add to the list, though I’m not sure where it might fit. Seems like a Traits thing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Give-the-Engineer-somewhere-to-shine

Edit: Got an idea for an alternate method of working this idea; check link for details.

I like these ideas. here let me add two more

( i seriously didn’t see these so please don’t flame if i missed them)

1. mobile turrets instead of turrets let them be bots.
2. mobile mines, they run after the mob we are attacking when activated and splode
3. aegis armor, that erects the protection field when we get hit with a regular hit (traited of course)

Well a nice way to fix turrets would be to give them a layered shield (like the one on fire shaman in grawl fractal) instead of the regular hp. So no matter what your damage is you’ll need to hit turrets N number of times anyways.
This solves the problem of scaling – turrets will have the same amount of “lives” at any level, while still being killable and counterable in pvp.

- Added stealth mines (and traps for professions that get traps. It’s only fair.)
- Added stealth-reveal to Utility Goggles (Reminds me of Markerlights for the Tau in WH40k. I put it down as giving enemies the Revaled debuff, as that would seem the easiest way for it to get implemented.
- Added a few suggestions for secondary traits, either baked into our normal traits as a “third stat,” or as a second minor set of traits with “tinker points.”
- Added mobile turret, likely as a Grandmaster trait like it is for Spirits.

- Didn’t add the Aegis Armor suggestion, as I’m not sure entirely what was meant by the suggestion. But I did suggest a trait give Aegis when hit for 10% of your health in a single hit, which would be troll-tastic against Mug->Backstab combos.

- Didn’t add the “hits” armor for turrets. I feel it wouldn’t make that much of a difference, as turrets should go down quickly while being directly attacked (say about 3 seconds of focused single target fire) so layered armor like that would last 4 hits. That’d make the layers harder to balance, as Hundred Blades, or even Splitblade, could drop a turret in much, much less time. Also a small gang of skritt would teat it down in similarly tiny bursts of speed.

Well, it’s not really important how to kill trash mobs. On the other hand bosses tend to attack slowly. And that’s where turrets really suck dropping from 1 aoe.

And I kinda think that making enemy to waste one of his powerful skills to kill a turret is a good enough investment.

Just my thoughts anyways. Not insisting or anything.

As a P/P engineer primarily I would love nothing more than bouncing bullets to always get the effect of my Grandmaster trait.

The biggest thing of all would be combining the traits to make them less Taxed, this would be AWESOME.

Seperating toolbelt skills from utility skills would create so many new build variations. That sure is an interesting idea.

What would you all think on this idea?

General/Weapons: Fire Selector
When an engineer has a weapon, they should learn to use it in every way possible, and improve on as many aspects as they can. So what if when you equip a weapon of any type, on the Hero Information Screen Thingy™, you could click one of two checkboxes next to each of your weapon icons labeled modes 1 and 2? Depending on what you have, you’d get different weapon skills.

Rifle Mode 1: What we’re used to, our controlling/melee rifle of awesomeness.

Rifle Mode 2: A full suite of 1200 range, single target skills designed for primarily damage and little else.

MH Pistol 1: What we got, a condition-heavy AoE weapon.

MH Pistol 2: A fast-firing mid-range, single target weapon.

OH Pistol 2: Single-target daze/stun, and evasion skills.

Shield 2: Offensive melee charge, and an area protection skill.

This would lets us have more options, without picking up “unfitting weapons” like staff and such. As it is, we have three weapon combinations, which is sad. Even Elementalist has more than us, and conjures to parallel our kits.

This would let people have their sniper rifles and such, but also let people keep the skills we already have.

Just a weird thought.

@wasdclick

why not just have it tied to weapon swap?

theValeyard.3690:

@wasdclick

why not just have it tied to weapon swap?

That could work, but it wouldn’t allow people to do MH Pistol 1 with OH Pistol 2, and the like.

This is the best post I have seen on the Engineer forums in a very long time. There are many ideas here that ANET needs to consider. Right now the Engineer is the most unused class, and for good reason. Whether it is lack of vision or idiocy, the engineer is the most under powered class. Anything we can do, another class can it better. If ANET cannot figure out what to do with the engineer, and soon, they need to listen to the community. We have been offering ideas and begging for fixes since release, and haven’t seen anything.

I’ll just leave this rant here, save yourself the frustration and roll a new class, in fact roll a few. So when the next patch buffs the Warrior, Thief, or god forbid continues to put on this “I don’t hear you” act; you can just switch characters. We are the Warlock of GW2, and ANET has not figured out what to do with us yet.

Wasdclick.1764:

What would you all think on this idea?

General/Weapons: Fire Selector
When an engineer has a weapon, they should learn to use it in every way possible, and improve on as many aspects as they can. So what if when you equip a weapon of any type, on the Hero Information Screen Thingy™, you could click one of two checkboxes next to each of your weapon icons labeled modes 1 and 2? Depending on what you have, you’d get different weapon skills.

Rifle Mode 1: What we’re used to, our controlling/melee rifle of awesomeness.

Rifle Mode 2: A full suite of 1200 range, single target skills designed for primarily damage and little else.

I think this is a great suggestion. It seems like it would appease both sets of engies that have been arguing over our rifle skills. I was going to come up with some suggestion skills for rifle mode 2, but after comparing the engineer and the warrior rifle skills, I wish the devs would just give us theirs. Like it or not, the warrior’s condition rifle skills would work great with our current firearms trait-line bonuses.

I don’t know if the range on those skills would conflict with Anet’s philosophy on the engineer though.

This is such a wonderful post.

I have a suggestion too.
I like using Elixir Gun’s Fumigate skill in dungeons to clear conditions off of allies, but much like some of our other abilities, it has some usability issues. Due to the negligible amount of damaging component it has, when I have an enemy targetted, it will attempt to shoot the fumes to that direction, making it harder to appropriately spray it towards an ally(especially ranged ones). It’s just really awkward to utilize a single area of effect to serve two distinctly different purposes. Also the fact that it doesn’t cure a single condition on yourself is kinda sad.

So I think it would be really nice if, while you channel Fumigate, you draw conditions from all nearby allies in a PBAoE, regardless of the direction you are facing, and then put those conditions into your fume to give back to the enemies you hit(kinda like Necro’s Putrid Mark). That way it will be less awkward when using it as a group cleanse skill, and also, hitting enemies with the fume will actually do something.

I know this would be not just a QoL improvement but a big buff, but honestly I feel Elixir Gun’s #1~4 skills are all very mediocre and unsatisfying.(maybe except #4 which can be used as an escape tool, but it can sure cure immobilize or be a stun breaker as well)

I have to say this is one of the better threads and not the normal whining or rage posts we see now a days, well done. ^^

I’d love to see a trait where our armor is increased when using a melee weapon or the toolbox kit (Hopefully we Engineers get a proper melee weapon in the future) something like 20% armor rating increase when this or that is equipped.

Another thing I’d love to see (Other then turrets that follow you around, excluding the healing turret) is having weapons directly connected to our kits. For an example a rifle gets connected to the flamethrower and when that rifle gets equipped the flamethrower kit appears, keeping the stats and sigil of the rifle in the process (and maybe the skin)

I have a suggestion you can add if you want for Mines.

1: Change them to a kit.

2: Mine Kit skills.
1: Mine: Throw a mine that explodes when a foe is in range or on impact.
2: Flame Mine: Throw a mine that explodes when a foe is in range or on impact. Inflicts burning for 5 seconds 10 second cool down
3: Repeating Explosion Mine: Explodes 5 times when a foe is in rage or on impact. 15 second cool down
4: Crippling Mine: Throw a mine that explodes when a foe is in range or on impact. Causes 5 seconds of cripple 20 second cool down
5: Shrapnel Mine: Blast Finisher. Throw a mine that explodes when a foe is in range or on impact. Causing 10 stacks of bleeding 40 second cooldown

there is one other area that I would love to see addressed:

Legendaries.

First up, any kit user doesn’t really get one. Since so much of our gameplay is centered around kits, this is actually a major reason why my engie will NEVER get a legendary (unless I someday end up with 10k gold and can just poot one out because I want to)

Secondly, of the three legendaries that engies have access to, not one fit the theme. The shield is obviously Guardian based, the rifle doesn’t suit our “shotgun” animations, and the pistol…. the pistol…. let’s not talk about that.

As the end game is so centered around visual progression as opposed to stat progression, I see this as a pretty serious issue (not as major as some of the ones listed by the OP, but not one that can be ignored forever)

Just dug up a few great posts on healing abilities and I’d like to get their highlights on this thread for the sake of clarity. I don’t mean that Wasdclick should edit all of this into the OP but that this post should help anyone looking for a few good suggestions to engineer healing abilities.

First is a detailed improvement for med kit by Rozbuska.5263:

Here is my idea how to change all 5 skills.

1. Heal channel – this skill merge current skills 1,2,3 and make them pulse channel what heal every second of channeling. Cooldown 12s (same as now)
2. Protection – skill with 1.5s cast (can be interupted) what provide 5s of Protection and Retaliation. Cooldown 15s
3. Boon booster – skill with 1.5s cast (can be interupted) what double (stacks) all boon what are currently on you. Cooldown 30s
4. Cleaner – same system as skill one but for condition remove – 3 pulses, remove one condition every pulse (can be interupted). Cooldown 15s (same as now)
5. Stimulant – No much changes to current (Swiftness and Fury) just 1s cast pulse instead flask on ground (pulses dont glith into ground right?) Cooldown 20s (same as now)

All skills can be casted while moving (we are in dynamic game right?)

And now that most imporant thing.
Revamp of Packaged Stimulants trait. – New trait will make all Med Kit skills AoE. So we can provide simillar support as Guardian or War with shouts.

One more thing for Kit Refinement trait. Now equiping do dmg whitch is wierd. Small AoE heal will be much better.

Next is an alternate improvement for Elixir gun’s Super Elixir, so that it may be more like the elementalist ability Geyser:

KinkyPotato.4219:

Super Elixir (Current):
Launch an elixir orb, healing allies on impact and creating an area of continual healing.
Impact heal: 380
Pulse heal: 140
Duration: 10 s
Radius: 240
Combo Field: Light
Range: 900
Recharge: 20 s
[…]
Super Elixir (New):
Launch an elixir orb, healing allies on impact and creating an area of continual healing.
Pulse heal: 808
Duration: 2 s
Radius: 240
Combo Field: Light
Range: 900
Cooldown: 20 s

On the healing turret. I had this suggestion about giving the healing turret a better immediate regen, bringing it closer to a Ranger’s healing spring.

Current Turret
Heal: 4920 (self)
Regen: 8 s
Life Regenerated: 1040
Combo field: water (For a second out of every 8 )
Radius: 480
Permanent

New Turret
Heal: 4920 (self)
Regen: 8 s
Life Regenerated: 2340
Radius: 240
Combo field: water (For 2 s out of every 4 )
Duration: 15 s
Cooldown: 25 s

This change would make the healing turret temporary, but still make it just as appealing to keep for its duration than to blow for the aoe heal combo.

For healing bombs a general suggestion would be to double (or improve by 50%) their scaling with healing power. As they are now it is difficult to use bombs in larger fights due to damage overtaking healing very rapidly. On trash mobs they are fine, but get in front of a champ and you see how terrible you are at tanking when compared to other classes.

ps. Hope no one gets upset about the heavy quoting. Just wanted to confine really good suggestions to this thread.

For the Mine kit, I think that’s sort of the way it was in BW1, but got changed. The problem is that it might feel like just a lesser version of grenades, or an in-between for Grenades and Bombs. We’d have to find a way to get a unique feel before it could be a kit.

@JohnDied, I did add a lesser version of that medkit buff. If it’s all buff-giving, it feels less like a medkit though, which is why I ‘toned it down’ a bit.

As for the other ones, making our skill copy other profession skills I don’t believe is the way to go. We already have a lot of borrowed skills. Super Elixir is pretty good, but in need of a small buff up, and serves a point as a point defense heal. Same with turret.

I especially don’t want to see a turret be limited in duration. It’d take away the flavor of the turret, IMO.