I feel like there are some fundamental design issues with this spec that should be looked upon. Engineers' Slot Skills are designed with toolbelt in mind and removing (or "replacing", depending how you look at it) the entire toolbelt means you invalidate all skills that have a key functionality not within the skill itself but rather its toolbelt counterpart. To a certain degree scrapper and holo also did that but it was limited to a single skill, not all 5. Hence those two specs work far more fluently than mechanist in its current state. The result of that oversight is that you either build completely around your mech (which means just taking signets) or you ignore the mech and build around kits as those are not as reliant on their tool belt skill as the other skill types engineer got.
That being said I like the idea of an engi elite spec that favours strong toolbelt skill usuage as the Tools traitline generally isn't really used in many scenarios right now. So maybe there can be a compromise of enabling a couple of toolbelt skills in addition to the mech mechanic (at least the elite toolbelt skill should be a given considering you cant use it anywhere else).
Another problem is the current state of mace. It just doesn't do anything meaningful. I feel like the auto chain is a bit overloaded with utility and therefore to weak because someone was afraid of powercreep and therefore overcompensated by lowering numbers. Please buff it accordingly. One of the reason holosmith is so much fun to play is that it can use a strong and interesting weapon - their sword. That is not the case for mechanist right now. Mechanists skills are all over the place and considering their off-hand choices dont't really fit in. Best example is mace 3 which for some reason does a stun and burning. Both can be achieved by shield4/5 or pistol4 so mace3 really doesnt do anything. I'd suggest to either give it a boon or some additional confusion to redirect the spec more towars heavy confusion usuage like it was probably intended.
The last thing is something I noticed in quite a few beta specs. There is too much diversification in the respective traitlines. Instead of fitting three different playstyles in (like condi, power and boon support), I'd rather see 2 styles or even just 1 but with options to enhance. One example of this in the 2nd column of holosmith where you can pick between range for your autos, healing on your corona burst or super speed on your holo leap. All of those are supportive traits which makes for interesting decisions which you wanna pick. For mechanist on the other hand its just the decision between which type of damage it does (or if any at all). I feel like we lose a lot of depth that way.
I know this patch is going to be centered around WvW but it would drastically improve scrapper if the vitality loss reduction would not just affect pvp/wvw but also pve. It was mainly a pvp centered downside to begin with so if you want to reduce the penalty you absolutely don't have to split the skill.
