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(edited by Swagg.9236)
Reworking the Tool-Belt
Engineers are supposed to be this versatile class that is unpredictable on the battlefield and can serve multiple roles. Well, in the process of trying to make that happen, ANet made the Engineer effectively a non-class through nerfs, RNG mechanics and design that really limited the Engineer’s survival and ability to contribute to a fight.
When we look at Engineer Utility Skills, it seems like there is always a kit (or two) stapled there. To this effect, the kits feel like a profession mechanic rather than a Utility Skill. With that in mind, I submit that Weapon Kits should in fact be part of the Engineer profession mechanic (the Tool-Belt).
On the topic of turrets, most Engineers don’t want to waste a Utility Skill slot to bring along a little pet that has moderate use on the battlefield if it isn’t accidentally stepped on or blows over in a strong wind (since that’s all it takes to destroy them). While I have more ideas on how Turrets could be improved, I think a safe place to start is by giving the Engineer a sort of freebie Turret option by reserving a slot for it, again, on the Tool-Belt bar.
This sort of flexible Tool-Belt bar that has a lot of options and not a lot of space is a way to give Engineers more options in the way that they build themselves and go about contributing to a battle. It’s also a task in management since if you slot a Weapon Kit and a Turret, you only have 2 slots left for Tool-Belt Skills.
This change would require some reworking of the Tools traitline, but I think that in the end, it would be for the best.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
thats way too confusing.
if they wanted to changed the whole tool belt thing: just put a different engineer kit on F1, F2, F3, and F4 and let us have a ton of utility skills.
thats way too confusing.
if they wanted to changed the whole tool belt thing: just put a different engineer kit on F1, F2, F3, and F4 and let us have a ton of utility skills.
But then you’re removing the tool-belt skills entirely—some of which are honestly pretty good or could easily be improved into something of great use. Furthermore, if you put a kit on each F-skill, you would have the Elementalist. Not that the Elementalist isn’t a bad design (it’s honestly the best-designed class in the game), but the Engineer should have a little more flexibility than that.
I was fooling around with the idea of having F1 and F2 be for Weapon Kits and then F3 and F4 be for Turrets, but that discounted all of the tool-belt skills and also made trouble for the Med Kit healing skill (of which the Tool-Belt skill is the actual heal).
I didn’t find the diagram confusing at all. I think getting the two freebie slots for kits and turrets would alleviate some of the issues engineers are having with out utility slots. Since we have the choice between having an extra kit or having a kit+kit-toolbelt (like BoB) this would please both groups of people (those who want things to stay broken, and the one’s who realize that our kit mechanic needs tweaks) and allow for more versatile gameplay.
tool belt seems just fine to me.
There are problems far more urgent to solve… for example reworking the elites…
I don’t think something so complicated is necessary. The most simple and effective solution to the engineer versatility is to unbind the tool-belt skills from the utilities, buff them and let us select them out of combat.
The reason why nothing else is necessary is because the tool-belt isn’t strong enough as a class mechanic if compared to the other classes(like eles having 20 skills, or all thieves skills being spammable, or the necro having two health bars).
If this change is implemented engineers would trully be capable of being the unpredictable class because we would be capable of slotting twice the ammount of utility skills, bringing a lot of versatility to our builds.
Some of the buffs could be making some of the tool-belt skills stun-breakers, that way it would be possible to have 4 kits and stun breakers, or 4 turrets and stun breakers.