I'm' back! Kits...required?
WvW? Not at all.
PvE? Probably.
For example, right now leveling I’m running this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUhusYNVw2Kw6FLkG0YAa+z/K9pbdYuHaQB
Focusing on maximizing DPS from explosions and static discharge, among other short CD proc traits, while also gaining the group benefits from turret traits.
(Just tools and explosives in leveling right now, haven’t unlocked 3rd – but use 3rd in PvP)
I seem to take things down quick while leveling, and I’m using all my abilities basically on cooldown, so I’m not wasting any of them. In the Mists I seem to be able to take down the combat training classes fairly easily as well.
Is a build like this horrible at end game?
(edited by Lucky Charmz.5089)
The problem is unlike most other classes, most of our dps is in the weapon kits. So to achieve our top dps, you have to use at least 3 kits (grenade definitely, flamethrower, elixir gun, and bomb depending on circumstances, and mortar is usually the elite pick).
That said, there are some good scrapper builds that don’t use kits as much because hammer is a kitten good weapon…
That really stinks.
Does that mean, though, that if I don’t care as much about DPS, and I’d rather build a bit more supporty (not exclusively supporting with the med kit, mind you. I still want to do some damage haha), rather than max DPS…I wouldn’t need the kits?
That really stinks.
Does that mean, though, that if I don’t care as much about DPS, and I’d rather build a bit more supporty (not exclusively supporting with the med kit, mind you. I still want to do some damage haha), rather than max DPS…I wouldn’t need the kits?
You’ll still probably need at least one kit — either bomb kit or grenade kit being our main DPS. The problem is that your DPS will be subpar even if you’re not playing for DPS without at least one kit.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
That really stinks.
Does that mean, though, that if I don’t care as much about DPS, and I’d rather build a bit more supporty (not exclusively supporting with the med kit, mind you. I still want to do some damage haha), rather than max DPS…I wouldn’t need the kits?
Let’s put it like this, most of our auto attacks suck. Granade is the only kit good auto attacks. Flame thrower is not horrible mind you. But Pistol and probably even rifle aren’t that good, they are just bad.
All our weapons cooldowns are on the medium to high duration.
If you don’t use any kit you will most likely spend a lot of time doing nothing but crap damage with the autos on the normal weapons while waiting for cooldowns.
People use kits because by the time you use the best skill possible in each and every kit that’s enough for pistol skills to go off cooldown for example. So you’re only using the best skills all the time and not using random bad auto attacks.
People do use Rifle if they go for power builds, but most of the time you use it for utility, one burst skill and then spend all your time on Granade Autos.
You CAN play without using kits, but I guarantee you it’s going to be tedious as hell.
So I don’t have to do crazy rotations I only use Flamethrower when casually playing. If I need range I use mortar as elite otherwise Supply crate or Elixir X.
It’s good and will get you through most generic content in the game.
So yes, I second the guy above. You don’t need to use all kits, but you most likely will HAVE to use one. But pick the one you like the most.
In the interest of providing the possibility of not using kits at all, I will say that hammer does pretty good damage across its several skills, and has a lot of synergy within itself, providing a lightning field, a whirl and a leap finisher, a block, projectile reflection (and on the #2 skill no less), etc. I don’t feel the need to switch to kit with this weapon, and it’s fun to have my engi wade into melee with reckless abandon. XD
Note: I am talking about PVE, not PVP or WvW, though I imagine it would work well in WvW too. I don’t pvp so can’t help you there.
Also, another thought on the high use of kits:
If you look on sites like metabattle and enjin, you will notice that while kits fill almost all the slots, they mention a lot of other utility skills to swap in for specific use cases. I honestly feel like engi is one of those classes that has a lot of highly specialized utility skills that don’t make sense to keep on the bar, but work great to swap in when you need them, possibly more true for us than any other class. This might also add to the high use of kits in the 7-10 skills.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single set of utility skills for over 1,000 hours? Abandoning 12+ other utility skills? I’ll never understand players who exclusively use kits.
I’m not saying I refuse to use kits. I’m saying I’d rather not use exclusively kits. I think it defeats the purpose of choice in Gw2.
As you progress farther and encounter harder stuff, you will feel friendlier towards kits simply because they give you more cooldowns. I haven’t even learned a proper rotation, but was able to solo a HP champ in Auric Basin (the vinetooth) by keeping up my turrets and toolbelt, and cycling through grenades, bombs, and mortars Firing Everything.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
I want to point out that when the balance “team” feels like doing something, they only seem to balance weapons people can equip. Our kits have been barely touched, despite being our most important source of DPS.
I’d also love to be able to free up some of my utility slots for something else too. I haven’t played with some of the gadgets in years.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
I want to point out that when the balance “team” feels like doing something, they only seem to balance weapons people can equip. Our kits have been barely touched, despite being our most important source of DPS.
I’d also love to be able to free up some of my utility slots for something else too. I haven’t played with some of the gadgets in years.
Last balance patch they touched flamethrower considerably, and said that they were looking at giving the kits more “purity of purpose” I believe was the phrase, so more changes are likely forthcoming. Which may mean we won’t need all the kits just to do damage, but can focus on the kits that let us do damage inside of whatever build we are doing (power, condi, etc).
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
I want to point out that when the balance “team” feels like doing something, they only seem to balance weapons people can equip. Our kits have been barely touched, despite being our most important source of DPS.
I’d also love to be able to free up some of my utility slots for something else too. I haven’t played with some of the gadgets in years.
Last balance patch they touched flamethrower considerably, and said that they were looking at giving the kits more “purity of purpose” I believe was the phrase, so more changes are likely forthcoming. Which may mean we won’t need all the kits just to do damage, but can focus on the kits that let us do damage inside of whatever build we are doing (power, condi, etc).
The difficulty becomes that if you are boosting the damage of the individual kits to reduce the need to kit swap to remain viable, you are also MASSIVELY boosting the damage of the kit swappers.
To the OP, you can still output a surprising amount of DPS with only a single kit and dual pistol, but as others have posted, to do competitive DPS you do pretty much need at least one. As an example I introduce something that needs more attention, the one kit plebineer:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5z1vtj/cnd_simplify_this_the_one_kit_condi_plebineer/
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
I want to point out that when the balance “team” feels like doing something, they only seem to balance weapons people can equip. Our kits have been barely touched, despite being our most important source of DPS.
I’d also love to be able to free up some of my utility slots for something else too. I haven’t played with some of the gadgets in years.
Last balance patch they touched flamethrower considerably, and said that they were looking at giving the kits more “purity of purpose” I believe was the phrase, so more changes are likely forthcoming. Which may mean we won’t need all the kits just to do damage, but can focus on the kits that let us do damage inside of whatever build we are doing (power, condi, etc).
The problem though is that kits are part of the package deal for engineers. At this point, our base weapons are so weak that any kind of considerable nerf to kits (for either power or condi) results in overall weakening of the class if they don’t boost our base weapons.
For example, the number of players who cried foul about the change to flame blast was significant, as it was one of the more potent power skills. Now it’s a “meh” condi boost.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
I wasn’t suggesting that they increase the power of the kits, only that they are trying to make them more appropriate for certain builds. Like if you are doing condi, you would only need these two kits because the other kits are all power based, and vice versa. You could still do all kits, but what would be the point? You’d only be using the kits that give the higher dps for your stat set. Even if that frees up one slot for something else, you wouldn’t suffer a dps loss, because you’d be using more of the skills on the kits you have equipped.
This isn’t a nerf on the kits. This is an adjustment into how they are set up for purposes of streamlining builds and increasing build diversity. They do need to make the weapon skills better, that I do agree with. That would also improve build diversity.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.
Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single set of utility skills for over 1,000 hours? Abandoning 12+ other utility skills? I’ll never understand players who exclusively use kits.
I’m not saying I refuse to use kits. I’m saying I’d rather not use exclusively kits. I think it defeats the purpose of choice in Gw2.
The purpose of choice in GW2? Depends on how you look at it.
If they made it so weapon skills and no kits were better than kits, you’d arrive at the same problem because now you are abandoning 4 utility skills that open up to be 20+ skills. The amount doesn’t matter so much, it’s the idea that the result would be the same.
Why don’t they make the other things only just as strong, not stronger? Not possible because we do have “the purpose of choice” in GW2. See, since we can freely mix and match certain things, things that are very unique compared to one another, we will inevitably come to a set of skills that are simply stronger than another set: in this case, Kits.
This is basically true for most classes in this game. It’s called the Meta.
Now, I’m not saying you are forced to play the best thing, nor is it the only thing you are allowed to play, but people do like improving themselves and doing the best they can because MMOs are, indeed, of competitive nature even in cooperative settings. If they weren’t, no one would care (but obviously, we do).
Now, I’m not saying you are forced to play the best thing, nor is it the only thing you are allowed to play, but people do like improving themselves and doing the best they can because MMOs are, indeed, of competitive nature even in cooperative settings. If they weren’t, no one would care (but obviously, we do).
I would say this is generally the case with humanity as a whole regardless of what they’re doing. We like to compare ourselves against each other. Which often leads to all sorts of problems, but well, that’s humanity for ya…