Guild Wars 2

Would it just break the game or something? We can only use three weapon sets to begin with, and one of them (pistol/shield, arguably dual pistol as well) is such low DPS that it is nearly unfeasible to use on its own. Our AoE kits mostly make up for this drop in damage, but to the point where using your own personal and stat-wielding weapon is potentially worse, and makes builds limited.

I admit I can’t speak for PVP balance, but considering the madness that certain other classes can pull, blocking once with a shield on a long cooldown hardly seems unfair.

I really love the rifle skills. All of them are actually useful and the auto-attack even pierces, but it’d be nice if I could actually use a shield without being mostly useless. Getting weapon swap probably won’t happen, but it’d be a much more fun class if it did.

Well, it’s not a question of game-breaking, but rather balance. Look at the elementalist; they also do not have the option to swap weapons, but they have a crazy amount of skills to choose from thanks to attunements.

I think I get where you’re heading, but weapon swap isn’t a viable option when kits already exist. The option, in my opinion, would be to implement another kit or just give engineers another weapon to choose (cough hammers). No need to fool around with the class mechanics.

Also, the shield is fine. Both of the skills can repel both melee and ranged attacks with even sweet daze to top it off. Not being to block a pull is not the shield’s fault Pulls are meant as interrupts, one way to counter-balance blocking.

The OP means that to use a shield he must take the pistol, which is a drawback I would agree with. The shield skills are great.

How about a one handed kit so you can still use shield or pistol then again doesnt toolkit have shield like abilities?

Toolkit has a shield use (#4) that blocks almost everything for three seconds.

I believe engineers can’t switch weapons for two reasons. Primarily it’s the design function similar to elementalists (as stated above) as classes with kit/attunement features aren’t allowed to switch weapons in combat. This might actually be a gameplay thing, as it could be confusing if you were constantly swapping weapons while you had a kit on, or if you did it by accident.

Additionally the weapon switch macro (~) is already used to get out of Med Kit once its been triggered, as re-equipping Med Kit does not take you out of Med Kit like it does other kits.