Guild Wars 2

OK, so having just watched the POI about the Rev and the ability to weapon swap it got me thinking.

All of the same reasons they’ve given for allowing the new class to have weapon swap applies to Engie (and even Ele) as well.

I think its about time they allow us to have weapon swap in the game if they are going to just give it to the revanent.

Thoughts?

Hm. Engis can now have up to 5 kits + a weapon. Additionally there is the toolbelt.

Thats 40 skills. And yet you want more ?

Rev only had 15.

Engi has 15 as well, by default.
And kits are optional, anyway – so the whole class shouldn’t revolve over their use.
If they’re supposed to be something the whole class is designed and balanced upon, they should have been the class mechanic. They aren’t.

But it is no use asking for it. Revenants are one of the strong points of the expansion, so they have to cater to the people interested on it. Gotta sell the expansion, after all.
Engineers…well, we can just be left alone in some corner.

Yeah, kits are great, when you build around their use, but then that also makes them a one trick pony. Also, my point was that the same argument they are using for giving the Rev the WS can just as easily be applied to engie and to some extent Ele.

Even more so when they intro the next weapon into the mix for the elite spec since they also seem to be building the specs around those weapons and traits.

Just makes sense to allow for the swap on those toons or it will be needlessly mean IMO.

Given how Engineer works, it’s strong even without kits. Engineer is already saturated on utility, adding a weapon swap would only serve to add even more, making pre-fight planning less useful.

I agree it’d be cool to increase our in-combat options, speaking as an Engi main, but it would take away from a defining factor from the class that sets it apart from others. Class identity is lacking in GW2, but Engineer does it very well. (if not the best, next to Ele and Mesmer)

The weapons we have to swap to outside of niche builds also don’t synergize with each other at all, if you’re specced for Power, you have no use for p/s or p/p. You’d get 1-2 skills to use for CC at best, then have to sit on a 10s CD till your main weapon is back up.

This is also problematic with the drop bundle/weapon swap mechanic being on the same button, if you’re dropping bundle to cancel a kit skill or anything like that, and you happen to press it even twice, you’re not on the opposite weapon you wish to use, as it’s probably not the one your build can make any use of.

Where this does benefit a build, is swapping between P/P and P/S or hybrid pvp builds. But now it’s just getting kind of ridiculous, very unbalanced. I can just imagine how much strength that would add to an already very strong pvp class. No thanks on that.

Hammer/Rifle would work for PvE, but with how many options we have for range diversity and dps rotations, on top of the above issues it would bring with it, we really really don’t need weapon swap.

Engineer is designed around an almost non existent cooldown on kits, as a trade off for no weapon swaping. That is its design, and the main draw of the profession. In my opinion, i would much rather see players who dislike the design, simply not play the profession. I see no reason to redesign the core intention, and ruin it for the entire community, just to serve a very small minority who dislike it’s functionality.

Correct me if im wrong but dont we have the option to switch between core and elite spec? so technically once we unlock engie elite spec we would have weapon swap?

eduardo.1436:

Correct me if im wrong but dont we have the option to switch between core and elite spec? so technically once we unlock engie elite spec we would have weapon swap?

You gain access to a hammer with the elite spec. That means you can equip a hammer. It does not mean that you have two weapon sets.

:)

It’s not at all comparable to Rev, and it has little to do with the count of skills (I’m sort of confused why people always seem to start counting skills whenever weapon swap is discussed).

Rev had a severe limitation in customization by the way Legends are designed. Their only real choices were “which 2 legends” and “which weapon”. They have no control over skills beyond that, and in fact some of that “choice” was illusory because you simply have to take a certain weapon with certain Legends and certain Legends with certain playstyles.

None of this applies to Eles or Engis. Choosing to be a support roe, damage role, or even to use your favorite utility skill doesn’t automatically fill in the rest of your loadout. Choose rifle on Engi or staff on Ele doesn’t dictate what other skills you must use. Beyond that both Ele and Engi can change their weapon skills at any time during combat, they are not stuck to one skill bar as Revs were. Eles and Engis simply do not need weapon swap.

I don’t think the Engi needs a weapon swap: I like kits as they are right now.

Look at the Rev and the energy cost of its skills. I would hate to see something like that added to Engi (or Ele) for balance sake just to have a weapon swap I probably wouldn’t use anyway.

I’m fine with my 31 skills, ty. A weapon swap is really too much for us. Kits are already a weapon swap without CD.

We are fine

Malchior.1928:

Hm. Engis can now have up to 5 kits + a weapon. Additionally there is the toolbelt.

Thats 40 skills. And yet you want more ?

Rev only had 15.

Yus!

comparing to eles; they have all their attunements and utility skills. when engi doesnt take a kit thats like an ele dropping an attunement for a mediocre utility.

I make this comparison because I started playing ele again. the mobility and utility is fantastic. I can pick fights I wont win and then run away safely until the pursuing enemies give up, then turn around and pick off the slow ones. engi has to fight to the death every time.

sure youre gonna say… rocket boots or elixir s! take them both and youre running 1 kit, maybe 2 with the mokitten. doesnt seem that fun. even rocket boots wont take you that far and in this meta of insane mobility engi is very lacking.

engi also needs a teleportation device. it fits the theme right? maybe it can be like a star trek spoof with the sparkly effects, epic!

that wandered pretty far off topic, sorry. I doubt hammer will give us the things we need so pretty much a moot point.

It really isn’t necessary.

Definitely unnecessary. We can have the second highest amount of skills, and we actually have more skills available in combat than warrior and guardian combined. A weapon swap is unnecessary and will cause a lot more rage then pleasure in the community currently. With a weapon swap we have 55 skills, that is far too many.

No. Revenant weapon skills are garbage compared to ours. Could you imagine an engineer with Jump Shot and Blowtorch? The tears would be unbelievable.

They need it.

Nah, engis don’t need weapon swap.

Revenants need it since they don’t have the versatility to switch from melee to ranged unless they bring a ranged weapon. Engis can do that easily with all the kits we have.

Rev will be really interesting with Legend swap + Weapon swap.
Engie will just become unnecessarily complex.
Dont get me wrong: I would love to glue someone to double jump shot them a moment later and then net them again just to burn them… But it would be too hard to balance, to OP in the right hands, and too confusing for most.
I rather prefer Anet invest the time and manpower to balance and revitalize what we have: We need a revised, more balanced, more flexible prof, with more viable builds and gamestyles.

Engi has 15 skills by default excluding kits, plus has A LOT of kits.
With kits Engi can reach 40 skills, excluding the kit invocation skills (45 if you include those). That is actually higher then Elementalist (37-40) and then Revenant with weaponswap (20).

Revenant with weaponswap is similar to Guardian (17 skills), but also has energy to deal with, and can’t chose its skills. Some legend skills are crap but you can’t unequip single skills.

Don’t compare class mechanic. Compare what they can do.
Revenant will be inferior to Guardian and Elementalist, even if one has less skills and the other cone has more.

I Don’t think Engi need weapon swap either.
BUT
I wouldn’t mind making these weapons viable enough on their own to not need to have at least 1 kit equipped.
Generally I am waiting for specialisation (I will probably drop explosive line for it). There was somewhere data-mined that hammer will have blast finisher on third AA, and it is hammer so it at least will have some higher than avarge dmg (but on other hand I am scared, when I look no how Anet kittened new traits… for me anyway).

Guardian has weaponswap since the start and Engi never complained.
Are you saying that if Revenant had weaponswap from the start it would have been fine?
That’s what I think

Phineas Poe.3018:

No. Revenant weapon skills are garbage compared to ours. Could you imagine an engineer with Jump Shot and Blowtorch? The tears would be unbelievable.

They need it.

Agreed.

Engineers do not have to use kits – and HGH certainly makes alchemist builds viable – but kits greatly increase our kitten nal and form part of the core assumptions of our profession: i.e., we use kits. And our kits already have an incredible amount of utility, even if you don’t specialize in that kit. You may specialize in one or two kits (e.g., grenade/mortar or flamethrower/elixir), but then swap out to another kit on your action bar as needed for its particular utility: e.g., blocks on tool kit, BOB and fields on bombs, etc.

no weapon swap for engis pls

it’s good as it is

iw ould like them focus more on traits synergy and some traits revamps, that’s all we need.

Yes we are all about kits, i find it very fun and balanced enough

More weapon choices would be better though.

Instead of a weaponswap, a button in the same place that toggles the weapon (not kits) Auto attack function could be an interesting way to add more gameplay to kitles/ non- rotation based builds.

Just imagne, rifle could toggle between a long range snipe shot with aim-down-sight animation and a spread-shot with the current hip-shot animation.

For kit-rotation builds is it not much of an improvment, you are not using your AA anyway so changing how it works don’t matter much. However, builds that run one of no kits will get a bit more interesting gameplay. It would also let us aim down the sight of our rifles.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

OK, so having just watched the POI about the Rev and the ability to weapon swap it got me thinking.

All of the same reasons they’ve given for allowing the new class to have weapon swap applies to Engie (and even Ele) as well.

I think its about time they allow us to have weapon swap in the game if they are going to just give it to the revanent.

Thoughts?

the issue was, Rev had 0 Access to any variation in play, making their Damage so predictable as they only ever had the same 5 buttons to use, also none of their weapons are strong enough to be the only weapons, It was imbalancing to give them Weapon Swap, also as a a Proffession that has no Kits and No Attunements it shouldnt balanced with us who do, it isnt really fair we have 15 buttons with 0 Kits yet they get stuck with us knowing they only ever have 5 offensive attacks from weaker weapons.

Elementalist would be too imbalanced and to rebalance them to fit weapon swap would cause SOO many CDs they’d come out worse off with Weapon swap introduced and us engineers barely use base weapon as it is, we dont rly need it + our Weapons have 0 Synergy.

We dont need Weapon Swap, Even with a Pure melee Weapon we have Elixir Gun Gerandes and Motar which all are Ranged Weapons, to give us Weapon swap would be broken specially having Rifle with our Hammer, the idea is to keep our proffession balanced so it isnt Nerfed 1 Patch into HoT and made worthless by a Over Nerf hammer.

Weapon swap fits the Rev but it doesnt fit us.

NiBlack.3149:

I Don’t think Engi need weapon swap either.
BUT
I wouldn’t mind making these weapons viable enough on their own to not need to have at least 1 kit equipped.
Generally I am waiting for specialisation (I will probably drop explosive line for it). There was somewhere data-mined that hammer will have blast finisher on third AA, and it is hammer so it at least will have some higher than avarge dmg (but on other hand I am scared, when I look no how Anet kittened new traits… for me anyway).

Well this will be even more pressed into hammer, Why? Cause 0 ranged capability to not be kited u will be required to take on Ranged Kits and imho that is Exactly how it should be.

your Secondary Resource and your main mechanic Lie in Kit Swaps, to give players a Capability to bypass that entire process is kinda taking away the point of the Proffession, the proffession is here to provide a Playstyle, Which is a jack of all trades within Multiple Kit uses to have abit of everything.

It should Never be nullified, U dont see them deleting Attunements for Elementalists.. Or Deleting pets for Rangers… or Deleting Clones from Mesmers… We shouldnt lose our core mechanics either.

One reason to give the engy and ele swap is so we don’t have to keep going to our inventory to swap crap around. Anet can just make sure it doesn’t get used in combat. Obviously its not some game breaking issue but quality of life changes are important. They really need to bring back the 4 weapon slots even if you can only have 1-2 “active” in combat. It would make switching between sets a lot easier.

Drayos.8759:

It should Never be nullified, U dont see them deleting Attunements for Elementalists.. Or Deleting pets for Rangers… or Deleting Clones from Mesmers… We shouldnt lose our core mechanics either.

I can’t see the point of comparing kits to attunements or pet, or even clones anyway. Our main mechanic isn’t kits, but the toolbelt.
Kits are theoretically optional and compete with other utilities.
Attunements and pets aren’t the same – you can’t even choose to not have them.
And clones are given with every mesmer weapon or off-hand weapons – and then used via their main mechanic of shattering them to get various effects.
All of those have a thing in common: they’re forced upon the class. Any user of the class will always have them available, at every time.
The same is true for the toolbelt in the case of the engineer. But not for kits.
Putting them as optional and then forcing their use is both a design and balance blunder. We may have got used to it, but it doesn’t mean it ever was a good idea to do so.

Manuhell.2759:

Drayos.8759:

It should Never be nullified, U dont see them deleting Attunements for Elementalists.. Or Deleting pets for Rangers… or Deleting Clones from Mesmers… We shouldnt lose our core mechanics either.

I can’t see the point of comparing kits to attunements or pet, or even clones anyway. Our main mechanic isn’t kits, but the toolbelt.
Kits are theoretically optional and compete with other utilities.
Attunements and pets aren’t the same – you can’t even choose to not have them.
And clones are given with every mesmer weapon or off-hand weapons – and then used via their main mechanic of shattering them to get various effects.
All of those have a thing in common: they’re forced upon the class. Any user of the class will always have them available, at every time.
The same is true for the toolbelt in the case of the engineer. But not for kits.
Putting them as optional and then forcing their use is both a design and balance blunder. We may have got used to it, but it doesn’t mean it ever was a good idea to do so.

Actually, I think it is really good design. Kits are made mandatory not because anet came from on high and demand that we use them, but instead, they HEAVILY incentivize their use to the point that not using them is obviously a bad idea in most cases.

One reason to give the engy and ele swap is so we don’t have to keep going to our inventory to swap crap around. Anet can just make sure it doesn’t get used in combat. Obviously its not some game breaking issue but quality of life changes are important. They really need to bring back the 4 weapon slots even if you can only have 1-2 “active” in combat. It would make switching between sets a lot easier.

THIS I can get behind.

Chairman Wang.5930:

One reason to give the engy and ele swap is so we don’t have to keep going to our inventory to swap crap around. Anet can just make sure it doesn’t get used in combat. Obviously its not some game breaking issue but quality of life changes are important. They really need to bring back the 4 weapon slots even if you can only have 1-2 “active” in combat. It would make switching between sets a lot easier.

It’s not that hard to get ooc and back…

lorddarkflare.9186:

Actually, I think it is really good design. Kits are made mandatory not because anet came from on high and demand that we use them, but instead, they HEAVILY incentivize their use to the point that not using them is obviously a bad idea in most cases.

How can you even call such a thing a “good design” is out of my mind.

If the rest of the utilities are so bad that we can’t do almost anything without kits by design, it’s the same as making them mandatory. Except that we even have to pay utilities for them, further reducing our choices.
The only “mandatory” skills everyone should have are their main mechanics. The ones everyone gets by default.
Especially since they decided to put elite specializations as bundles composed by a main weapon, set of utilities and a trait line.
What would the point of those utilities be if they’re just supposed to not be able to compete with kits? They would be making a bunch of skills that won’t be used in practice, supposedly, by design.

Engineers and Elementalists shouldnt have weaponswap, and neither should the Revenant. Giving Revenant weaponswap is really just a lazy design choice that does not even fix the real problem.

Revenant gets its extra skills from swap, but it swaps utility skills. The problem was that this leaves Revenant with nothing but static skills.
Weaponskills are static skills, but normally utility skills are flexible. Except for the Revenant.
Giving Revenant just more static skills in the form of weaponswap does nothing to adress the problem. But it’s a lot easier than doing what should be done, and that is developing more utility skills so each Legend has some choices to make in what is slotted.