Guild Wars 2

It would open up a lot of tactical play in WvW and pvp if the Sneak Gyro could be moved like the Ventari tablet, i.e. you could have it follow you, you could leave it in one location, or you could send it off as a diversion.

Of course this may also require moving the self-destruct to the toolbelt when the gyros are active, but I think it’d be cleaner to have them more consistent with the turret skill setup anyway.

Hate it when everyone says “if you dislike this portion of the class, don’t play it.” Really? It’s perfectly possible to like a class’s overall theory and playstyle without thinking it’s perfect.

Anyway, some comments regarding the OP:

Rifle:
I like the rifle. What others call “incoherent,” I call “flexible.” Engineers have a lot of skills. That’s basically their thing. What’s the purpose of the rifle? To collaborate with other skills. Sure the rifle may seem odd by itself, but you’re not looking at the whole picture. Throw a flamethrower in the mix and now things are interesting. Now R2, R4, and FT3 work with R1, R2, FT2, and FT4. R5 already works with R2 and R3, and now it works with FT1, FT3, and FT5. And so on. Throw in any other kit and you have a whole ’nother set of possible interactions. If you ask me, pistols are just too straightforward. Shield makes up for that though; engie shield is kittening glorious.

The bad part about rifle is that it does not work too well in builds with 0 utility kits. (However I think that is more of a problem with non-kit skills having far too little versatility compared to kits, but that’s a whole ’nother discussion.) I think a kit-less rifle could be made more practical through traits. If there was a new trait that gave the rifle another layer of self-contained versatililty (with a high investment cost, presumably), that could really open up possibilities for gadget/elixir/turret-augmented rifle builds. Alternatively, they could just give us more weapon options.

Toolbelts:
I disagree with the toolbelt solution. Balancing individual skills is made more difficult by linking them to toolbelts, that is true. But by unlinking them, balancing builds is a nightmare. Yes, a nightmare. You just have to take a hell of a lot more into account when balancing each skill. You have to think about its potential interactions with every other skill available. How do I know it’d be a nightmare? Because that flexibility is a big part of what destroyed GW1 balance. It’s why weapon skills are tied to each other, and it’s why each of the 10 slots are grouped the way they are. Anet went far out of their way to solve this problem, and I guarantee they’re not about to re-introduce it, even if it would be present on a smaller scale.

Another major point: Free range toolbelts would make build construction far more complicated that it already is. You may not mind this, but the game developers will. Their game needs to be accessible.

Also, doing this would involve redesigning most of the available skills, since they’re designed with their counterpart in mind.

Plus if kits were in the toolbelt, toolbelt cooldown reduction (“ingenuity” in the tools line) would be awkward as the class’s primary line. Not sure how they’d replace it.

Elixirs:
Hate the way these are implemented. I wish they could find a way to implement them to make them interesting and competitively viable.

Turrets:
Turrets are terrible, but I think they really just need stat buffs and recharge buffs. Their toolbelts are mostly underwhelming as well.

I think it’s kind of odd to suggest an overhaul here. Sure they suck right now, but that could just be because they’re weak. We can’t know if they’re fundamentally flawed since they’ve always been god awful; no one has had a chance to actually try them legitimately.

I like your idea Mithran but after 7/8 years or so of GW1 I’ve never seen Anet add new mechanics like that. It would be nice and GW2 could be different, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

“Make their effects widely relevant in combat, less situational.”

Not sure what you mean here, reducing falling is the point of the trait, want something more battle relevant? Pick a different trait.

By that I meant they could give different triggers to the effect of each class. Triggers that are relevant in combat. For example, engies could release a grenade barrage after taking falling damage or when… stunned or something. Not exactly like that, but that’s the general idea. Triggers. Or just a completely separate effect, something relevant to combat.

I also saw an old idea that suggested the effect could trigger whenever a player falls from any height greater than jump height, so you could just jump off of a fence or something and get your cool effect. It would still play on the environment, but it would work in a greater variety of environments.

“After making them worthwhile traits, either remove the -50% fall damage altogether or move them up to 2nd tier, so people don’t gimp themselves by putting 10 points in suboptimal locations just in case they want jump off a cliff in WvW.”

What?
You want it moved higher, and thus costing more, so people don’t waste 10 points to get it. Great, then they’d be spending 20 and gimping themselves further, rendering even more builds not viable. So people aren’t using the exact build you would, so what, if they can make it work more power to em.

Alright so the idea here was that people would put just 10 in a trait line fairly easily. Like, I have 10 points left and I could put it in this one trait line that’s more useful in combat, and this other trait line has worse combat traits, but it also has the -50% fall damage trait. So I go with that just in case I need to jump off of a cliff. I don’t think people’s builds should be influenced by such situational things.

If it was moved up a tier, you would have to legitimately invest in the line, you know? It would reduce this problem somewhat, but not entirely. Frankly, I think the -50% traits should be changed completely, either made more widely available or not at all. I thought others could see that as too radical, though, so I included the alternate suggestion.

I think fall damage traits are too situational. What these traits say to me is:

“Easily circumvent fall damage while out of combat, but only if your current build happens to have 10 points in this particular trait line (20 if you’re an ele, just ’cause).”

For the most part, people just equip them, use them as a safety net, and then unequip them. Why would people running certain builds that invest a small amount in one line get a random way to cheat death that’s for the most part irrelevant to combat?

It’s just weird.

Suggestion

• Add passive effects to these traits to at least make them legitimately useful. Maybe combine them with the passive movement speed buffs that every profession seems to have.

• Make their effects widely relevant in combat, less situational.

• After making them worthwhile traits, either remove the -50% fall damage altogether or move them up to 2nd tier, so people don’t gimp themselves by putting 10 points in suboptimal locations just in case they want jump off a cliff in WvW.

I think AoE and control (including area control through aoe) could actually be things that the engineer is intended to excel at. Who knows, maybe Anet will nerf the aoe of other classes while leaving engies alone. That would actually give us a bit of a niche in the game.

I’m not too worried about bombs, pistol, flamethrower, or rifle aoe just because they’re all pretty short range or difficult to place. Bombs have plenty of factors working against them and they’ve been nerfed multiple times already; I don’t think anyone sees them as OP anymore. Pistol 1 has what? A 1 foot radius? Rifle 3 and 5 both have short range and are somewhat difficult to place. FT 1 doesn’t seem too bad and FT 2 is pretty difficult to handle.

Grenades might get changed. Personally, I think the way grenades are designed is kind of genius (well, in principle anyway). Anet likes ranged to be weaker than melee, and since grenades have air time and spread, they automatically balance themselves depending on the range at which you use them. But yeah if they nerf the overall kit, I hope they compensate by reducing air travel time more. They said grenades are supposed to be long-range, but they’re unusable past ~800 range or so unless you’re chucking into crowds or at stationary people. I guess skill 4 is supposed to help with this, but it does a mediocre job.