Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen quite a few posts taking about how our new profession mechanic is lacking, and some suggestions that giving Scrapper weapon swap would be a simple addition to help make up for it. I think this could be an interesting idea; perhaps allowing Scrapper to chose between having weapon swap or a kits slotted, to help keep balance (and promote non-kit builds).
I’m wondering what other primary Engi players think?

I’ve often thought about precisely this. Having a dedicated Kit slot instead of a second weapon would open up room for all sorts of builds. Of course the slotted kit would have to lose it’s toolbelt, but I could live with that. It would also have to be locked from in-combat changes. I suspect though that it couldn’t be done.

A straight up weapon swap was added to Revenant, so we know it’s at least possible to make that kind of change.

+1

give me weaponswap as class-mechanic

It does not need to be necessarily build in with scrapper, but would be nice to have in a future specialization,

…or as core-class mechanic:
Our cd trait for the toolbelt is still just half-baked since all other classes received additional effects to these traits, so how about we change mechanized deployment & streamlined kits into this:

mechanized deployment:
- reduce TB cd by 15%
- allow weaponswap to a offhand weaponset IF no kit is equiped / 10sec weaponswap cd.

streamlined kits:
[additional effects]
- gain swiftness for 20sec when weapon-swapping
- reduce weaponswap cd to 5sec

Oh look, kits are suddenly not our shoehorned, unofficial class-mechanic anymore…
Ofc they are still ridiculously good, but no-kit builds are at least more viable in themselves, especially when combined with scrapper.

Our weapons and utilities – kits themselves – are all balanced over kits’ forceful use and continuous swap. Just giving a weapon swap when no kit is equipped wouldn’t work. Those other utilities and weapons are still undertuned due to the mere existance of kits, after all.

They should overhaul the class, giving normal weapon swap (even to a kit, if they wanted to, but it isn’t strictly necessary), maybe some normal weapon to the base spec and add some kind of disadvantage to kits (like, cooldown on swap).
And add an elite spec focused on kits that could make them work sort-of like now, obviously giving up the weapon swap. Except that by doing so it would be a choice, rather than something forced upon the whole class like it is now. And it could properly be balanced separatedly.

Manuhell.2759:

Our weapons and utilities – kits themselves – are all balanced over kits’ forceful use and continuous swap. Just giving a weapon swap when no kit is equipped wouldn’t work. Those other utilities and weapons are still undertuned due to the mere existance of kits, after all.

They should overhaul the class, giving normal weapon swap (even to a kit, if they wanted to, but it isn’t strictly necessary), maybe some normal weapon to the base spec and add some kind of disadvantage to kits (like, cooldown on swap).
And add an elite spec focused on kits that could make them work sort-of like now, obviously giving up the weapon swap. Except that by doing so it would be a choice, rather than something forced upon the whole class like it is now. And it could properly be balanced separatedly.

Or we can leave the class as it is and not completely change how it functions based on your whims.

My “whims”. Hah.
The whole design of the class right now is nothing else but a failure.
This is the only class that can’t even use “on swap” sigils by default. Because we have no swap, by default.

Kits and weapons have to be balanced over full-kits build, and the other utilities can’t even stand a comparison with kits for the most part. The only ones that get used are the ones that can do something that kit cannot – like slick shoes. And they even get whined upon because of their strength.

A class that has by default the lowest amount of skills, and yet can have one of the highest ones as well…and yet should be balanced for both of these cases. How can you expect that to work well?

And now we’ve even got elite specializations…that can’t even work properly with how the class is designed. Of course, classes weren’t being designed thinking about elite specializations to begin with.
New weapons and utilities? Useless, they all have to be balanced over kits, thus suffering the same issues.
They can’t even give some decent new mechanic – we already have a ton of F buttons used, and the toolbelt can’t just be replaced with some other mechanic given that some utilities depend on the toolbelt to work (like turrets). So we get leftovers like the function gyro.

And people even want to think everything is well with the class…

I’d love weapon swap, but I worry it would take recoding the entire inventory system just to make this possible for an elite spec.

Manuhell.2759:

My “whims”. Hah.
The whole design of the class right now is nothing else but a failure.
This is the only class that can’t even use “on swap” sigils by default. Because we have no swap, by default.

Kits and weapons have to be balanced over full-kits build, and the other utilities can’t even stand a comparison with kits for the most part. The only ones that get used are the ones that can do something that kit cannot – like slick shoes. And they even get whined upon because of their strength.

A class that has by default the lowest amount of skills, and yet can have one of the highest ones as well…and yet should be balanced for both of these cases. How can you expect that to work well?

And now we’ve even got elite specializations…that can’t even work properly with how the class is designed. Of course, classes weren’t being designed thinking about elite specializations to begin with.
New weapons and utilities? Useless, they all have to be balanced over kits, thus suffering the same issues.
They can’t even give some decent new mechanic – we already have a ton of F buttons used, and the toolbelt can’t just be replaced with some other mechanic given that some utilities depend on the toolbelt to work (like turrets). So we get leftovers like the function gyro.

And people even want to think everything is well with the class…

Um…… Swap sigils proc on kits.

Kits are your weapon swap. Equipping a single kit gives you 19 skills equipping 5 gives you 35.

Engie is all about customization, you decide how many skills you need to be effective 15 or 35.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Um…… Swap sigils proc on kits.

And kits aren’t given by default. They’re a type of utility skills, and thus optional. In theory.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Kits are your weapon swap. Equipping a single kit gives you 19 skills equipping 5 gives you 35.

Again, they aren’t a proper weapon swap. Any other class gets it by default, even atypical ones like elementalists (where their class mechanic and weapon swap converge into a single mechanic).
You didn’t mention the case where we have zero kits, by the way. What about our weapon swap then?
If they’re optional, playing without kits shouldn’t be an issue. And yet…

Daniel Handler.4816:

Engie is all about customization, you decide how many skills you need to be effective 15 or 35.

Sure, in theory it would work that way.
In practice they have to balance over the upper spectrum so that having that large number of skills doesn’t end up making you overpowered. Making single skills (like, all the other utilities) mostly irrelevant.

Manuhell.2759:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Um…… Swap sigils proc on kits.

And kits aren’t given by default. They’re a type of utility skills, and thus optional. In theory.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Kits are your weapon swap. Equipping a single kit gives you 19 skills equipping 5 gives you 35.

Again, they aren’t a proper weapon swap. Any other class gets it by default, even atypical ones like elementalists (where their class mechanic and weapon swap converge into a single mechanic).
You didn’t mention the case where we have zero kits, by the way. What about our weapon swap then?
If they’re optional, playing without kits shouldn’t be an issue. And yet…

Daniel Handler.4816:

Engie is all about customization, you decide how many skills you need to be effective 15 or 35.

Sure, in theory it would work that way.
In practice they have to balance over the upper spectrum so that having that large number of skills doesn’t end up making you overpowered. Making single skills (like, all the other utilities) mostly irrelevant.

Only in PvE and only because it is so DPS obsessed.

In PvP, the loadout is more more relaxed. Of the three Meta builds, each uses a different amount of kits from 1 – 3. There, Elixirs more than hold their own.

As Turrets are the requisite kittenty utility line that all classes seem to have, that just leaves gadgets as the line that needs to be able to meaningfully compete.

Keeping the above in mind, in all modes, the best way to ‘fix’ kits is to:

A – Concentrate all hard hitting kit damage skills in 1 – 2 kits. Gives more incentive to bring other utilities since kit swapping to get the hardest hitting skills will not be needed.

B – Buff gadgets by giving them a passive and an active effect. These should be comparable in efficacy to the 1 -2 skills we bother to bring kits for anyway.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Manuhell.2759:

My “whims”. Hah.
The whole design of the class right now is nothing else but a failure.
This is the only class that can’t even use “on swap” sigils by default. Because we have no swap, by default.

Kits and weapons have to be balanced over full-kits build, and the other utilities can’t even stand a comparison with kits for the most part. The only ones that get used are the ones that can do something that kit cannot – like slick shoes. And they even get whined upon because of their strength.

A class that has by default the lowest amount of skills, and yet can have one of the highest ones as well…and yet should be balanced for both of these cases. How can you expect that to work well?

And now we’ve even got elite specializations…that can’t even work properly with how the class is designed. Of course, classes weren’t being designed thinking about elite specializations to begin with.
New weapons and utilities? Useless, they all have to be balanced over kits, thus suffering the same issues.
They can’t even give some decent new mechanic – we already have a ton of F buttons used, and the toolbelt can’t just be replaced with some other mechanic given that some utilities depend on the toolbelt to work (like turrets). So we get leftovers like the function gyro.

And people even want to think everything is well with the class…

Um…… Swap sigils proc on kits.

Kits are your weapon swap. Equipping a single kit gives you 19 skills equipping 5 gives you 35.

Engie is all about customization, you decide how many skills you need to be effective 15 or 35.

Sorry kenti, but you got some of his points wrong:

We don’t have a default weapon swap, so we are forced to equip at least 1 kit in order to use these, which shoehorns our build-process right from the start into kits.

additionally our utilities have mutiple design flaws, making no-kit builds hardly viable at all. Turrets are squishy, immobile scrap that only scale with healing&condi power, which makes them absolutely useless unless manhandled as better bombs, the same fate that seems to await gyros.

All our utilities are balanced against the fact that we CAN have up to 40 skills (don’t forget the extra-effects from streamlined kits).
All our mainhand weapons are balanced around the fact that we CAN have up to 40 skills.
Kits themselves are balanced around the fact that we can have up to 40 skills.

The more kits we swap out for other utilities, like elixir S or slickshoes, the bigger issues we get with keeping up pressure on our targets, since all our hard hitting skills are on rather long cd’s, spread over multiple kits.
And since kits also come with a multitude of survival skills, we are virtually forced into equipping as much kits as possible so we can keep up our common gameplay of cycling trough one kit after another, spamming & comboing our burst.

The issue is, kit cycling is not our class-mechanic.
Atunement cycling is the class-mechanic of elementalists. They don’t need a weaponswap since their class comes with 4 weaponsets to all times PER DEFAULT.

But we have to give up one utility after another in order to achieve a gameplay that is borderline viable compared to other classes. This means we are on a equal footing to other classes IF WE RUN NOTHING BUT KITS. As soon as we start to switch out kits for other utilities, our potential dps, cc, & survivability goes down the sink since we’ve switched potentially 7 skills out for 2, which usually are stunbreak skills on high cd’s…

And we already can see this bad class-design to hurt the scrapper, which AA hits like a wet noodle, has a completely unwhelming class-mechanic compared to what other classes got, and comes with what is the SECOND batch of squishy AI for our class already…
You know, it would be OP when played together with kits, otherwise…

That is true toxo. I more meant that kits were the default weapon swap. That as an engie you were expected to use at least one. Probably not fair but the assumption is clearly there.

They are the engies other weapon. And they allow the engie to swap weapons without the effects of the cooldown present to all the other professions. They at three kits allow an engie to have three weapons, again without the cd swaps of things like conjured weapons.

It is a weird thing to balance.

Jupp, and therefore many of us want it to be changed.

I myself made a suggestion to put 10sec swap cd’s on each kit, give streamlined kits the option to reduce it to 5sec, and allow us to weapon swap as well. Mechanized deployment then would finally get is secondary effect (weapon-swap cd reduction to 5sec) as well
This would have been accompanied by a buff to most kits / weapons & some utilities in order to make them viable in and around themselves, coming closer to the concept of ele-attunements. This would allow no-kit builds to become a lot more viable, especially since they still have the option to weapon-swap, get pure kit builds away from their spaminess & more towards proper swap-cycles & therefore open up our balancing decissions for new elite-specializations.

We would still have the potential of running around with 40 skills, but the broken aspect of having access to them to all times would be gone, and therefore allow a way more reasonable balance around this fact…

Fundamentally change the most interesting and compelling class in the game into ranger 2.0? I’ll pass thanks.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Manuhell.2759:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Um…… Swap sigils proc on kits.

And kits aren’t given by default. They’re a type of utility skills, and thus optional. In theory.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Kits are your weapon swap. Equipping a single kit gives you 19 skills equipping 5 gives you 35.

Again, they aren’t a proper weapon swap. Any other class gets it by default, even atypical ones like elementalists (where their class mechanic and weapon swap converge into a single mechanic).
You didn’t mention the case where we have zero kits, by the way. What about our weapon swap then?
If they’re optional, playing without kits shouldn’t be an issue. And yet…

Daniel Handler.4816:

Engie is all about customization, you decide how many skills you need to be effective 15 or 35.

Sure, in theory it would work that way.
In practice they have to balance over the upper spectrum so that having that large number of skills doesn’t end up making you overpowered. Making single skills (like, all the other utilities) mostly irrelevant.

Only in PvE and only because it is so DPS obsessed.

In PvP, the loadout is more more relaxed. Of the three Meta builds, each uses a different amount of kits from 1 – 3. There, Elixirs more than hold their own.

As Turrets are the requisite kittenty utility line that all classes seem to have, that just leaves gadgets as the line that needs to be able to meaningfully compete.

Keeping the above in mind, in all modes, the best way to ‘fix’ kits is to:

A – Concentrate all hard hitting kit damage skills in 1 – 2 kits. Gives more incentive to bring other utilities since kit swapping to get the hardest hitting skills will not be needed.

B – Buff gadgets by giving them a passive and an active effect. These should be comparable in efficacy to the 1 -2 skills we bother to bring kits for anyway.

This is easily the most illuminated response in this thread, and needs more visibility. The mentality that all-kit builds are necessary or even desirable is much more a reflection of the basic style of PvE in this game. It’s exactly what Anet is trying to change with raids – requiring more utility out of players instead of having dungeons that ultimately amount to elaborate whack-a-mole.

In PvP, you see a lot more builds that opt for non-kit utilities. Still, at least one kit is practically required across the board, and that should be addressed for the sake of build diversity. Both of darkflare’s suggestions are great for this, taking into account the context of the game, and making minor adjustments rather than a total rework of the class.

Finally, I would note that while kits always outclass everything on paper, having to click more buttons to use the skills you need can become more of a liability than an asset in game modes that are not focused on a dps rotation. In a rotation, it’s easy to train yourself to hit a series of keys in order repeatedly. In, for example, PvP, you have to play reactively. A kit may have a lot of tools, but if I have to hit two buttons to get there it isn’t always as good as another skill that offers fewer abilities, but can be deployed immediately when I need it. The fewer opportunities for getting my intended actions screwed up by fat-fingering or the ~1/4 second it takes to hit an extra button, the more reliably I can do what I want to do when I want to do it in a fast-paced dynamic environment.

Long time Engineer, I would hate this change. It wouldn’t add anything interesting to the class.

From a PvE perspective; No thanks. This would heavily interfere with rotations and I really don’t need more DPS buttons to press, which is essetnially all a weapon swap would bring. Not to mention it would slow us down with accidental weapon swaps when canceling abilities.

From a PvP perspective; No thanks. This would interfere with balance in a very negative way. Existing weapons would have to be watered down to compensate, because ALL Engineers would be running the exact same thing because we lack many weapons, so it’s just baseline utility/damage/CC that we’re gaining.

I honestly can’t understand why many must impose their other class’ design on Engineers. We don’t have weapon swap, we rely on our utility skills to design our playstyle. The same way Rangers are designed as a pet class, and this shouldn’t change (or change much, future elite spec etc) from being that at it’s heart.

No swap, thanks.

While the F-Gyro is practically a Non Value Spec Mechanic, weapon swap will be totally OP, and quite impossible to balance.

Also every proffession out there except Ele have weapon swap already, so it wouldn’t answer the aesthetic problem of the Scrapper lacking a clearly visible and exclusive Spec Mechanic.

One thing I should point out: Kits don’t have cooldowns (well, 1 second, but I don’t think anyone can press buttons that fast, and the animations couldn’t keep up with that) on stowing and equipping like other classes do for weapon swap, and ele has for attunements. If they gave us a weapon swap, they’d probably give us cooldowns on equipping kits, which would wreck our rotations.

Goosekilla.2796:

This is easily the most illuminated response in this thread, and needs more visibility. The mentality that all-kit builds are necessary or even desirable is much more a reflection of the basic style of PvE in this game. It’s exactly what Anet is trying to change with raids – requiring more utility out of players instead of having dungeons that ultimately amount to elaborate whack-a-mole.

In PvP, you see a lot more builds that opt for non-kit utilities. Still, at least one kit is practically required across the board, and that should be addressed for the sake of build diversity. Both of darkflare’s suggestions are great for this, taking into account the context of the game, and making minor adjustments rather than a total rework of the class.

Finally, I would note that while kits always outclass everything on paper, having to click more buttons to use the skills you need can become more of a liability than an asset in game modes that are not focused on a dps rotation. In a rotation, it’s easy to train yourself to hit a series of keys in order repeatedly. In, for example, PvP, you have to play reactively. A kit may have a lot of tools, but if I have to hit two buttons to get there it isn’t always as good as another skill that offers fewer abilities, but can be deployed immediately when I need it. The fewer opportunities for getting my intended actions screwed up by fat-fingering or the ~1/4 second it takes to hit an extra button, the more reliably I can do what I want to do when I want to do it in a fast-paced dynamic environment.

But kits are superior to anything else, that’s a fact. That’s because they had to balance everything else toward a worst-case of people using many kits together, because balancing otherwise could result in overpowered results.
Other utilities are used only if they can do something that kits cannot do and if there is some specific situation that requires it, else they’re just ignored.
And all the weapons had to be balanced over kits. That was even clearly written in the balance philosophies.
In short, either if you use them or not, anything revolves over kits. Is centered over kits, and is balanced in a way that makes kits mandatory. Even new weapons and skills have to balanced in that way. And it always ends up on us having to rely on the same kits for most of the time. Instead of being free to use something else and still see some decent results.

About pvp, it isn’t like having more skills to use is even an issue – having a lot of skills also means that opponents won’t be able to avoid all of them, after all.

Anyway, the choice is either to do a rework to fix the issues with the base design or getting screwed with any future elite specialization and having to do even more work later.
Kits as they’re now would be a nice elite specialization. Right now, they’re just something that makes balancing the class properly an impossible task.

Edit: i see many responses are opposed to change kits. Let me ask this: how come the actual class mechanic is seen as much less important than some optional utilities?
People treat kits as if they were our class mechanic. They aren’t. And thus they shouldn’t have such an impact on our overall balancing.
They were made as an optional utility, and they should be balanced as an optional utility.
Not be the center of everything like they are now.

Manuhell.2759:

Edit: i see many responses are opposed to change kits. Let me ask this: how come the actual class mechanic is seen as much less important than some optional utilities?
People treat kits as if they were our class mechanic. They aren’t. And thus they shouldn’t have such an impact on our overall balancing.
They were made as an optional utility, and they should be balanced as an optional utility.
Not be the center of everything like they are now.

The class mechanic is actually the most important, without tool belt skills for many of our utilities, they wouldn’t be worth taking in many builds. Before the spec update, they were even exceptionally good for restoring Endurance and making the need for vigor almost obsolete in many builds.

Kits are strong, having at least one isn’t an issue. Most classes always have one of a single utility type on their bar, ours is kits. We’re also themed towards utility skills more than other classes, like how Revenants are too. There are niche builds that can work without taking a single kit, without DPS headsmash speed runs in mind.

Manuhell.2759:

i see many responses are opposed to change kits. Let me ask this: how come the actual class mechanic is seen as much less important than some optional utilities?
People treat kits as if they were our class mechanic. They aren’t. And thus they shouldn’t have such an impact on our overall balancing.
They were made as an optional utility, and they should be balanced as an optional utility.
Not be the center of everything like they are now.

I think it is pretty obvious that kits are at the core of the class.

The tool-belt is less of a class mechanic and more of an apology for Kits taking a utility slot.

And the lack of weapon swap is the trade-off for having so many skills because of kits and tool-belts.

If anything, I think the Toolbelt is the most problematic presence on the class. Taking up all the ‘F’ slots as it does severely limits Elite specs to being too passive.