Guild Wars 2

Engineers can’t swap weapons with the tilde key (~), so what if instead they had a slot specifically for toolkits to go there instead? It would become a “Equip Main Toolkit” key. There’s no loss of function, and it would free up an extra utility slot for other skills (even a secondary toolkit).

Would you welcome this hypothetical change, or do you think it would give engineers an unfair advantage in PvP?

I’ve suggested this very thing a few times. I think it’d be nice; I’d finally actually start using the bloody things, because I wouldn’t be sacrificing slotted skills that I’d dropped traits on.
No idea if it’d be overpowered or not in PvP.

It would open up the ability for 5 kit Engineers. :O

It would make sense. Engineers already have fixed penalties due to kits, yet as now they’re optional (in theory; in practice almost anyone uses some kit because we lack offense otherwise, outside of a few gimmicks) and with the added cost of an utility slot.
A proper kit slot would justify the fixed penalties and add a way to use swap sigils even when all the utilities are used for other purposes. Sure, there is no toolbelt skill this way, but it would be a small price to pay.

Personally, i don’t think there would be a balance problem. Beside not being able to properly trait such a number of kits, it should be considered that the class is all sustained damage, and even having an higher amount of skills isn’t necessarily better if you can cycle between a better subset of those in that amount of time.

the engineer class was built around kits as our main mechanic and f1-f4 made up for the “lost utility slot”

our main hand “weapons” are tools we use incombat that compliments our kits.

once ppl understand this they will become better engineers.

kits #1 weapons #2 in prio

The main class mechanic is the toolbelt, and even that doesn’t justify having a single weapon slot – guardians have got three signets as main class mechanic and they still have a second weapon. A single mini-utility doesn’t warrant five less weapon skills.

Kits are optional, and should be treated as such for balance purposes. Otherwise they should have been the main class mechanic – that one thing every player of the class always has at his disposal, no matter what.

If they’ve made such a blatant error in designing the class, well, they can always correct it. As long as people stop defending such a broken design.

I don’t really understand what the problem is. We can have access to four different weapons and can swap them almost instantly, unlike other classes who need to wait ten seconds in combat. I’d say the lack of two weapon slots is perfectly justified.

Oxstar.7643:

I don’t really understand what the problem is. We can have access to four different weapons and can swap them almost instantly, unlike other classes who need to wait ten seconds in combat. I’d say the lack of two weapon slots is perfectly justified.

Can. That’s a very important word, which pretty much encapsulates the crux of the whole issue. See, there’s ‘do,’ ‘can,’ ‘can not,’ and ‘do not.’ Do and do not are definite. Can and can not are fuzzy. There’s a reason I point this out – after all, an Elementalist does have access to four different weapons, though they have cooldowns. The Elementalist can’t not.

We, however, can. We can have builds which have no Kits at all, and can even go from 1-80 without ever unlocking a single Kit. These builds are effectively punished by the current design, which more or less ignores the fact that they can exist; our weapons are made intentionally weak, weapon choice is barely trinary, and we can’t even swap weapons if we don’t have a Kit slotted, so once we’ve set all our cooldowns a-coolin’, we’re stuck autoattacking if we have the audacity to just not slot a Kit at all times.

Now, obviously, Engineers are balanced around Kits. Nobody’s going to debate that, or at least I’m not, given the fact that the class is openly limited in particular ways due to Kits existing. The devs flat-out admitted to that in the Class Balance Philosophy.
It would be nice for one to always be available, regardless of build, though.
After all, that’s the assumption the very design of the class makes.

just rebind 7 to ~ …

insanemaniac.2456:

just rebind 7 to ~ …

You’re completely missing the point. The idea is to make equipping a weapon kit functionally identical to swapping weapons. With your main weapon kit no longer going in your utility slot, this would free up a utility slot for other abilities.

I guess people miss an important point here.
Yes, the engineer is balanced around his kits, and yes, without equipping one we loose great capabilities, but running an engi without at least 1 kit would be as running a hambow build without the hammer. Why would we want to get a swap-mechanic like other classes, if that would limit us to one kit per build?

Other classes have weapon-swap and therefore can equip up to 4 different sigils. But that has its downsides. f.e. bloodlust. If you wanna stack bloodlust in wvw, and only have this sigil on one of your sets, you are forced to use the set in question to kill, else you won’t stack up. same with sigils that are triggered on weapon-swap. they will not trigger if you already have swapped to them and then back to a set that has these sigils not on them.

For the engi this does not matter since the two sigils we can equip are activated not only when we switch back to the main weapon, but also when we pick up any of our kits. If we equip 3 kits (or more) then this means that we get 8 sigils to the price of 2, tough we’re limited in the versatility of combining different sigils.

Furthermore, appart from the toolkit, all our kits have at least one combo-field within their skillset, which enables us to carry a impressive load of possible combos with us, without sacrificing anything anything for it. Like eles, our many blasts and fields compensate us for our “missing” weaponset.

If you consider it logically, we sacrifice 3 utility slots that other class could use, for receiving a total of 15 weapon-skills on a 1sec swap cd. Even if you substract the 5 extra-skills from other classes additional wepons, you end up with a total of 14 more skills than other classes since each kit brings an additional skill for our toolbelt. If we also equip the med-kit, then we end up on !18! (1 substracted from 19 for the heal every other class has) skills more than other classes. Why are you complaining about one of our biggest strengths?
Only ele can match this versatility and they also lack the ability to swap their main-weapons. This balancing of not having weapon-swap on ele or engi makes total sense, alongside with the fact that we use the least accessible main-weapons (only 3, with a total of 3 very different combos).

If you don’t like running multiple kits, fine. Actually there are enough worthwhile builds with various utility combinations out there, but if you wanna become the jumping devil in your opponents dreams you go with 2 or more kits.
Welp, turrets are fun as well, if you like bunkering in pvp that is.

I actually haven’t seen a single post suggesting limiting Engineers to the one kit that’d be equipped in their weapon swap slot.

turret engi with a kit … or 3 kit engi with thumper turret or elixir s … oh horrors. that’s a whole utility slot, man, that’s a lot. it’s basically changing the game mechanic for a class. the engi as it is now would be completely overpowered. i bet there are some really nasty setups you could play with that you haven’t thought of. this would completely get out of hand. many things would have to be rebalanced and toned down which anet would turn into an unholy nerffest. rather not, thanks.