Guild Wars 2

I keep seeing people saying things about not being able to swap kits…I’m pretty sure you can still swap kits. In fact, I know you can, because I was doing it when I was figuring out the boundaries of the Kit Refinement thing for another post. I don’t even like the kitten things, but I was trying to figure out how the things worked to see why people were so kitten angry about the cooldown.

Do you mean ‘swap kits and receive the Kit Refinement from multiple kits within a few seconds?’ If so, that’s not nearly the same thing as not being able to swap kits. Besides which, you can switch kits in midair to prevent the Refinement effect for the time being. Somebody also made a post, not too long ago, about how it could, if implemented entirely and properly, actually be a boon – were the various kit refinement effects not already subject to their own cooldowns, ten seconds would be kitten amazing for at least the Elixir Gun – which even got a boost to the very thing people were annoyed about being fixed when it got bugged in a way that was favorable for us, though you wouldn’t know it by how they’ve disregarded the Elixir Gun’s buff.

I don’t even know what baffles me more, people claiming to have been stripped of some measure of their versatility due to a global cooldown on Kit Refinement being implemented, or the people whining about the Medkit being stowable, requiring them to press one more button per five seconds to extend their Swiftness effect.

I do, at least, finally understand why the devs don’t talk on these boards much – we can tell ourselves we’re constructive, and sometimes we really are, but holy kitten do we whine. We finally get buffs, and the response is “Keep the buffs, just don’t nerf Kit Refinement! Nooo!” If they told us we were getting buffs, we’d lose our kitten the moment we saw a nerf in the next patch, claiming they lied, and if they told us we were getting nerfed, we’d lose it immediately. I’m not going to lie – I’ve done the same thing as everybody else.

If we want them to communicate with us, though, I think we need to not flip out.

I’m not saying “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

I’m saying: Be reasonable. Take the time to understand the things they’ve changed, and look into why, perhaps. Don’t beg them for an explanation – they won’t give you one. If they did, it’d make people angry.
Imagine you’re in their position – you nerf something, somebody asks for an explanation, and you give it to them. “Why was Kit Refinement nerfed?” “There were particular issues in the way it was implemented that allowed people to achieve effects we had not intended and do not consider balanced.” “But I’m not one of those people! Why can’t you just nerf them?” and so forth. Whatever they say, it will anger somebody. So they say nothing.

So…don’t ask them for an explanation. One won’t be given, for their own good. There’s no point in them giving us one. Instead, offer a rational critique, after taking time to understand the change and its intentions. Come up with logical alternatives to the disliked change. They probably still won’t say anything, but at least we’ll actually be trying to be constructive instead of just being pissy.

And yes, I know, this post probably comes off as pissy, ranty, high-horsed, rambling, or any number of other uncomplementary things. I don’t particularly mind.

Take the kitten out of it, if you want. I won’t even try to defend it – everybody’s going to be too busy being angry about the change to post anything really interesting on these forums for a little while, anyway.

See the thing is we don’t even know what they even intend with this nerf right now. Currently only FT and EG trigger the global cd. Tool kit and Grenades and Bomb can still chain into each other. However they still have internal cooldowns that are ~20 sec. From the wording of the patch it can be interpreted that the global CD applies to all kits, and the next KR can be used within the next 10 sec. However it is currently bugged (I’m assuming) so we don’t even know whats intended or not.

It’s pretty bad when it appears they half-kitten a nerf.

Anymras.5729:

I keep seeing people saying things about not being able to swap kits…I’m pretty sure you can still swap kits. In fact, I know you can, because I was doing it when I was figuring out the boundaries of the Kit Refinement thing for another post. I don’t even like the kitten things, but I was trying to figure out how the things worked to see why people were so kitten angry about the cooldown.

Do you mean ‘swap kits and receive the Kit Refinement from multiple kits within a few seconds?’ If so, that’s not nearly the same thing as not being able to swap kits. Besides which, you can switch kits in midair to prevent the Refinement effect for the time being. Somebody also made a post, not too long ago, about how it could, if implemented entirely and properly, actually be a boon – were the various kit refinement effects not already subject to their own cooldowns, ten seconds would be kitten amazing for at least the Elixir Gun – which even got a boost to the very thing people were annoyed about being fixed when it got bugged in a way that was favorable for us, though you wouldn’t know it by how they’ve disregarded the Elixir Gun’s buff.

I don’t even know what baffles me more, people claiming to have been stripped of some measure of their versatility due to a global cooldown on Kit Refinement being implemented, or the people whining about the Medkit being stowable, requiring them to press one more button per five seconds to extend their Swiftness effect.

I do, at least, finally understand why the devs don’t talk on these boards much – we can tell ourselves we’re constructive, and sometimes we really are, but holy kitten do we whine. We finally get buffs, and the response is “Keep the buffs, just don’t nerf Kit Refinement! Nooo!” If they told us we were getting buffs, we’d lose our kitten the moment we saw a nerf in the next patch, claiming they lied, and if they told us we were getting nerfed, we’d lose it immediately. I’m not going to lie – I’ve done the same thing as everybody else.

If we want them to communicate with us, though, I think we need to not flip out.

I’m not saying “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

I’m saying: Be reasonable. Take the time to understand the things they’ve changed, and look into why, perhaps. Don’t beg them for an explanation – they won’t give you one. If they did, it’d make people angry.
Imagine you’re in their position – you nerf something, somebody asks for an explanation, and you give it to them. “Why was Kit Refinement nerfed?” “There were particular issues in the way it was implemented that allowed people to achieve effects we had not intended and do not consider balanced.” “But I’m not one of those people! Why can’t you just nerf them?” and so forth. Whatever they say, it will anger somebody. So they say nothing.

So…don’t ask them for an explanation. One won’t be given, for their own good. There’s no point in them giving us one. Instead, offer a rational critique, after taking time to understand the change and its intentions. Come up with logical alternatives to the disliked change. They probably still won’t say anything, but at least we’ll actually be trying to be constructive instead of just being pissy.

And yes, I know, this post probably comes off as pissy, ranty, high-horsed, rambling, or any number of other uncomplementary things. I don’t particularly mind.

Take the kitten out of it, if you want. I won’t even try to defend it – everybody’s going to be too busy being angry about the change to post anything really interesting on these forums for a little while, anyway.

Post too long so i didnt read it all lol but.. its not about just spamming internal cool down on kit refinement, its more about it being reliable, if you needed condition removal or apply short burn AoE you know you had it, but now unless you think twice before switching kits or bringing less kits the effects will be completely random and as an engi do you need any more randomness?

as for what they intent, i have the feeling that the trait was broken intentionally so people would stay longer in kits and to promote to make builds arond FT or EG, and if they dislike the result they can just change it and claim it was a “fix”

also think about it, the trait wasnt overpowered by any means and internal CD kept it well balanced.. but devs spent hours writing the code to nerf it but they wont sit down and work on gadgets, turrents or our LONG LIST of bugs lol….

I think their intent was clear.

This bug fix immediately negates the ability to proc the explosion from the dbl medkit proc from kit refinement. this was a known bug which people bragged about here on the forums, even offering it as tips for how to play.

so now that their workaround no longer works, a workaround which was being openly exploited to somehow account for our profession’s “lack” of versatility, kittens are mewling because they have to actually plan their rotations in a better paced, more meaningful way rather than “button mash” or play “keyboard calisthenics” or what have you.

you can still use the same combos you could use before. just not all at once.

They fixed the bug from Med Kit by making sure it now swaps out instead of just reapplying the kit. This means that there’s a 2-second CD on the Med Kit KR effect. This puts it in line with Bomb Kit.

We are supposed to be versatile, and the ICD addition to Kit Refinement is an affront to our versatility. There are other ways to nerf accordingly. Reduce the damage of the Grenade Kit KR’s Barrage, for example.

I’m still a little confused by the KR effect of Med Kit. Why not make it drop a bandage or antidote rather than an explosion? Perhaps make the explosion an AOE heal effect.

OP, your post might make sense if they did the same thing for other classes whose abilities in some respects are completely off the wall in terms of balance. As it stands, since they’ve done NOTHING about it, your thesis doesn’t hold water.

If they were targeting a specific issue (100 nades – I never used it, but God forbid the engineer has something to contend with the 2 fest of the thief or 100 blades), they have punished some of us who valued diversity rather than cheap no brain builds.

nakoda.4213:

I think their intent was clear.

This bug fix immediately negates the ability to proc the explosion from the dbl medkit proc from kit refinement. this was a known bug which people bragged about here on the forums, even offering it as tips for how to play.

so now that their workaround no longer works, a workaround which was being openly exploited to somehow account for our profession’s “lack” of versatility, kittens are mewling because they have to actually plan their rotations in a better paced, more meaningful way rather than “button mash” or play “keyboard calisthenics” or what have you.

you can still use the same combos you could use before. just not all at once.

no really, did you ever tried switching to bomb kit before dodging before dodging so you’d leave 2 bombs or didnt you like you always had the condition removal from EG whenever you needed it ?

the only thing this encourages is for players to stay in kits longer and not look for combos, to make builds around FT or EG, that’s not fun..

builds in fact still do work, they dint change at all, what anet is forcing us to change for us is our play style.. the beauty and creativity of the class, no one played engineer the same way

SmoothHussler.6387:

OP, your post might make sense if they did the same thing for other classes whose abilities in some respects are completely off the wall in terms of balance. As it stands, since they’ve done NOTHING about it, your thesis doesn’t hold water.

If they were targeting a specific issue (100 nades – I never used it, but God forbid the engineer has something to contend with the 2 fest of the thief or 100 blades), they have punished some of us who valued diversity rather than cheap no brain builds.

100nades wasnt nerfed at all, just removed the pull factor which can easy be replaced by simply walking lol.. 100nades is still live.. they want us to stay longer in kits and make builds around them instead of having many kits and alternating skills (which like i said above, allowed for creativity )

Personally I’m not really upset with the changes because they’ll break builds. In fact, I don’t believe they will. The engineer community is an adaptive one that has come up with some crazy things to make up for the deficiencies that the engineer profession possesses (look at 100nades), I don’t think learning new key combinations will deter us. To tell the truth, the post detailing the new kit refinement is a fine example of what the community does, it analyzes our limitations and then it finds ways of optimizing our play-styles based on those limitations.

This habit of the engineer community however, has this side effect of finding out all the ways the profession was never finished or polished. So we take what we have (a buggy unfinished profession with no clear niche or purpose) and we make the most of it. Most engineers complained about the stow med-kit bug until we found a way to incorporate it into our playstile, now that the devs have found out and changed it we wan’t our crutch back.

We seem to find all these “crutches” to make up for the weaknesses the profession has as byproducts of rushed design work and implementation. So when the devs take them away, we flounder, complain, and then adapt.

That being said, Kit refinement was not a crutch. It was not something we cobbled together like static discharge builds or 100nades. It was a functional, reliable mechanic that a lot of engineers used. It wasn’t over powered, not everyone ran with it. I switched it out for speedy kits when I found that SE’s weren’t that productive to a party.

The reason why I’m upset with the change to kit refinement is because it was neither needed, nor intuitive, nor polished. It was a buggy change that has made a convenient trait (to some) into another broken thing for our profession. A part of the engineer community finds this change to serve no purpose and to inconvenience those who use it. A part of the engineer community finds that the devs have broken something that was fine, so we react.

Mostly we react in the forums (the only place to give feedback) in the hopes of the devs having some food for though. Nothing will probably go our way, and the profession will be ham-fisted into whatever the devs seem to want out of us. At least we gave our feedback.

I agree that the forum in general needs more reasonableness. Unfortunately, the patch notes were undeniably inaccurate again—most of the frustration is over stuff that wasn’t actually nerfed, just sounds like it was in the patch notes.

On the other hand, engineers should do research to be effective. It’s kind of a nice immersion experience, actually. Here I am, late at night, doing research so that I can be effective tomorrow…the life of an engineer.

JohnDied.3476:

Personally I’m not really upset with the changes because they’ll break builds. In fact, I don’t believe they will. The engineer community is an adaptive one that has come up with some crazy things to make up for the deficiencies that the engineer profession possesses (look at 100nades), I don’t think learning new key combinations will deter us. To tell the truth, the post detailing the new kit refinement is a fine example of what the community does, it analyzes our limitations and then it finds ways of optimizing our play-styles based on those limitations.

This habit of the engineer community however, has this side effect of finding out all the ways the profession was never finished or polished. So we take what we have (a buggy unfinished profession with no clear niche or purpose) and we make the most of it. Most engineers complained about the stow med-kit bug until we found a way to incorporate it into our playstile, now that the devs have found out and changed it we wan’t our crutch back.

We seem to find all these “crutches” to make up for the weaknesses the profession has as byproducts of rushed design work and implementation. So when the devs take them away, we flounder, complain, and then adapt.

That being said, Kit refinement was not a crutch. It was not something we cobbled together like static discharge builds or 100nades. It was a functional, reliable mechanic that a lot of engineers used. It wasn’t over powered, not everyone ran with it. I switched it out for speedy kits when I found that SE’s weren’t that productive to a party.

The reason why I’m upset with the change to kit refinement is because it was neither needed, nor intuitive, nor polished. It was a buggy change that has made a convenient trait (to some) into another broken thing for our profession. A part of the engineer community finds this change to serve no purpose and to inconvenience those who use it. A part of the engineer community finds that the devs have broken something that was fine, so we react.

Mostly we react in the forums (the only place to give feedback) in the hopes of the devs having some food for though. Nothing will probably go our way, and the profession will be ham-fisted into whatever the devs seem to want out of us. At least we gave our feedback.

LOVE the post and everything is very true!!! and yea, it wasn’t OP at all, it was reliable and they just gave us 1 more thing to be random about :S

they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us they want us

Engineer was supposed to be the class of a dozen different possible playstyles. We’re designed to be amongst the weakest (if not the…) in dmg output. But our toys give us the ability to change styles to suite the circumstances. This is why I’ve invested time in the class.

So these changes werent targeted at the 100 nades pullers??? lol ok sure! By all means let the 100 naders come and tell us how they’re finding things these days.

Basically, die or go elixir build. TY.

I was going to write a post about this very same thing but you put it in a nicer way than I would have. Long story short the vast majority of the people here sound like 5 year olds every patch and its embarassing honestly. Anet knows what they want the class to be like, they have made steady progress in addressing the issues, they are not amateurs and the dont owe any of you anything (please stop crying for a dev reply). So carrying on like a baby and crying all over the forums will not get you anywhere. This one goes out to the complainers, you know who you are.

Riojin.2649:

Anet knows what they want the class to be like.

lol

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree that the forum in general needs more reasonableness. Unfortunately, the patch notes were undeniably inaccurate again—most of the frustration is over stuff that wasn’t actually nerfed, just sounds like it was in the patch notes.

On the other hand, engineers should do research to be effective. It’s kind of a nice immersion experience, actually. Here I am, late at night, doing research so that I can be effective tomorrow…the life of an engineer.

The meta-game of our class shouldn’t be “How do I best protect myself from ArenaNet and their patches?” however. I researched a nice build. It worked. I liked it. Then this patch hit and now I gotta find workarounds AGAIN.

Arimahn.3568:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree that the forum in general needs more reasonableness. Unfortunately, the patch notes were undeniably inaccurate again—most of the frustration is over stuff that wasn’t actually nerfed, just sounds like it was in the patch notes.

On the other hand, engineers should do research to be effective. It’s kind of a nice immersion experience, actually. Here I am, late at night, doing research so that I can be effective tomorrow…the life of an engineer.

The meta-game of our class shouldn’t be “How do I best protect myself from ArenaNet and their patches?” however. I researched a nice build. It worked. I liked it. Then this patch hit and now I gotta find workarounds AGAIN.

I was being a bit sarcastic, sorry. It does feel like our builds are built on odd workarounds/hidden cooldown management/knowing the bugs inside and out. I was just trying to put a positive spin on it

Oh I wasn’t responding to the tone of your post. Just the whole “research” paragraph made me think of what I posted. It feels like we’re working against the devs here and that is just awful.

People would probably be less in arms if the changes didn’t seem so arbitrary all the time. This patch is a good example: The Engineer by the devs own words is supposed to be a very versatile class and suffer somewhat of a penalty for it. I think we all agree the second part of that equation is working just fine.

Yet with the kit refinement change they specifically target versatile builds and punish them some more.

That just does not compute.

Making a fuss over kit refinement is no small matter, after a series of nerf and trying to understand how to make ourselves viable, a lot of engineers like me have come to a conclusion with a build involving multiple kits. What I don’t understand is what are they trying to do with this buggy change in kit refinement, seriously adding another cooldown on top? I understand that they have buffed up eg and ft however no matter how you look at it-it just looks like they want to kill off any thought of us being versatile.
Im sure they could have at least increase the cooldown on each individual kits