Guild Wars 2

Kits were designed with the idea of swapping in and of them frequently, hence the lack of weapon swaps on Engineer. And, originally, the Engineer trait design supported this philosophy (the original Kit Refinement, Speedy Kits, et. al.).

Originally, Kit Refinement had separate internal cooldowns per kit (i.e. swapping into Flamethrower Kit triggered Flamethrower Kit’s refinement ability and cooldown, then swapping into Med Kit would trigger its ability and internal cooldown that was separate from Flamethrower’s).

This was synergistic to the design idea of an Engineer swapping kits frequently and gave them something extra if they traited into it.

However, the original Kit Refinement abilities were changed and in addition, a blanket internal cooldown was placed on every kit when one was used (i.e. triggering one kit’s refinement ability placed a 20 second cooldown upon all of them).

This meant that the kit refinements were triggered in inopportune times and were generally on cooldown from being triggered unwillingly. Particularly problematic as Kit Refinement was in the same traitline (Tools) as Speedy Kits, a trait which encouraged frequent kit swapping.

There had been times (in attempts to make use of Kit Refinement), that I felt constrained to whatever kit / weapon I was using when the cooldown refreshed just so it wasn’t triggered unnecessarily.

Now that Speedy Kits and Kit Refinement has been consolidated into a single trait (Streamlined Kits) and moved from the Adept to the Master tier, it all but assures that the Kit Refinement portion will provide little value as it’ll be on cooldown from triggering Swiftness. Kit Refinement has a long, blanket internal cooldown and situational requirements whereas Speedy Kits has an effect that is desirable all the time.

I understand that it is too late in the process for a more thorough solution, but may it be possible to revert the blanket cooldown on the Kit Refinement on all kits to being separate, individual internal cooldowns per swapped kit (e.g. Med Kit’s refinement being a separate internal cooldown from Bomb Kit’s, and Grenade’s, Flamethrower’s, Elixir Gun’s, & Mortar’s). So that while the Swiftness portion was a 20 second cooldown, the various refinements had internal cooldowns separate from one another.

While it wouldn’t fix the lack of synergy from the current state of the Kit Refinement trait, it would go a long way to enabling some value to be gained from that portion trait.

I’ve always thought this would be a good idea, but the devs have indicated previously that they think having access to all those small effects very frequently would be too powerful or not have proper counter play.

Another type of fix they could do is just make it so that the speedy kits portion of streamlined kits pulses the stability at every 20 second interval while a kit is equipped. That would reduce the need of frequent swapping a bit, so it would be less likely to be in a situation where you have to waste your KR proc in order to get your mobility.

Which kit refinement effect is even good?

elixir gun: puts down a trail of slick-puddles that apply immob once per puddle to a player. less effective than slick-shoes in group-play (still decent), but as effective as slick-shoes in 1v1’s.

medkit: magnetic aura. free projectile reflect for some seconds (and with the comming changes to medkit awesome defense against pew pew rangers and bow-warri’s

toolkit: super-speed for some seconds. awesome for a quick disengage with gearshield up.

bombkit: magnetic bomb that pulls 5 targets in a decent range towards the bomb. Good setup for BoB, mine-field bursts and rezz/stomp prevention.

the rather bad triggers are flamethrower, with fire-aura for a short duration, and nades who drop nothing but a mine.

No idea what mortar will bring.

Kit refinement skills are overall worth it, but their shared internal cd’s always made their usage wonky, especially since they trigger out of combat as well.

as far as i know mortar kit deploys an ethereal field under your feet

Brtwrst.9312:

as far as i know mortar kit deploys an ethereal field under your feet

They said it apparently drops gunk at your feet, which will be of questionable value at best. It will easily reveal you from stealth, and it doesn’t synergize well with the mortar since you’ll be trying to use that thing from long range mostly. Now it does allow you to combine your standard shot for the mortar to gain confusion on it, or you can blast it for chaos armour, but it’s still a really weird fit.

The only kit refinement I’ve seen that has novel value is the bomb. That provides unique functionality that you can’t otherwise get, and can be very useful in setting up bomb combos. All the other ones are often too short duration, too weak, or just too underwhelming in general to be of any significant use.

What tops it all of is that they all conflict with each other. So if you want to run a 5 kit build, good luck making “clutch” use of a particular kit refinement effect, especially if you’re trying to use something like speedy kits in conjunction with it. Removing the shared ICD between the effects would be a good first step into making the kit refinement portion of streamlined kits better.

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’ve always thought this would be a good idea, but the devs have indicated previously that they think having access to all those small effects very frequently would be too powerful or not have proper counter play.

Yeah, I recalled a mention of this as well way back when. Though this was also back when it was an Adept trait and before the refinement effects were changed.

The original (Old Kit Refinement, back within a year of release) version of Kit Refinement was, going by memory:

Flamethrower: Player-Based AoE Flameblast (ala Sigil of Fire) that applied a burn and removed a condition from the Engineer. Had a 10 second ICD.

Elixir Gun: Player-Based Super Elixir. 15-20 second ICD.

Grenade Kit: Player-Based Grenade Shower (ala the Explosive Descent trait). 15-20 second ICD. This is the refinement ability that lead to the drastic changes that led to the Kit Refinement we all know now.

Bomb Kit: Dropped Bomb 1 at the Engineer’s feet. 5-10 second ICD.

Tool and Med Kit: Sadly, I can’t recall what the original kit refinement effects for these were.

The original Kit refinement was strong for an Adept trait. Though, even then, it was rarely used outside of one build (the 100 ’Nades build) in PVP. The current Kit Refinement we all know is undesirable even as an Adept trait and it will soon be moved into the Master tier.

Synosius.9876:

Which kit refinement effect is even good?

Of the current Kit Refinement effects? Mmm, Bomb, Elixir, and Med Kit’s are useful in situational applications. Flamethrower, Tool and Grenade Kits has little effect in even ideal situations.

However, in its current form, it is virtually impossible to get value out of those abilities due their hair trigger and prohibitive, blanket 20 second cooldown.

Hopefully one of today’s streams will be able to shed more light on this since no further information was provided Friday (as a dev posted they would be).

From Chaithh’s stream, they still have the blanket cooldown. He said that he hated that about it, and that it’s actually worse than the it is currently.

Yes most of the “spells” are kinda bad. But think of them as freebies for taking speedy kits(despite the fact it’s a nerfed version of speedy kits).

The elixir gun, mortar, toolkit effects are pretty decent for free stuff. You probably won’t be able to control them with a 20s icd. But you get the IV buff icon so you at least know when they will occur.

robertul.3679:

Yes most of the “spells” are kinda bad. But think of them as freebies for taking speedy kits(despite the fact it’s a nerfed version of speedy kits).

The elixir gun, mortar, toolkit effects are pretty decent for free stuff. You probably won’t be able to control them with a 20s icd. But you get the IV buff icon so you at least know when they will occur.

They won’t be an extra in 99% percent of cases, there is no incentive to take this trait beyond perma swiftness which is GREATLY outclassed by mecha legs, hell even invigorating speed is useless if you rely on streamlined kits.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Brtwrst.9312:

as far as i know mortar kit deploys an ethereal field under your feet

They said it apparently drops gunk at your feet, which will be of questionable value at best. It will easily reveal you from stealth, and it doesn’t synergize well with the mortar since you’ll be trying to use that thing from long range mostly. Now it does allow you to combine your standard shot for the mortar to gain confusion on it, or you can blast it for chaos armour, but it’s still a really weird fit.

The only kit refinement I’ve seen that has novel value is the bomb. That provides unique functionality that you can’t otherwise get, and can be very useful in setting up bomb combos. All the other ones are often too short duration, too weak, or just too underwhelming in general to be of any significant use.

What tops it all of is that they all conflict with each other. So if you want to run a 5 kit build, good luck making “clutch” use of a particular kit refinement effect, especially if you’re trying to use something like speedy kits in conjunction with it. Removing the shared ICD between the effects would be a good first step into making the kit refinement portion of streamlined kits better.

Gunk/Ethereal makes sense for engineer, if only because Thieves have stolen Gunk from us for years yet, until now, we have had no gunk skills or effects of our own.

…and that projectile-based confusion lasts 5 seconds, which is a little nuts, since all other projectile finisher conditions only last 1 sec IIRC. Assuming the 1/2sec attack speed stays, you could flash to mortar to proc this in melee , quickly swap to Tool Kit for Prybar, then come back and spam the 1 skill on your target for an easy 10+ stacks of Confusion in a really short time, and without Nightmare or Perplexity Runes. With decent (about 1200 or so) Condition damage, that would around 740 damage per tick and 1.2k damage per skill use.