Guild Wars 2

GADGET UTILITY SKILLS

Rocket Shoes

• Activation no longer interrupts the player. Player simply jumps backwards 900 range. Animation and effect identical to Acid Bomb’s retreating leap.

Slick Shoes

• Now breaks Stun.

Throw Mine

• Recharge increased from 18 to 25 seconds.
• Now removes up to 3 boons.

Personal Battering Ram

• Recharge reduced from 45 to 35 seconds.

GADGET TOOL-BELT SKILLS

Rocket Kick (Rocket Shoes tool-belt skill)

• Range increased from 300 to 600.

Super Speed (Slick Shoes tool-belt skill)

• Recharge reduced to from 45 to 40 seconds.
• Now removes Crippled, Chilled and Immobilized.

Launch Personal Battering Ram

• If you strike a foe that is disabled, you do double damage.

TRAIT REMODELING

Explosives —> Inventions: [Exploit Weaknesses]

• [Exploit Weaknesses] function change. [Exploit Weaknesses] is now an Adept Trait in the Inventions trait line. To compensate, [Enhance Performance] is now an Adept Trait in the Explosives trait line.
  • Upon activation, all Gadgets convert a Condition into a Boon for each Gadget you have equipped (maximum 2 Conditions).
    • The Condition-to-Boon effect uses the same conversion table as [Contemplation of Purity].

Inventions —> Explosives: [Gadget Blowout Overdrive]

• [Power Shoes] replaced by [Gadget Blowout Overdrive] (new trait). [Gadget Blowout Overdrive] is now a Major Master Trait in the Explosives trait line.
  • Personal Battering Ram now removes Stability. When the mine from Throw Mine detonates, all nearby allies now cure up to 2 Conditions (Radius: 240). Rocket Boots now deal +10% more damage and burn foes (Burning: 3 seconds). Slick Shoes now produces a Glue Puddle at your location upon activation. Utility Goggles gains a powerful headlamp (chains into a new skill).

• Deer in the Headlights (new Utility Goggles skill)
  • Activate your goggle’s powerful headlamp, dazing and blinding foes in a line.
    • Range: 900
    • Daze: 2 seconds
    • Blind: 6 seconds

Firearms: [Mach Drive]

• [Knee Shot] replaced by [Mach Drive] (new trait) and swapped with [Napalm Specialist]. [Napalm Specialist] is now an Adept Trait (tier 1) and [Mach Drive] is a Master Trait (tier 2). Both respectively remain within the Firearms trait line.
  • Rocket Boots now grant evasion for 2 seconds (all incoming attacks miss). Slick Shoes now grant Swiftness and Retaliation (Swiftness: 15 seconds; Retaliation: 7 seconds). Throw Mine and Personal Battering Ram can now be activated while stunned (they still do not break stun). After using Utility Goggles, your next attack now immobilizes your enemy for 3 seconds.

Suggestions and comments are welcome. The idea behind my post was to bring Gadgets into their own as an Engineer utility sub-type. Elixirs-only builds work for Engineers despite being single skills (as opposed to the extra skills and utility that kits grant) because of a good Trait foundation. With the proper trait adjustments, Gadgets could open up doors to new playstyles and increase an Engineer’s contribution in active combat. Instead of focusing on “buffs-on-use” abilities as are Elixir traits, I figured it would be more interesting to suggest an “additional-skills-on-use” approach for Gadget traits in order to preserve their identity and, again, push for new playstyles.

There exists the distinct possibility that some aspects of this list are overpowered—I tried to make the suggestions balanced—so if you want to call me out on something that you see, please do.

Rocket Shoes are actually OK , just need to fix bug with not going backwards but getting blocked by a tiny rock and self ccing. Or jump like you say

Slick Shoes is 95% perfect the way it is. Just needs lower CD. Nothing else. Like 45s instead of 60.

Proposed change by you will not help mine. It could be good if it did something more beyond what it does.

Rocket kick is fine really. Low CD, long burn, aoe. No need to change.

Super Speed is very powerful the way it already is. No need to change. 100% faster movement in combat is mighty good.

Launch Battering Ram. Imo it should just do a Launch or Knockdown.

I would add Stealth Seeing to Utility Goggles and change the name to Infrared Utility Goggles

I agree with the suggested changes. Particularly to the Utility Skill Rocket Boots. I don’t mind the self knock back per say, for I find it very stylistic of the engineers “Reckless” mentality. But I find the self knock back to be too long to warrant much use as it was intended for. Granted this opinion is from a competitive end game PvP perspective.
I think a fair change to Rocket Boots would be either:

1)Reduce the self knock Back duration. I feel this would be a reasonable change because in its current state using Rocket Boots out of an Opponents Crowd Control will keep you Inactive long enough for the opponent to close the distance and re-apply another Crowd Control thus defeating the purpose. (You can see this when running along side someone with the same running speed. click “About face” and launch your self In front of the person and by the time you regain control of your character they will have closed the distance providing no actual gain in distance.)
2)Allow the origin or launch point of Rocket boots to knock down nearby opponents for a matching self Knock Back Duration. This effect would be similar to the Engineers Rifle skill “Overcharged Shot” allowing you to gain a mild advantage from the distance gained while also providing a offensive utility to this Skill.
3)Provide additional Condition removal. Besides the obviousness uses of this it would be a welcomed addition to non-Elixir builds and add some much needed survivability to Engineers which currently lack and reliable form of Condition removal. Allowing for removal of 2 conditions on top of the already stated movement impairing condition removal while still causing a self knocking Back, I feel, would be a decent change.

Everything before the trait line changes i really like. Everything after i’m a little wishy washy on.

Killyox.3950:

Rocket Shoes are actually OK , just need to fix bug with not going backwards but getting blocked by a tiny rock and self ccing. Or jump like you say

Slick Shoes is 95% perfect the way it is. Just needs lower CD. Nothing else. Like 45s instead of 60.

Proposed change by you will not help mine. It could be good if it did something more beyond what it does.

Rocket kick is fine really. Low CD, long burn, aoe. No need to change.

Super Speed is very powerful the way it already is. No need to change. 100% faster movement in combat is mighty good.

Launch Battering Ram. Imo it should just do a Launch or Knockdown.

I would add Stealth Seeing to Utility Goggles and change the name to Infrared Utility Goggles

Slick shoes used to have that CD you speak of, it was considered OP and a must have…thus it has the CD it has now. Was it OP before? “shrug”, i know i always used it till they nerfed it..now i never do, i think trait’s that effect gadgets is a better way to bring this utility up.

And he is making mine do more than what it does now, 3 boon rips. Lets compare throw mine to battering ram for a second…

1. Better knockback from range (you can even aim it to choose which direction you want to send them)
2. Can boon shred.
3. is the ONLY “gadget” with multiple traits that effect it in the explosive tree (vuln, larger ae, 10% more damage, explosions can cause bleeding, etc) ps. it used to be a kit only reason it is better than other gadgets.
4. does AE damage instead of isngle target right infront of you. (does same base damage)
5. is a blast finisher.
6. 18 second cd instead of 45.
7. toolbelt skill is situationally better. (as it also benefits from said traits)
8. can be placed in advance on yourself to instantly knockback theifs etc who jump you
9. is unblockable.

So saying mine should do MORE comes off silly to me, tweaking what it is already doing or adding new gadget traits to aid it sure. But right now it makes battering ram look like a pos. His change would give it more utility at boon shred which is unique to this ability, as we dont have access to boon shreds outside of it. (btw, i occasionally use it as it will get rid of stability on elite users and interrupt players channeling a block)

slick shoes toolbelt skill should be stunbreaker

Rocket boots should be ground targetable like the rifle jump shot( without the hovering), id really like a way to chase down running targets, i think were one of the only classes that doesnt have a good blink ability.

Sororita.3465:

Rocket boots should be ground targetable like the rifle jump shot( without the hovering), id really like a way to chase down running targets, i think were one of the only classes that doesnt have a good blink ability.

I was wondering about that possibility as well. I can’t really give you a direct answer about why I’m mostly against turning Rocket Boots into a targetable leap, but I feel that it works well the way it is now. The fact that it removes all slowing Conditions, breaks stun, counts as a blast finisher and has a 30 second recharge (24 seconds with Speedy Gadgets) already makes it really good. Simply removing that self-CC at the end would skyrocket this skill into relevancy. It’s already pretty close, in all honesty.

It actually just occurred to me that sometimes the distance that Rocket Boots covers when activated can vary wildly while in combat (sometimes I will go about 900 range while other times it seems more like 300). A ground-targeted version would fix this immediately and also give the Engineer more control over where exactly the skill places the player.

However, once again, something just stops me. I feel like Rocket Boots is really in a nice place where it is. Maybe it’s the flavor, maybe it’s the way you really have to play around its effect and work with the skill to get your body moving across the field in the way you want, but Rocket Boots being a backward retreat fits the Engineer well.

Then again, chasing people with Rocket Boots sounds awfully fun. Ah, I’m conflicted again.

Zinwrath.2049:

So saying mine should do MORE comes off silly to me, tweaking what it is already doing or adding new gadget traits to aid it sure. But right now it makes battering ram look like a pos. His change would give it more utility at boon shred which is unique to this ability, as we dont have access to boon shreds outside of it. (btw, i occasionally use it as it will get rid of stability on elite users and interrupt players channeling a block)

That’s actually an interesting point, but it still sort of feels weird to make traits for Gadgets and then leave out Throw Mine because it falls into the middle of the trait Venn Diagram. Uhhh, I don’t know here. You are right about Battering Ram, though. After some review, it did sort of get shafted compared to my suggestions. I should address that.

As for the traits themselves, I felt that if Elixirs have already gone down the passive, homogenized buff road with their trait base, then Gadgets could go the individualized, active skill route. The best way I thought of doing that was by implement traits that tack on big effects or entire skills that trigger with Gadget skill use.

So what about Throw Mine? I’m a little lost on this one. I still don’t see the harm in keeping those trait suggestions. Is it more just that it outclasses Battering Ram? I suppose that that could be fixed with some function tweaking and buffs.