Guild Wars 2

I know these are not unique, saw some posts about them, but never saw one as a topic on how it could/would work.

Been discussing with some friends about my engineer and how I feel it should work…be unique, have a tool for situations, etc.

My thought:

Kit everything.

Have an elixir kit (separate from gun), turret kit, gadget kit. Have the skill points unlock the abilities in each kit.

For toolbelt: Depending on kit in each slot, have a drop down list to choose from for each slot.

Cooldowns would have to work differently, but I feel it can be done.

When you use an ability in a kit, the whole kit goes on cooldown. Switch to elixir and pop Elixir B if want to do more damage at the time, then kit goes on 20 second cooldown (or the cooldown of the elixir used essentially) as it unequips after using 1 ability. Gadget could function similarly as well.

Weapon kits can be fine to work as they do now, and figured turrets could work in a similar manner, but unsure how much would have to be adjusted for balance (there’s a lot of abilities to choose from then, but its about hitting the right one in the right situation for gadget/elixir kits).

Toolbelt would lock like utility slots when in combat, but can switch out of combat to suit each encounter (go from toss elixir b for buffing group to toss u to eat ranged attacks, etc.)

Thoughts? Comments? Trolls?

Its good idea imo but here will be many ppl what disagree, because multikit builds are very hard to handle.

The Devs hate us too much to ever even consider something cool like this.

I’m not a fan of this idea. If everything’s a kit, then every kit-using Engineer is going to have access to almost every Engineer skill – they just wouldn’t have all the existing Kits. Sure, they’d have cooldowns; so what? They wouldn’t be able to spam all their skills – but they could use every single skill one after another, inhibited only by cooldowns and their knowledge of the class.

This would also pretty much homogenize the Engineer as a class – the Engineer has four skill categories, and the only one that you don’t mention turning into a Kit is the Kit category. Every Engineer would be a Kit engineer, because there would be nothing else. I don’t like kits to begin with, and if they decided to make them our only option, I’d quit instead of waiting and seeing what changes the coming months bring.

I was playing with an idea to maintain all kits (with few mods) and make current weapons kits too and vice versa. You could take eg pistol and a crowbar or a flamethrower for your “main weapon” etc. That would leave your utility slots free for elixirs or gadgets or whatnot. Double crowbars anyone? But I haven´t really thought about all the stuff that would take to make it work..

I’ve been thinking similar; my feeling has always been that the class was designed around taking kits. Having access to a lot of skills you can swap between very quickly is what I think is supposed to be our hallmark and advantage.

But, I think all kits goes against the overall design philosophy; meaning there wouldn’t be an option for a more fire-and-forget play style, and I know the developers want to keep those sorts of options open across all classes.

I don’t like this idea. I would much prefer to see us given the ability to equip a kit to a weapon slot, so we would be able to use the weapon swap. The change would mean that one kit user’s who are looking for 5 additional skills to equate to a second weapon do not have to pay for it via a utility slot. For multi-kit users, this would mean that they could have another utlitity as well, but it could mean that we are limited to using a total of three kits, which I would be fine with.

Basically, this would give us an extra utility slot, placing us a par in term of number of skills and utilities with the Elementalist. Whether this would work in terms of balance or not, I cannot say, but it would certainly make me happy.

Oddgo.5423:

I don’t like this idea. I would much prefer to see us given the ability to equip a kit to a weapon slot, so we would be able to use the weapon swap. The change would mean that one kit user’s who are looking for 5 additional skills to equate to a second weapon do not have to pay for it via a utility slot. For multi-kit users, this would mean that they could have another utlitity as well, but it could mean that we are limited to using a total of three kits, which I would be fine with.

Basically, this would give us an extra utility slot, placing us a par in term of number of skills and utilities with the Elementalist. Whether this would work in terms of balance or not, I cannot say, but it would certainly make me happy.

Not to be contrarian, but I really hate the weapon swap ideas. There are 6 other classes that pick 2-4 weapons and swap on cooldown between them. I’m good with Engie’s having a different play style in that regard. I’ll admit I think it needs some tweaking still, but I like the ability to quickly switch if I want to.

Interesting ideas, but I personally feel Engineer is fine atm – My engy works great with the build I have.

Good idea. It would need a couple of changes (see below) and serious balancing on the Elixir Kit. But it would make the UI for the Eng a far more consistent and breathe much needed life into some languishing areas of the Eng skill set.

• Turret kit: There’s been several discussions on this, and IMHO no strong argument against making turrets a kit. 5 turrets (excluding Healing Turret which has its own slot) = 1-5 skills, easy. The only losses would be on the toolbelt skills: a) the turret specific toobelt skills would need to be replaced with a) a ‘no turrets placed’ toolbelt skill such as Net Attack or Rocket, and b) Detonate All Turrets whne turrets are active. The obvious auto attack is to place a Rifle Turret.

• Gadget kit: The biggest problems gadgets have is their overly long CDs. Making them a kit would balance this with access to more gadgets. 5 gadgets = 1-5 skills. Again the gadget specific toobelt skills would need to be replaced with a single toolbelt skill or perhaps two, one for kit-equiped (e.g. Super Speed) and one when not equiped (e.g. Analyze). As for auto-attack, either disable it on this kit or change Goggles so that it works as a non-damaging auto-ability (e.g. immune to stun and blind while you’re in the auto ability but not using any other gadget).

• Elixir kit: This would be great but need careful balancing as giving us access to all Elixirs (except H) under one utility slot would be OP at the current elixir specs.
  5 elixirs (excluding elixir H in the healing slot) = 1-5 skills, easy. For the toolbelt skill, have it be one elixir toss when the kit is equipped and another when it isn’t. As with the Gadget kit, the auto-attack will need to be disabled on this kit or include a passive place holder that handles the long cooldown on elixirs.

• Mortar Kit: This doesn’t deserve to be an Elite as it’s no better and arguable worse than several of our standard utility kits. Solution: make it a standard kit and split the Elixir X into two separate Elites (which removes the RNG unreliability that stops people taking Elixir X). This would make it Eng only, but the seamless place and retrieve would more than make up for the few times someone else wants to fire an Eng placed mortar. For a toolbelt skill, give it Rocket from the Rocket Turret utility.

• Toolbelt Skills: The changes above would reduce our current range of toolbelt skills from 20 down to 11. We could get this back up to 16 by making a different toolbelt skill available on the other kits when they are equiped/not-equiped (here’s some suggestions: Bomb Kit add Shockwave, Grenade Kit add Mine Field, Elixir Gun add a Toss Elixir, FT add Throw Napalm, Tool Kit add Launch Personal Battering Ram). With all the suggestions above, the only toolbelt skills lost would be Surprise Shot and three Toss Elixirs – this last would be more than made for by doing a better job (i.e. less RNG) with the Toss Elixirs that do remain. If the toolbelt changes when each kit is equiped/not-equiped then players may actually end up with access to more toolbelt skills in play than at present.

• Stun breaks: The best solution seems to be to leave the stun breaks within the kit skills and give access to them by allowing kit swapping while stunned.
  Why not provide stun breaks on the toolbelt skills for specific kits? Because this will force Engs to take those specific kits reducing diversity.
  Why not leave all the stun breakers in Elixirs and Gadgets? Because again that forces Engs to take those specific kits reducing diversity. Better to redistribute the stun breaks across more kits.
  Wouldn’t this be a major buff to Kit Refinement? Yes. Solutions: a) only allow kit swapping to kits that contain a stun breaker; and/or b) modify KR so it doesn’t proc if switching while stunned.
  Could someone potentially get access to 3 stun breaks by taking 3 kits with stun breaks? Yes. Solutions: a) leave it be; and/or b) code a global cooldown of say 5s on the Eng stun break effect (just, please, not like the mess that is the current KR cooldown).

• Leveling: Modify skill acquisition for Engs to make some kits accessible as 1 skill point utilities. Modify some kits to start with a subset of skills, with the remaining skills purchased separately.

• Build diversity: Keeping the 6 slot for Healing/Med Kit and distributing the stun breaks across more kits would mean we’d have to chose 3 kits out of a full range of 8 kits for our utility slots. The range of options and diversity of play styles this would allow would make us more diverse in play not less.

And some questions:

• Wouldn’t this force Engs who don’t want to take kits to take kits? That’s right. It’s what we have to do right now anyway – our weapons are so nerfed there are no viable non-kit builds. Eng’s have to take kits to be viable, lets just accept this and design for it.

• Wouldn’t this make our UI even more complicated (Engs are hard enough to play as it is)? No. It would actually make our UI more consistent and easier to follow. Yes it would be different to other classes, but we have that already, only this time it would make more consistent sense in play.

• Wouldn’t this force Eng’s to always be doing multi-button combos? You’re catching on. Eng have to do multi-button combos all the time right now just to be viable. This gets that right up front, so players can start learning how to master it right from the early days of running their new Eng.

• Wouldn’t this end up being just a different version of the Ele attunements with toolbelt skills thrown in? That’s exactly what we’ve got right now, but with the added complication that the current version is not so well organised. Doing it this way tidies up that mess, while still giving us our toolbelt abilities, all in a more consistent logical structure.

Now if Turrets and Gadgets (as well as the Mortar and Elixir toolbelt skills) were in better shape, then putting everything into kits would be OP. But they aren’t, so this seems like a much less radical and far more sensible step than it might appear at first glance.

You know, if all the turrets were part of ONE kit, I’d probably use it.

MrForz.1953:

You know, if all the turrets were part of ONE kit, I’d probably use it.

Yeah, everyone does, it’s called Supply Crate

All kits would just make engi into ele :p

@Zenguy:

You’re definitely onto what I was looking at. Typed this last night so late I was half asleep and rambling.

I feel like there would be two different type of kits: weapon kits and utility kits.

Weapon kits work like they do now, where you can pop up a new weapon and boom there you go, new attacks. I would have turret kit work like that.

Gadget and Elixir I would make utility kits. You go in, pop an ability, and it ends the kit, putting the kit on cooldown depending on ability used. I would like to try to keep that toolbelt as diverse as possible…honestly, I wish we could just select what 4 abilities we want on toolbelt kind of like utility slots regardless of what utilities are currently being used. Or with all kits have turret kit and both gadget and elixir kits let you choose which toolbelt skill to put on those slots (ex: for elixir, you can choose any toss, and it would let you switch it out out of combat like it does with utility skills now).

It would make the traits a bit more interesting to me, and a bit more “powerful” if you would. Especially since were forced into taking 1 weapon kit essentially with the current design. So you can go full elixir spec, be able to use any elixir by switching to the kit at any time (sure can’t rotate them in a row, but maybe make a 30 point trait that lets you use 2 before kit goes on cooldown, same with gadget).

I think this would make for some very interesting and awesome combos.

Mister Mustard.7203:

MrForz.1953:

You know, if all the turrets were part of ONE kit, I’d probably use it.

Yeah, everyone does, it’s called Supply Crate

Why isn’t there a Rocket Turret in there then.

MrForz.1953:

Mister Mustard.7203:

MrForz.1953:

You know, if all the turrets were part of ONE kit, I’d probably use it.

Yeah, everyone does, it’s called Supply Crate

Why isn’t there a Rocket Turret in there then.

Supply only has healing+ net + flame turrets :P ( rifle is trained ), but correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t everyone use supply on top of enemies for the stun rather than the turrets ? cause if you do after those 2 seconds are gone, so are your turrets lol

Sinosis.8514:

@Zenguy:

You’re definitely onto what I was looking at. Typed this last night so late I was half asleep and rambling.

I feel like there would be two different type of kits: weapon kits and utility kits.

Weapon kits work like they do now, where you can pop up a new weapon and boom there you go, new attacks. I would have turret kit work like that.

Gadget and Elixir I would make utility kits. You go in, pop an ability, and it ends the kit, putting the kit on cooldown depending on ability used. I would like to try to keep that toolbelt as diverse as possible…honestly, I wish we could just select what 4 abilities we want on toolbelt kind of like utility slots regardless of what utilities are currently being used. Or with all kits have turret kit and both gadget and elixir kits let you choose which toolbelt skill to put on those slots (ex: for elixir, you can choose any toss, and it would let you switch it out out of combat like it does with utility skills now).

It would make the traits a bit more interesting to me, and a bit more “powerful” if you would. Especially since were forced into taking 1 weapon kit essentially with the current design. So you can go full elixir spec, be able to use any elixir by switching to the kit at any time (sure can’t rotate them in a row, but maybe make a 30 point trait that lets you use 2 before kit goes on cooldown, same with gadget).

I think this would make for some very interesting and awesome combos.

I would like to just select skills for my own kits.

google.3709:

Supply only has healing+ net + flame turrets :P ( rifle is trained ), but correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t everyone use supply on top of enemies for the stun rather than the turrets ? cause if you do after those 2 seconds are gone, so are your turrets lol

The Flame/Net turret tends to be a major pain for the opponent. But I was just talking about just making a kit that only contained turrets in there, minus the healing one.

Kit stacking would be far more viable if the gadgets actually gave us something great.

Unless you spec static discharge, the gadgets are very underwealming and on very long cooldowns.

Which is why it’s worth considering putting all of the Gadgets into a kit that takes only one utility slot.