Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing GW2 since launch and loved the idea of being versatile enough to make my character great for a particular type of combat. So it saddened me to realize upon reaching 80 my class and play style (pistol, turret engineer) was far below my peer classes in terms of both damage and adaptability. So my rather large idea to fix this is as follows:

Ammo Modification Mechanic

Seeing as all the weapons we have available to us are projectile weapons they all have one thing in common, ammo.

The concept would work in a similar way to the elementalist in terms of their switching between attunements and would replace the toolbelt. Rather than have a mishmash of somewhat random skills based on what utilities we want we could instead have ammo variants.

One example might be that we could load an ammo that bleeds the target(piercing ammo) to an ammo that for example slows it(chilling ammo). I realize the effects mentioned we already have on some skills but they are just quick examples.
Having a mechanic like this I think would fit the engineer class down to the ground and make the engineer truly versatile in terms of choosing what weapon you want to use be it a harpoon gun, pistol, rifle or even a kit.

Our kits are after all use ammo of a certain type too, you could apply the same concept to the flamethrower for example and switch it between a Napalm mix which would burn and a liquid nitrogen mix which could chill. This ammo idea could also be applied to our turrets giving them the same ammo effects when they fire as the player is shooting.

Although it would be a somewhat large makeover I really think this would pull all aspects of the engineer together around one solid concept, what you load into your weapon is what counts.

What do you guys think?

I think this would be a sick idea, bullets for bleeding, burn , chill. This would be especially good for people who don’t want to use kits in their build. I feel like we shouldn’t HAVE to take kits to do decent damage and control but at the moment it feels this way because grenade kit is basically the best thingwe have.

I think its a bad idea. As you mentioned elementalist swapping attunements as a reference, well we already got the option or choice of that with kits.

Tool kits do not use anything I consider ammo, just saying.

Not to be negative nancy but they don’t even have people doing actual simple bug fixes(like fixing a text field in tooltips) so I highly doubt we will see many changes like this.

coglin.1496:

I think its a bad idea. As you mentioned elementalist swapping attunements as a reference, well we already got the option or choice of that with kits.

Tool kits do not use anything I consider ammo, just saying.

Don’t forget elementalists get both attunements and Kits, they 2 very different concepts. In fact most classes get a skill kit of some type as well as the option of weapon swapping which i consider to also be a kit.

The problem with the Kits we have currently, or even all the skills we have is that they have no relation to each other and therefore difficult to balance.
This is almost certainly why we didn’t get runes on kits or equipped weapon damage until recently and even now people are in an uproar about how the grenade kits is way overpowered.

The engineer as it is currently in my opinion seems to have way to many different skills without any real focus bringing them all together. Many of these skills and kits people never ever use, the Elixir Gun instantly springs to mind, how many times have you seen people running about with that on?

Moddo.7105:

Not to be negative nancy but they don’t even have people doing actual simple bug fixes(like fixing a text field in tooltips) so I highly doubt we will see many changes like this.

I agree to an extent.

I’ve had the idea in my head for a while and put off typing it up because of that reason, but if I don’t put it out here its definitely not going to be considered.

Twitchz.6407:

The problem with the Kits we have currently, or even all the skills we have is that they have relation to each other and therefore difficult to balance.

It is hard to determine what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?

Twitchz.6407:

This is almost certainly why we didn’t get runes on kits or equipped weapon damage until recently and even now people are in an uproar about how the grenade kits is way overpowered.

Really? Most people are in an uproar that what they felt was our only shot at burst damage equivalent to other professions burst, got nerfed.

Twitchz.6407:

The engineer as it is currently in my opinion seems to have way to many different skills without any real focus bringing them all together. Many of these skills and kits people never ever use, the Elixir Gun instantly springs to mind, how many times have you seen people running about with that on?

I agree with this only in reference to kits. They do mix and match damage, control, and support on kits. it could be beneficial if they specialize. Outside of kits I disagree with you conpletely. I feel all of are gadgets are very control oriented, all of our elixirs are very buff oriented, and all of our turrets are very crappy minion oriented.

coglin.1496:

Twitchz.6407:

The problem with the Kits we have currently, or even all the skills we have is that they have relation to each other and therefore difficult to balance.

It is hard to determine what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?

Sorry I missed a ‘no’ in there. What I meant was they seem to me to be random ideas that the devs thought would make a good skill for an engineer. A lot of them don’t really have en enginery feel to them nor do they have seem to have a central idea about what the skill is aiming to achieve in a build.

coglin.1496:

Twitchz.6407:

This is almost certainly why we didn’t get runes on kits or equipped weapon damage until recently and even now people are in an uproar about how the grenade kits is way overpowered.

Really? Most people are in an uproar that what they felt was our only shot at burst damage equivalent to other professions burst, got nerfed.

Exactly, you hit the nail on the head. As it seems trying to balance weapon damage and runes on top of our current kits is no simple business and by adding that damage in they felt they needed to remove it from somewhere else.
Clearly they need to sit down and look at the engineer as a whole rather than trying to patch on parts other classes have to try and make up the difference.

Question: How do you propose to change med-kit? The loss of the toolbelt skill would vastly hinder its self-healing capacity.

pioshock.7508:

Question: How do you propose to change med-kit? The loss of the toolbelt skill would vastly hinder its self-healing capacity.

Off the top of my head I’d probably add the heal to the Drop Stimulant skill and change the description to something like “Use a stimulant to heal yourself and drop a stimulant that grants fury and swiftness”.
They both have the same CD so I don’t see why they cant be combined.

While it’s a nifty idea, the problem is a lot of us like the Engineer for how it plays right now. A rework isn’t really what I’m after at least, personally. I love the Engineer, it’s just the numbers need tweaking and certain things need to be enhanced. The concepts as they are currently are fun and engaging.

I like this idea but only if it worked for our weapons.
Since we are limited to Pistol and Rifle as our weapons. ( Shield isnt exactly a weapon )
I think having some type of equipable ammo mod would be awesome, it would be something that is Engineer specific and can be collected like Ranger pets. If it was made so that Engineers have a new slot where the usual secondary weapon slot would be that you could equip an ammo mod into would be nice.
Anything to give our few weapons more options would be awesome.