Suggestions for the Explosives and Tools traitlines

The most recent rework to our Firearms traitline got us thinking about Explosives and Tools again and I have a couple suggestions that may help add some diversity to our builds, specially to the famous or infamous full kit condi engi variant, the only semi-competitive vanilla build we got for high end PvE.

• Blasting Zone and Glass Cannon coexist on the same tier and are both heavily focused on power. I propose that Glass Cannon remains the same and Blasting Zone gets a bonus to either Condition Damage or Expertise instead of the current Power bonus. That tier would then have a power focused trait, an utility trait (grenadier) and a condi focused trait.

• Orbital Command is often completely ignored even on our power variant builds because of shrapnel and is overall kinda lackluster for a grandmaster trait but doesn't need a huge bump, imo. In addition to what it does already it could make blast finishers damage the area around them (even fits the theme) with a power coefficient around 0.7 (can be lower, higher, that's up to devs).

• Short Fuse in addition to what it does right now could make fields that originate from fire bomb, smoke bomb and glue bomb to last 1 or 2 more seconds and add a stack of confusion or two to concussion bomb.

• Static discharge has some targeting issues when looking at ground but outside that could inflict one stack of confusion per discharge, fits the theme and helps slightly with the vanilla condi engi build.

• Excessive energy could grant +7% outgoing condi damage and +7% power damage when having vigor. A similar trait already exists for revenant with Ferocious Aggression (Minor Master) with a much more common boon (fury instead of vigor).

• Kinetic Battery could make the next few attacks after you reach 5 stacks to inflict confusion.

That's all I got for this post and you're welcome to discuss anything I put here. Not sure if I'm repeating anything that Chaith already suggested and if I did my apologies!, but these are mostly PvE oriented ideas after all.

I'd say "hey ANET" just scrap the whole mortar thing" And give us a rocket launcher, or make Mortar 2-3-4-5 launch a short duration turret of some kind then in WVW we could trait for turrets to explode and shields and create some Zerg chaos.

Personally, Orbital Command should just be an all in Mortar trait, with some extra bonuses for other things.

Mortar 1 does -50% damage, but now calls an Orbital Strike where it lands. Mortar 1 Cooldown increased to 1 second. Mortar 2-5 are now unblockable projectiles.Blasting any field does damage and applies conditions to enemies. Duration of all fields increased by 1 second. (includes bomb kit and such).

Call down all the orbital strikes, especially on fields for massive damage!

I don't mind them fixing mortar kit at all but I was just referring to that specific trait. Think condi vanilla engi is in need of some love. The power holosmith variant is pretty good as it is right now, the only wildcard being sword and its role since rifle is straight up better in most situations.

Update: fixed a bit my suggestions with Excessive Energy and Kinetic Battery to better follow my whole idea for that traitline to have more confusion/condi interaction overall.

Merry Christmas everyone.

We need supply drop rework make it summon like triple the turret and 1 thumper

Orbital command is fine the problem is orbital strike is underpowered i propose we both double orbital strikes base damage and raise its scaling to 3.5 or 4.0 , in case this sounds OP this would bring the damage values equal to those of backstab, with a 3 seconds activation so i consider it fine.

@Rezzet.3614 said:We need supply drop rework make it summon like triple the turret and 1 thumper

Orbital command is fine the problem is orbital strike is underpowered i propose we both double orbital strikes base damage and raise its scaling to 3.5 or 4.0 , in case this sounds OP this would bring the damage values equal to those of backstab, with a 3 seconds activation so i consider it fine.

I like the idea of giving unique characteristics to engi on blast finishers, think it fits the theme of the class. Alternatively I'd give a mod so blast finishers heal in Alchemy or Inventions for example.

You know what I've always wanted to see? A fun grenade trait like: grenadier makes the grenades bounce 2 times on the ground