Every single class except for five means three (since revenant isn’t listed there). That’s more like an exception, not the rule. And whatever the initial design could have been, it doesn’t mean it works well. Even revenant initial design was one without weapon swap, yet now they have one. After they’ve been extensively tested before their release, something we couldn’t afford back then at the launch.
That’s also why they had to make a ton of changes even to the kits themselves right after the start (they couldn’t even process sigils at the start, probably because they really were just normal ambiental weapons).
But aside that…you’re mentioning turrets? The ones we can use to “help defend and take control of an area”, right?
I mean, i quoted that paragraph a lot of times when turret nerfs were being discussed, yet we can all see in what pitiable state they’ve been reduced. Despite whatever could be the initial design. It seems to me they don’t care much about what they’ve written there.
Guess i have to hope they’ll give the turret treatment to kits as well, then.
Oh, and toolbelt not being listed doesn’t mean much (not even elixirs are listed, by the way). They’re still our main class mechanic. Toolbelt, not kits. Else we would be elementalists – they’re the ones whose main mechanic is changing weapon sets.
You want to eliminate variation on the class that is entirely designed around variation.
If by variation you mean “equip multiple kits and use the rest of the slots (if there are) on something else”, then sure. I guess my definition of variation is different, though.
You dont want to play engie anymore.
If anything, i would like to play the engineer in his entirety without getting punished for doing it. Thus using all those other utilities instead of having to rely on some kit all the time.
Engie has no cooldown between accessing it’s skills. That is its design. Every concept from kits to toolbelt revolves around this. To add cooldown is to make something that is not engie. The 10 weapons swap cooldown is not engie.
If anything, that’s just your definition of what is “engie”. Neither the profession page or balance philosophies ever declared something like that. And kits were supposed to be specialized weapons, not the best choice for everything like some are now.
You are starting to sound like the people who want revenant to have control over their utilities.
Revenant? Oh, yeah, that class that was announced as not having weapon swap and that received it during their beta. Guess some more months before the launch would have been good for us too. If we weren’t the last profession designed, at least.
Totally agree. If you REALLY like weapon swap go play warrior with quick hands or whatever it’s called..
Or i could play with all the other utilities the engineers have got and not get punished for it. If only what was put as optional was actually optional.
It’s just a class people need to get used to. Just like people will get use to elementalist attunements, or you not being able to control which utilities you slot on revenant.
I played engineer as a main for more than three years. I guess i’ve got enough time to get used to it. But after three years, i’m kinda fed up of not being able to use the rest of the utilities without getting punished for doing it.
Oh, and the comparisons made no sense (as always, i should add). Those aren’t optional, they’re just how their class work. There are no elementalists without attunements, there are no revenants with free control upon their utilities. But there can be engineers without kits. And they shouldn’t be as terrible as they are.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Seeing the amount of datamined icons scrapped (hah), along with the change from the datamined name, i indeed think they reworked it from the ground up at a certain point of the development.
I don’t know how to help you. This is class design. Engie is built around around having access to all their skills at once.
And this is right…
And having at least one kit.
…whereas this is the issue.
See all the examples you’ve done below?
Thief is built around having no cooldown on weapons. Necro is built around having death shroud to subvert the 10 second cooldown on weapon swap.
Those are built in the class. No thief weapon will have cooldowns. And every necro will always have death shroud at their disposal.
If kits are supposed to be required, they should work the same way. It shouldn’t be an option at all, but rather something forced upon the class. Like attunements.
Ele don’t get an additional skill to make up for taking conjured weapons. Neither do warriors for banners.
And those are just normal skills. They don’t dictate the balance of the whole class, and they don’t have fixed drawbacks just because those skills exist.
If you want fixed drawbacks for skill types look at the necromancer corruptions.
And those are fine. You use them and when you do it you get a drawback.
You don’t have it to start with only because your class has those utility skills.
If you don’t like my explanation then look at the other commenters in this thread.
It simply isn’t possible to give a true weapon swap without completely reworking the class. All weapons would have to be altered in strength. The toolbelt skills would have to be altered in strength. The kits would have to be altered in strength. Cooldown on kit swaps would be added.
And i honestly think we would really need a rework. This was the last class introduced on the game. It barely worked when the game launched, and let’s face it, they had to put many recycled things just to give us something – even the kits themselves were just ambiental weapons stitched to a skill.
There was likely no plan for elite specializations back then. Now there are, and here we have a class that can’t go beyond an utility type. Let alone have good, standalone main weapons – they will always have to be balanced over kits.
New utilities? We will be forced to use kits for the most part anyway. Other classes may have utilties stronger than others as well, but they aren’t having their whole class balanced over their use. We are. And it will just worsen the more we go on. Cause every specialization will have to be balanced that way.
The current concept of kits would be fine as an elite specialization. You equip that line, and you get both disadvantages and advantages. It becomes a choice. And it makes the base class properly balanceable, as it would eliminate the extreme variation between no-kit and full-kit builds. It could even be something like “they can use one or two kits at most at the same time” for the base class, and a ton of problems would be solved – they don’t have to balance the weapons and kits themselves over a “they have a main weapon and up to 5 kits” situation anymore. It could even work with other elite specializations – when they introduced them, they said that at the moment they don’t work with other ones, so it is something that could change – and it wouldn’t force them to balance the elite specialization as well over kits unlike how they’ve to do right now.
And to me, such an approach seems drastically better than what we’ve got now.
Yes and that is why every utility slot gives you a toolbelt skill. Just as every weapon allows mesmers to summon Illusions.
Quite a poor comparison. The equivalent for mesmers would be shatter skills, not the illusions they get on weapons. Obviously, they do get them because they’re necessary for shatters to work properly.
And other classes get F-skills as well, anyway. Guardians have three signet-like skills, for example. While still having a second weapon set.
Even at your lowest amount you have access to 15 skills on demand. All other professions besides chronomancer do not have access to that many on demand.
For example a thief has access to 11 skills at a time and they require a weapon swap to access the other 5.
Five of which – the weapon skills – are weakened on purpose due to kits, as we know from the balance philosophies.
And toolbelt cooldowns aren’t usually comparable to weapon skills’ ones even when the effects aren’t exactly amazing. So merely reducing it as an amount of skill available at any time isn’t a fair comparison.
That is just how the classes works. Kits give you access to two weapons and the payment is a utility slot. The balance is there, you just don’t like it.
And it works quite badly. They ended up having to balance weapons and utilities over theoretical full kit builds because of how overpowered they could become otherwise (and screwing the builds with few-to-no-kits in doing so) – they even had to balance individual kits over their traited versions until the specialization update (grenade kit says hello). And making it the only class that needs a particular utility type to even process on swap sigils.
The only class that gets fixed drawbacks due to the mere possibility of using a particular utility type, heh.
If warriors got decreased stats because they can use banners to raise them, people would laugh. Engineers having no second weapon slot because of kits instead is treated as normal. Heh.
I see no problem with giving kitless builds a way to proc weapon swap sigils, but I don’t think you should get a true weapon swap. It would simply mess up too much of the class.
As if the class isn’t messed up already, right?
Even if we had such a thing, weapons and utilities would still be balanced over kits. So nothing would change.
People have secondary mechanics. Mesmers use shatter but they also must use and work with illusions. A mesmer build that doesn’t summon Illusions is just as limited as an engie not equipping one kit.
Yep, that’s why every single weapon the mesmer can equip can generate illusions.
And thus makes sense to balance the class over it – the instruments are always provided to the class, one way or another.
But engineers don’t get kits from weapons and neither have separate kit slots that would make so that there are always kits available.
No, they use up utility slots that other utilities could use as well. They’re optional, and as such should be balanced.
With a single kit an engie has more skills than thieves, rangers, warriors, guardians. Add another they surpass mesmers, necromancers and revenants. Add a third they surpass elementalists. Conjured weapons and banners don’t touch this, they cause the reverse effect in terms of enhancing utility, there are no 4 banner or 4 conjure builds.
If anything, this is exactly why there are issues.
How can you expect them to balance a class that is able to have the least and the most amount of skills of any class and is able to freely access all of them at any time?
At most, what they can do is to balance for the worst case – multiple weapons, so that they won’t be op. Obviously, that makes the single weapon case very weak.
People are not ‘fine’ with this. They just do not want to see kits gutted.
Most of the things on that list would weaken kit dominance.
Half of those things can’t be done exactly because of kits as they’re now.
If a main weapon ends up good enough to be used standalone, it will be op when used with kits. (so, no point 2)
Weapons not got enough standalone means that by using multiple gadgets we will lack offensive power. And single gadget skills can’t provide the same firepower or utility of a whole kit, for obvious reasons. At most they can offer skills that weren’t purposefully put in kits, but that’s it. (so, can’t do point 1)
Grenades crowd out too many damage options? What to do about it? At most they can nerf it. Buffing the others would just make us able to profit from both, due to how freely we can swap between kits. But i doubt people would like a nerf, even if it is the only reasonable option. (thus, probably no point 4)
Healing turrets gets used because it is good. One of the few non kit skills we reliably use, at least. Would rather not see it gutted. But we could see the alternatives being made better.
And thank the six gods that the Med Kit didn’t end up as forcefully imposed as any other kit, i should add. I would rather see it too weak than as strong as any other kit.
The “soul of the class”, you say? Guess many would rather not have a soul at all.
Maybe the “soul of the class” shouldn’t be an optional type of utilities, then.
Given that we’re the only class that gets such a forced drawback for something that we may not even choose to get.
Changing weapon sets is the “soul” of elementalists by the way, not engineers. We have toolbelts instead. But many people just seem to forget it.
It doesn’t change the issues at all.
What do you think would happen?
The damage has still to be put somewhere. It would only end up even more easily accessible than before.
Make a couple of highly damaging kits, and we end up cycling between those skills freely while still having slots for other useful utilities.
Put it in a single main weapon, and we have both a ton of damage and specialized weapons for anything else we may need and maybe even a slot for some other particular use.
And we would still lack a way to use “on swap” sigils when not using kits anyway.
We have just far too many differences between our best and worst cases.
Again, a class can’t be balanced over having a single weapon and 5 freely available at the same time. It just isn’t feasible.
Why should they even bother fixing all the other skills if people are fine with having kit builds as the only decent option?
You can’t have both kits as they’re now and a decently balanced class. And people seems to prefer the first option. So, nothing will change.
How is balancing with weapon swap any better than kits? You just end up with the same situation, forcing players to run two weapon sets and swapping between them is almost worst than kits since I now HAVE to slot another weapon. Just giving engineers weapon swap would make more of a mess than we currently have, players would still have to run 4 kits to max out dmg, the rotations would just hit 60+ steps.
Because weapon slots have no other purpose that using weapons, and that’s what makes it far better and easier to balance.
You mention having 4 kits to max out damage. Yeah, the problem is, they had to balance all the class over that worst case to that having 4 kits didn’t become overpowered.
When compearing Engineer to more basic classes like, lets say Warrior, you get the following setups:
- Warrior may run one ranged weapon and one melee weapon, both designed around the existance of the other, excelling in their role but lacking in the other.
- Engineer have one general use weapon that works well in both melee and range, and can equip a variety of kits for more specialized roles and situations.
We stopped having general use weapons when hammers were introduced.
But aside from that, kits are far more general use weapons than the main weapon themselves. So much that even their autoattacks are often preferred to the ones of the main weapons.
And our main weapons are balanced over the existence of kits, anyway. We know that from the balance philosophies since the launch. That’s why they’re essentially mandatory.
This difference in playstyle is what makes engineer unique. It is why I fell for this class in the first place. If they want to make les kits more viable, then the solution is to move power from the kit skills over to the weapon sets, not to make us into other classes. Or to buff non-kit skills so they stand up against their kit counterparts.
Except that they can’t do that. Making weapons stronger would just make a full kit build stronger. Making other utilities stronger would just make an almost full kit build stronger. Even if you try to shift the balance between them.
You can’t balance over having a single weapon and five at the same time. The differences are too extreme.
And that’s why we have all these issues.
Weapon swap should just be given to the base engineer and the whole class shouldn’t be balanced over kits.
Our class mechanic is the toolbelt. Not kits. Remake them into something whose balance doesn’t screw the rest of the class and if possible put them as they work now in an elite specialization, so that such a specialization can properly be balanced separatedly instead of dictating how the whole class works.
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.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Ehh, pretty much all classes have useless utility types or a gaggle of useless skills.
And I think it is pretty unreasonable to demand that all utilities be effective in every mode. That is just not going to happen and it already does not.
Having all the utilities effective in all the modes of the game is what they should aim for, though. But there is quite some difference from ones being weak due to being balanced wrongly and ones made weak on purpose.
And while i can condone errors, i can’t stand the latter at all.
Especially if they even end up making new utilities while still following that same mindset.
That said, I DO think the turrets should be updated and made useful. I just do not think that this will happen in the same way everyone expects them to. More likely than not, if turrets are useful gain, it will be in a completely different way than they are now.
Eh, whatever. At least they would be useful that way. Whatever way is it.
Also, Gyros are not useless. And those that look to be, are thus not because they are A.I. (Blast Gyro, Shredder Gyro, Purge Gyro) but because they are poorly designed.
In PvP and WvW they will be, since they’ll survive just as much as a turret. That is, few seconds at most. They’re even supposed to follow the scrapper better now, thus they’ll likely end up getting damaged by any attack aimed at him, since they’re there as well.
In the best case they will just be used alike turrets, to get the initial effect and the detonation, and who cares about how they’re actually supposed to work.
You say that’s due of their design? Yeah, their issue is that they’ve been created as a sort of minion skill by developers that have a terrible mindset versus minion skills. And that’s all.
Honestly, i don’t care a bit about the effort required.
They exist, they must be as useful as anything else. That’s all.
They’re free to delete them and give something else that’s useful in every game mode, of course (albeit, having a class based on pet interaction, that isn’t exactly feasible).
But until then, they should be as useful as any other skill.
Seems a nice bandaid, but minion skills and pets should work in any mode, not just one, like any other skills does after all.
And right now, despite what you may say, they are terrible in PvP and WvW. Saying that you’re fine with them right now means saying you don’t care for them being completely useless.
And seeing as Scrappers got an entire line of new minions in addition to the ones engineers already had, if they’re meant to be useless in two thirds of the game from the get go, then there is no meaning on having made them to begin with and no meaning for scrappers to have got them instead of something else that could have just worked nicely and be useful in any single mode.
They do not want minions to be effective in PvP. That has been obvious for years.
Short of a complete re-work, I think turrets are mostly dead in PvP.
Truth be told, I can live with this.
Honestly, i don’t care a bit whether they want or not for them to be effective.
Those utilities are there, and they have to work. In any mode.
If they don’t want them to be effective on purpose, then remove them and give us something that is supposed to work. But just don’t leave them to waste.
And for the love of the six gods, especially don’t make new ai-based skill types if they are purposefully designed to be useless in two thirds of the game. Cause it makes no sense at all, and it ends up being a waste of time for both us and them. Yes, i’m talking about gyro.
Mh, this could make gyros indeed more reliable, at least in PvE. Gotta see how often they happen to get aggroed, though. And how cleaving attacks work against them.
Edit: ok, cleaving attacks that don’t target them directly have their damage reduced. Fine. Gotta test about the aggro when the changes go live then.
Edit 2: I missed the line about minions being in a good place for PvP. Guess they forgot already what they did to turrets. Or just never tried them after that change.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Comparing them with other classes’ utilities is kinda pointless, though.
Other classes aren’t as overly reliant on utilities as the engineer (mainly due to our botched design – as every gyro used is a kit that could have been used instead).
We need them to be somewhat reliable. And right now they don’t seem to be reliable at all.
If i use a gyro at a certain moment, it’s because i need its effects during that timeframe. If it just dies easily, there is no point to it. Even if it comes back in 20 seconds. Cause i can already be dead by then.
We just can’t afford to spend utility slots like that. They’re too scarce to be used on something that can’t work as expected. Kits work because they do what they’re supposed to do. Same for elixirs. Gadgets…it’s more a matter of balance. And turrets aren’t reliable at all, so they’re just used as initial effect+overcharge+instablast/pickup. Because we already know that they’ll die if they stay placed down.
Right now, it seems to me they’re giving them the turret treatment rather than having a proper reliability. I mean, just see the healing gyro. It is just more beneficial to use it for the initial effect and blast it yourself. That’s an healing turret 2.0, come on, the only difference is that there is no overcharge and that it can’t be picked up, but it is used functionally the same way apart from that. They even gave gyros a grandmaster trait that benefits from blasting them asap so that we can have them available earlier just so that we can blast them again.
I don’t have much hopes for them, sadly.
Whatever their cooldown and uptime is, if they can’t do what they’re supposed to do when we call them, they will be useless.
And to do that they need to survive enough time.
Guess we have to hope in this mysterious “systemic change”.
If it makes them sturdy enough, then it will likely be fine. Otherwise, it will be a wasted slot. They may even have a 20s cooldown, but if they can’t stay alive more than a couple seconds, there won’t be much use for them.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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.
Is the “systemic change that should increase their survivability quite a lot” supposed to be the “cooldown upon summon” change, or is that something yet to be revealed?
Because that would increase their uptime, but does nothing to their survivability. If they died in a few seconds, they will still die in a few seconds.
And i feel that it is important to point out that we need them to survive enough to do whatever they’re supposed to do. Cause by having a single weapon we need to rely on kits, and taking a gyro means not taking a kit instead. A kit that would have no such issues to begin with, i should add.
So if they can’t be reliable enough…they just won’t be valid enough choices.
All this secrecy at 10 days from the launch doesn’t bode well at all, frankly speaking.
We already had only a single beta to test the spec, and it isn’t like it hadn’t got some blatant issues (some of which were already evident since the point of interest – see gyro survivability, even if just math-wise at that point).
I have to hope this isn’t just a way to ignore the issues and gloss over them. Like it was done with turrets.
What if the hammer autoattacks apply some kind of debuff during the autoattack chain (like, positive strike applies a “positive charge”, negative bash applies a “negative charge”) and we have equalizing blow and other skills interact with such charges?
Like, equalizing blow could do something based on the charges inflicted. Other electrical or magnetic-based skills could have their effects increased as well (increased range on magnet, for example?).
All the other utilities would still be balanced over kits – as per the worst case of having many of them at the same time. And even the base weapon skills would still be balanced over normal kits.
Essentially, it wouldn’t solve anything at all.
And anything short of rebalancing the base class to be not dependant on kits won’t suffice, anyway.
Can’t be worse than turrets, anyway. At least these would be usable.
It was something I considered.
Initially I thought it would be something Seeing as if they want us to use a full set of elite spec skills, we would need to sacrifice using kits.
An engineer with weapon swap and no kits would have just as many skills as revenant has after they got weapon swapping.
My idea is that they should give engineer weapons swap, but it gets disabled if they have any kits equipped in the utility slot.
That could be a way…but it wouldn’t work well. Because our utilities and weapons would still be balanced over kits.
Essentially, all the issues are about that – the class is dependant on something optional, rather than on something that we have at any time. And forcing it upon the class.
You misunderstand: It is too late.
That is such a huge shift and a massive betrayal from what that class has been for over three years.
We’ve been betrayed since the beginning then. We aren’t supposed to be dependant on kits. As if we were, those would have been our class mechanic, not an optional-but-actually-forced utility type.
Best approach now is to have each elite spec directly address the problem, each in their unique way. Or offer more competitive options (somehow). Or offer new kits.
Elite specs can’t do anything about it. They still offer whatever the base class does – thus kit included – but even if for some reason they excluded kits from a spec, all the rest of the utilities and weapons beside those of the spec would still be balanced over their existance.
And offering other kits just further exacerbate the issue.
No, better to not do it at all. As I see it, this is a bad idea. So bad in my opinion, that I would rather see what the same dev team that thought we needed another AI utility set, can do to find a solution, rather then go with this profession crushing suggestion.
The bad idea was to indulge with this design to begin with. Something optional can’t decide the balancing a whole class – that’s how a main mechanic is balanced, not one of many utility types.
And they can do so with a main mechanic because it isn’t optional at all, so you have both advantages and disadvantages together.
Whereas, by not using kits, we just have disadvantages and nothing to make up for them.
And until they fix this flawed design choice, we have no way to free ourselves from kits and a kit-based balancing. Whatever elite spec may come.
Right, and kits are effectively the class mechanic, so if those get nerfed we have a bit of a problem/revolt on our hands.
Better do it soon than later. Any elite spec they plan to do just further increases the amount of work they’ll have to do to rebalance all the utilities and weapons once kits are finally made as optional as they should be. Since right now anything must be balanced over the assumption of their use, and thus forcing their use instead.
And while you talk about nerfing, it’s just a matter of effectively rebalancing the whole class. Some things would be nerfed, others would be buffed.
We already have all sort of balance issues, though – and due to kits.
Well, it’s either that or continue with a botched design that wasn’t made to work with elite specializations.
If nothing changes, we’re doomed to rely on kits with whatever specialization we’ll ever get, since they need to balance everything over their use and forcing it in practice.
Thus making any new weapon or utilities irrelevant for the most part, whatever they may be. Gyros are mostly bad for themselves, okay, but it would have happened either way.
The current working and balancing of kits (and everything else over kit) would work better as an elite specialization, rather than as a part of the base engineer. So that we don’t have forced disadvantages for something technically optional, but we do get those disadvantages when we choose to have them the way they’re now.
Imho they should overhaul the class, give it a second weapon slot, put some kind of limitation to kit so that they aren’t anymore the be-all, end-all utility – be it a cooldown on swap or something else – and eventually rebalance things here and there after the changes.
And then make an elite specialization focused on kits. That will likely lose that second weapon slot, but has reduced cooldowns (that may be reduced further with a trait) and some kind of kit-related new mechanic, like “dropping” a kit to lend it to someone else for a limited time, for example.
Imho, we should be overhauled and get normal weapon swap, a cooldown on kit swap and get all our utilities rebalanced (since they were all balanced toward a massive use and swap of kits – kits themselves included). Maybe do the same with the traits, too – some could even be removed to give some space to the other utility types. I mean, give some love to gadgets.
This makes it so any elite specialization we’ll have in the future won’t be weighted down by the mere existence of kits.
And then we can have an elite specialization focused on kits and properly balanced over their use.
Because Engineers need to use their kits.
That’s why all our #1 skills are kinda kitten, by comparison Hammer is probably already the best one Engineer can get.
If kits were our class mechanic, you would be right. But then we would always have some of them at our disposal and thus balancing everything around them would finally make sense.
But since they are optional, we shouldn’t “need” to use them. And the balancing of literally everything else shouldn’t revolve around them.
The scrapper is supposed to change our class and give us new roles and ways to play? Well, start with the elephant in the room, then, and give us a spec that can work nicely with the instruments it provides – hammer and gyros (or even not-kit utilities, and that would already be quite a change).
Because it may happen – especially seeing that we’ve got a single main weapon by default, and we may not have kits if we’re using other utilities instead – that such other skills are on cooldown, thus making us rely on the autoattack during that time.
Especially seeing that we’ve got new utilities that we are supposed to use along with the hammer.
Cannot agree with that. Be it kits or weapons, they’re still autoattacks.
If anything, by giving an autoattack that wouldn’t lose out to kits’ ones, we wouldn’t be forced to take kits even just for that purpose. Lessening the impact that kits have on the class and giving more choices to the players would only be good for the class.
Especially if they want us to use the new utilities. Cause having them losing out to kits (and like everything else, anyway) AND having kits forced upon yet again for any little thing is a surefire way to not see those gyros used at all.
They should care for feedback to begin with. That’s the major issue.
And we already know that they don’t – else we wouldn’t have gyros as flying-turret alikes to begin with.
It isn’t like people hadn’t already predicted what it would have happened if they gave us yet again AI minions. The failure of turrets is evident to everyone – the only way to get something out of them is by using them as everything but turrets.
And yet they did again the same errors – and even new ones, of course.
They could have been signet-like skills, they could have been upkeep skills, they could have even been shout-like skills, they could have been anything that could have been reliable and, essentially, actually working.
Instead, we have yet others unreliable, fragile AI minions.
Guess we could sum up most of the problems with “AI is dumb and unreliable”.
Coincidentally, that’s also one of the reasons why people didn’t want new AI-based utilities to start with.
Apart from that, gyros are far too fragile right now, at least in pve. And slow, painfully slow.
Hammer is mostly fine, i guess. Apart from the autoattack, that’s quite slow for the damage and effect it does. And sure, rocket charge may be clunky at times, as written by others.
The idea itself is nice, but it wouldn’t work with some classes.
For example, the engineer. As kits essentially dictate how anything else is balanced, so even if they had a second weapon and had to use non-kit utilities…all of those would still be balanced over the existance of kits. Thus it would likely end up as a downgrade.
On the opposite spectrum you suggested to give kits to elementalists. A class that wasn’t ever balanced toward kits, since they just don’t have them. And neither conjurations were balanced over such kittene, given they’ve got a time and charge limit.
They would likely end up too powerful.
I think that untraited grenades AA should be weaker than untraited hammer AA. The weapons for engineers are joke already and nowhere near comparable to even untraited kits (if you don’t run at least one dmg oriented kit your dmg is virtually non existent).
Maybe we shouldn’t be balanced over the assumption we’ll use some specific optional utilities to begin with, since that’s what forces us to use said utilities. That’s the textbook definition of a vicious circle, basically.
The issue is that we have to be balanced around the fact that we CAN use specific utilities to maximize our damage.
If you balance around only one kit being equipped, anyone who takes 4 kits will be playing with godmode turned on.
I only see 2 ways to fix this, and neither option is a trivial task:
1) You can make all of our weapons and kits almost entirely reliant on the AAs for damage, and make the 2-5 skills utility-like from a damage standpoint. This would prevent you from cycling through the Acid Bombs and Shrapnel Grenades of the world for the damage they provide. This would probably make things incredibly boring to play, but would most likely be the easiest option to implement.2) You can neuter kits across the board and create a series of Old Grenadier style traits that take them from niche utilities up to weapon status, but make sure you can’t pick up all of the traits at the same time. You’d see stuff like gear shield on a 50 second CD, but with a trait to reduce the CD on toolkit skills by 50%. This probably is a better long term solution, but would require much more finesse to get right.
Neither of those is going to happen overnight, or almost certainly not before HoT releases.
In the short/medium term, get used to the current design paradigm. It probably isn’t going anywhere really soon.
TL;DR: Balancing Engy is hard.
It would make sense…if only the rest of the game was balanced like that, too.
Except that it really doesn’t work so.
We’re the only class balanced (and designed, given the lack of the second weapon) over assumptions. The assumption to use a particular skill type, or even some traits (grenadier in the past -grenades were balanced over the use of that trait, but i guess even siege rounds applies, given the mediocrity of the base mortar).
Let’s just make an example. Warriors can use banners to raise their stats and the ones of their allies, but this doesn’t mean they have lower stats to begin with. They have a grandmaster trait that makes them heal allies with their shouts, but it isn’t like their healing skills (or the shouts either) are balanced over that optional trait. They get straight bonuses from their utilities/traits, and they aren’t balanced over the assumption they will have them at any time.
And that’s how it should be. That’s what optional means. Sure, some things may be stronger than others, but that’s something that can be solved by balancing them.
Whereas we pay some prices in advance (no second weapon slot, main weapon having weak dps* because we may use kits…forcing us to use them for that reason) and we have to end up balancing over vicious circles due to nonsensical design choices. That’s something you can do with the main mechanic -something that’s forced and given for free at any time. Not with something mechanically optional. Cause it ends up not being optional anymore. Again, a vicious circle. Driven by a broken kit-based design.
*refer to classes balance philosophies, written in one of the december 2012 patch notes
Or should i talk about the new elite specs? Some classes are getting powerful abilities in addition to all they had before. And yet this doesn’t seem to be an issue, they just get them as an added bonus.
Yet, with the engineer, anything becomes an issue. Even if we get the most niche elite spec mechanic of the bunch.
Balancing the engineer is hard? Yeah, probably it is, but they brought it to themselves with such a design. Maybe they should fix the cause of the issues, instead of catering to past ideas that go even against the whole concept of the elite specializations, locking us to old utilities and forcing peculiar balancings of anything we can get.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
I think that untraited grenades AA should be weaker than untraited hammer AA. The weapons for engineers are joke already and nowhere near comparable to even untraited kits (if you don’t run at least one dmg oriented kit your dmg is virtually non existent).
Maybe we shouldn’t be balanced over the assumption we’ll use some specific optional utilities to begin with, since that’s what forces us to use said utilities. That’s the textbook definition of a vicious circle, basically.
Simple solution to end this problem… Nerf the grenade kit more…. oh whats that.. you dont agree.. ok then shush up. GAWD… Stop whining so much and stop trying to get more free damage lol. No one says you have to use a hammer you still have rifle and p/p. All you guys are gonna do 2 months later is say Hammer AA is super strong… nade kit is weak…. Nade kit should be better cause you have to give up a slot for it….. Buff nades……pls…..
Another simple solution would be to read the posts you are quoting, something that you apparently missed out to do.
What part of “having an autoattack that won’t lose out to a kit autoattack” wasn’t clear enough?
I’m asking for the autoattack to be comparable. Kits offer a whole slew of other abilities in addition to that one, so why should that matter? Using a kit autoattack should be an alternative filling some particular use that the main weapon lacks, not the overall better solution for any single case like they’re now.
And why is this a problem?
The scrapper is intended to help fill out our current defensive liabilities … primarily our lack of stability options. There is nothing about it that is intended to challenge or usurp our current high damage options as those are already plentiful and really quite different depending on whether you want to spec for power or condi.
Asking for a decent autoattack is by no means equal to “usurp our current high damage options”. Kits do all sort of other things beside giving an autoattack.
And not having to depend on some kits just to have a decent autoattack would help covering our liabilities as well, given that we’ve got to spend slots even for that right now. And those are all slots that we won’t be able to spend on gyros.
(gyros that suffer all the current defensive liabilities of turrets, anyway, so i can’t see what they’re supposed to fill, anyway)
I get it that people have a DPS-over-all mindset in PvE because that’s just the way the game has been played up to this point, but ArenaNet is obviously taking a different approach in Heart of Thorns and the community refuses to adjust.
Given that i’ve stated multiple times that i would like to see more practical use of all those stat combinations beside zerker, i would be fine if that happened. I just don’t think they will ever effectively do it. We’ll see if anything changes with the release of the expansion, though.
Then why are people complaining that the grenade kit outdamages a weapon with three leap finishers, a block, and a reflect?
People are complaining about the autoattacks, not about whole kit rotations.
It’s all about having an autoattack that won’t lose out to a kit autoattack.
Cause what will happen otherwise is that people will use those “three leap finishers, a block, and a reflect” when they aren’t on cooldown and switch to some kit for the rest of the time.
I’m sorry if you find what I’m saying offensive, but PvE players are exhibiting precisely this mindset in this thread. All they care about is DPS.
Maybe if DPS wasn’t the only thing that mattered in encounters for over three years, people wouldn’t have such a mindset.
Especially seeing what happens when they make tools supposedly purposed for other roles (med kit says hello).
In the reveal blog post it was stated about gyros that “If traited, they’ll explode in a larger area while stunning foes.”
Yet neither in that post or in the livestream such a trait was present.
Also, there were some discrepancies in some traits between the blog post and the live stream.
And thus the questions. Was that unnamed trait mentioned above scrapped after the writing of the blog post? And what is the current form of Final Salvo – the one of the blog post (with the gyro cooldown reduction), the one in the livestream, or something else entirely (related to the unnamed trait mentioned above, maybe)?
The hammer is as good as a standalone weapon for an engi can be, it litterally has everything important in the game right now, I dont get what makes you think it cant be good standalone.. I even played a rifle engi for a while in pve and pvp which did really good with only 1 kit which I used rarely.
Hammer is good in any fashion, sure sometimes you want to do range damage, but THEN you can still switch to a range kit or rifle before the fight.
the problem we need to solve is making other utillitys better so that you dont feel the need to have a kit, which has nothing to do with the hammer beeing bad, but damage rotations, dps and versatillity. if you had better gyros, for example (this will be just an OP example to makes things clear) If you had 5 gyros out that would each fire rockets every 2 seconds that would deal 4k per hit on 1200 range, you would have no problems with hammer and never switching it, because it feels rewarding that you have super strong damage support from behind…
Apart from the autoattack it seems a solid weapon. That is to say, assuming it won’t get nerfed during the bwe.
And it may well be if they follow that design of not making engineers’ weapon good enough standalone just due to the possibility of using them with kits, essentially ending up forcing people to use kits to make up for the shortcomings (shortcomings that are there…due to the existence of the kits themselves).
That’s what i’m bothered with. The class was designed to be forced to use kits, using up utility slots in doing so, and balanced everything toward the use of kits.
So unless something ends up being more situationally useful than what a kit can offer – usually because that’s something that a kit can’t do – and with a good degree of reliability,something that turrets (when used as proper turrets) and gyro right now can’t afford, then people will just use kits.
Imho, the issue with other heals are:
Elixir H: randomness and balanced over all those elixir traits (thus making it worthless without them).
AED: opportunity costs – you can use other heals multiple times before having the right chance to properly use it. The concept is nice, but in practice it doesn’t work well.
Med Kit: med kit.
Guess it could, but not with those values – it would be far too powerful. Maybe the scrapper could get the full amount, and allies gets a reduced amount instead (unless they’re scrappers and they’ve got the trait, in which case they get the normal version instead, so that we don’t have any weird rapid regeneration stacking).