Guild Wars 2

So I’ll admit I’m not surprised but still disappointed to see no love given to kitless builds. If anything, kits will be an even more ingrained part of our gameplay now due to the presence of an extra kit (mortar) and some potentially attractive options in the redesigned med kit.

What’s the problem? The engineer has no inherent access to the weapon swap mechanic. I must slot a kit on my bar to be able to do that.

Now yes, I understand that I am just wanting to play the game “wrong”, but don’t try and tell me that it makes logical sense that engineers are the only profession in the game that has no inherent access to the weapon swap mechanic unless they equip a particular class of utility skills. It doesn’t. Both the single-weapon set counterparts, those being elementalist and revenant, both have inherent access to weapon swap via attunement and legend swapping. Ironically, elementalist actually has access to the weapon swap mechanic before anyone else in the game since they can swap between fire and water attunement right in the tutorial instance at level 1.

Why is this an issue? Well, first of all, it kills off build variety. Without the access to the weapon swap mechanic, any player that chooses to run kitless deprives themselves of a variety of powerful sigil effects, those being sigil of battle, doom, energy, geomancy, hydromancy, intelligence, and leeching. Thus I can’t, say, make an all-gadget or all-elixir build that also makes use of sigil of energy.

I’m already punishing myself by not having a kit on my bar, so just throw me a bone and let me access those very powerful sigils.

There’s also a few crappy things in the new trait system where some options are too heavily kit focused. For instance, the alchemy master tier slot has two traits that require kits to be useful, and the other option is the auto-elixir S which I may not even want on my build. So I either go with something absolutely useless, or something that could interfere with how I’m playing (i.e. auto-elixir S pops and prevents me from killing a guy at 2% health, or prevents me from removing condis so I die anyways).

How could this be implemented? I’m not 100% sure, to be honest. Perhaps at the very least, let it activate on tool belt skill use with a 10s ICD. This would be more usable in other builds, obviously (i.e. SD burst build with surprise shot), but at least that’s something.

But maybe I’m just hoping for too much. I mean, they basically had to move a mountain and a half just to get hobosacks taken care of. I just hope I live to see a day where I can access weapon swap sigils without having to run a kit.

I’m actually hoping the hammer alleviates some of the overwhelming demand on use of kits, in the form of it having really high dps to the point that you some how nerf your own damage output by juggling 3 kits and your actual weapon.

And not because I don’t like kits or how active the playstyle is, but I wouldn’t mind relaxing on engi once in a while :P and the fact that I have this ‘itch’ that wants me to be able to change utlites depending on encounter like guardian does, one encounter you might go like wall, bane signet, purging flames, another encounter you go wall, stand your ground and hallowed ground etc. I like that.

And not just that problem, it’s that future skills that aren’t kits will likely not see the light of day in meta builds, or only in niche situations you might slot out a kit for something. And it saddens me we are probably going to be using the same kits like we do now for a looooooooong time.

But the speciliasation we get in HoT + future ones may relieve the demand on kits a little or give us new ones.

Khenzo.2465:

And not just that problem, it’s that future skills that aren’t kits will likely not see the light of day in meta builds, or only in niche situations you might slot out a kit for something. And it saddens me we are probably going to be using the same kits like we do now for a looooooooong time.

It’s just an inherent issue with the kits. They generally provide so much more worth than the other utilities that you always need at least one to be truly effective.

I don’t expect this to change anytime, at all. It’s just too ingrained into the engineer design. Kits are really more of a “class feature” than a “utility skill group”. It’s perhaps fair to say that they should never have been designed the way they were. It would be nice if hammer shakes that up a bit (haha, pun?), but I’d like something a bit more universal, in an ideal world.

But I don’t see having inherent access to a weapon swap mechanic to be beyond the realms of possibility. They’ve just never given any inkling towards wanting to do that, despite the glaring logical design flaws it demonstrates. I suppose they’re also not sure what the proper solution is as much as I am.

Of course, I don’t get paid to think about this stuff…

In my ideal world, engineer would have had weapon swap, with kits being weaker to compensate, so they would be mini weapons that was alot more optional to use, with hammer being an original weapon.

So could go hammer/rifle – with a gadget, an elixer, and a kit or something.

In the long run the class would be a lot better off imo.

But like I said, I enjoy kits and the high apm playstyle, but the kits really are a curse and a blessing.

Oh and I’m sure Anet understand the demand on kits too, so I actually think one day we will get an elite spec that gives us weapon swap, but removes access to kits, or some how limits how many we can slot.

But ofcourse this wouldn’t happen until a few more Especs are in the game to broaden weapon combo choice and skill types to make it truely viable to be a kitless or near kitles engineer.

I really enjoy the kit-based playstyle, but I really wish a gunner/gadgeteer engie was more of a thing.

I personally wouldn’t play it to be honest, but engie could totally be a steampunk cowboy which would be pretty awesome.

Not having a weapon swap is still workable, but the kits are still flat-out better than most of the tools and gadgets, and I saw very little in that livestream to buff things like the mine or the battering ram, which is disappointing.