Upcoming Engineer Balance Changes

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@"Zex Anthon.8673" said:

Elementalists don't even have to deal with the the trade offs that core engi does when deciding to take extra weapon skills in place of a utility skill. They get 4 sets for free as part of their profession mechanic. Additionally, being designed as a profession mechanic from the start, attunements have meaningful traits and utility synergies. While with kits we are left with traits like short fuse and grenadier.

I think your perspective here is off. If you look at the engineer in its entirety, it has three core mechanics going for it:

-no weapon swap+toolbelt skills+kits

There's a problem with saying that we lose utility slots by equipping kits. Two, actually. First, this utility slot doesn't actually "lose" anything. It gives you 5 skills on command. To say otherwise is to also say that stuff like Ele Conjures are also stealing away utility slots. A kit also gives you a relevant toolbelt skill that you can use. Even then, if you equip streamlined kits, it gives you a spell that activates on press. This is all simply what the kit spot does.

Although I wouldn't mind the idea of making kits an innate ability of the Engi. It would require a pretty massive re-design of all of the kits and utilities, but it could work. Personally I'm not sold on this nebulous and dubious notion of "tradeoffs" anyway.

[Manuhell.2759]

The meta builds used kits because the balance of the whole class was dictated by their existence. The "worst case", as far as balancing goes, had the engineer using several kits. They couldn't afford making kits strong enough that one was fine to make a strong build...because nothing would stop an engineer from taking more of them. And the other utilities couldn't compete with kits, unless they did something situationally important that a kit couldn't do - like the invincibility provided by elixir S. Let alone having no-kit builds, as the main weapon couldn't deal enough dps alone - because, if that was possible, then a weapon plus kits would end up overpowered. As a matter of fact, we could only have gimmick builds to go no-kit, and they could do so because they supplied the engineer with additional sources of damage - the lightning bolts made via static discharge, made via toolbelts, and thus the skills were chosen mainly due to their toolbelt cooldown.

It put the engineer in an absurd spot where even if the kits were optional, in practice, the balance of the class wholly depended on them. Despite not being the actual profession mechanic.

Things did change a bit with the elite specs. Mostly because they couldn't sell them if they kept balancing like that, i guess. Even then, to give a proper dps role, they still had to give a different additional source of dps - the photon forge - and to restrict the use of kits while using it.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Zex Anthon.8673" said:

Elementalists don't even have to deal with the the trade offs that core engi does when deciding to take extra weapon skills in place of a utility skill. They get 4 sets for free as part of their profession mechanic. Additionally, being designed as a profession mechanic from the start, attunements have meaningful traits and utility synergies. While with kits we are left with traits like short fuse and grenadier.

I think your perspective here is off. If you look at the engineer in its entirety, it has three core mechanics going for it:

-no weapon swap+toolbelt skills+kits

There's a problem with saying that we lose utility slots by equipping kits. Two, actually. First, this utility slot doesn't actually "lose" anything. It

gives

you 5 skills on command. To say otherwise is to also say that stuff like Ele Conjures are also stealing away utility slots. A kit also

gives

you a relevant toolbelt skill that you can use. Even then, if you equip streamlined kits, it gives you a spell that activates on press. This is all simply what the kit spot does.

Although I wouldn't mind the idea of making kits an innate ability of the Engi. It would require a pretty massive re-design of all of the kits and utilities, but it could work. Personally I'm not sold on this nebulous and dubious notion of "tradeoffs" anyway.

If you agree that kits are a profession mechanic, then why not make kits a proper profession mechanic instead of classifying it as a utility skill? Kits are obviously very important to engineer gameplay. You are handicapping yourself if you run zero kits on core engi. Ele conjures don't have to be taken in order for the ele to receive additional weapon skills. Most kit toolbelts cannot replace proper utilities, when you are looking for mobility, condi clears, break stuns, etc to complete a build. This is why elixir gun is one of the best kits, its fucking loaded.

If you take a look at other utility skills across all other classes, you will see that almost all of them have one single trait for the utility family. That is because utility skills are meant to provide just that, "utility". They aren't meant to be the primary mechanic of the class, they are not what give the class it's identity. Kits have traits spread across all specializations of the class, much more like a profession mechanic, unlike toolbelt which are located entirely within the tools line. Look at any other class: Guardian -> Virtues, Necro -> Death Shroud, Ranger -> Pet, Engineer -> Toolbelt? Kits? ... I don't view toolbelts as what give engineer its identity, they are just additional utility skills (which usually splits the power between the utility and toolbelt. i.e. Strong Utility = Weak Toolbelt, or Strong Toolbelt = Weak Utility). Kits are what separate the engineer from the other classes. They are unique and fun, yet disappointing because they could be so much more.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

This right here...

@"Manuhell.2759" said:The meta builds used kits because the balance of the whole class was dictated by their existence. The "worst case", as far as balancing goes, had the engineer using several kits. They couldn't afford making kits strong enough that one was fine to make a strong build...because nothing would stop an engineer from taking more of them. And the other utilities couldn't compete with kits, unless they did something situationally important that a kit couldn't do - like the invincibility provided by elixir S. Let alone having no-kit builds, as the main weapon couldn't deal enough dps alone - because, if that was possible, then a weapon plus kits would end up overpowered. As a matter of fact, we could only have gimmick builds to go no-kit, and they could do so because they supplied the engineer with additional sources of damage - the lightning bolts made via static discharge, made via toolbelts, and thus the skills were chosen mainly due to their toolbelt cooldown.

... is why this will not work:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Improving kits is easy: more damage, shorter cooldowns, larger range, faster casting time, merging skills to create spots for new skills, adding additional abilities onto skills that already exist, etc. If you want to be really radical, make Streamlined Kits baseline. It's a silly question, really. It would be better to ask how not to improve kits.

How do you balance a profession around running 0-5 of a skill-set which are arguably intended to be the core mechanic of the class? Either you have strong single kit builds making multi-kits overpowered, or you have balanced multi-kits and weak individual kits. Personally I would like each individual kit to have its own identity and function well as a weapon set on their own.

---

@"Iozeph.5617" said:How do we do that though? I'm not saying it's impossible, but how? How do we make flamethrower or elixir gun do more than tickle enemies? How do we make Bomb kit not a death sentence? How do we make grenades less unwieldy? Of late, thanks to this recent patch, the word of the moment has become 'tradeoffs.' The problem with kits, as opposed to the profession(including elites) overall, is that each one is built with a fatal flaw or a tradeoff that keeps it from being good enough to rely on for every situation - or any situation for that matter now unless it's PvE.

To start we would have to eliminate kits biggest flaws: replacing a utility slot, and freedom of multi-slotting. Moving kits from the utility bar into the profession mechanic "f-bar" would provide a much needed level of freedom when making builds. The current design is too restricting and usually limits your kit choices to elixir gun and toolkit because they provide the most utility. Grenade builds are really gimmicky since they are only good for one shot potential, and rely heavily on elixir s because the build had no sustain otherwise. With a predefined number of kit slots, like two, we could balance kits around that number in order to make kits more meaningful. Ele attunements are fixed to a quantity of 4, so their skills can be balanced around that number, making ele builds more consistent.

When reconstructing kits they could be separated into two categories: Offense and Defense. From here offense kits will provide more damage with less (not zero) sustain, and vice versa. Next, list out the utility commonly provided on a weapon set: Mobility, crowd control, condition removal, boon application, etc. Then, divide up they utility such that every kit provides roughly two of these utility types. Finally, sprinkle in combo fields and finishers among all of the kits to promote synergy between each other and the weapon sets.

As an example:Grenade Kit - Offense, Ranged, Power Damage

Changes:

• Remove Flash Grenade and Poison Grenade
• Move Grenade Barrage into the 5 skill
• Add a new skill "Explosive Vault" - Leap to target location evading attacks while dropping grenades.

[Ivantreil.3092]

@"Manuhell.2759" said:The meta builds used kits because the balance of the whole class was dictated by their existence. The "worst case", as far as balancing goes, had the engineer using several kits. They couldn't afford making kits strong enough that one was fine to make a strong build...because nothing would stop an engineer from taking more of them. And the other utilities couldn't compete with kits, unless they did something situationally important that a kit couldn't do - like the invincibility provided by elixir S. Let alone having no-kit builds, as the main weapon couldn't deal enough dps alone - because, if that was possible, then a weapon plus kits would end up overpowered.

Not so long ago, we had this:https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Drunk_Engineer

This particular build had something, traits that specificly toghether made a non-kit build workout, and you defenitely didnt want to have a kit because it would mess the objective of the build, and had no point whatsoever with every trait on the build.

Also this build died because of one single trait nerf, it's all in the traits, dedicating traits exclsuively pointed at kits, that discourage specialization usage, would be the key to revive the kits at a more relevant area.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:This right here...

@"Manuhell.2759" said:The meta builds used kits because the balance of the whole class was dictated by their existence. The "worst case", as far as balancing goes, had the engineer using several kits. They couldn't afford making kits strong enough that one was fine to make a strong build...because nothing would stop an engineer from taking more of them. And the other utilities couldn't compete with kits, unless they did something situationally important that a kit couldn't do - like the invincibility provided by elixir S. Let alone having no-kit builds, as the main weapon couldn't deal enough dps alone - because, if that was possible, then a weapon plus kits would end up overpowered. As a matter of fact, we could only have gimmick builds to go no-kit, and they could do so because they supplied the engineer with additional sources of damage - the lightning bolts made via static discharge, made via toolbelts, and thus the skills were chosen mainly due to their toolbelt cooldown.

... is why this will not work:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:Improving kits is easy: more damage, shorter cooldowns, larger range, faster casting time, merging skills to create spots for new skills, adding additional abilities onto skills that already exist, etc. If you want to be really radical, make Streamlined Kits baseline. It's a silly question, really. It would be better to ask how

not

to improve kits.

How do you balance a profession around running 0-5 of a skill-set which are arguably intended to be the core mechanic of the class? Either you have strong single kit builds making multi-kits overpowered, or you have balanced multi-kits and weak individual kits. Personally I would like each individual kit to have its own identity and function well as a weapon set on their own.

Manuhell is wrong, though. For one, we have exactly the situation he describes now with Holosmith. We have a single weapon set that is powerful enough to function on its own, plus no limitation on the kits that can be used with it. Depending on the situation, you can see the bomb, grenade, and elixir gun on the holosmith. For two, there have been a few meta builds that weren't kit reliant. Ivantreil mentioned Drunk Engi, but the Turret Control engi also used no kits. This meant that both turrets and elixirs were balanced alongside of kits before they were nerfed.

The strength of the engineer didn't come from having massive burst to mow people down. It came from versatility and being tricky. I suspect that a lot of people are asking for murder burst when they want a "stronger kit." Of course that would be a bad idea. That's why holosmith has the heat mechanic and skill lockout. That's why thunderclap had its first hit removed. But, you can have good sustained damage, CC, conditions, and utilities without front loading a ton of damage. That's what we did in the past.

The thing with your suggestion is that it doesn't solve the problem that you're presenting us with. You'd still have multiple strong kits and weapons, alongside of two new free utility slots. We have DPS skills for utilities, so we'd create the exact kind of burst that you're trying to avoid.

[Manuhell.2759]

I did say we had gimmick builds, like the static discharge one. They just dealt with the lack of dps (and offensive skills in general) that resulted from a single weapon in different way - the drunk engineer made up for it via boons and at its core depended heavily on traits (and the particular build linked isn't even a core one, by the way). And then turrets...heh. They were explicitely designed as a tool to control and defend an area...and nerfed to the floor because they did just that. I wonder why they even designed them like that to start with, given that Conquest is all about defending and controlling small areas and it was sure to create issues. But that's in hindsight, after all.It's important to point out that they could work only because Conquest doesn't necessarily requires to kill enemies - keeping them out of the point or staying alive once the point is conquested is all that's needed (and someone else can do the kill for you, anyway). The rest of the game doesn't work like that, though.

As i also mentioned, they probably changed how they balanced the class a bit with the elite specs. The hammer is much more varied in skills compared to our old main weapons (and that spec isn't focused on dps to start with, so it's free to use other kinds of utilities; it's about staying alive rather than killing the opponent).The Holosmith - this time focused on dps - had to put some limitations on the kit mechanic, by imposing a cooldown on kits once in Photon Forge, so that we can't freely swap between Forge and Kits. The heat/overheat mechanic also acts in a way to limit our skill use within the forge (how well it does it is still a subject of discussions, as there is a lot of complainings about the strength of the holosmith).But it didn't solve the issue with the core profession. It just left it behind the elite specs.

You mention versatility and being tricky. We need skills to do so, and we start with less weapon skills than anyone else. And kits offer several skills. As i said above, they end up dictating the entire balance, but it's not limited to dps. If a kit is supposed to be effective by itself - whatever it does, be it damage, cc, defensive skills - and every kit is balanced like that, then having several of them means having all the damage, cc, defensive skills of the kits together, all with the free swap the kits come with. Of course it ends up overpowered. Other utilities can't compare with them unless they do something completely different (just think how bloated would have an utility to be if it was supposed to be comparable to whatever the elixir gun or flamethrower does). And even then, it's useful only if that "completely different" thing is useful in that particular situation.

If they were to properly rework the profession mechanic - setting kits as F-skills - they would also be able to balance them properly over the fixed amount of kits. And the other utilities wouldn't have to compete with kits anymore - as they aren't available as utilities anymore. In doing so, the Photon Forge could take the place of one of the kit F-slots, and the same could apply to some reworked Function Gyro.But to do so would require an heavy rework of the class. So i doubt it would ever happen, especially given the low playerbase of the class.

[Jaruselka.5943]

Pistols still suck..

[alain.1659]

A simple kit and utility skills rework might work for engineer. The tricky ones are not that tricky anymore due to the power levels of other professions. Engi, back in the day, was the only class that could "do everything but a little bit". Now with all these new elites and stuff, most of the professions have variety of skills. What engi needs is to get what it was designed for, being the jack of all trades. So in my opinion we need a kit and utility skill rework (and a little trait rework tied to those) to gain our advantage back.

[MarkBecks.6453]

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Engineer

Relatively minor changes for engineers compared to other classes, but general improvements going around. Overall I approve. MH pistol still needs more improvements, but this is a good step.

I play scrapper because I like the hammer along with certain gyros build, Trait #5 of Scrapper, "Thunderclap" has been nerfed to the point of uselessness, range of 1200 which is the only range on a SINGLE weapon, now changed to 240, so you can only cast at youre feet, The only weapon and engi has and they nerf the only range, we cant swap to another ranged weapop, I cannot believe this nerf, its the worst Ive seen in 7 years, think about that, Engi can only carry 1 Weapon, and its nerffed

[Vagrant.7206]

@MarkBecks.6453 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Engineer

Relatively minor changes for engineers compared to other classes, but general improvements going around. Overall I approve. MH pistol still needs more improvements, but this is a good step.

I play scrapper because I like the hammer along with certain gyros build, Trait #5 of Scrapper, "Thunderclap" has been nerfed to the point of uselessness, range of 1200 which is the only range on a SINGLE weapon, now changed to 240, so you can only cast at youre feet, The only weapon and engi has and they nerf the only range, we cant swap to another ranged weapop, I cannot believe this nerf, its the worst Ive seen in 7 years, think about that, Engi can only carry 1 Weapon, and its nerffed

... they didn't nerf thunderclap?

Also, you do know what kits are, right?

[MarkBecks.6453]

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@MarkBecks.6453 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Engineer

Relatively minor changes for engineers compared to other classes, but general improvements going around. Overall I approve. MH pistol still needs more improvements, but this is a good step.

I play scrapper because I like the hammer along with certain gyros build, Trait #5 of Scrapper, "Thunderclap" has been nerfed to the point of uselessness, range of 1200 which is the only range on a SINGLE weapon, now changed to 240, so you can only cast at youre feet, The only weapon and engi has and they nerf the only range, we cant swap to another ranged weapop, I cannot believe this nerf, its the worst Ive seen in 7 years, think about that, Engi can only carry 1 Weapon, and its nerffed

... they didn't nerf thunderclap?

Also, you do know what kits are, right?

II play mostly WvW, and know you can run kits, but I prefer gyro scrapper, but good news is, after I did a repair, it restored the 1200 range, so maybe I had a setting wrong that insta casted to my feet, and I could not range thunderclap, maybe someone can shed some light on which setting it is so I don't make the same mistake again. All working perfectly, don't understand how, but it has the range to 1200 and I can cast it, sorry for the misleading comments, game over