Guild Wars 2

Before I start, I am not sure on ANET’s policy on editing pictures of GW2 in a manner such as this. If I am breaking any rules please let me know to prevent future issues.

I am here to present you with what the Engineer should be (my opinion). See attached Please don’t get too upset over my bad photoshop skills, I know I am bad, we can both agree on this.

A brief explanation in case there are questions.
Starting at the top left, Kits would be moved to where the toolbelt abilities were. You would have three kits available, and would be able to freely select which ones you want to run with. To balance having three kits available at all times, there would be a five second cool down when leaving a kit and the kits’ toolbelt abilities have been made available as utility skills.

Let me point out that Medkit would still be located at the number 6 skill slot, and the toolbelt ability for it is located right above the number 6 skill; Medkit would not have a cool down. With Medkit you would be able to run with 4 kits.

On to the right side, tool belt abilities would remain, and would be moved near/above their respective skills. The only other changes to this side, would be the old toolbelt abilities from the kits. As already mentioned, they would be made available as utility skills.

Now that the explanation is over, let us discuss.
I’ll start by asking some questions.
Would you rather have something similar to this, or what we currently have?
Do you think this could make us more competitive in pve, pvp, or both?
Would you consider this OP, Why?
If considered OP, what could be done to make it more fair?

Lets discuss!

so you want to be able to have, essentially, 20 weapon skills AND 8 utility skills at all times, hindered only by a 5 second cooldown?

do not like.

the nature of the instant kit swapping facilitates the orchestration of prolonged combinations of abilities from various kits that have an equally varying rate of recharge. To adjust everything to a 5 second timer would make our rotations static and uninteresting, not to mention far too predictable.

tool belt skills need to be buffed in that they need to be more effective and/or have cooldowns reduced.

likewise, gadgets need to have their efficacy improved along with cooldown reductions.

nakoda.4213:

so you want to be able to have, essentially, 20 weapon skills AND 8 utility skills at all times, hindered only by a 5 second cooldown?

do not like.

the nature of the instant kit swapping facilitates…

Fair enough.
My question to you is, to balance having 28 skills available at all times what would you do? Remove a kit? Lower the cool down? Not have a cool down at all? Remove tool belt abilities?

In case there was miscommunication, you would be able to switch between kits somewhat freely, as I said the cool down only applies after leaving the kit. Think of it similar to an ele switching attunments.

Sorry but… no thanks. I am okay with not always having turrets I need to stay by. I do not want the “OPness” of my class to be determined by something that would only be useful until I ran out of range, which I can often do.

The current system allows builds like HGH and Rifle builds that don’t even have to touch turrets. This would force everyone to use them, and to sacrifice for them aswell. I think that them adding the toolbelt for Engineers is enough.

Also, the weapon skills… I don’t want to have to work any harder to get the mediocre results we already get.

Welswift.9813:

Sorry but… no thanks. I am okay with not always having turrets I need to stay by. I do not want the “OPness” of my class to be determined by something that would only be useful until I ran out of range, which I can often do.

The current system allows builds like HGH and Rifle builds that don’t even have to touch turrets. This would force everyone to use them, and to sacrifice for them aswell. I think that them adding the toolbelt for Engineers is enough.

Also, the weapon skills… I don’t want to have to work any harder to get the mediocre results we already get.

I didn’t say anything about being forced to use turrets or utility slots being changed to do so. Those are merely place holders.

PLEASE OP TAKE ALL MY INTERNETZ!!!
Seriously for me this would be a dream come true, overpowered? hell no look at the skill cap you would need.
Deeeevs pleeeeaaase, it would make the engineer my main forever and make the class so much more fun(it already is). Thank you OP for showing this work of ingenuity.

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

nakoda.4213:

so you want to be able to have, essentially, 20 weapon skills AND 8 utility skills at all times, hindered only by a 5 second cooldown?

do not like.

the nature of the instant kit swapping facilitates…

Fair enough.
My question to you is, to balance having 28 skills available at all times what would you do? Remove a kit? Lower the cool down? Not have a cool down at all? Remove tool belt abilities?

In case there was miscommunication, you would be able to switch between kits somewhat freely, as I said the cool down only applies after leaving the kit. Think of it similar to an ele switching attunments.

my suggestion would be to go play an ele and switch attunements.

leave kits and kit swapping alone. it is the one thing that works every time exactly as you want it to. it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. what kind of engineer are you?

It won’t happen because you just created an “Elementalist”… (A much, much, more powerful one…)

I don’t like this. It would both be unfair (every single Engineer would have 28 skills and access to several kits regardless of other chosen skill) and too much like the Elementalist’s attunements.

To resolve this: Maybe give one Kit as a secondary weapon choice that doesn’t offer a Toolbelt skill, and allow other kits to be chosen on the Utility bar. Give swapping between the two an identical cooldown to that of weapon-switching, since that’s what it bloody well is. Full stop. There, Kit users get a free extra, non-Kit users get a freebie that they might never have looked at, and it’s not going to be 20 skills available with only a 5-second cooldown between each set of five.

If you were seriously going to try to make this thing work, you’d need a cooldown at least equivalent to the elementalist’s attunement swapping – I’m pretty sure that’s at 15 seconds, though it has been quite a while since I played my Elementalist (pretty sure I deleted them, come to think of it). You’d also need to nerf kitten everything into the ground to compensate for having 20 weapon skills, 4 utilities and 4 toolbelts – it’s just too bloody many skills to have available all at once. Then there’s the speed piano aspect.

As for skill ceilings: Sure, it might look high…but kits aren’t hard to use to begin with. Aside from that, you’ll end up establishing routine combinations, at which point muscle memory kicks in and you essentially end up playing Street Fighter. To not end up getting muscle-memory combinations, you’d have to somehow establish a way to make it so that no combination would be useful more than a little of the time, which just means that we’d end up with more RNG.

IMO the engineer should be an engineer with devices and gadgets and not standard weapons like bombs and grenades.
And not the stupid cartoon gadgets like slick shoes or the pocked ram, or the fail-rocket boots.
I would have things like a robotic clockwork backpack kit that dispenses small drones that fly around you for a bit and shoot at enemys. Much like the StarCraft Carrier/Interceptors and an elite skill that instead of a weak kitten mortar it would be a steampunk mech suit, the animation for it could be like how Gizmoduck’s armor attaches to him (or for you kiddies, how the new Ironman armor attaches)

I’ll stop here, iv hated how the engineer is a joke from day one. and to see a topic where “What the engineer should be” is only have more weapon kit slots feels like a waste to at least talk about how the engineer could have been an engineer rather than a grenade throwing grunt.

No ty, I think this would eliminate almost all the choice required to make a build. TAKE ALL THE SKILLS

XelNigma.6315:

IMO the engineer should be an engineer with devices and gadgets and not standard weapons like bombs and grenades.
And not the stupid cartoon gadgets like slick shoes or the pocked ram, or the fail-rocket boots.
I would have things like a robotic clockwork backpack kit that dispenses small drones that fly around you for a bit and shoot at enemys. Much like the StarCraft Carrier/Interceptors and an elite skill that instead of a weak kitten mortar it would be a steampunk mech suit, the animation for it could be like how Gizmoduck’s armor attaches to him (or for you kiddies, how the new Ironman armor attaches)

I’ll stop here, iv hated how the engineer is a joke from day one. and to see a topic where “What the engineer should be” is only have more weapon kit slots feels like a waste to at least talk about how the engineer could have been an engineer rather than a grenade throwing grunt.

I agree with you, Anet had potential with this class, but it was wasted on a half hearted attempt to make a sudo class. I won’t go into much more detail on this subject since there are many forums already talking about the wasted potential that we Engineers are. We could discuss this all day, but frankly, I don’t think Anet will be able to rectify their mistake until an expansion pack. So lets work with what we have instead.

To balance having so many skills available at once you’d have to severely nerf the strength of them or institute a cooldown on everything. The draw of engineer, imo, is that we’re free of so many tedious cooldowns. I’ve realized that while our attacks may not hit as hard as those of some other classes, we have access to so many with very short cooldowns. I don’t want more cooldowns. It would break the style of play I have come to love.

I believe what you are trying to acomplish here is give us more versatility correct?
Here’s a more simple solution: Buff our Tool-belt skills and make them selectable.
Now we are much more versatile, and have better skills available to us.

GuilguiS.2738:

I believe what you are trying to acomplish here is give us more versatility correct?
Here’s a more simple solution: Buff our Tool-belt skills and make them selectable.
Now we are much more versatile, and have better skills available to us.

+1, although making them selectable might be a bit much. I mean, the idea that your toolbelt skill is paired with the kit you choose is both interesting, and makes sense from a design perspective. But they DO need buffs to make them more appealing, and thus aid in the decision to TAKE a kit, rather than to Exclude a kit, like we do now.

The biggest issue with Engineers is that our Weapon Kits automatically kitten our Utility Slots. Simply by playing the Engineer the way it was pretty much designed, you are cut out of 1 or 2 Utility Skills. Playing a multi-kit build is difficult since you’re often bottle-necked when it comes to key skills like stun-breakers or control skills. I’ve been partial to my little picture below when it comes to solving this problem and providing a little more versatility to the Engineer’s Weapon Kits, Turrets and Utility Skills overall. It sort of finds a middle ground between your suggestion (which, months ago, I probably would have been all for) and the current state of Engineer F-skills/Utility Skills.

No.

The whole point of the toolbelt is to compensate for the lost utility slot.

Toolvelt utilities need to be improved, but that is all.

Don’t kitten with something that works well, ie the kit/belt mechanic, and address what needs work like the individual skills themselves.