Does weapon swap restriction really make sense for this particular profession?

[Ghertu.7096]

So, there are two professions unable to swap their weapons in combat: Elementalist and Engineer. They have their attunements and kits instead. Though while attunements are mandatory profession mechanic, kits are optional, you can run without them. What am I getting to: I recently tried to make a Scrapper build utilizing a hammer and gyros as the main sources of damage and realized that I'm basically playing a Warrior who can't swap weapons.

[Skotlex.7580]

I am of the idea that what engineer really needs is to make kits part of the profession mechanic.

That way all engineers have a fixed number of kits, and the tradeoff for the elite would be one fixed kit instead (photon forge, and perhaps they could rework utility gyro into a kit as well?). Not being able to equip all kits on your build would also grant ANet the freedom to improve said kits' abilities (since they already feel superior to most other utilities).

Granted, there would be quite a bit work to go. Like, deciding what to do with the toolbelt skills. They could be removed, or maybe an engineer could have a compromise of two kits + three toolbelt skills (meaning only utilities being these).

Enabling weapon swap isn't going to help much, as generally speaking engineer doesn't has enough weapon build options to take advantage of it. I would much rather they do something to make kits a more integral part of the engineer.

[Hynax.9536]

Giving us in combat weapon swap right now would change nothing as we barely have any weapon options.

@Skotlex.7580 said:I am of the idea that what engineer really needs is to make kits part of the profession mechanic.

That way all engineers have a fixed number of kits, and the tradeoff for the elite would be one fixed kit instead (photon forge, and perhaps they could rework utility gyro into a kit as well?). Not being able to equip all kits on your build would also grant ANet the freedom to improve said kits' abilities (since they already feel superior to most other utilities).

Granted, there would be quite a bit work to go. Like, deciding what to do with the toolbelt skills. They could be removed, or maybe an engineer could have a compromise of two kits + three toolbelt skills (meaning only utilities being these).

Guess they should go in a way like elementalist and place all our kits in the F1-F5 keys. Maybe give an option to select if the F1-F5 slots will be occupied by an engineering kit or the toolbelt skill of the respective utility skill equipped. If you choose to equip an engineering kit, its respective toolbelt skill will be available while it is equipped. This way you can mix kits and toolbelt skills as you wish and still have free utility slots.

[Dawdler.8521]

Once upon a time, the excuse was that it had kits which made it more "flexible" than the rest.

Then expansions happened and powercreep went through the roof and up into the atmosphere, removing any sanity to this limitation.

Personally though, I still think that the engineer should get a weaponswap skill that can only be occupied by a kit. IE your weaponswap is between the weapon and kit. This frees up 1 utility slot on all engineers while still "restricting" them to a class mechanic instead of just a generic weaponswap.

[Nero.7369]

I would love to play a scrapper with hammer and rifle or sw/sh and rifle on holo. I could imagine a system that allows us to weapon swap when there are no kits equipped.For core engineer i could imagine that they could use a kit as a secondary weapon for free

I think the bigger problem is that many kits are really outdated and haven't seen much qol updates. Projectile fly time of grenades and mortar are a joke, 'naded need to be traited but then the arc is so crappy that they often don't reach their destination. Most kits are mostly utility oriented like mortar, elexier gun, toolkit and medi kit. There is no real good offensive power dmg kit choice. Nades do some direct dmg and some condition. Bomb auto attack is the strongest power one but their others also apply conditions. Same goes for mortar. Even the pry bar on toolkit deals power and condition damage. More clear roles for the kits would be great, like:

• Medi Kit: Support Kit as it is
• Elexier Gun: Range Group Utility, Remove Acid Bomb, Glob Shot, Add Mortars Elexier Shell and Flash Shell which also criples and is a smoke field instead.
• Tool Kit: Melee Single Target Power Damage and Utility, remove confusion from the pry bar increase power damage, replace box of nails with another power dmg skill
• Flame Thrower: Melee / Short Range Condi Damage, Replace smoke field, maybe a pulsing burn and blind or projectile block with higher cd.
• Mortar: Range AoE Power Damage, Remove Elexier Shell and Flash Shell, Add Elexier Guns Acid Bomb and another high damage skill
• Grenades: Range AoE Condition/Hybrid Damage, improve arc and fly time increase range to 1000, flash grenade also applies confusion increased cd
• Bombs: High Power AoE Damage on Short Range. Remove fuse time, bombs are thrown at 250 range and explode on landing. Remove Fire, Confusion and Smoke Bomb. Add Magnet Bomb (from Streamlined Kits) and two high power damage skills

I like the current toolbelt skills and think they also part of the profession mechanic. Also some kits got great toolbelt skills with them :)