Guild Wars 2

As the title says – it’s an open question.

Some explanation, however: For the Toolbelt being the Engineer’s unique mechanic, it gets overlooked, and isn’t very good to begin with, in my opinion. This is largely due to the skills involved, and how they’re linked to utility skills, or so I’d say – I’m sure my opinion differs from others, after all. What I don’t think can be disputed is that a class should be evaluated on what they will always have available, above and beyond what they might have available (I’m looking at you, kits, you overloved lumps) – and for the Engineer, the only thing that they will always have is their trusty Toobelt.

So, I’d like to see what kind of ideas others have to make the Toolbelt better.

Here’s a couple of mine:
Unbind Toolbelt Skills from Utilities – Don’t buy anybody any proverb books, this is one situation where I think this mix-and-match kitten’s got to be. There’s skills I only even look at because they give a better-than-others Toolbelt skill, some I look at the Toolbelt skill and go “Well, that’s…just dandy, I guess, if you’re in the mood to screw around.” I’d like to pick what skills work best for me, without having to go “But the toolbelt skill for this one sucks, compared to this other one…”

Rebalance Toolbelt Skills against the Unique Mechanics of every other profession – Yes, including the ones that seem okay or actually seem powerful. It’s important to achieve balance with the other professions, and the Toolbelt is the one thing every single Engineer has at all times.

I also had an idea involving contingency skills that are only available to the Toolbelt, but I’m not sure how that would really work.

Currently we have to create builds using: kits, elixirs, turrets and gadgets.
This is simply too much, we can’t fit it all in.

So how would I improve tool belt?

By making the most usefull gadget effects into the actual tool belt of a kit!

Rocket boots for Flamethrower, sick shoes for Elixir gun, add goggles effect to Big ole Bomb… whatever, just add the stunbreakers, excapes, boosts… to the kits as tool belt.
Just be carefull to leave the usefull kit tool belts that provide utility now (like Big Old Bomb).

Result: we get the effect of gadgets while actually using a full sized kit.
Leaving at least one category out of the 3 slots we have: no more gadgets as seperate slot. Just kits that have them as tool belt, elixirs and turrets.

I’d rather just move the gadgets to the toolbelt entirely, if that’s the idea, perhaps with a chain effect (resetting upon cooldown completion) to continue activating both (or all four, in the case of Throw Mine) effects or something. Some gadgets are actually okayish, and it’d be neat to be able to use them alongside some of my other stuff (definitely help deal with turret cooldown), but I don’t like kits in the least.

I think they’re overemphasized, honestly. That’s why I’m asking for ideas to improve the underemphasized Unique Mechanic of the Engineer, the Toolbelt, as opposed to That One Category of Utility Skills that Seemingly Everyone Loves and Wants to Improve.

I think everyone who plays an Engineer would LOVE to be able to customize his/her Toolbelt Skills. As you said, this HAS GOT TO BE. Period. This would solve most of our viability issues. This also goes with ANet’s philosophy of the Engineer always being prepared!

Med Kit would be the problem, though. Perhaps equipping the Healing Utility(Turret, Elixir H, or Med Kit) automatically takes up that first slot in the F1-F4. I would not see this as an issue. The other three slots, F2-F4, are yours to do with as you please!

My build would run something like this:
Toolbelt skills… F1:Bandage Self(again, F1 Slot automatically takes the Healing Utility compliment) F2: Launch Personal Battering Ram F3: Super Speed F4: Net Attack
Rifle/Tool Kit build, with Med Kit, Elixir S, Elixir B, Tool Kit and Supply Crate/Mortar.
(I like to control the circumstances I’m in regarding a fight in WvW, so I try to utilize ALOT of CC)
As far as Turret Detonation, just remove it. Too often our Turrets melt in a matter of seconds anyway, so that function is really worthless(to me, at least). Just have it explode when the turret runs it’s cycle.

I believe that this change would not make us OP. From reading several other threads, this seems to be what all Engineers want, and need.

Not sure if I would change anything at all. You basically get 2 skills for each utility slot…that’s quite powerful in itself. Of course they’ll need to be weakened a bit to compensate. Compare it to the warrior or thief, who only get 1 skill…or the elementalist, that needs traits just to get skill effects at all. Or the ranger, who gets a pet but still gets 1 skill out of it in total. Or the mesmer and guardian, which get 3 unchangable skills instead of 4 changable ones.

Anymras.5729:

I’d rather just move the gadgets to the toolbelt entirely, if that’s the idea, perhaps with a chain effect (resetting upon cooldown completion) to continue activating both (or all four, in the case of Throw Mine) effects or something. Some gadgets are actually okayish, and it’d be neat to be able to use them alongside some of my other stuff (definitely help deal with turret cooldown), but I don’t like kits in the least.

I think they’re overemphasized, honestly. That’s why I’m asking for ideas to improve the underemphasized Unique Mechanic of the Engineer, the Toolbelt, as opposed to That One Category of Utility Skills that Seemingly Everyone Loves and Wants to Improve.

You touch upon a very simple, and very strong solution:

make all tool belt skills seperate.

1. Create a list of all current tool belt skills that every ability has.
2. Add most, if not all gadget main effects to that list.
3. Balance them out amongst each other
4. Create categories like: elixir tool belts, turret tool belts… etc.
Just make sure every category has most gadget effects in one form or another.
5. let us pick whatever we want, out of each category fitting the skill itself (turret, kit or elixir).

small note: how to detonate turrets than?
Simple: ‘press F’ and forget the whole ‘pick up’ system.
Just detonate, and let each detonate do a knockback without traiting.

…actually, I think Anet’s philosophy was “Uh. This guy, uh, kitten. Where do we take this guy? Let’s make him versatile – but not more so than the Elementalist, that’ll kitten off the Elementalists, uh, medium armor, three weapon choices, reduce the damage for, uh, versatility in kit choice…which class was this again? Ah hell, deadline.”

I know I’m a proponent of making the Engineer the Prepared/Magnificent kitten class. Gotta have somewhere to be the boss.

Yeah, I was thinking it’d be restricted similarly to the default – F1 for Heal, F2-4 for whatever strikes your fancy. Not sure what builds I’d use; possibly Bandage Self, Rocket Kick, Mine Field and Analyze. Turrets explode so often that I may as well just plan for when they’re on cooldown, after all.

…I actually find the detonation pretty useful. I often use it to set off combo fields and knock enemies around (Accelerant-Packed Turrets, see), and kind of think of Healing Turret as a healing landmine/grenade. If they made the turret explode after running its cycle, that would also require a serious bit of work on cooldowns (namely, they’d have to be much, much shorter) and making the Overcharge the default state of the turret.

As for how I’d handle Detonate Turret: When the turret’s on the field, the key corresponding to it becomes Detonate Turret. It’s not a perfect solution (locking off the Toolbelt until the turret is destroyed has always irritated me), but it’s what I’ve got, and it keeps people from using Analyze+Grenade Barrage to inflict sixteen/eighteen stacks of Vulnerability on some poor sap caught in the crossfire of a Rocket, Rifle and Flame turret nest.

Buff em

It’s real real real simple, you don’t have to add juggle mechanics or have to give us 4 more abilities to swap around before combat (I mean seriously.) Just buff it.

If all the toolbelt abilities were awesome you could take anything and you’d still have 4 awesome toolbelt abilities. You don’t need to “swap them for utility” or any other such nonsense, the toolbelt skills already work along the same lines as the abilities they’re linked to.

However, currently they’re seriously weaksauce. Some are pretty good, but the cooldowns are too long to consider them real abilities. The others, as I’ve mention, are flavored with a sauce that is weak.

-Throw elixirs: I’m fine with the random buffs! If we’re going to take away unique aspects to the class, that’s a real sellout situation. Instead, just make any effect you get workable. There’s nothing like throwing an elixir B for a combat buff and getting some …swiftness…. so give swiftness all the time in addition to one of the useful buffs. H needs to have a heal in addition to one of its effects, and if B and H are going to just apply 1 measely buff, it would be nice if that buff at least lasted a while. All elixirs (except U and R) need bigger effect areas to actually buff people, and C could probably stand to have a slightly smaller cooldown for its 1-buff cleanse.

-Minefield: This is awful. just up the damage significantly. If the enemy players are ever going to be destroyed by this ability, it’s their fault for walking over the blinking, noisy, clustered lights. Walk around the kitten things! Also, prematurely detonating the minefield should not trigger the entire cooldown. Just keep the internal cooldown ticking and always follow that.

-Slick shoes haste: I don’t even know why this exists. You can get infinite sprint from speedy kits or just get anything else that doesn’t suck like slick shoes. Make it a frost/cripple immunity sprint for when you want to get somewhere fast and you don’t want junk slowing you down. It needs to last more than a lousy 5 seconds and have a shorter cooldown.

-Incendiary ammo: Buggy. Fix it. Possibly reduce cooldown. A whole minute is a bit much, even if you can prepare for 45 seconds ahead of time.

-Healing mist: It’s a cruddy little regen you can’t even use if the turret is active, so it doesn’t need a 60 second cooldown. Fix.

Everything else is pretty good except many of them just need the cooldowns reduced. I don’t know what non-nords get for their racials though, but cooldown reduction probably couldn’t hurt them either.

@ Anymras, on the turrets:

I would keep the detonate on demand, I wouldn’t keep the ‘pick up’.
Why: pick up still triggers a cooldown almost as long as detonating does…

Detonate at least gives a blast finisher, and in my version a free untraited knock back as well.

Pick up just gives a slightly lower cooldown without any other benefit at all.

If ‘pick up’ would mean I can put it down somewhere else the next second… THAN I would find it usefull.

I’m pretty okay with messing with skills between fights, myself – I do tend to change things around when I’m not in a lot of danger, to be fair, so I can see how it could be irritating for someone in the middle of, I ’unno, some place full of monsters to swap things around.

As for the having four awesome toolbelt abilities…well, that’s great and all, but that very thing where they all function along the lines of the Utility they’re attached to is kind of a problem, in some cases, particularly as it prevents a bit of skill synergy that could otherwise be available – like that very Analyze+Grenade Barrage+Turrets example I give above to explain leaving Detonate Turret on the F-keys. (After all, nothing says you couldn’t place the turrets immediately after using the skills.)

I don’t consider the Elixir’s randomness to be a ‘unique’ aspect of the class, but, to be fair, I don’t think any other class can’t tell what boons they’re about to give their allies. There’s “work with what you get” and then there’s “Well, great, I stealthed the Warrior and Stabilitied the Thief.”

I do like the rest of the ideas that you put forward, though. And yeah, Asura and Charr get long cooldowns on their racials, too.

Edit: Picking up the turret does reduce the cooldown by 25%, which can be great if you can get to the turret to begin with; not entirely sure what the point of removing it would be.

Anymras.5729:

Edit: Picking up the turret does reduce the cooldown by 25%, which can be great if you can get to the turret to begin with; not entirely sure what the point of removing it would be.

Throw Mine works on a special cooldown. After you throw it it already starts the cooldown. If some hapless sucker trips it, the ability button is available again and you can just throw a new one if enough time has passed. Turret pickups could be like that. If you pick up a turret that’s been there forever, you could just move it to a new spot right away. It’s perfect.

I don’t understand why you would want to achieve any additional convoluted synergy between loadout abilities though. Keeping it simple is sometimes better rather than Anet having to nerf things because a few abilities had to get together and make 18 stacks of vulnerability and ruin it for the rest of them. I personally don’t want to be paying another “versatility” tax for the meta versatility of our versatility tag-alongs abilities.

That should be how it was to begin with – it’d be the only explanation for the cooldowns of most of the turrets that I can think of, at least.

That eighteen stacks of Vulnerability in two moves requires one Grandmaster trait (or it’s sixteen, if you don’t have that), good aim with a Grenade Barrage, and drops off sharply after five seconds, when the Steel Powder vulnerability wears off. I can easily keep an enemy at somewhere north of 15 Vulnerability with Grenadier, Grenade Kit and Barrage, along with miscellaneous Condition infliction, in the middle of, potentially, four damage-dealing turrets and one net turret (via Supply Crate with Elite supplies and usual Utility skills), as it is – drop that to three damage-dealing turrets if I were to, say, switch in Utility goggles for one of them, to access Analyze and Fury, so I could get three chances for a critical hit at an increased rate against an enemy with 25 stacks of vulnerability. It’s not really hard to do to begin with, just requires a particular loadout. For my part, I don’t quite understand why you wouldn’t want to increase the potential synergy.

As for why I really want to be able to switch toolbelt skills around? As a turret engineer, I’m plagued by long cooldowns on most of my utility skills. Unless they reduce the cooldown, and I doubt they will, this will always be an issue – it forces me to decide whether I want to use any of my skills in a fight with random enemies or hold off in case I need them around the next corner, either waiting out the cooldown in a game where things often respawn quickly, leaving them placed so I can try to kite into them in a game where both turrets are fragile and the earlier statement about respawn is true, or going around the corner empty-handed, hoping not to run into something nasty. That’s why I picked, if you’ll notice from the “what I would probably use,” things to 1) Heal, 2) Damage, 3) Increase damage dealt and 4) Deal damage while I run in circles like an angry, drunken hamster in a sideways wheel.

I think this is the right approach to take when discussing engi buffs. Anet’s obviously not going to hand out a nuclear bomb kit or a gatling gun turret, so it’s a good idea to focus on small, reasonable buffs aimed at increasing build variety.

1. The ability to select toolbelt skills: my personal favorite. Alternatively:

2. Improve toolbelt skills to buff certain builds: I would suggest things like:
—Kit toolbelt skills now include a condition removal and a stunbreaker
—Turret toolbelt skills now include a projectile reflect (and turrets get reduced CD on pickup)
—Elixir toolbelt skills’ stability and protection are reliable, not RNG
—Gadget toolbelt skills have reduced cooldowns

If they do use the Independent Toolbelt Skill idea, then I’d hope they’d eventually start putting in skills specific to the Toolbelt, even if they’re skills that have to be bought, that would allow a variety of interesting effects that we’re currently lacking, or entirely new things that play off of our current loadouts in some way.

Would absolutely love a Projectile Reflect that doesn’t require either a shield or the Flamethrower, too – good idea.

Oh, and some freakin’ direct heals, especially for party members. Could really use some more of those.

Lots of good suggestions here, but I still think the cleaner way to change the Toolbelt is to make the Toolbelt the place for our kits.

The suggestions in this thread are along the lines of:

- allowing us to pick Toolbelt abilities independently of utilities.
- allowing us to equip gadgets in our Toolbelt.

These are both accomplished by moving kits up to the Toolbelt. Give us 2 kits slots up there (and leave the healing slot up there as well, since our heals are balanced around it), and then let us have our 3 utility slots.

Move all of the current Toolbelt skills down to the utilities section, rename them gadgets, and change any trait that affects the “Toolbelt” to affect “gadgets.” Now, Static Discharge would go off when you used any gadget, and our “Toolbelt recharge reduction” from traiting into Tools would actually now affect all gadgets. This would provide a nice little boost to existing gadgets by allowing their recharge to be reduced, and leave the previous Toolbelt skills completely unchanged.

This negatively effects Elixir builds which use Formula 409 and HGH, so the next step would be to make all Elixirs able to be tossed, have Formula 409 cleanse 2 conditions instead of one, and allow HGH to stack 3 or 4 stacks of might per Elixir instead of the current 2 stacks. You make these traits twice as effective to account for the fact that you can only equip half the Elixirs you used to be able to equip.

I say give us 2 kits slots only, because honestly I feel like having 3 slots for kits on the Toolbelt would be too powerful. It would allow any Engineer, even those specializing in Elixirs, pistols, or rifles, to take an additional 15 bonus attacks. That’s too much. 2 kits, I feel, strikes a nice balance. Yes, we can no longer equip 3 kits. Most of us didn’t before, anyway, so there’s not much lost, there. The additional versatility and strength granted to us from being able to take a full 3 utilities/turrets alongside 2 kits more than makes up for the loss of that 3rd kit slot.

The end result is, all Engineers can now take a main-hand weapon plus 2 kits, completely independent of our utilities. Our utilities, then, are free to be customized any way we want. We also gain a nice little boost to our gagdets, since they are now affected from the recharge reduction in the Tools trait line (and can trigger static discharge), and Elixirs also get a buff, since all of them could now be thrown.

-Travail.

Okay (cracks knuckles like he’s about to play a piano)

Toss Elixir H Always gives protection duration 10 s
Regenerating Mist Gives a small burst of healing that scales with +healing before giving regen to allies.
Detonate Cleansing Burst Now creates a water combo field for 15 seconds.
Toss Elixir B Always gives retaliation, gives one of the following boons randomly: fury, might, swiftness.
Toss Elixir C Converts 1 condition to a random boon for allies, creates a light combo field for 10 seconds.
Toss Elixir R New Duration 12 seconds.
Toss Elixir S Always grants Stability with the new duration of 10 seconds.
Toss Elixir U Grants Quickness for 4 seconds, creates a random spell at the location.
Launch Battering Ram Interrupts casting and cripples struck foes.
Rocket Kick Change completely to rocket leap, the engineer is shot forward with his gear shield in front of him, knocking the enemy back and interrupting casting.
Mine Field Plant Mines around yourself. (Mines now are mostly focused in front of the engineer where they are most needed, have a much larger explosion radius and actually trigger when an enemy comes within ten feet. When Homing Device is traited, the mines will get up and crawl towards the target that the engineer is fighting)
Super Speed Now has a new duration of 10 seconds.
Throw Napalm Throw a ball of napalm that explodes on impactl burning foes at the target location. Now creates a fire combo field for 8 seconds.
Surprise Shot Fire a volley of shots are your foe. 5x 1,160. Range 1200. ….OR….
Fire a powerful shot, damage increases with vulnerability to target.
Rocket Fire a rocket out of your belt that explodes on impact burning foes around the target location.
Shockwave Release a shockwave of inertial force to damage nearby foes, launch nearby foes.
Big Ol’ Bomb Now has a reduced timer, activates .3 seconds after being placed.
Grenade Barrage Throw several grenades at once, applies 4 of each condition damage type to the enemy. (since most likely the engineer didn’t pay attention to what he was grabbing)
Healing Mist Vent a healing mist that initially applies a heal equal to 10% of the total regeneration time modified by +healing, applies regeneration.
Throw Wrench Now causes confusion when not traited to cause immobilize.

The ability to customize your toolbelt loadout is an amazing idea and one I heavily support, but one problem sticks out. Toss Elixir R. Currently, this is tied to a sub par stun break, and though the couple of extra dodges are nice, I personally have only ever equipped Elixir R for it’s toolbelt skill, specifically for a self rez. I believe the stun break is so sub par for balance reasons, sure you can rez teammates or self rez, but you’re giving up a utility spot to do it, for the most part. Customizable toolbelts would make this something that I would see pretty much every Engi bringing along, even with it’s 2 minute CD, which of course, will lead to the masses shouting that Engis are OP, etc. To be honest, I’m not sure how I would fix this problem. Figured I’d shove in my 2 cents, but all around, there’s some great ideas in here! Say what you want about where engi is currently in balance, but besides the whining (which I myself have been guilty of a few times), I truly believe that Engineer has the best profession community in the game. Cheers.

…my initial suggestion would just be accomplished by making it so you could choose your Toolbelt skills separately from your Utilities, really. The gadgets and kits in toolbelt thing is mostly Kimball. Interesting idea, though.

Anyway: Thanks for the suggestions on how to rebalance the toolbelt skills themselves.

Toss Elixir R is something of an issue, true. Not sure how to handle it; I’d probably just leave it as it is, really. Is there potential for abuse, and people possibly considering it OP? Of course there is. I just don’t know if the risk is too great.

Just to be clear, I didn’t mean that how Toss Elixir R currently works is an issue. I was just thinking that if we were able to pick and choose our toolbelt skills at our leisure that there might be potential balance issues if every engi is carrying a self rez. Just wasn’t sure if I made that clear or not lol

Yeah, I got the idea, don’t worry.

I think Kits need to be buffed to be adequate weapons, with some mediocre toolbelt skills.
And gadgets/elixirs need to get strong toolbelt skills.

If the flamethrower has a knockback, whats the point in personal battering ram? Well, personal battering ram becomes appealing if it was good (bigger range, shorther cooldown, slightly bigger blow out/longer knockdown) and had a good toolbelt skill it can compete with flamethrower.

If not, then either kits will always be lackluster, and if kits arent lackluster then gadgets would be pointless. Yay for making weapons share the same slot with utility skills…

Honestly, Elixir R probably shouldn’t rez us in the first place (it’s one of the Toolbelt skills that is way too strong to be only 1/4 of our Toolbelt.) I would have no problem with the devs removing the ability of Elixir R to rez it’s user. It wouldn’t be a very popular change, I’m sure.

-Travail.

I think it’s fine the way it is. It has a pretty obvious circle showing where you threw it and your body can still be knocked out of it. Or just out damage the heal, it only lasts 6 seconds I believe and it takes 2 pulses (2 seconds I believe) to rez you. No more OP than a warrior’s traited vengeance or that one that the mesmer has (forget what it’s called).