Guild Wars 2

Kinetic Battery is a great trait, no doubt about that but there’s an issue with it that I think needs to be addressed.

The issue in question is with how Kinetic Battery basically forces you to use it within the short time frame the proc is up. When you dodge and activate it, it’s either you use it right then and there or it goes on a 40s cooldown. There’s no space for tactical play or set-up in order to use it at the best possible moment.

The sense of urgency that is forced upon you when using this trait cannot be ignored. It really could make or break your fights and while that can be cool, I feel a more tactically sound way of dealing with the trait is to have the trait not have a duration when you activate it. It should be permanently active until you decide when to or when not to use it because like I alluded to earlier, that would allow us to use it at the best possible time.

My two cents and a stop watch. What do you guys think?

Another idea would be to reduce the cooldown by a certain amount of you choose not to proc it.

I think you are right Dirame, the “proc time” should be the same as the internal cooldown. This trait has a good potential but those 8-10 seconds (?) are just too short

Just don’t dodge until you are ready to use it. /s

Bog.5893:

Just don’t dodge until you are ready to use it. /s

Aahaha nice joke!

You don’t even get the 8 seconds to cast it, because it can run out while you’re casting your skill. That is absolutely brutal when casting orbital strike, because it will only proc at the moment the skill would go on cooldown.

Hilariously enough though, if you get INTERRUPTED kinetic battery goes away too. So I guess anet made it intentionally very clunky in order to ‘balance’ it better.

I mean, aren’t the conditional aspects of the trait what make it balanced?

It’s a skill shot—perhaps the biggest one we have as a class. It has a very high skill floor to use most effectively because it demands you to be more patient about your tool belt usage and waiting for the right opportunity, but even further heightens our ceiling and what we can do as a class.

To have it permanently accessible would be overpowered. I do agree with Sold Out that the activation should trigger the trait rather than the aftercast. It feels almost as if it pulses every second as a check, and triggers on the next second check with a toolbelt skill on CD. This could also just be a skill queue lag issue, as I’ve also annoyingly accidentally double casted my Toss Elixir S before despite not pressing the button after throwing it the first time.

Phineas Poe.3018:

To have it permanently accessible would be overpowered. I do agree with Sold Out that the activation should trigger the trait rather than the aftercast. It feels almost as if it pulses every second as a check, and triggers on the next second check with a toolbelt skill on CD. This could also just be a skill queue lag issue, as I’ve also annoyingly accidentally double casted my Toss Elixir S before despite not pressing the button after throwing it the first time.

Maybe I explained it wrong or you read it wrong but I meant, after you dodged, it remains there so that you can use it at the right time. 40s duration is also perfect or even 20s or 15s.

Dirame.8521:

Maybe I explained it wrong or you read it wrong but I meant, after you dodged, it remains there so that you can use it at the right time.

I didn’t misunderstand you. To have there be no activation window you’re literally granted a free tool belt use just for dodging. That’s completely OP.

What makes this skill balanced is that it requires you to follow up a dodge with a toolbelt skill; it requires you to actually think before you use something. What you’re asking for is just a permanently accessible second tool belt use, and that’s just crazy. Why should engineers get double Grenade Barrages just because they dodged?

The very counter to this trait is to further lock down engineers so that they can’t fire off their free tool belt skill upon initially evading. What you ask for is to take away any potential counterplay to this trait. It’s just a flat buff to us that we frankly don’t need. We struggle against certain classes right now, but it certainly isn’t because of Tools.

Alchemy+Tools is like our best trait line combination right now, and that’s partially because of HGH and Kinetic Battery. If anything needs a buff, it’s Explosives or Inventions. Tools is fine, if not the best designed tree we currently have right now. The only trait in that entire tree that doesn’t work well is Gadgeteer, and even then it’s still OK.

I don’t know about you guys, but kinetic battery with the elixir elite is veeeery powerful. Nothing beats a well placed dodge followed up by 2 (or 1 depending on the situation) moa transforms. Add that onto the fact that its an aoe is quite literally the most delicious point, considering team fights will practically become a formality.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Dirame.8521:

Maybe I explained it wrong or you read it wrong but I meant, after you dodged, it remains there so that you can use it at the right time.

I didn’t misunderstand you. To have there be no activation window you’re literally granted a free tool belt use just for dodging. That’s completely OP.

What makes this skill balanced is that it requires you to follow up a dodge with a toolbelt skill; it requires you to actually think before you use something. What you’re asking for is just a permanently accessible second tool belt use, and that’s just crazy. Why should engineers get double Grenade Barrages just because they dodged?

The very counter to this trait is to further lock down engineers so that they can’t fire off their free tool belt skill upon initially evading. What you ask for is to take away any potential counterplay to this trait. It’s just a flat buff to us that we frankly don’t need. We struggle against certain classes right now, but it certainly isn’t because of Tools.

Alchemy+Tools is like our best trait line combination right now, and that’s partially because of HGH and Kinetic Battery. If anything needs a buff, it’s Explosives or Inventions. Tools is fine, if not the best designed tree we currently have right now. The only trait in that entire tree that doesn’t work well is Gadgeteer, and even then it’s still OK.

It’s not even on the shore of overpowered, talk less of actually being in the city of OP. Half the stuff we can do with the toolbelt skills can be evaded, interrupted, blocked, CCed to death, destroyed by projectile deflects, heck Elementalist Dagger #2 destroys thrown elixirs. It’s not like giving us the choice to use KB when we find it most appropriate would all of a sudden break the game. If anything, it would simply make us more of a target when people notice we have KB and could do something with it at any time.

And even if someone tried to CC me when KB is up so I wouldn’t use it, they’d be wasting their time because what I use it for is an instant skill. I just want the option to use it at a later time when I choose to, not when the game forces me to.

What I was hoping for was that instead of a full recharge, it would instead take xx seconds off the recharge of the skill. That would keep it useful without making it overpowered when used with things like toss elixir r and toss elixir x.

The one thing I DO want to see on Kinetic Battery – please give us a buffbar icon showing when the battery is off cooldown, like Streamlined Kits.

Mangoes.5163:

The one thing I DO want to see on Kinetic Battery – please give us a buffbar icon showing when the battery is off cooldown, like Streamlined Kits.

This. And perhaps change the 8s threshold to apply to the respective toolbelt ability’s buildup start. Not the end.

Easiest solution: buff icon so we cen manage it and full refresh when the buff runs out (= we haven’t used it)

So basically you can sorta keep it up by dodging until ready to use, having a mild synergy with traits requiring dodge or low endurance ;-)