Guild Wars 2

I want to get a good idea as to what other people would like to see from the Engineer profession. I’ve posted my own ideas here before, with bittersweet response.

A few rules to follow on your submissions though:

1. Do not talk about current bugs. Nothing like “we don’t have working deployable turrets!”
2. Explain your idea, don’t just give a few words.
3. Keep in mind that others may critique your ideas (including me!), so take criticism with grace.

Go ahead and post now. This next stuff is just me explaining my personal opinion. Engineers are the embodiment of creativity. Magic, science, nature, experimentation, we use everything and anything to manipulate the world around us, and do so in order to make ourselves a force on the battlefield unmatched by sword or spell. However, the current available skill sets put us more along the lines of “commando/soldier” than they do inventor/engineer.

We have rifles, grenades, bombs, flamethrowers, which are all arguably very “military-ish”. This has been justified by the fact that Charr are the fore-bearers of Tyrian engineering. They invented the technology, they used it to kill the titans that enslaved them. BUT! Asurans are also natural engineers, sylvari are natural scientists, (norn are uh.. connected to all the other races that invent things?), and humans are adaptable enough to learn, practice and develop their own mechanical/alchemical creations.

Spill it! What ideas have you got?

EDIT 5 We are running out of room on my top post here. If someone from ANet sees this, please, if you can – create an entry below the first post that I can keep amending suggestions to!

+ A condition melee kit (perhaps the Chainsaw Kit suggested by Karast?)
+ Kits scaling with traits (a classic, but definitely a goodie)
+ Current rifle skills -> Shotgun Kit. New rifle skills instead.
+ Gatling Gun/Minigun Kit + +
+ A reliable (non-RNG) “big item skill” like reflecting walls, group stealth or group stability
+ A pure-DPS elite skill (I thought Mortar fit this role, since it summons a rifle/flame kit, does damage on landing, and drops some healing stuff/turret ((okay last one isn’t DPS…))
+ Siege Repair abilities
+ Turret customization (both looks ((possibly based on race)) and behavior)
+ Gadget-based Elite skill. We have turrets and potions, no gadgets though!
+ Reliable stability
+ Incorporate more TF2-Engi style turreting as opposed to current incarnation
+ Leg/Helm/Chest/Arms Augment skill tree ideas (shamelessly mine)
+ Make our skills more “oomfy” (visual flare) so that they feel stronger without needing any actual changes to make them stronger
+ Ability to put sigils on our kits
+ Exploding med-kits
+ More large-area utility skills such as walls and Mesmer portals
+ Kit skins (including legendary ones)
+ Hammer added as a weapon set
+ Beefier turrets
+ Less/No Random effects
+ Stealth/Cloaking Device as a utility or weapon skill somewhere
+ Turret cooldown reduction trait
+ Faster turret summoning
+ More choice of sigil usage (we are limited since we only get one weapon set)
+ Make ‘Tool Kit’ support turrets better, and be a more effective melee kit.
+ In addition to the post above, a suggestion here that I definitely agree with: “Make tool kit THE turret weapon kit.”
+ More kit mechanisms like Kit Refinement and Speedy Kits
+ Make underwater Engi combat more interesting. Improve underwater kit functionality!
+ Railgun kit. Also, a nail-gun kit that uses improvised tools for attacks.
+ More shotgun weapon skins (so that we don’t look so rifley)
+ Grenades becoming Grenade-kit has made itself visible again!
+ Summonable Multi-function passive-effect proccing backpack. Go go gadget death machine!
+ Smart targetting turrets
+ Improved flamethrower
+ Rifle turret -> Minigun turret & Rocket turret -> Homing missile turret
+ Healing turret that does pulse heals instead of having to pick up/re-summon turret
+ Flamethrower kit comes with a gas mask
+ Pistol skills to animate with both pistols instead of just one
+ Sniper Kit + +
+ The ability to lob grenades down a hill (distance improved by pure falling)
+ More color slot options for goggles
+ Weapon slot modifiers that slightly-modify weapon skills. This is an amazing idea proposed by CriSPeH for an alternative to weapon swapping.
+ Rework pistol to be rewarding, strategic, and powerful in line with weapons other classes enjoy.
+ RPG/Bazooka/Rocket Launcher kit
+ Blunderbuss has multiple shots (repeated attacks)
+ Underwater mines become depth charges

More added when provided

I would like to see a Melee cut that revovles around Condition Damage. At the moment the Tool Kit sits a little uncomfortably between Power and Condition Damage. I’d like to see the kit as a hammer.

I would like to see kit’s scale with weapons.

Reason: We use our kits more often than weapons in most cases and having it not scale with weapon is incredibly stupid and makes our class inherently worse at scaling than others.

I would like to see a viable long ranged weapon aside from grenade. Being able to use a rifle as a rifle would be nice for example, would much rather a shotgun kit get added to the game with the current rifle abilities and the current rifle abilities to be retooled to resemble a rifle.

Reason: Mostly gameplay related I feel neutered at range and I do far more damage at close range because that’s where most kits synergise the best with your main weapon. Thematically, hip firing the legendary rifle looks all kinds of stupid.

First I totally agree with nofo, would love to see the shotgun (current rifle abilities) become a shotgun kit and the rifle remade into a rifle.

Nearly every rifle skin in the game is just that.. a rifle. None of them look much like a shotgun and as 1 of only 2 classes able to use a rifle it makes me wonder who exactly the skins were designed for. Hipfiring any large caliber weapon is not only stupidly inaccurate but downright dangerous.

Even RL shotguns are shoulder fired, no one outside of random action movies would ever actually hipfire a shotgun, you’d A) miss and probably hurt yourself. And no one.. at all.. ever.. hipfires a rifle.

On a completely different note:

I would love to see a gatling/minigun kit. Give it a trait like old juggernaut, or else allow it to ‘deploy’ (let number 5 have no CD and like 1.5-2second cast that roots you and gives stability, then allow it to either increase fire rate or else increase accuracy (if the base weapon is inaccurate).

It could even be an elite kit, I would totally give up every engineer elite for it.

Something like that is just… droool.

I am fairly happy with engineer, but there are a few things I would like to see.

The big items are things we already have but cannot use in an effective way.

Such as group stealth, group stability, and projectile reflect walls. These are really strong abilities, that are at times must have group utility skills in WvW, PvE, and SPvP. While we do have access to these skills, they are part of RNG mechanics, so we can’t guarantee we will get the skill we need, when we need it. We cannot be counted on to provide the needed skill at the needed time, so it is better to bring someone who can and will rather than risking death / loss on an RNG mechanic.

But I would too like to see a more thematically rifle- like rifle ((without losing the current rifle))

A ST melee kit, could easily be condition based using bleeds / burns. Chainsaw comes to mind as an option.

A DPS focused elite skill. All our elites seem to focus on control. I would like something that did a bit of dps. The above suggest machine gun kit, or a rocket launcher kit, or something similar could work.

Or something different.

I want to be able to repair siege :<

I also think being able to equip 2h hammers would be a pretty nice addition. Give the 1-5 some nice engineer-related skills, like an AoE daze and maybe a leap or whirl gap closer of some sort.

I would like a rune or some kind of more customization for turrets.

I’d like to see:

Turrets that scale with the user to some extent. Maybe some customization, with different equippable barrels/power sources/armor platings/ammunition? Customization’s likely to be a bit too much, but scaling would make them more viable.

Maybe a Grenade Launcher weapon (not kit), that basically works as a less powerful Grenade Kit – firing one grenade per shot, targeting single enemies, with a small AoE effect perhaps comparable to the Pistol’s Exploding Shot. Maybe give it a mode swap so that it’d be able to switch from ground-target to hostile-target, but that would likely just make it pointless.

A melee weapon option for combat would be nice. No idea what it would be, but it would be nice to not need Toolkit to slap things around. Perhaps a shock-stick or something?

At least one Elite skill of each skill type (Turret, Gadget, Elixir) available to us, at both 10 points and 30. As it’s currently set up, there’s Elixir X (10 points, Elixir-type), Supply Crate (10 points, Unclassified (Drops bunch of turrets and medkits)) and Mortar (30 points, Turret-type) – no Gadgets at either rank, no Elixir at 30 or Turret at 10 (except for the turrets the Supply Kit drops), making specialization kind of suck when you have to pick an Elite. I’m still saving up for Mortar (even though I’ve heard that it sucks – might as well see if it’s any good, right?), but I likely won’t use it often, due to the immobilization factor involved and the amount of aggro I tend to collect – a more turret-like Turret would be just dandy, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it might be to a Gadget Engineer that there’s no Gadget Elite, leaving their Gadget traits only useful for their non-Elite skills.

Reliable stability would be the holy grail. But I don’t think we’ll ever get it.

As unbalancing this would probably be, I’d like to see a racial kit: more than any other profession would engineers be influenced by their upbringing. The art of shooting things, hitting things and magic, to a lesser extent, are fairly universal With the way things are, engineer technology feels predominantly Charr in style.

Admittedly, this may because I get to see all the sparkly technology whenever I go home to Rata Sum, and all the turrets I drop look incredibly clunky…

Venthus.6137:

As unbalancing this would probably be, I’d like to see a racial kit: more than any other profession would engineers be influenced by their upbringing. The art of shooting things, hitting things and magic, to a lesser extent, are fairly universal With the way things are, engineer technology feels predominantly Charr in style.

Admittedly, this may because I get to see all the sparkly technology whenever I go home to Rata Sum, and all the turrets I drop look incredibly clunky…

Hrm, maybe racial graphics for turrets would be nice. Their own kits though would be a pain to balance.

I’d love to see some kind of chainsaw-type weapon, so we have a reliable source of damage at melee range. The attacks might look like:

1: Buzzcut – Continuously damage an enemy in front of you, like the Flamethrower, but shorter range. Applies Bleeding (1 per hit would make sense, but fewer would seem more balanced). +5% damage to Sylvari (ok, maybe not that one)
2: Whirling Slash – Spin 360 degrees, damaging and bleeding all enemies in a circle around you.
3: Frozen Chains – Like Buzzcut, but applies Chilled as well.
4: Acidic Chains – Like Buzzcut, but applies Poison.
5: Devastating Slash – A slash that applies Vulnerability to your enemy.

I just think it would be fun to hear the sounds of a chainsaw in the midst of combat.

A long range option.

That’s all really.

I would like to see a viable turret build.

GW engineer is based on TF2 Engy, and Engy uses turrets. Maybe things can be done with the Wrench to help out—make base turret weaker, but has very low cooldown. Then make the wrench give it bonus/reduce activation cooldown. This way, Engy can drop turrets when needed, but they won’t be extremely powerful when unmanned.

Also, CHAINSAW!
But Rhett’s chainsaw needs more pizazz.
- need CC—> Takedown: You kick down the enemy, and then slice the target to bits, crazy murderer style.
- need for mobility (gap closer) —> Skate: Ride on your chainsaw forward, boosting your speed for a short distance and shredding enemies that you passed by. Effected enemies are given Roadkilled! achievement.

Also, kit skin would be very nice.

Viable turrets can happen very very easily.

Make them scale with all stats. Damage, toughness and vitality.

Then they are worth it. Till then? They are just a nice concept.

Okay everyone I’ve gone ahead and edited the top post to reflect a summary of all the suggestions so far. I don’t know what “+1” does really, but if it helps increase the visibility of this post, by all means do it!

I’d also like to discuss some of the ideas, because a lot of them are really kitten. I’m glad that so many people are of the same mindset as me, thinking we need to be more engineer and less soldier.

Lewis Burnell

I would like to see a Melee cut that revovles around Condition Damage.

I agree. Right now our current melee option (wrench) is something that I’m in the mindset of thinking should be more turret based than it is. We would need another melee option to even it out. I think that Karast’s suggestion of the Chainsaw would be an excellent idea to do both. Chainsaws cause bleeding, and I’m sure other things that wouldn’t be too good. I’ve always been partial to something like “Giant handheld drill” (dredge inspired?), which might be able to do the same as the chainsaw, except it would be less “Doom” and more “Dig Dug”.

nofo

I would like to see a viable long ranged weapon aside from grenade. Being able to use a rifle as a rifle would be nice for example, would much rather a shotgun kit get added to the game with the current rifle abilities and the current rifle abilities to be retooled to resemble a rifle.

The more I read this, the more I start to agree. I LOVE my rifle skills as they are, but they really don’t fit the look (at least on most of the rifles they don’t). Here’s my idea to incorporate yours. Shotgun is now a kit (with a kitten looking shotgun!) Rifle is now a sniper kit. It’s got 1500 range traited, one of the skills allows you to stealth for up to 15 seconds if you are /not/ moving. Firing the weapon doesn’t unstealth you, but does make you half-visible for about half a second. This is the #5 skill and has a 45 second cooldown (non-reducable for balance). Imagine the other skills as you want, but I think this would be a unique way to bring both range and utility into the class in weapon form.

I personally would love to see more and more kits added as time goes on. Mini-gun, drill, golem arms, grenade launcher, all sorts of fun stuff if they played their cards right.

Lyuben

Viable turrets can happen very very easily.

I like turrets a lot, even though they are kinda kitteny. I would only love to see more improvements made though. Take Xocolatl’s idea for example; turrets can be upgraded with something like a wrench whack.

Anymras

At least one Elite skill of each skill type

For some reason when you mentioned elite gadget, I imagined how the old mines worked (mine kit) where you could throw out multiple mines. However, this time it would be as an elite, with the knockback and everything – 5 throwable mines with increased damage and knockback would be AMAZING in WvW. Just get rid of the Mortar and call it good!

Injecting some of my own ideas here. Skill type; “Augments”. Arms, legs, chest and head (chest = healing augment). These are toggles that have both passive boosts, as well as tool kit abilities that use their respective body parts. You can have all 4 toggled at once if you so choose (though many may find it useful to just keep a single augment on their bar).

Augment Helm: Passive: Grants Fury for 10s after each kill. Active “Engage enemy”: Break stun, and grants the next attack a critical for +25% crit damage (1 min CD)

Augment Chest: Passive: Grants regeneration for 10s after every 5 hits. Active: “Shell Shock”: Heals the Engi, setting up a close barrier for 2s to repel/daze physical attackers and reflect projectile attacks.

Augment Legs: Passive: breaks immobilizes/cripples, granting immunity to both effects for 10s (30s internal cooldown). Active: “Thrusters”: Grants the engi swiftness for 15s and breaks immobilizes/cripples.

Augment Arms: Passive: grants ‘might’ for 5s for every attack used (realistically this /could/ be 8 stacks in the best of conditions. Nothing to sneeze at but in no way OP). Active: “Tantrum”: The next 5 attacks cause 2 stacks of bleeding (each), and any melee hits against the engi will trigger knockback against the enemy (5s).

EDIT: Oh, and these will definitely come with some sort of animation on the character. I’m not sure how..

A long range, direct targeted weapon.
Preferable one that doesn’t rely on condition damage.

I just want our current moves to feel stronger, like not be stronger but have more visual appeal.

For example, the overcharged shot doesn’t really feel like the huge knock-away blast it is and maybe a flashier animation and deeper, louder sound. Something that tells the opponent they were hit with an attack so strong it cc-ed the user. Currently its like the normal rifle shot with a larger smoke cloud, meh.

The other skills could use more visual flare too, like the utility goggles could have like light flash from your eyes for a second or rocket boots having a special flying backwards animation instead of just looking like you got hit by any normal knock-back. I just feel like the engineer would be more fun with cool animations.

@LoreChief
I never asked for this.

Jokes aside, i’d prefer stats and sigils on kits (i’m not even sure if the devs have stated that it’s a bug or not)
I’d also like kit refinement to work better with medkit. Who thought it’d be a good idea for a medkit to explode when activated?
It’s not related to engineers, but i’d also like to be able to quote people without the forums bugging up on me.

Oh and for the engineer to be able to set up more stuff like walls or things team-mate use, think mesmer portals but do something else.

Skins for kits

As the majority of us use kits most of the time in place of regular weapons, I hope we can change the skins of our kits. One cultural set per race, one from dungeon, one from personal story, one from adventure/explorer’s achievements etc.

Re: kits scaling with weapon stats

Personally I feel it makes more sense not to scale with weapon stats since you “unwield” the weapon to hold the flamethrowers and other kits. This said, tool belt skills still scale with weapon stats if you use it when you wield your weapons.

The practical problem in my eyes is that, on the one hand, the current situation does discourage us from getting the legendary weapons, since mostly unwielded and not offering stats and sigils; on the other hand, everybody’s kits are all the same, in terms of cosmetics and in terms of stats.

Legendary Kits

In this case, I’d prefer an upgraded version of current kits. Each kit shall have a legendary version, in which some kit skills may use higher scaling coefficients; some may yield more stacks, some more hits, some longer duration, etc. Or perhaps there is an advanced refinement effect when swapping. This can be more efficient and direct than to adjust the stats.

And yes, it shall have a distinguished appearance.

Should also post this on suggestion forums imo.

Legendary Kits
In this case, I’d prefer an upgraded version of current kits. Each kit shall have a legendary version, in which some kit skills may use higher scaling coefficients; some may yield more stacks, some more hits, some longer duration, etc. Or perhaps there is an advanced refinement effect when swapping. This can be more efficient and direct than to adjust the stats.

Why not just have kits scale with weapon and have skins you can apply to your kits much in the same way you would a normal weapon?

The more I read this, the more I start to agree. I LOVE my rifle skills as they are, but they really don’t fit the look (at least on most of the rifles they don’t). Here’s my idea to incorporate yours. Shotgun is now a kit (with a kitten looking shotgun!) Rifle is now a sniper kit. It’s got 1500 range traited, one of the skills allows you to stealth for up to 15 seconds if you are /not/ moving. Firing the weapon doesn’t unstealth you, but does make you half-visible for about half a second. This is the #5 skill and has a 45 second cooldown (non-reducable for balance). Imagine the other skills as you want, but I think this would be a unique way to bring both range and utility into the class in weapon form.

Oh god this sounds sexy, I like your suggestion.

I would be happy with a viable ranged weapon and a rifle that behaves like a rifle. But kitten this would be going above and beyond the requirements.

edit: Oh, having turrets scale to gear as well would be real nice, they are a novelty at the moment.

General improvement to the whole turret/toolkit synergy. I don’t feel this is anything like as important as kits scaling or rifles being rifles though.

Mif.3471:

A long range, direct targeted weapon.
Preferable one that doesn’t rely on condition damage.

Yes, and I would like to see our weapons do what weapons are supposed to do: doing compareable direct damage.

In pistol-builds the conditions are doing the damage (with offhand-pistol doing no damage at all on more than close distance), in rifle-builds the real damage comes from toolbelt-skills and lightning-trait.

Kits either suck damagewise or are only good in certain situations and when traited (grenades, bombs)

LoreChief.8391:

+ Replace Grenades with Grenade Launcher (provide new behavior)

No. No. NO.

Other then that, Engi is perfect the way it stands now in my opinion.
I really feel there is no need for more kits or changes to certain kits.

We just need the bugs fixed, the turrets need a bit more oomph and I would love not lose over 2k hp when changing kits. (the usual weapon stat problem).

Frankly, I find all these suggestions somewhat bizarre.
We already have so much diversity and cool tricks up our sleeve.

Still, just one guys opinion here. Carry on.

- Some more weapons (preferably hammer)
- turrets which will not break in one hit
- better elite skills! (a dps one, engineers dps is kinda sucky)
-less elixer randomnes
-A long range weapon (we got really aerodynamic grenades, so we throw those further then we can shoot bullets..)

nofo.8469:

Legendary Kits
In this case, I’d prefer an upgraded version of current kits. Each kit shall have a legendary version, in which some kit skills may use higher scaling coefficients; some may yield more stacks, some more hits, some longer duration, etc. Or perhaps there is an advanced refinement effect when swapping. This can be more efficient and direct than to adjust the stats.

Why not just have kits scale with weapon and have skins you can apply to your kits much in the same way you would a normal weapon?

As I explained I don’t think it makes sense if kits use or scale with weapon stats, but I am not against it. After all, it is easier to implement.

Besides, an addition effect is more sexier than pure stats. 3 stacks of confusion become 5 stacks. Or, an advanced Super Elixir when swapping to Elixir Gun. Or, 40% projectile finisher. This is more interesting (and I believe more powerful too.)

Siofra Crumble.2098:

….
Other then that, Engi is perfect the way it stands now in my opinion.
I really feel there is no need for more kits or changes to certain kits.
….
We already have so much diversity and cool tricks up our sleeve.
….

I kinda agree with you:)

But embarrassedly, I still desire some vanity.

like you said about shotgun kit and new rifle abilities. Mainly a hard hitting snipe shot to open with

I actually kinda intended the Grenade Launcher idea as a new weapon idea, not a Grenade Kit replacement – that’s why it’s a toned-down Grenade Kit with hostile-targeting instead of ground-targeting, so people like me, who use turrets constantly, can use a diverse variety of conditions with a touch more style (and perhaps a little more oomph?) than dual pistols without having to sacrifice a turret for it, Grenade Kit fans can use a version that doesn’t stress their fingers (I’ve certainly seen a fair few posts about repetitive stress injuries and the grenade kit) and still be able to switch to the kit for a bit more oomph and AoE.

Grenade Kit’s fine; sure seems to be one of the few aspects of the class the devs pay any mind to.

Re: Grenades

I think the current behaviour is really close to reality.
Disadvantages have been elaborated a lot, while with the current ground targeting feature, sometimes I can actually hit the rivals before they can hit me, not because of the distance, but thanks to the obstacles in between.

For example, once I found an angle at which the grenades could pass through a gap between two staircases and hit the mobs badly before he could reach me, once I threw them at the mobs high above on the tower whereas my pistols were blocked by the wall of the tower, etc etc… This might be just very situational but such parabolic flight is irreplaceable by direct lines.

As there will be inevitably a longer duration for such parabolic flight, the grenades will never hit anything if it is people targeting. The foes will just move away in any random direction easily without need to dodge at all. However, while the grenades flying in the air without being tied to the location of the foes, it is more difficult to predict where it will fall. Plus it actually has a radius of explosion. I feel people targeting will make the hit rate even worse, unless we are talking about heat-seeking missiles.

In a sense if the grenades would be thrown automatically in different manners to arrive at the targeted location, if there is an AI to help avoid throwing grenades directly into obstacles, the issues could be greatly improved.

For example, the grenades are rolled over the ground and bounce towards the location. Perhaps other throwing routes would be automatically chosen by such AI to allow grenades to arrive successfully at the targeted ground under many more different situations, rather than got stuck and exploded. For example, in a cramped room, or in a case where we want the grenades to roll into a hole or any other sort of cavity.

Anyway, I think even in reality, the grenades won’t explode upon hitting a wall in the middle, it shall still bounce back to the ground and explode with a delay.

Re: Sniper

There are actually already such weapons in game. For example, there are a few snipers on a tower in a lvl 50-60 map in the northeast. It does target at people, not ground. The bullet travels with a long duration. It misses very often even the victims do not have a clue that they were aimed at.

Even if it hit and took away more than 50% of HP in one shot, at the distance of 2000, the mob recovered to his full health before the cool down finished. So I wondered what is the use of it?

In reality, the sniper shooter mostly got the chance of one shot. If he fails, he exposes his location. He will get back fired without the mobility to escape. So I think it is fair there would be a price to pay for such a strong weapon, and it would be even more situational than grenades.

Even so, if we form our own nice portfolio of all these kinds of situational kits, we engineers will still be (actually I feel already are) powerful (situationally).

I dont want much just my stats from the rifle if i equikittent. Srsly its annoying as hell.
We are the only class with such a crap implementation and such a big differnce between sPvP and WvW/PvE.

Another cool thing would be a reliable stability/stunbreaker as well as a teleportation skill. I could cry rivers every time if i look at ele stunbreakers.

a “sniper” kit

Stealth so i dont need to level a Thief

Gunblades. I would like gunblades.

Rapid turret deployment trait, that reduces turret cooldown by 20% (that stacks with the reduction from picking up the turret as opposed to destroying it).

It occurs to me that the Legendary Rifle is essentially a modern sniper rifle. I find that odd, firstly because it sucks when you compare it to other Legendaries (Dreamer, Eternity), and secondly because it doesn’t fit at all with what the Rifle can do. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a Barret .50-cal fire a shotgun blast (Blunderbuss).

This makes think that either The Predator needs a re-skin (my choice), or the Rifle skills need to be more Sniper-y.

Also, Turrets are 75% of the reason that I can 1v3 and come out alive. Triple Turrets plus Supply Drop has saved me so many times in WvW and sPvP. That being said, once those turrets are gone, I’m vulnerable, and am missing 1/3 of my skills (because the Turrets are on CD). And, of course, smart enemies will just run out of range and stalemate me into leaving my little protective bubble of turrets. Rapid Turret Deployment would be a huge help.

Also, maybe this should go to the Suggestions Forum? Maybe.

• Viable turret build for sPvP that ISN’T bunker.
• More sigil choice. We can’t use most sigils because we lack weapon swap. Make it work with kits.
• A skill that gives guaranteed stability. We have none. Throw Elixir S cuts close but it’s still random.
• Not having a large majority of our traits/skills be bugged.

Another one handed weapon would be nice, preferably a melee one. A mace would fit, I think. Hammer would be cool, too, but since kits are just 2h weapons, our “hammer” would probably just end up being a kit.

I would like to see the toolkit redone a bit so it isn’t thought of as our melee kit. It seems to be made to support 2-3 turrets and I would like to see it upgraded to suit that role better.

Okay, sorry for the delay on the latest update. It’s up there now.

Additionally, I’ll post this to the suggestion forums (link will be in top post shortly). Everyone else do your part to make sure it gets as much visibility as possible.

EDIT: I’ve updated the top post with the link in the suggestion forums.

Funny thing is, we have a good amount of suggestions being offered.

For example, we have 1500 range grenade kit, and folks ask for ranged options as if they do not exist.

Viable turrets.

We have them hundreds and thousands of engineers successfully us turrets and grenades every day.

The OP suggested “+ A condition melee kit (perhaps the Chainsaw Kit suggested by Karast?)” Yet we have bombs that are melee range with 3/5 bombs being conditions. Why are we demanding more skills that are redundant?

Turrets are not bad at all really. There are simply two problems with turrets. First problem is most people approach them with a closed mind and do not know how to think outside of that very small box to use them. Secondly, people who keep hearing they are bad, and them they tell other people they are bad, when they never even tried them. I have read post from people claiming they are bad and the reasons they gave were even fixed before release, clearly showing they hadn’t even tried them, for themselves. . It is like it is some lazy fad to hate on them. Do they need improvements, well yeah, a lot of engineer stuff needs improvements. They are great for combo fields, knock backs, they distract mobs and allow you to go aggro free when you want. They disable, immobilize, and do damage with very little attention needed from you. My favorite, is when “deplorable turrets” trait is functional properly on all turrets, you can place them out of reach of melee mobs, or in hard to reach locations that make them very useful at times.

Nobody is saying turrets are useless, people are saying turrets are far from optimal and only viable under specific circumstances, I do use them just fyi, just not for the majority of activities.

Grenades used on land thrown towards my target, as is done underwater.

Someone mentioned the turrets being more like TF2, funny enough I’m playing an engi just the way it is in TF2.

The only thing turrets are currently missing, according to my experience anyway, are :

1. Reduced(more like halved) cooldowns when they are picked up outside of combat. It’s rather annoying that I have to wait a whole minute before using my missile turret on another set of creeps. It makes placing the turret pointless unless it’s a veteran creep or you’re in the middle of an angry mob and need more firepower.
This would even be logical cause I saved my turret and why wouldn’t I be allowed to redeploy it faster.
However this should only be applied to turrets that can attack foes. Halving the cooldown of a healing turret would give engineers too much advantage in PvP. I haven’t played any PvP yet but I’m guessing someone would find a way to exploit it eventually.

2. Better looks. Rifle turret, with all honesty, looks like a peashooter. I remember having a wallpaper of a char engineer with a minigun turret beside him, I want that.
Better yet make it so it acts like a minigun too. I don’t mind seeing a lot of small numbers when there are A LOT of small numbers.
Missile turret too, 3 barrels and that’s it. Rather make it 1 barrel with all the shiny widgets so it looks more like a javelin launcher than 3 bamboo sticks tied together.

3. Slightly higher damage output. I can imagine this being an issue in pvp balance but PvE needs it.
Turrets don’t deal the damage you’d expect them to. True, missile and rifle turrets can beat up 1 creep with no fuss but when you really need them to deal damage they don’t deliver.

4. Missile turret needs to be AoE damage. I don’t see how this wasn’t included in the concept. 1 minute of cooldown for a slow projectile that does do rather high damage, considering the rifle turret, but has a pretty unusable secondary function as most of the time I’m running around like a headless chicken trying to dodge.

5. Turrets to target my target. Rather annoying how even though I’m beating to death 1 creep my rifle turret felt it was more important to drag in that other creep which was minding his own business not trying to kitten me.

6. Healing turret either needs a buff on the regen it gives or a secondary ability that has the same cooldown as the turret and heals for the same amount as when placing the turret.
Currently the healing turret is hardly for use in solo situations as when you place it, you will either have to destroy it to have the big heal available in time or begin another fight without a ready heal.
Other classes place their heals on the floor and the heal skills start recharging immediately.
The healing turret doesn’t start recharging until you destroy it making the regeneration bit it does quite pointless.
Also fighting MK I’ve found out that the field effect is quite useless when dodging all the floor AoE effects that pop up. It’s just not something of a priority to stay near.
In short it either lacks mobility or potency.

I’ve yet to find an activity that my turrets were not useful in. I’ve run them from 1-80, I use them in events and dungeons with almost 100% uptime during combat, and I use them in WvW (which has helped me have a far higher win to lose ratio in 1v1 and even 1v2 combat situations).

I would love to see a faster deployment time on them, but in the end they do exactly what I want them to.

I don’t deny their usefulness, hell I can’t see myself using a toolkit as I’m too attached to the turrets, but there’s room for improvement.

coglin.1496:

Funny thing is, we have a good amount of suggestions being offered.

For example, we have 1500 range grenade kit, and folks ask for ranged options as if they do not exist.

Have you every really truly used nades at 1500? Do you not know how incredibly stupid someone has to be to get hit by nades at 1500? Even if they don’t actually see you, they will see the red circles at their feet and that’s pretty much the signal for anyone to either walk (because nades take forever to reach anything that far out) out of said AoE or do a dodge roll.

coglin.1496:

The OP suggested “+ A condition melee kit (perhaps the Chainsaw Kit suggested by Karast?)” Yet we have bombs that are melee range with 3/5 bombs being conditions. Why are we demanding more skills that are redundant?

Bombs are melee ranged on a timer. Again they REQUIRE stupidity on your opponent for them to hit. So here are the requirements for actually getting a hit.
1. get in range
2. plant the bomb
3. pray the target is dumb enough to stay there (stupidity)
or
1. get the target to chase you (stupidity)
2. plant bombs while running
So the utility of bombs that so many speak of (the delay between planting the bomb and the explosion) requires target stupidity. For PvE, that is a given.

The difference with a bomb and a melee swing is that damage actually happens on the swing and not a sec after.

Hey guys make sure that the general focus is on providing creation “wants”, more than in depth critiquing of each others opinions, especially when it’s about already-in-game skills/behaviors!

Grenades have their use, but it is not the same use as say a ranger with a longbow, a warrior with a rifle – which is something that many engi’s (including myself) would like to see. That’s all I’ll say on the subject since it’s been covered a lot in many other parts of the forum.

I like everyones input on the behavior of turrets. They can really act pretty dumb, and having the ability to either force them to target your target, or force them to target what you TELL them to target would be a massive improvement. I can think of many instances this week, just during the halloween events, where I was like “time to unload on this champion skeleton!” only to throw out my turrets and have them target random stuff around me OTHER than the champion skeleton. Facepalm Turret activated.

A lot of what this thread is for is to generate those ideas and get them out there, so when they say “what kind of things should the Engi get?”, there is a thread out there that a lot of engi-lovers have commented on, that has a lot of insightful and creative ideas. Also, I didn’t suggest the melee condition build, but I certainly won’t tell ANet not to give us a new one because we have one that kind of works the same way.

Variety is the spice of life.

ANYWAYS! Keep em coming with your cool ideas everyone! If you think it fits the Engi as a concept, put them here. I’ll be updating this list until it stops getting any action.

EDIT: Please be adults in this thread. Keep it on topic, don’t let it turn into another pissing contest about whether Engi’s are “good as they are” or “super underpowerered”. That’s not the point of this thread. COME UP WITH COOL IDEAS. Just do it, if you can’t, read this thread to be amused and/or inspired. Don’t come in here trying to start arguments.