Guild Wars 2

Okay, the title may have been a little misleading; I’m really going to focus on how to improve Turrets, and give the Engineer more of that versatility they said we’d have without sacrificing skill slots to do it.

Turret Issues (And how I’d fix them):

• Ineffective: Implement across-the-board scaling on all turrets; turrets at low levels would need to be toned down, but it would improve late-game Turrets. Give them additional resistance to AoEs.
• Too Immobile: Allow them to be picked up and carried, either like the Ghostbore Turrets in story bits (pick up and move, nothing else) or like Banners (temporary kit-like bundle, allowing Turret Engineers to benefit more from the Runes of the Engineer.)
• Drop-and-Pop Playstyle: Start the cooldown when the turret is placed, not when it is removed, to encourage leaving them on the field, and add a cooldown-reduction trait. Won’t counter people detonating the turret for quick damage or to access the toolbelt, but this way, the cooldown isn’t a factor.

Versatility (How I’d Improve It)

• Toolbelt: Unbind Toolbelt skills from the utility bar, so they can be chosen independently. Add tech-based, Engineer-skill-centric, signet-style skills to the toolbelt – a Turret Control System, Elixir Synthesizer, Kit Harmonizer, and Gadget Thingamajig, perhaps, maybe moving some traits to the Toolbelt to allow for more flexibility in trait selection (which would also encourage versatility). Maybe convert some Gadgets into this type of Toolbelt skill.
• Weapons: More choices, such as the Hammer and Mace, and allow kits to be equipped both as secondary weapons and utilities – kits equipped as secondary weapons would not grant Toolbelt skills, but could be swapped to and from freely. This would allow all Engineers to carry a kit, a healing skill, three utilities, and their Elite, as well as their main weapons, which would encourage versatility by adding options. Kit-loving Engineers would be able to carry…potentially four Utility-slot Kits, and the Medkit, under this idea, while Turret Engineers could carry three Utility-slot Turrets, the Healing Turret, and the Toolkit.

TL;DR:
There is no tl;dr, you intellectually subsapient, gnat-brained simpleton. I would compare your attention span to that of a lone Skritt, but the Skritt does not deserve the insult. Okay, I’m joking, but seriously, you better not have just skipped down here.

Moving on.

I find myself at a loss for how to improve: Kits, Elixirs and Gadgets, as these are things I have much less familiarity with, and would like feedback regarding the changes above, before I hurl them into the turbulent sea of the Suggestions board.

Oh, and I forgot to add:
Engineering as a class mechanic: Essentially, give the Engineer a way to modify their skills (possibly via that old Engineering Traitline thing I had) to better suit their playstyle. This would give the Engineer more of a class identity.

Anymras.5729:

Oh, and I forgot to add:
Engineering as a class mechanic: Essentially, give the Engineer a way to modify their skills (possibly via that old Engineering Traitline thing I had) to better suit their playstyle. This would give the Engineer more of a class identity.

I think class identity is something we really need.
Consider that we don’t have weapon swap because we get toolbelt skills. So we can say toolbelt skills are equal to a weapon swap. Every class can weapon swap, so what exactly is ours class identity? Well if you treat the toolbelt skills as a weapon set then our class identity is basically that we can use two weapon sets at the same time.
/thinking about it too much

I guess kits could be considered part of our identity too though

Kits have always struck me as rather similar to the Elementalist’s attunements – the Engineer, looked at like that, ends up seeming like an inverted Elementalist in Medium armor:

Engineer: No Weapon Swapping, gets pre-selected skill on Toolbelt to compensate for giving up Utility Slots for freely-selected (restricted only by level) Kits/Attunements to acquire a facsimile.

Elementalist: No Weapon Swapping, gets pre-selected Kits/Attunements as facsimile; can choose Utility Skills freely.

Besides this comparison (which I did my best to keep unbiased), the Kits are only a part of the class identity of the Engineers who use Kits. As somebody who prefers Turrets, and typically travels with a full complement of them on my skillbar (Healing, Rifle, Flame, Net, for example), kits have as little to do with my class identity as Turrets have to do with a Kit Engineer’s class identity. The only factors shared between myself and any Engineer who uses Kits, and nothing but, are that we’re both Engineers, we may both have points in Explosives and Tools, and the existence of the Toolbelt, though everything else may be utterly disparate.

A couple of the ideas posited above – the Turret-as-Temporary-Kit, obviously, and the Toolbelt Freedom, would give my Turrets-and-nothing-but and their Kits-and-nothing-but some common ground, but they’d leave other skillsets in the cold, so…perhaps allow us to Engineer our Engineer skills like the Engineers we play. Let us tinker, and maximize the potential of all our abilities by doing what, logic suggests, our class should do best. This, I think, would give all Engineers some common ground – and would go a long way toward giving us more of a unique class identity.

I think the current balance team are simply too understaffed and over stretched for a unusual class like engineer to get any decent changes. Unless A-net can somehow be persuaded to stop making a false economy by under spending on their class balance department, we’re never really going to see class balance as a whole move to a good state for all game modes.

We probably won’t see any actual advances in balance and bugfixing until they give releasing new content every month a rest so they A ) don’t have to dedicate their already-stretched-thin live bugfixing crew to fixing bugs introduced by new content and B ) can dedicate their resources to fixing the game. Doesn’t mean we can’t try to come up with ways for them to fix things, on the off-chance they take a half a gander at the board.

Might as well throw my own musings here. Overall I think the engineer isn’t in a bad spot at them moment, even with the changes to kit refinement and the tweaking to certain kits. I’ll admit I only tend to use either a HGH 100% condition duration build or a SD build, depending on what I’m doing. That said there still needs to be some tweaking to bring Turrets, kits and the whole gadgets line up to the same level of usefulness as Elixirs are.

Turrets:

Originally (and I still do) I wanted to make my engineer use turrets, that was until I discovered way back when that the turrets were kinda ‘meh’ and were more of a wasted utility slot. These days they are marginally better but I still see no real reason to take anything more than the improved healing turret unless I’m running a crackpot build for kittens and giggles.

Changes that should be done:

*Reduce the size of turret hit boxes. See this thread here for the details https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-s-The-hitbox-needs-to-be-fixed

*Improve the 30% damage reduction trait to 50%.

*Rifle Barrelled Turrets trait should give a 15% increase in ALL turret stats. It may sound like it’s approaching an OP level but consider this: Turrets don’t move and with the current 30% damage reduction trait, still only take a few hits to destroy.

*Auto Repair trait to be improved so that it works while in combat and heals quicker. I’ll admit I haven’t used this trait in a while but last time I did it was only healing out of combat and did very little to keep the turret alive.

Changes I’d like to see

*Elixir Infused Bombs trait moved to the explosives trait line and a new mobile turret trait added. The engineer now has to decide if they want stationary but turrets with a higher DPS or basic mobile turrets

*Each Turret to have it’s own unique detonation skill. For example, the flame turret leaves a fire field, or the rocket turret releases a grenade barrage.

*Turrets to provide buffs to other turrets dropped by the same engineer and/or provide buffs to players. Works in a similar fashion to banners with each turret providing one stat improvement. For example the healing turret providing a buff to vitality or the thumper turret improving toughness.

*Bring back the old Deployable Camo trait in some form so an engineer could set up ambush traps with their turret

Kits:

This one is mostly focused around using multiple kits. Before the kit refinement changes, while understandable but killed the trait, I used to run around with a FT/EG build that was a mixture of DPS and support. Since the change, I can’t really see much point bringing more than one kit, with the exception of med kit.

Changes that should be done:

*Remove the current global cooldown on Kit refinement. I can’t see the point in having a global cooldown with the current version of kit refinement. If anything it makes the whole idea of hot swapping kits rather pointless if you’re worrying about saving a kit refinement buff for a certain situation.

*Rethink the current buffs kit refinement gives. At the moment it feels that the current bonuses granted were a knee jerk reaction to the 100nades build. Ideally keep the bomb kit’s magnetic bomb, move the oil slick to the tool kit, give EG back it’s super elixir but tone it down or make it a 3-5 second long water field and give the FT a ring of fire. For the mean time keep the med kit and grenade kit the same.

Changes I’d like to see

*Kit’s to have their own set of stats that override the engineer’s current weapon stats while in use, but not the sigils. So the bomb kit would have Solider stats, the flamethrower would have berserkers, etc.

*Bomb kit to have a 20% blast finisher chance on the standard bomb skill.

*Elixir Gun to have its own grandmaster trait and/or to have the elixir trait bonuses affect it’s elixir skills

Gadgets

I know, I’ll have a full gadget engineer…said no one ever. I like gadgets, but no enough to have more than one of them on my bar at a time, usually utility goggles and that’s only when I’m running a SD build.

Changes that should be done

*Gadgets to act like signets and provide a passive bonus.

Changes I’d like to see

*Possibly a rejig of the whole line. I don’t think I’ve seen an engineer use personal battering ram for a very long time, same with throw mine. Rocket Boots and Slick Shoes I see rarely, with Utility Goggles being brought a long mostly for SD builds or for the stun breaker.

Wish I could say more about the gadgets line but I just don’t use them enough.

They’re the areas I think could do with being looked at first before any others.