Guild Wars 2

One of the problems with Engineer and also one of its defining features is the ability to use Kits. Basically you can equip up to 6 weapons at a time. The problem is that with an MMO you have to strive to make every class be as rewarding as every other class, however with Engineer as it is, that means basically getting just as much reward as any other class but it requiring a much greater investment of skill.

So I had an idea that instead of being extra weapons, Kits should be utilities that can be changed on the fly, and base weapons should be buffed.

One example I thought of was with the Grenade Kit. Instead of simply switching to the grenade kit and spamming all the grenades on cooldown. Why not make the grenade kit have super powerful toolbelt abilities but the use of the grenade kit itself would be to switch among them. Also the toolbelt skill would have an internal cooldown, so even if you switched to a new grenade, you’d have to wait until the last one came off cooldown to use it.

For example :

1 : Arm Grenade: Grenade Barrage : (1/2) This would remain much the same, except that its cooldown would be reduced, it would be a power pressure skill.

2 : Arm Frag: Frag Barrage : (1/2) Throw 6 Frag grenades : 5 targets : Low damage : Each frag grenade applies 6 seconds of Bleed and 6 seconds of Torment. This would primarily be a condi damage grenade. 10 second cooldown.

3 : Arm Flashbang : Throw Flashbang : (1/2)Throw a flashbang at your feet. Stunbreak. 1/2 second daze, 3 seconds of blind, 3 seconds of weakness. 15 second cooldown. This would be a stunbreak used for PvP duel situations.

4 : Arm Gasbang : Chuck Gasbang : (1/2) Throw the gas grenade to a target area, makes opponents in the area choke on the gas. Radius 240. Poison Field. Duration 6 seconds. Pulses 3, Pulse Interval 2 seconds. 1 second of Blind, 1 second of Weakness, 1 second of Poison. Cooldown 20 seconds. This would be an area denial skill.

5 : Arm Frostbang : Chuck Frostbang : (1/2) Chuck a grenade into an area causing the ground to freeze over and targets standing in the area to trip. Knockdown 2 seconds, Chill 6 seconds. Cooldown 20 seconds. I mainly came up with this as a solution to break bar, + kiting mobs.

Grenadier : Reduces Cooldown on Grenades by 20%, Reduces activation time on grenades from 1/2 to 1/4.

Shrapnel : Increases condition duration caused by explosives by 33%. Explosions now apply 5 seconds of cripple.

Thermobaric Detonation : Increases Damage from explosions by 20%. All explosions are now 20% chance Blast Finishers.

The way it would work is, you switch into the grenade kit, use an arm skill to set your toolbelt skill. The toolbelt skill would be the grenade throw. The toolbelt skill would have an internal cooldown. So if you use Chuck Frostbang for example, it would put the toolbelt skill at a 20 second cooldown. You can still Arm a different grenade during this time, but you wouldn’t be able to use it until Frostbang’s 20 second cooldown is gone.

Basically what this would make Grenade kit is a kit of hotswap utilities instead of a weapon on it’s own. Along with this though, I would also suggest buffing core weapons.

Although I haven’t worked out the exact idea. One example I thought of was, why not make pistol 1 faster and have it be a 100% projectile finisher. Then have bombs be slightly weaker but leave larger and longer combo fields.

Too many buttons just to get off an attack. One-key combat will trash two key really quickly. This and you can’t see the cooldowns since the toolbelt uses one slot for the graphic. Basically you’re fighting both blind and complicated.

If you want to add depth start by trying to remove it. If nades are spammable ask why then deconstruct from their. Maybe the answer isn’t to make them more complex but to diversify value by simply changing kit interactions.

I.E. “Explosives Expert: While both grenades and bombs are equipped in your utilities Shrapnel is improved to 20% chance to cause bleeding for 14s.”

“Chemistry Mastery: While Elixer Gun and Flamethrower are in your utilities Juggernaut now works with Elixer Gun and Flamethrower gains a chance to cause vulnerability.”

Easy peasy. Reward combinations and synergies rather than reinvent the wheel.

DGraves.3720:

Too many buttons just to get off an attack. One-key combat will trash two key really quickly. This and you can’t see the cooldowns since the toolbelt uses one slot for the graphic. Basically you’re fighting both blind and complicated.

If you want to add depth start by trying to remove it. If nades are spammable ask why then deconstruct from their. Maybe the answer isn’t to make them more complex but to diversify value by simply changing kit interactions.

I.E. “Explosives Expert: While both grenades and bombs are equipped in your utilities Shrapnel is improved to 20% chance to cause bleeding for 14s.”

“Chemistry Mastery: While Elixer Gun and Flamethrower are in your utilities Juggernaut now works with Elixer Gun and Flamethrower gains a chance to cause vulnerability.”

Easy peasy. Reward combinations and synergies rather than reinvent the wheel.

I like what this guy is saying.

Kits definitely need some kind of overhaul in order to make us less reliant on them. Engi has so many utility slot options but every meta build uses the same three kits and I see that as a huge and obvious problem for build diversity. I saw a Nike! video on this topic recently, and while his suggestions would change the engi playstyle a little, I think he pitched some unique ideas: eg. making kits more about utility and increasing the dps of the engi weapons / tool belt skills as a trade-off.

100% disagreed. While PvE players may have trouble playing piano while dealing with boss mechanics this would utterly destroy engi gameplay in PvP/WvW. Kit playstyle is integral to engi like symbols are to guardians.

I don’t think the problem is that its being super hard to play, heck thats kinda what you sign up for with engi. The issue is that it doesn’t offer anything for the PvE group. Give us a trait that does something people want like grace of the land and bam engi is wanted again. Or give us some kind of utility skill other than kits thats worth bringing in a group scenario. People were running slick shoes just fine before it got decimated.

Pride.1734:

100% disagreed. While PvE players may have trouble playing piano while dealing with boss mechanics this would utterly destroy engi gameplay in PvP/WvW. Kit playstyle is integral to engi like symbols are to guardians.

I don’t think the problem is that its being super hard to play, heck thats kinda what you sign up for with engi. The issue is that it doesn’t offer anything for the PvE group. Give us a trait that does something people want like grace of the land and bam engi is wanted again. Or give us some kind of utility skill other than kits thats worth bringing in a group scenario. People were running slick shoes just fine before it got decimated.

How would changing kits destroy Engi in PvP? They are barely used in PvP as it is. Grenades aren’t at all with all the projectile hate. Unless you are talking about some super niche builds that are okay against some noobs playing some classes, pretty much everyone runs Power Scrapper which only utilizes Elixir Gun.

Although I do agree that my idea isn’t fully worked out. However, I would like to see kits reworked a little to add more utility to them and drop damage, and to move that damage over to core weapons so that Engi doesn’t have to require so much effort just to meet the rewards of other classes.

DGraves.3720:

Too many buttons just to get off an attack. One-key combat will trash two key really quickly. This and you can’t see the cooldowns since the toolbelt uses one slot for the graphic. Basically you’re fighting both blind and complicated.

If you want to add depth start by trying to remove it. If nades are spammable ask why then deconstruct from their. Maybe the answer isn’t to make them more complex but to diversify value by simply changing kit interactions.

I.E. “Explosives Expert: While both grenades and bombs are equipped in your utilities Shrapnel is improved to 20% chance to cause bleeding for 14s.”

“Chemistry Mastery: While Elixer Gun and Flamethrower are in your utilities Juggernaut now works with Elixer Gun and Flamethrower gains a chance to cause vulnerability.”

Easy peasy. Reward combinations and synergies rather than reinvent the wheel.

It was only a first draft but it was meant to be simpler not more complex.

By which I mean, arming a grenade would be equal to setting your tool kit skill to a specific attack until you change it.

Also by cooldown I meant that, as long as your toolbelt skill is on cooldown, your arm grenade skills would be too.

So essentially if you arm a flashbang, your toolbelt skill would be a flashbang until you change it. If you use it, the toolbelt skill would go to a 15 second countdown, as would your grenade kit.

Grenades aren’t used because there’s too much projectile hate in game to justify them and anet has yet to fix the bug that causes ground target skills to just shoot into the ground and not do what they are supposed to then go on full cd.

If we do anything to grenade kit, it should just be reverting the kit to pre june 15th mode (long range and poison was a field) and then remove the grenadier trait so we don’t make explosives mandatory to take nades effectively. (The need to bring alchemy, inventions, and scrapper for every build eliminates the ability to take explosives without gimping yourself so people can’t afford to use nades even when they want to)

Other skills ought to be buffed and engi weps could use some changes to eliminate the requirement of kits but at the same time you should be rewarded with significant utility and combo potential when you choose a kit over another condi cleanse or stunbreak. The way kits are made to function now is perfect, the issues lie in other parts of the profession and the game (HoT specs still being too OP for core to be a thing) Also imo the way engi works with its and such to where there’s a high skill ceiling with a high skill floor is how the rest of the game should be. Too many things are faceroll easy and we need more to be like the engineer (core) with it’s high skill demand but large payoff. (excluding the stupid imbalance caused by HoT)

Ging.6485:

It was only a first draft but it was meant to be simpler not more complex.

By which I mean, arming a grenade would be equal to setting your tool kit skill to a specific attack until you change it.

Also by cooldown I meant that, as long as your toolbelt skill is on cooldown, your arm grenade skills would be too.

So essentially if you arm a flashbang, your toolbelt skill would be a flashbang until you change it. If you use it, the toolbelt skill would go to a 15 second countdown, as would your grenade kit.

But doesn’t that lock up all six skills? I’m not sure how this would improve the situation per se.

Adding a cooldown to kits and rqeuiring pre selection of skills is NOT simpler.