Guild Wars 2

I haven’t been playing Guild Wars 2 very long and I don’t do much PvP or WvW or SPvP or whatever all those acronyms mean, but I haven’t seen many posts on here about viable Gadgets usage for the engineer. Does anyone use gadgets or does the flexibility of kits outweigh the small limitations of our gadgets?

Would the developers care to comment? Do they see the gadgets as a useful and meaningful part of our skills or are they mere novelties used to fill in space?

Does anyone have any suggestion for a gadget build?

The only reason i use gadgets is because their toolbelt abilities are great to use with static discharge…the main abilities just take too long to come off CD.

google.3709:

yup, cool down is the only problem with gadgets, other than that, they have good skills and are fun to play with

Gadgets need to be worth a utility slot in comparison to a kit, and as said above cooldowns are one way making headway here.

I feel like cooldowns are a good start, but since kits offer 5 additional skills to use which have an array of possible uses, I think gadgets should offer a little something more, even if they intend to bring the cooldowns down. I can’t see Throw Mine as ever being more applicable to use over the Grenade kit in any circumstance, EVEN if they reduced the cooldown to 5 seconds. Perhaps an on hit effect which enhances your rifle or pistols. For example a passive effect for your rifle skills. Every third skill shoots an explosive mine round that detonates on impact causing bleeding or some such. What do you guys think?

Throw Mine has the boon stripping and knockback which you can’t do with a grenade. Plus it is a blast finisher. I wouldn’t say I’d choose Throw Mine over Grenade kit. They complement each other though.

I used goggles a bit before too for the Analyze toolbelt skill and that worked well in lots of 1v1 situations. I don’t think one could get by with a mostly gadget build though.

I agree. The throw mine has differences, but as you said, would anyone really choose it over the grenade kit? The same could be said of all the different gadgets. Would you choose the ram over the flamethrower? Or the shoes (either pair) over the elixir gun? Or the goggles for that matter over any of the Elixirs? Let’s hypothesize and say that all the gadget’s had their coo ldowns reduced to 10 seconds? Would that make them worth slotting over a kit or elixir?

EVEN if they reduced the cooldown to 5 seconds

I’m sorry did you just say that on demand 5s cd launch would not best grenade kit?
Ah, you.

I don’t think one could get by with a mostly gadget build though.

They would force you to use rifle of course and X/30-X/0/0/30. Excellent in 1v1, almost guaranteed win with that ridiculous amount of control. But 1v1 is not encouraged in most areas of the game.

I only use 1 gadget and that’s due to it being one of the few toolbelt items that has less then a 30 second cooldown.

The cooldowns on some of these items in this class are just outrageously long and need serious adjustment.

I used to use goggles for example but it actually has a longer cooldown then the ramhead and is less useful in pve considering you can cc anthing that does knockbacks so they never reach you and knocking back the enemy before they can stun you is very satisfying.

Gadgets are really specialized in control, which is what makes them harder to make full builds around because the group is not highly diverse. That said, they definitely have their uses if you have/need an extra slot for some control. I carry Throw Mine around since it’s a pretty reasonable cooldown even without Speedy Gadgets (which didn’t work with it before this patch anyway) for a blast finisher, knockback/down, and boon stripper. The others are on a bit long of a cooldown though, but so are a lot of our skills for what they do.

bromi.7809:

EVEN if they reduced the cooldown to 5 seconds

I’m sorry did you just say that on demand 5s cd launch would not best grenade kit?
Ah, you.

Even if they did make it 5 seconds, in a 1 v 1 situation, the mines can be evaded. The grenades have an advantage in that the frost grenades can be used to create a buffer in a 1 v 1 situation. The mine has a terribly small radius. But for the sake of considering, let’s say it was 10 seconds. Would that make it more viable in that slot?

athuria.2751:

Gadgets are really specialized in control, which is what makes them harder to make full builds around because the group is not highly diverse. That said, they definitely have their uses if you have/need an extra slot for some control. I carry Throw Mine around since it’s a pretty reasonable cooldown even without Speedy Gadgets (which didn’t work with it before this patch anyway) for a blast finisher, knockback/down, and boon stripper. The others are on a bit long of a cooldown though, but so are a lot of our skills for what they do.

Forget a full build, please discuss the disparity between using a skill slot for a gadget over a kit. What I would like to know is if the gadgets in their current iteration warrant a skill slot over a kit. And do the developers feel that the gadgets are underdeveloped?

If you’re looking for what gadgets do (control/breaking control), then yes (the control on kits doesn’t justify taking them to me if you don’t have a use for the rest of the kit, because they aren’t as strong). Like I said, they’re very specialized—you’ll either have a use for them or you don’t.

As for how the developers feel, hell if I know. I’ve not seen much of anything on gadgets from them probably because Engineers don’t say as much on gadgets. They’re not as popular as kits, but not as broken as turrets, and they just kind of get forgotten about.

let’s say it was 10 seconds. Would that make it more viable in that slot?

Tbh yes. Especially if they somehow fixed RNG of toolbelt counterpart.
I’ve tried it for a bit and its a real good control its area of effect is surpisingly nice.
With 10s it could be like a smaller but much flexible version of BoB.

I’ve played quite a while with mine in spvp just for the sake of it. You would be surprised how innovative you can be in people bowling game even with 20s cd. The trick is not to use it like a fence between you and enemy. You throw it from aside and then boom man goes from some ledge to oblivion.
With 10s it would bring joy enough in spvp, could be even useful in zerg www.

But a 10s utility would go against arena’s concept of game anyway.

I think no one talks much about gadgets because there are a few of them that are just outclassed by other skills. Take utility goggles vs elixir b for instance. Both on same cooldown, and both give fury, but elixir b also gives three extra boons. What utility goggles offers is a very situational immunity to blindness for ten seconds and a stun break. Which is too bad since stuns last between a second and two and I’m most likely to be dazed or knocked down in pvp situations.
As for battering ram, I’m sure I wrote about it yesterday, but if you want knockback there are better utilities to take instead of it with longer range, shorter cooldown, etc.
Rocket boots: It might have is used if chilled, but no one likes to watch their character cc themselves.
Throw Mine and slick shoes are pretty good, too bad slick shoes suffers from a one minute cooldown.

While I agree that minor tweaks such as the cooldown need to be looked at, the biggest problem I see with gadgets is the lack of traits built for them. Gadgets only get a 20% cooldown reduction, but look at how many traits do elixirs have! Turrets, kits (both for specific kits and kits in general), even pistol and rifle have multiple traits to benefit from. Hell, even the shield trait gives more than a cooldown reduction, and that’s just for 2 skills on a offhand weapon, let alone an entire class of utilities.

The way I envision gadgets is them being the ultimate surprise factor, based on skills such as rocket boots and slick shoes. Perhaps making all gadget skills instant cast would also serve to make them unique. I know, most of them already behave that way. But being able to PBR a warrior while knocked down would be pretty sweet and maybe even justify its current cooldown. Idk how that would work with the mine, but it’s a concept nonetheless. How about adding some gadget traits that give more synergy between the gadget itself and their respective toolbelt skills?

I’d be happy if Mine kit used an “ammo” system or something.

Remove mine field, and replace it with “detonate mine(s)”. Allow 2 or 3 mines to be placed (indefinitely? or 3 minutes…) with say, a 10 second cooldown between each placement, and possibly 20 seconds on recharging mines.

Devinchi.2756:

Hell, even the shield trait gives more than a cooldown reduction, and that’s just for 2 skills on a offhand weapon, let alone an entire class of utilities.

It works on Gear Shield from tool kit as well, one of the best blocks in the game. Just saying.

I use gadgets from time to time, and they work in certain situations: i.e. I use slick shoes when running into a zerg in WvW, Rocket Boots has a nice blast finisher attached to it, but I do agree some changes would be nice. Slightly reduced cooldowns and more trait options that effect Gadgets would be nice. Heck I’d even drop the cooldowns argument if we had some sort of signet effect or an interesting trait effect to go with them, like Kit Refinement for Kits.

Penguin.5197:

I think no one talks much about gadgets because there are a few of them that are just outclassed by other skills. Take utility goggles vs elixir b for instance. Both on same cooldown, and both give fury, but elixir b also gives three extra boons. What utility goggles offers is a very situational immunity to blindness for ten seconds and a stun break. Which is too bad since stuns last between a second and two and I’m most likely to be dazed or knocked down in pvp situations.
As for battering ram, I’m sure I wrote about it yesterday, but if you want knockback there are better utilities to take instead of it with longer range, shorter cooldown, etc.
Rocket boots: It might have is used if chilled, but no one likes to watch their character cc themselves.
Throw Mine and slick shoes are pretty good, too bad slick shoes suffers from a one minute cooldown.

Knockdown/back launch and daze all count as stuns for the purpose of stun breaks,
I use rocket boots, just because any situation i get cc’d is a situation i want to gtfo of. and this does that job.
Ram does need a change imo, mines not too bad, neither are the goggles and slick shoe a not that bad, just doesn’t fit into my build.

Had an idea for them awhile back, what if they had a 2 part activation, use it once, get one effect, use it again for the other and it goes on CD, similar to turrets.
Take slick shoes, part one leave trail of oil that knocksdown people going thro it, part two set the oil on fire to create a fire field.
Ram, p1, gain protection, p2 the launch.
goggles…….some kind of lazer beam :\.
stuff like that