Scoring System: 0-5. Each are worth one point: Fun, Creative, Effective, Functional, Useful.
Flame Thrower - 3
Some flawed functionality with evading, missing, and obstructed mobs. Not useful when compared to other options for both AOE and single target damage. The #2 skill requires perfect distance, the #1 severely limits mobility, #3 is crazily short-ranged.
FIX ME: Allow #2 to be detonate-able (like many under-water skills). Make #1 a chain attack that increases the intensity of the flame/damage the longer you’re able to channel it. Reduce the cool down on #5.
Elixir Gun - 3
Similar to the flame thrower, it has some functionality issues with the frontal cone attack (#3). This is not an effective weapon due mainly to the loss of stats while using a kit.
FIX ME: Fix #3 attack so it stops getting evade and obstruction messages.
Tool Kit - 1
This kit gets one point for being creative.If anything, this is the kit that should reward toughness for equipping it, not the Flamethrower. The risk associated with going into melee far outweighs any potential rewards. #1 is good, until the third swing, when you telegraph your attack for what feels like an eternity before you swing. #2 casts too slowly to be efficient. #5 is far too slow to be reliable.
FIX ME: Apply a toughness buff to this kit that brings you in line (or slightly below) warrior and guardian level armor. Reduce casting times for #2 and #5. Until then, this kit will not be used.
Elixirs - 4
Elixirs are very strong. The main complaint that I have is the level of effectiveness.
FIX ME: Being that only one of the Thrown Elixir effects is extremely powerful (Elixir R), the effectiveness of the elixirs would be greatly improved by larger areas of effect. Unless you’re in a coordinated group, you will have a hard time hitting more than one target with a thrown elixir. What does this mean? It means you’re really just going to throw the elixir on yourself for that one additional buff; which is not the general intent.
Pistols - 4
Pistols are very nice weapons in AOE situations. Since the bleed duration reduction, pistols are very weak for single target encounters.
FIX ME: Being that only targets that are hit directly with a pistol bullet acquire the bleed affect (not counting any proc’d effects), I think upping the bleed duration isn’t an outrageous request.
Rifle - 5
No complaints. I like the rifle as it is.
Grenade Kit - 4
This is the best kit without question. The damage is very strong. You can stack vulnerability for your group very quickly. You get a combo field. You get great debuffs.
FIX ME: Tossing grenades is extremely clunky. Even if you enable quick ground targets, it just feels poorly implemented. To be fair to ArenaNet, I love the game, and I love their effort. The grenade tossing mechanic is very slow and unnatural feeling. They could probably stand to have their damage reduced a little bit.
Bomb Kit - 2
One point for fun. One point for creativity. That’s it.
FIX ME: The default AOE radius on bombs makes them obsolete unless you spec into them. So, by nature, they’re unusable. Please increase the default radius. Also, being that a Grenadier gets three explosions per toss, they’re doing 1) more damage 2) more conditions 3) staying alive from range. Bombs need some serious love; in the form of damage increases, AOE increases and/or fuse and placement rate reductions.
Turrets - 3
Fun, Creative, Useful. I love turrets. I just can’t love them all the time. This feature is a huge draw to the Engineer class. It’s also a huge draw-back. We have several traits and several utility slots and one healing slot dedicated to these. However, they force you to stay in one spot. If you rely on them, their cool downs WILL kill you if you need to relocate.
FIX ME: Rather than reducing the cool down of a turret by a set amount when picking it up, instead reduce the cool down of your next turret by the duration your turret has been deployed upon picking it up. For example, if I place a Rocket Turret while defending a point in SPvP, if I run to pick it up when I leave, reduce the cool down according to the duration I kept it out. This solves two problems: one, it increases mobility; two, it gives enemies an incentive to destroy your turrets. Also, it would be beneficial if there was a trait that helped reduce cool downs like every other utility in this game!
Med Kit - 3
My favorite idea for a kit. It’s a useful kit for... yourself. There’s almost no way to effectively help your teammates with it. Especially in the heat of battle.
FIX ME: Triple the healing of the individual kit drops. Then, give each player an internal cool down for picking up packs. For example, you can only pick up one med pack every 30 seconds. Give the med packs a white circle underneath them so they can be identified the same way other friendly ground targets are.
Gadgets - 5
Gadgets are in a good place.