Don't take away our versatility

Don't take away our versatility

in Engineer

Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Wouldn’t an increase to both Elixir-gun and flamethrower’s kit refinements be better than having to manage two internal cooldowns?

Just increase flamethrower’s kit refinement to 20 seconds (if it’s still to powerful increase Elixir gun’s to 25), don’t take away a perk we had to kit swapping.

Before this patch kit refinement didn’t encourage engineers to spam switch kits, it gave us a class unique advantage for having a lot of kits equipped (at the cost of stun-breakers). There is literally no good reason to have two internal cooldowns on kit refinements. One cooldown is enough to manage, now we have to worry about how switching to one kit will eliminate all kit refinements for the duration of the second internal cooldown.

How is this effective for our class to have? How was kit refinement so out of control to the point that it needs two individual internal cooldowns to manage?

Quickly swapping kits was the only thing the engineer had over the elementalist in terms of managing weapon sets. This change to kit refinement only punishes us for doing so. It tells us that the direction the devs want from this class is one where we don’t swap our kits more often than an elementalist switches atunements.

If this is the case we are on route to becoming a much less versatile class.

EDIT: I didn’t actually mind the idea of having a 10 sec cooldown on all kit refinements. What bothers me is that we now have 2 internal cooldowns to manage a singular (and minor depending on your build) trait. This to me is ridiculous

(edited by JohnDied.3476)

Don't take away our versatility

in Engineer

Posted by: Daigle.8497

Daigle.8497

What’s ridiculous to me is they invested in man-hours to nerf us.

Ride The Lightning was a digit change.
Kit Refinement was an overhaul.

Don't take away our versatility

in Engineer

Posted by: google.3709

google.3709

Kit refinement, what is it was.. it was reliable you either had a short snare, small burn or heal/condition removal that you knew you could count one, and the internal cooldowns kept it balanced but now if you use one you lose the others, so now players r ether forced to bring less kits or switch less often or simply submit to the fact that they just made us even more random…

@Daigle.8497
lol you’re totally right…wtf fix gadgets and turents instead of nerfing the few good things we have

(edited by google.3709)

Don't take away our versatility

in Engineer

Posted by: NevirSayDie.6235

NevirSayDie.6235

Kit refinement, what is it was.. it was reliable you either had a short snare, small burn or heal/condition removal that you knew you could count one, and the internal cooldowns kept it balanced but now if you use one you lose the others, so now players r ether forced to bring less kits or switch less often or simply submit to the fact that they just made us even more random…

@Daigle.8497
lol you’re totally right…wtf fix gadgets and turents instead of nerfing the few good things we have

Agree with you here. It seems the best way to deal with the change is to simply use fewer kits. For example, in my current build, flamethrower kit refinement is my only condi removal apart from antidote. But if I happen to use toolkit BEFORE cleansing a condition instead of after, my cleansing drops to zero because I used my kits in the wrong order. Best to give up prybar, block, pull, and throw wrench, because as good as those are, I’d rather have a condition removal.

I haven’t done enough theorycrafting/testing/practicing to know how hard of a hit our kitmaster builds took. My initial guess is that they can still be effective but have become infinitely harder to play (they were already the hardest build in the game…) A while ago, there was a thread asking if engineers were for “elite players only.” I disagreed then, but now, I’m not so sure.

Don't take away our versatility

in Engineer

Posted by: google.3709

google.3709

Kit refinement, what is it was.. it was reliable you either had a short snare, small burn or heal/condition removal that you knew you could count one, and the internal cooldowns kept it balanced but now if you use one you lose the others, so now players r ether forced to bring less kits or switch less often or simply submit to the fact that they just made us even more random…

@Daigle.8497
lol you’re totally right…wtf fix gadgets and turents instead of nerfing the few good things we have

Agree with you here. It seems the best way to deal with the change is to simply use fewer kits. For example, in my current build, flamethrower kit refinement is my only condi removal apart from antidote. But if I happen to use toolkit BEFORE cleansing a condition instead of after, my cleansing drops to zero because I used my kits in the wrong order. Best to give up prybar, block, pull, and throw wrench, because as good as those are, I’d rather have a condition removal.

I haven’t done enough theorycrafting/testing/practicing to know how hard of a hit our kitmaster builds took. My initial guess is that they can still be effective but have become infinitely harder to play (they were already the hardest build in the game…) A while ago, there was a thread asking if engineers were for “elite players only.” I disagreed then, but now, I’m not so sure.

yup, and its sad because me like lots of players enjoy switching kits, setting up combos like going on bomb kit then dodging backwards leaving my 2 little bombs but as off right now you can’t do that with FT or EG anymore and if they fix the broken trait to do what its intended it will elite things like this, i loved being able to know i could remove a condition from me and my teammates by going on my EG but now i have to think twice because its gonna be either that or a second grande barrage..

it seems the reason they discourage kit swamping is because they wants us to not do combo’s simply go on a kit and stay on it for a while, and that’s sad, and boring..

a better nerf would have been to move the trait to master or grandmaster, make people tweak their build a little instead of killing their play style

Don't take away our versatility

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Glad the arguments haven’t broken out here

I made this post in an “anti-QQ” thread (If I’m being honest that’s what it was). I think I’ll drop it here as well just so the intent of this thread is clear.

Personally I’m not really upset with the changes because they’ll break builds. In fact, I don’t believe they will. The engineer community is an adaptive one that has come up with some crazy things to make up for the deficiencies that the engineer profession possesses (look at 100nades), I don’t think learning new key combinations will deter us. To tell the truth, the post detailing the new kit refinement is a fine example of what the community does, it analyzes our limitations and then it finds ways of optimizing our play-styles based on those limitations.

This habit of the engineer community however, has this side effect of finding out all the ways the profession was never finished or polished. So we take what we have (a buggy unfinished profession with no clear niche or purpose) and we make the most of it. Most engineers complained about the stow med-kit bug until we found a way to incorporate it into our playstile, now that the devs have found out and changed it we wan’t our crutch back.

We seem to find all these “crutches” to make up for the weaknesses the profession has as byproducts of rushed design work and implementation. So when the devs take them away, we flounder, complain, and then adapt.

That being said, Kit refinement was not a crutch. It was not something we cobbled together like static discharge builds or 100nades. It was a functional, reliable mechanic that a lot of engineers used. It wasn’t over powered, not everyone ran with it. I switched it out for speedy kits when I found that SE’s weren’t that productive to a party.

The reason why I’m upset with the change to kit refinement is because it was neither needed, nor intuitive, nor polished. It was a buggy change that has made a convenient trait (to some) into another broken thing for our profession. A part of the engineer community finds this change to serve no purpose and to inconvenience those who use it. A part of the engineer community finds that the devs have broken something that was fine, so we react.

Mostly we react in the forums (the only place to give feedback) in the hopes of the devs having some food for though. Nothing will probably go our way, and the profession will be ham-fisted into whatever the devs seem to want out of us. At least we gave our feedback.

Keep on with the catharsis friends