Guild Wars 2

Here are a few off the top of my head.

Bomb Kit: Don’t show the combo field until it is actually active. (Currently it displays the field before the combo field the bombs generate are actually active.

Elixir Gun: Show an area effect radius reticle around Acid Bombs residual damage area. (Only visible to the Engineer who used it)

Well, in light of the new Engineer patch I’ve decided to do a little updating to my original posts and maybe spark some new discussion about the future of the Engineer.

I actually really like the new Rocket Boots too. Crazy good engage-disengage abilities with that one. Also, while I was originally complaining about how using Rocket Boots while inside a combo field doesn’t automatically trigger the combo effect (such as stealthing yourself while inside of a smoke field), I actually now see this quirk as insight since (as is the case with stealth comboing with a damage-inflicting blast finisher) there is the possibility of instantly revealing yourself with a smoke field blast combo via untimely damage inflicted onto a nearby opponent. The way Rocket Boots works with its delayed blast combo effect allows me to always stealth from a smoke field even if I use Rocket Boots while right next to an enemy. It’s pretty neat.

As I’m playing more with Bomb Kit, I feel thakittens cast-times are really holding it back. There are many instances when chaining skills in which I find myself exposed due to laying down a bomb. I know that sounds silly (“That’s what you get for using a powerful skill, jerkbag,” kind of silly), but I’m not really talking about [Bomb] (Bomb Kit 1), rather the Bomb Kit 2-5 skills.

I updated my Bomb Kit suggestion on the first page to reflect my feelings towards the kit in general. It’s really good, but just clunky. It’s effects are very static (they don’t move), and yet they take quite a long time to cast—often too long to make it worth using most of them when engaging a player at melee range. As of now, Bomb Kit 2-5 simply allow an enemy to get in free swings while the Engineer lays down bombs and waits for them to explode. Engineers using Bomb Kit get hit a lot while being unable to do very much of anything in return due to the “delayed attack” nature of their skills.

By halving the cast-times of [Fire Bomb] and [Concussion Bomb], the Engineer gets a better chance at inflicting damage with them, and is also able to slip back into using other skills much faster. Reducing [Smoke Bomb] and [Glue Bomb]’s cast-times to 0 operates on the same principle, just to a higher degree.

Bomb Kit is a PBAoE weapon. More importantly, it’s big skills are on relatively high cool-downs. Therefore, even the general attack speed of the kit’s 2-5 skills were to be increased dramatically, those cool-downs would prevent spamming from ever really being effective since the only area that would be affected by such a display would be a small circle directly around him or her. Players could just walk out of it, or even avoid it due to the bombs’ delayed attacks. Then the Engineer would have to wait another 20 seconds or so in order to do something like that again (provided that they’re taking the Short Fuse trait).

So in conclusion, Bomb Kit is a PBAoE control/support kit for the most part when it comes to a PvP environment. It denies free movement to its opponents by planting temporary hazards at your immediate location. To this effect, a player has to constantly be able to react quickly in order to get any damage in, thwart an enemy attack or direct/predict an enemy’s movement. The current cast-times of Bomb Kit’s 2-5 skills do not really allow for this. By lowering the cast-times on the Bomb Kit 2-5 skills, the kit as a whole would be vastly improved and its use made much more intuitive and responsive than what it is now. However, even with reduced cast-times, the Bomb Kit would remain balanced in thakittens main damage typically comes from its 1 skill (a skill that would remain unchanged). The reduced cast-times would simply be made in order to improve and streamline the Bomb Kit’s control/support capabilities.

Bombs underwater cast and detonate 20% faster (0.75s vs. 0.9s).

I also feel like the base range on bombs is too low, but the increase from the trait is too high.

You’d probably be better off with 150/150/150/210/270 untraited and 200/200/200/280/360 traited.

That would require people to run forwards to escape the explosion radius of the untraited bombs, and require them to run forwards with swiftness for the traited version. Otherwise they’re going to have to dodge the attacks like every other attack in the game.

I’d be completely happy if they combined the cast/fuse speed and 33% radius increase into one trait and made it a GM trait.

Thrown turrets should land perpendicular to the surface thrown on when traited. When on a wall, they are horizontal to you. When on a ceiling, they are upside down to you.
This of course is based on the last time I played with the idea about a month ago & found out they are always vertical no matter what surface I threw them on.

Knox.8962:

Bombs underwater cast and detonate 20% faster (0.75s vs. 0.9s).

This is actually news to me. I remember putting bombs on my Engineer underwater like a week ago for funsies, but before then I had never really used them (I rarely go underwater anyway). They did feel a little more intuitive, though. I’ll have to experiment with them a little bit now.

Knox.8962:

I also feel like the base range on bombs is too low, but the increase from the trait is too high.

You’d probably be better off with 150/150/150/210/270 untraited and 200/200/200/280/360 traited.

That would require people to run forwards to escape the explosion radius of the untraited bombs, and require them to run forwards with swiftness for the traited version. Otherwise they’re going to have to dodge the attacks like every other attack in the game.

I’m actually fine with bomb radius right now. I think that the radius is good, but the only thing that makes it difficult to actively engage enemies with bombs is their cast-time. A decrease in cast-time is almost like an increase in range since the enemy would have less time to react or move away. I dunno. It is sort of weird how I can’t imagine ever playing bombs effectively without that trait, though. It’s sort of just a given, maybe they really should improve/combine it with something since its so integral. Dunno, though. Also, I would miss my 270 range Concussion Bomb—even if it doesn’t do that much condition damage in my build. It still scares people and wrecks [Crossfire] rangers.

Knox.8962:

I’d be completely happy if they combined the cast/fuse speed and 33% radius increase into one trait and made it a GM trait.

I’d be sad to lose that extra 10 from Tools in my build. Although, Short Fuse as a master trait that did both of those things would maybe be too strong…

Copying my post from the other thread:

So a little testing in the mists and it turns out that the fuse time on the bomb is 0.9 seconds, which allows a normally moving character who is in combat to move 189 units in that time. A character with swiftness will cover 251 units in the same time period.

Strafing and backpedaling will allow 162/215 and 95/126 units with/without swiftness.

With a radius of 120, even if you drop the bomb in the center of the player’s character, they will have time to strafe out of the explosion with no significant effort. A character with swiftness will be able to backpedal out of the explosion.

Traited bombs are in a much better place, and they play well enough in PvE or sPvP, but in WvW, they’re a bit of a struggle to use when enemies don’t have to engage you on the spot of your choosing.

That said, I’d suggest that the base range on the bombs be increased, but the traited version remain the same, or similar. As it stands today, the trait adds 50% to the radius, which makes the area covered more than 2x as large as the untraited version.

A quick example of the untraited bombs being largely useless against moving mobs who don’t have to stay on a capture point or come in melee range to attack you:

Video

Bomb-kit should be changed to Mine-kit, with the bombs having a 4 second fuse, but auto proximity detonating as soon as a hostile is inside their range.

Lots of good and bad suggestions.

It’s obvious, turrets need work. That is something I think a lot of us can agree on. In their current iteration, they are only good when there is a single target to deal with. Outside of 1v1 or a single PvX target, they fail significantly more. Their traits also need work.

Kits:

Flamer – Obviously it could use some re-work.

Elixir – This weapon is pretty good but some slight tweaking to skills would make it function as people would hope it would. IE: Elixir F travelling faster and more bouncing. Fumigate improved, Acid Bomb (aoe circle, aftereffect?, etc), Super Elixir (possibly change it to a water field?)

Grenades – improved delivery speed would be the only thing I’d like.

Tool Belt – tweaks to skills

Bombs – shorter fuses etc, improved aoe, because as pointed out, they are pretty easy to avoid entirely.

Toolbelt skills – There is room for improvement.

Elixirs – There is room for improvement. Less RNG for one. Elixir X could use an entire overhaul. It’s literally a copy-paste of 2 other elite skills. Alchemists would like to be unique. This is an opportunity to do so.

Mortar – exceptional range should be the strength of this elite. It could use some work on the skills, and when traited, should be highly desirable. I could care less what other classes say about range. The mortar when traited shouldn’t be the same range as grenades traited. Lets make it useful, otherwise, we’ll just keep sticking to supply drop since it’s the only good elite.

Necropost! I tweaked the suggestions (removed some, changed some). I’ve sort of given up on my Elixir X idea. It would be unwieldy to implement and also a cool change would be to give the Engineer something completely different outright than a simply RNG copy of another class’ elite.

I still think about [Bomb] (Bomb Kit 1 skill) and sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be better as a 2-part skill chain in which the second part would prematurely detonate [Bomb] a player’s command (even directly after dropping it) and then raising [Bomb] to a 1-second recharge. That might also be too overpowered, though. It would pretty much turn Bomb Kit Engineers into walking explosions that deal a consistent 180 PBAoE range 2-3k damage every second depending on their gear and traits. Dunno.

Again, shame devs never discuss these things.

Swagg.9236:

Necropost! I tweaked the suggestions (removed some, changed some). I’ve sort of given up on my Elixir X idea. It would be unwieldy to implement and also a cool change would be to give the Engineer something completely different outright than a simply RNG copy of another class’ elite.

I still think about [Bomb] (Bomb Kit 1 skill) and sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be better as a 2-part skill chain in which the second part would prematurely detonate [Bomb] a player’s command (even directly after dropping it) and then raising [Bomb] to a 1-second recharge. That might also be too overpowered, though. It would pretty much turn Bomb Kit Engineers into walking explosions that deal a consistent 180 PBAoE range 2-3k damage every second depending on their gear and traits. Dunno.

Again, shame devs never discuss these things.

Bomb Kit has 2 problems that face it at the moment:
1: PVP players complain about it being spammy and with little counter play because you cannot tell at all what kind of bomb is placed.
2: Outside of PvP and in open-world type scenarios, Engineers essentially kite themselves. Bombs explode behind the Engineer, which basically makes BK the strongest when running away

I find that with Bomb Kit the essential problem with it is that it is mad strong in essentially 2 formats: PvP with conquest, and in PvE dungeons when meleeing bosses.

In the first format PvP, enemies must come to you as they must contest the point. They will end up eating all your AOEs you place at your feet simply because there is no-where else to go. This is half the problem with the format having capture points that are simply way too small, and half that traited bombs cover essentially the whole point. This leads to complaints that a Bomb Engineer (latest meta is condition cleave with focus on Burning damage) is excessively AOE Spammy and there is little counterplay.

In the second format, PvE Dungeons, bosses move very little when engaged in melee (which is pretty much the only reason why Warriors are viable with their superior power scaling to reward melee risk). Bombs then become actually viable, consistent DPS that is even usable while kiting as a bomb would then explode behind the Engineer, providing DPS even if the boss is chasing.

The only problem is that Bomb kit becomes significantly weaker when enemies are given space and incentive to kite. In addition, fighting a Bomb Engi essentially involves strafing or dodging backwards to force Bomb engis to run forwards, leaving bombs behind that do no damage – unless you get Glue Bomb or another Immobilise off. This is particularly important when fighting actual smart opponents in WvW

I have thought long and hard about Engineers obtaining true PBAoE using Bomb Kit and I think that the way bombs are fused and are placed at the moment are the issue here. I believe that if bombs are placed slightly forward of the player (say, ~180 units, or the traited bomb radius) such that a player moving forward without swiftness would have the bomb explode directly at his/her feet – then the problem of the Engineer essentially kiting himself is solved. In increase in casting speed would also work, but would also need to come with a change in distance the Bombs are placed forward of the Engineer.

This new bomb placement would essentially make the Engineer want to strafe from side to side exactly as a true Melee player would as the threat radius of the engineer is now slightly forward. Enemies in contact with the Engineer would want to flank in from the side and behind as there is no threat of explosions from there. Fighting a Bomb Engi would involve getting right up into point blank range to allow weaving just as a D/D ele would do the same to minimise damage against melee opponents.

This would obviously have ramifications for changing the Bomb placement animation.
Placing Bombs forward would also mean that telegraphing which bomb is placed is now extremely important.
It is vitally important that the type of Bomb that is placed with BK is visually distinct from the rest.

I know that it sounds like an indirect nerf, and it is. But giving what is essentially a 5 target maximum 180 range cleave with other, cleaving utilities sounds quite excessive already.

MonMalthias.4763:

Your post on Engineer Bomb Kit.

This is why I love bumping this thread. This was a really enlightening post and had great ideas in it. I mean, I’ve played with Bomb Kit for quite some time now, and I realize how dancing about in a circle while an enemy chases you often spells doom for that enemy, but I never really thought about it as broken until I read through that. Your idea on changing Bomb Kit 1 has some merit to it and I’d like to re-think my Bomb Kit suggestion upon going through your post.

Also, bump because huge update to the Turrets/Overcharges suggestion.

Great list! Some of these things were already suggested way back when the game started. Unfortunately they have the tendency to not only ignore the problems of this class but also completely ignore the solutions offered them to fix it.

One of the things about the Bomb kit is they keep playing with the explosion radius of everything, they need to increase it to what it was, It’s a bomb, it’s supposed to have a wider explosive radius than handheld weapons and I completely agree with you on the speed differences it’s stupid.

Here’s to hoping someone pays attention to your post tho! (raises a glass)

This is almost unrelated to the past few posts and would also require a arge amount of redesign making it unlikely for any attention.. But consider this:

What if Bomb Kit skills could now be charged by holding the button down, and activate apon release. There could be 3 stages of the charge, the 1st stage would simply drop the bomb at your feet and act identical to the Bomb Kits current design but the 2nd level would boost the damage slightly and allow you to throw the bomb ahead of you with it detonating a few moments later after releasing the key. The 3rd and final charge could increase the damage/effect and the range that the bomb would travel even further while also allowing it to detonate immediately apon arrival. When thrown these bombs could arc similar to Throw Mine but function identical to the Warriors Greatsword Skill “Bladetrail”, in the fact that it doesn’t require a target and can be positioned in a strait path in front of you. (This would create a unique projectile instead of simply giving them Grenades wrist crushing Ground Target.)

The intent here is to make Bomb Kit more versatile, therefore encouraging prolonged use of this Kit in stead of its current application of simply swap and drop then swap out to control a Zone, or to escape. If bombs could be charged it would allow much more diverse gameplay while not affecting the Engineers DPS. If the engineer is in close proximity he can simply spam the skills, dropping the bombs at his feet for their usual sustain damage or he could charge them and attempt to burst.

This I feel would be an innovative way to make Bomb Kit’s function more unique while aiding its viability. Now when a Thief jumps you you could quickly drop a Glue Bomb then kite while charging up a Concussion bomb then lobbing it in his general direction.

Food for thought.

Reduce the cooldown on all gadgets.

Increase the health of turrets SIGNIFICANTLY.

Make turrets scale based on your stats.

Add new gadget traits.

Wolf.5816:

Your post on Engineer Bombs

This feels like the missing link between my thoughts and the post made by MonMalthias.

I’d actually be quite for Engineer Bomb Kit 1 being a skill that had the Engineer lob a bomb ~180 range in front of him where it would explode. It would completely change how Bomb Kit is played for damage, but I think that it would overall be a pretty good change by both providing a better tell for the enemy vs a Bomb Kit Engineer (allows them to judge distance and make decisions about engaging the Engineer) and also giving an Engineer a little more elbow-room for using Bomb Kit outside of cramped spaces/tight corners while relatively maintaining its effectiveness in those same locations (it would just require a little more finesse).

I actually really like the bomb throwing suggestion, though! It certainly seems do-able what with the many instances of “charge-up” type weapons such as cannons, mortars and trebuchets. and throwing bombs would only add to the skill ceiling and versatility of the Bomb Kit. I still think that throwing a bomb (relatively) long-distance (maybe something like 600 range max) should be reserved for only the 2-5 skills seeing that the 1 skill does so much raw damage. However, I’m not sure that tying a straight power-up (even slightly) to the distance thrown is a good idea.

Even so, there’s no reason that a thrown bomb itself couldn’t become a line-directed physical projectile with adjustable range that damaged foes that touched it (ala Flame Blast). Then they could chain into [Detonate Bomb] skills that could blow up the bombs in mid-flight and apply their effects at their immediate location (but that might be too good). Either way, Engineer Bomb Kit would gain a whole new dimension to toy with when it comes to placing bombs and dominating a space.

VIVorcha.7853:

Reduce the cooldown on all gadgets.

Increase the health of turrets SIGNIFICANTLY.

Make turrets scale based on your stats.

Add new gadget traits.

I’ve already made arguments about why buffing health and damage on turrets is not going to make them good (it could make them overpowered, though, if taken too far). Gadget traits are cool, but only suggesting that they exist would flesh them out any further than that. Actually speaking of traits, I think that Engineers could stand to have more Turret traits. It’d be nice to see some skill options tied to Overcharge activation (reflection bubbles; AoE daze sonic wave; 300-range AoE pull, etc).

Swagg.9236:

VIVorcha.7853:

Reduce the cooldown on all gadgets.

Increase the health of turrets SIGNIFICANTLY.

Make turrets scale based on your stats.

Add new gadget traits.

I’ve already made arguments about why buffing health and damage on turrets is not going to make them good (it could make them overpowered, though, if taken too far). Gadget traits are cool, but only suggesting that they exist would flesh them out any further than that. Actually speaking of traits, I think that Engineers could stand to have more Turret traits. It’d be nice to see some skill options tied to Overcharge activation (reflection bubbles; AoE daze sonic wave; 300-range AoE pull, etc).

This problem has been in every mmo with 3D graphics and classes with AOE skills that do AOE damage on pets. They need to make all pets immune to a certain percentage of AOE damage say 85% (some games had to go 90 because that’s all most people will use especially in open pvp zergs) or they need to make them untargetable by these AOE skills and only directly targetable with the mouse that way even the Champions we are fighting or bosses won’t instakill them and we’d have a viable build with them again. It’s not that difficult. Other games already did this kind of thing and it worked on their pet heavy build classes has for years in some cases.

@Swagg, regarding Bomb Kit suggestions:
I aim to please.

@Wolf:
I really like the suggestion of adding the Charge skill implementation of Bombs to the Bomb Kit. It’d be the reverse of the Super Adventure Box Mini Bomb and adds a level of interactivity for Bombs similar to Grenades.
It’d also make Bomb Kit Engineers start to complain about RSI again – so I’m not sure if making Charge cast on the 1 skill is such a good idea.
I think the idea has merit on the 2-5 skills as well, but Bomb would have to have its damage increased significantly to compensate for the longer cast. And any damage increase will also be capped by the option to simply drop the bomb at your feet.

It’d be a whole new can of worms to rebalance. I think it might be easier to add more direct damage to the 2-5 skills on charge cast, or more utility.

• Concussion Bomb could pull foes on a fully charged cast, for example
• Glue Bomb could pulse its Immobilise twice instead of just once
• Smoke Bomb could pulse its Blind 3 times instead of just twice
• Fire Bomb could have its direct damage tick harder and the Fire Field persist
• I just don’t think that putting a charge cast on Bomb is a good idea for RSI reasons.
• If Bomb was instead a 6 second cooldown but much higher damage, and a Blast finisher though, we could then transition Bomb Kit to a full utility kit.
• On the other hand, Engineer is really suffering for sustained direct damage already, and turning Bomb into a utility cast will take away everything except for Rifle Hip shot – which is only justifiable if Rifle was actually good at auto-attacking.

@tigurius:
I think that making Turrets

• Short duration
• High DPS if left alone
• Short cooldown (but not enough for 100% uptime)

Would be a good start to re-implementing turrets without having to recalculate their stats altogether.

• Turrets can stay as fragile as they are – if they were on 20-30 second cooldowns.
• They can also fire as slowly as they do – if each hit was significant.
• They can even not scale with Engineer stats at all – because making Turrets disposable means that you now have the opportunity to balance them with far greater granularity without having to worry about stat scaling with certain builds.

I actually like the current implementation of Turrets – for Healing Turret and Rifle Turret – fully disposable, highly useful in their niche. I believe that they should be the “model” such as it were, for Turrets moving forward.

Keeping them as a semi-permanent entity will only lead to one thing: overtuning. It’s happened already with Ranger pets – and now Spirits. Low cooldown, non-scaling, disposable turrets will allow granular balancing, higher Engineer mobility (just blow them up when you want to move), and a more interactive playstyle than just plonking down all your Turrets and beginning to kite.

Swagg.9236:

Wolf.5816:

Your post on Engineer Bombs

This feels like the missing link between my thoughts and the post made by MonMalthias.

I’d actually be quite for Engineer Bomb Kit 1 being a skill that had the Engineer lob a bomb ~180 range in front of him where it would explode. It would completely change how Bomb Kit is played for damage, but I think that it would overall be a pretty good change by both providing a better tell for the enemy vs a Bomb Kit Engineer (allows them to judge distance and make decisions about engaging the Engineer) and also giving an Engineer a little more elbow-room for using Bomb Kit outside of cramped spaces/tight corners while relatively maintaining its effectiveness in those same locations (it would just require a little more finesse).

I actually really like the bomb throwing suggestion, though! It certainly seems do-able what with the many instances of “charge-up” type weapons such as cannons, mortars and trebuchets. and throwing bombs would only add to the skill ceiling and versatility of the Bomb Kit. I still think that throwing a bomb (relatively) long-distance (maybe something like 600 range max) should be reserved for only the 2-5 skills seeing that the 1 skill does so much raw damage. However, I’m not sure that tying a straight power-up (even slightly) to the distance thrown is a good idea.

Even so, there’s no reason that a thrown bomb itself couldn’t become a line-directed physical projectile with adjustable range that damaged foes that touched it (ala Flame Blast). Then they could chain into [Detonate Bomb] skills that could blow up the bombs in mid-flight and apply their effects at their immediate location (but that might be too good). Either way, Engineer Bomb Kit would gain a whole new dimension to toy with when it comes to placing bombs and dominating a space.

To be honest it’s hard to not completely agree with any/all said changes to Bomb Kit. It just feels (opinion) like it lacks any depth. Aside from using Smoke Bomb for stealth/secure stomps and clever use of Big Ol Bomb the actually Kits applications seem so dry.. I’m sure it’s usefulness (and its disadvantages) grow in WvW. But I only play competitive sPvP.

Changing core mechanics on anything, as you know, is tricky business.. The only reason I suggested a slight damage boost on Charging was to warrant your loss of DPS while you are charging the skills. But I have just played a Tourney in my head with your above mentioning of chain skill “detonate bomb” on bomb kit, and it would be VERY fun, particularly if each bomb had a potential fuse of 3 seconds Instead of its current 1/2 second fuse so you could have more time to set up combos before “Detonating” them manually.

The longer fuse/detonate could even be a trait. And would allow for such combos as Laying a Glue Bomb and a Concussion Bomb then swap to Tool Kit to Magnet Pull> Pry Bar>Detonate Bombs. This may sound like an overpowered combo, but given its largely broadcasted set up and lengthy cooldowns I think it would be completely reasonable.

In conclusion. I’m all for it all, if keep writing our thoughts down on the forums perhaps we will over saturate them and a trickle of our hopes will slip through the cracks and be seen.

@Wolf:
I’ve had a similar idea actually – being able to set multiple bombs then pulling foes into it was my first thought. Kinda like setting up a Mesmer’s Shatter.

My problem with it is that Bomb Kit is a sustained damage kit. The auto-attack is one of the few that are worth spamming, yet the only direct damage burst skill is Big Ol’ Bomb – and that resets a fight to end your combo.
It also directs Bomb Engineers more towards the Condi-Burst side of builds which, given that Bomb Kit is already AOE, will do nothing for adding a Power build for the Engineer that also adds high sustained DPS in fights.

Bump because of updates to Bomb Kit suggestions. They’re still pretty rough, but I wanted to try to capture what MonMalthias and Wolf were talking about. I thought that they both had really great ideas.

Flamethrower

Fix Flame Jet range to match animation, or reduce animation range.

This has been an issue since launch, really is past time to fix it.

@Swagg:
You really should link the “charge cast” skill to this page:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charge_skill

Back in beta, certain skills like Churning Earth were Charge Skills and were really interesting. Hold to charge, release to fire. Longer duration channels increased damage. It’s unfortunate that many of the beta Charge Skills were later reworked into long channels. In the case of something like Arcane Blast ; the skill actually consumed energy back when the original design incorporated it.

With Energy changed to Endurance for dodging and other major revisions, such things disappeared. It’s always interesting to trawl through the “history” of versions of skills to look back on what the old design crew cooked up – and you can still see echoes of their work in Trebs, Catas, and other seige weapons although they are conspicuously absent from the bars of players.

MonMalthias.4763:

@Swagg:
You really should link the “charge cast” skill to this page:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charge_skill

Back in beta, certain skills like Churning Earth were Charge Skills and were really interesting. Hold to charge, release to fire. Longer duration channels increased damage. It’s unfortunate that many of the beta Charge Skills were later reworked into long channels. In the case of something like Arcane Blast ; the skill actually consumed energy back when the original design incorporated it.

With Energy changed to Endurance for dodging and other major revisions, such things disappeared. It’s always interesting to trawl through the “history” of versions of skills to look back on what the old design crew cooked up – and you can still see echoes of their work in Trebs, Catas, and other seige weapons although they are conspicuously absent from the bars of players.

That’s a good idea about the link. I’ll do that.

Yes, I very distinctly recall the announcement to remove Energy entirely from GW2. I was pretty horrified. It really is a shame in my opinion, but I suppose that in exchange for energy, the biggest cost to players in using a skill has become activation time—which could really be something on which ANet could capitalize if they just implemented the “charge skill” paradigm more often in skills (either for determining projectile distance or for skill damage/effect scaling) since time is a precious commodity in a dynamic battlefield without mana costs. Aside from CC and movement skills, the “charge skill” mechanic is a key to really broadening the capabilities of individual skills, builds, and—some some extent—even entire classes.

Again, it’s a shame that there isn’t really much spotlight on mechanical improvements to classes (even outside just Engineer). ANet is typically content to pressing an up or down button when it comes to “balancing” or “improving” a skill or build. I guess the most we can do is just keep bumping relevant topics and having discussion on some of GW2’s more interesting design features.

Introduce a trait that improves engineer field blasting capabilities. This can be a major/minor trait, but this highlights combo play styles with engineers.

Some ideas off my head are the following:
- double duration/potency of blast effects
- double range for effect (most effects are limited to 300 range)
- add another effect (kinda like Persisting Flames)

Advent Leader.1083:

Introduce a trait that improves engineer field blasting capabilities. This can be a major/minor trait, but this highlights combo play styles with engineers.

Some ideas off my head are the following:
- double duration/potency of blast effects
- double range for effect (most effects are limited to 300 range)
- add another effect (kinda like Persisting Flames)

Oh man, this is actually a really neat idea. I had no idea that a trait like Persisting Flames even existed. However, it’s true that the Engineer has a disgusting amount of blast finishers, and even though it’s not to say that Engineer players don’t take advantage of them, having a trait or several traits that triggered based on a combo field in which a blast finisher occured could be really cool. It could be like a Kit Refinement type trait except it depends on which combo fields in which you use a blast finisher. Man, that’d be really neat. My head is buzzing with possibilities.

TURRET AND OVERCHARGE SKILL SUGGESTIONS
General

• Picking up turrets no longer invokes a Recharge/Cooldown.
• Turret pickup activation time increased to 1.5 seconds.
• Turret HP saved upon pickup. Redeploying turrets resumes saved HP amount. HP resets to full after 5 minutes of non-activation time from the utility bar.
• Destroyed turrets still incur a recharge time.

Rocket Turret

• Burning damage component removed. This skill now applies 5 stacks of Torment for 3 seconds.

Explosive Rockets (Rocket Turret overcharge)

• Animation changed to incorporate faster projectile travel time.
  OR
• Explosive Rockets now deal AoE Knockdown.

Flame Turret

• Burning duration increased from 2 seconds to 3.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Swagg.9236:

TURRET OVERCHARGES (OPTION 1)

• A utility skill turret’s overcharge now interrupts its respective turret’s current skill queue upon activation (it triggers immediately the second that you press the button).

Erebos.6741:

Overcharges enhance/replace the turret’s regular bolts, meaning the effect won’t activate until the time the turret fires.

This lack of effect activation control makes overcharge skills unreliable (including Cleansing Burst), so don’t be so quick to detonate/pick up!

A simple yet effective solution is to allow overcharge skills to reset turret rate of fire upon skill activation.

Effectively the same result so I support this idea! [+1]

Erebos.6741:

TURRET AND OVERCHARGE SKILL SUGGESTIONS
General

• Picking up turrets no longer invokes a Recharge/Cooldown.
• Turret pickup activation time increased to 1.5 seconds.
• Turret HP saved upon pickup. Redeploying turrets resumes saved HP amount. HP resets to full after 5 minutes of non-activation time from the utility bar.
• Destroyed turrets still incur a recharge time.

Rocket Turret

• Burning damage component removed. This skill now applies 5 stacks of Torment for 3 seconds.

Explosive Rockets (Rocket Turret overcharge)

• Animation changed to incorporate faster projectile travel time.
  OR
• Explosive Rockets now deal AoE Knockdown.

Flame Turret

• Burning duration increased from 2 seconds to 3.

Those are some interesting idea. Direct [Flame Turret] buff could make sense, I guess. However, swapping burning for torment on the [Rocket Turret] makes me think. Sounds like it could lend itself to a condi-burst really well ala necro via use of a pistol main-hand and the Incendiary Powder trait.

Buuuut, your suggestion on picking up turrets is really neat. Seriously, that’s a cool idea. I’m not fully convinced that hp should be saved exactly given that if you rescued a wounded turret and placed it back down as help, it might just end up exploding right as it entered combat. I dunno, it sounds balanced, though. Maybe a trait could be something like “Heal your turret when you pick it up (maybe something like 2500hp or so).” That way, you’d have to spend an awful lot of time picking up your turret just to heal it that way, but it would also get a breath of fresh air when you set it back down into an active fight.

Hello Swagg,

Nice thread btw and thanks for the feedback!
To clarify a few things: saving HP is the drawback to removing Turret pickup Cooldowns.

The drawback is needed because Turrets (as all skills) need weakness/counters to excuse their potency, otherwise players could just pickup and redeploy their Turrets with full health to exploit the lack of Cooldowns.

Even with saved HP there is further counter-strategy where players could pick up their turrets upon impending damage, only to redeploy them immediately after.
Despite rewarding skillful play there is no counter to this maneuver, which creates imbalance (important in PvP), so I thought to include a long activation time to discard the possibility in order to maintain fair play.

This also promotes (or rather doesn’t demote) Tool Kit Turret repair utilities and the Autotool Installation trait, which could persist in effect to stowed Turrets as an additional suggestion.
I also like the suggestion to merge Autotool Installation with Metal Plating suggested in another thread by MonMalthias, even though I personally still wouldn’t take the combined trait as being a strict SPvPer ;P

TL;DR: The motive behind these proposed changes is to allow greater Turret activity by affording them better mobility to comply with exploration requirements, etc.
And confine counter-strategy to maintain balance in PvP.

This is an alternative to other increased Turret mobility suggestions previously mentioned throughout the forums.

Erebos.6741:

Hello Swagg,

Nice thread btw and thanks for the feedback!
To clarify a few things: saving HP is the drawback to removing Turret pickup Cooldowns.

The drawback is needed because Turrets (as all skills) need weakness/counters to excuse their potency, otherwise players could just pickup and redeploy their Turrets with full health to exploit the lack of Cooldowns.

Even with saved HP there is further counter-strategy where players could pick up their turrets upon impending damage, only to redeploy them immediately after.
Despite rewarding skillful play there is no counter to this maneuver, which creates imbalance (important in PvP), so I thought to include a long activation time to discard the possibility in order to maintain fair play.

This also promotes (or rather doesn’t demote) Tool Kit Turret repair utilities and the Autotool Installation trait, which could persist in effect to stowed Turrets as an additional suggestion.
I also like the suggestion to merge Autotool Installation with Metal Plating suggested in another thread by MonMalthias, even though I personally still wouldn’t take the combined trait as being a strict SPvPer ;P

TL;DR: The motive behind these proposed changes is to allow greater Turret activity by affording them better mobility to comply with exploration requirements, etc.
And confine counter-strategy to maintain balance in PvP.

This is an alternative to other increased Turret mobility suggestions previously mentioned throughout the forums.

Well, first off thanks for the input. I really appreciate the conversations that pop up in this thread. Yeah, after thinking about it more, “saving hp” would probably be the most balanced manner of implementing a turret pick-up paradigm that operated without cool-downs. I wonder if they could do it (not sure any deployed item or pet really saves previous existences or not in this game or if they all just assume new instances of themselves; I’m leaning toward the latter).

I also agree that new traits would probably be the closer on a new turret pick-up paradigm. It wouldn’t be enough to just introduce something like that without really supporting such a play-style with a proper trait-base. I mean, sure, making a change like the one you suggested would really change turret play (and, in my opinion, for the better), but what turrets really need beyond better mobility are traits to capitalize on their varied skill chains. Merging current ones and introducing, new active trigger traits would be a great step forward to making turrets truly viable outside of gimmicky 1v1 settings.

Swagg.9236:

I mean, sure, making a change like the one you suggested would really change turret play (and, in my opinion, for the better), but what turrets really need beyond better mobility are traits to capitalize on their varied skill chains.

I agree that improving Turret portability isn’t the most crucial issue (at least from a Conquest PvP perspective), personally I would just like to see some recharges lowered /shrug

What Turrets need?
— To be competitive? — Honestly? I lack the credentials/experience to justify such an opinion.
The only testament to my skill is the odd compliment I get from friendly players in Hot Join/Solo Queue, nevertheless I feel Turrets are somewhat effective as compared to our other utilities/builds.

— To be fun to use? — I currently enjoy them as is, but the small condition removal and situational stun breaker can be frustrating.
The problem with Rumble is how (like all Turret Tool Belt skills) it gets replaced by Detonate ‘x’ Turret while the Turret is active.
This isn’t such a problem with other Turret Tool Belt abilities however, because they all happen to mirror their respective Turret’s talent, i.e:
Healing Turret applies Regeneration, Regenerating Mist applies Regeneration, Net Turret Immobilizes, Electrified Net Immobilizes, etc.

This means that the player doesn’t normally have to sacrifice anything, unlike the Thumper Turret which requires you to trade utility; impeding effectiveness.

I have to go soon so I won’t have time to brainstorm possible fixes just now, but If there’s any one fix I could choose for Turrets in a future patch, it would have to be the aforementioned rate of fire reset upon Overcharge skill activation.

Thanks for reading! ^^

Turrets are so undesirable to most, that I am open to any discussion on improvements to them. But since your brought this thread back up, I have some thoughts on the spread of condition removal and stun breakers in the various utility sets. I feel it is relevant as a suggestion to list.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Spreading-out-the-benefits/first#post3009096

coglin.1867:

Turrets are so undesirable to most, that I am open to any discussion on improvements to them. But since your brought this thread back up, I have some thoughts on the spread of condition removal and stun breakers in the various utility sets. I feel it is relevant as a suggestion to list.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Spreading-out-the-benefits/first#post3009096

Hey, Coglin, I read your post and I completely agree with your thoughts on how it’d be nice to show a little more love (additional condition removal, damage mitigation, skill synergy, etc) to Engineer utility lines outside of Elixirs and—to a lesser extent—kits (since honestly kits are in a pretty good place right now for the most part).

When it comes to gadgets, truth be told, I think that one of the best ways to go about this would be to make gadgets sort of like Engineer signets (hear me out). Gadgets have really interesting and often game-changing active abilities which often promotes use on cool-down or snap-decision-use when an opening calls for it. To this effect, adding interesting passive effects while gadgets are off of their cool-downs would be a nice way to even out their issues derived principally from a lack of traits (and such a change might even compliment future gadget traits should they ever be added).

Things such as:
Utility Goggles

• Added a passive effect when unused: Using a gadget skill or a tool-belt skill heals for a small amount and removes 1 condition. If you removed a condition, this skill enters a 10-second cool-down.
• Healing: 325
• Utility Goggles’ passive ability counts itself when its active ability is triggered.

Throw Mine

• Added a passive effect when unused: When you use a gadget or a tool-belt skill, you drop a bomb at your location that explodes, blinding and bleeding nearby foes (15-second cool-down).
  • Damage: 251
  • Blind: 5 seconds
  • Bleed (3): 5 seconds
  • Radius: 180
  • Combo Finisher: Blast

Could add more depth to gadget-centric combat and could even spawn Gadget-only Engineers that synergize their profession mechanic with their utilities to invent new play-styles and rotations.

As for turrets, I think the solution to making them “better” lies in first updating how they behave in combat (we’ve had a lot of interesting suggestions for that), but also then looking at implementing more active-trigger traits for turrets. Turrets need traits like “Drop turrets from above when you deploy them, dazing nearby foes,” or “When you activate a turret’s overcharge, that turret forms a force field around itself that reflects projectiles.” To be better, turrets just need more skills and need to move easier around the battlefield (that sort of stuff is noted in Erebos’ suggestions above about increasing turret pick-up time to 1.5 seconds, but then reducing their recharge completely).