The engineer is the reskined version of the ritualist from GW1.Quite some stuff in the engineer's kit is supposed to be Anet's translation of ritualist's mechanics into GW2. Turrets are basically the same as spirits, just with a different appearance. They are still stationary minions which are effecing their environment in different ways, either through attacking or pulsing benefits for allies (boons and healing from the healing turret). Kits are their attempt to translate ashes into GW2, which is way more defined by your weapons than it has been the case in GW1. Broken down, ashes were basically just conjured items you could hold or drop for different effects. Completely disabling your weapon skills, like they did in GW1, would feel bad in this game, so they went another route by making the engineer summon an item that replaces their current weapon skills with new ones. Mechanically, the only thing from ritualist that is missing on engineers are weapon spells. Something that at least comes close to them, at least in my opinion, would be the venoms put on thieves. Anyway, I know many people would like to see ritualist return, but I think the only realistic way for that is through an elite spec to give us some of their thematical flair back. Mechanically, most of their stuff got already translated into the engineer. There is a lot of similarities but to me the Rit spirits had a lot more utility to them they were more than just damage and you could move them to you. I didnt think about the eng being like that since its a lot different in appearance and such. Thanks for pointing that out! Also the rit to me had overall more utility because the current "meta" eng builds in a lot of siutation dont utilitlize the turrets. I see more eng running scrapper or holo rather than using them the way a Rit would. I think it would be cool to hav that hybrid of a class thats a mix of a boon creater, healer, and also use aoe and dots like they did. Personally I lilke the idea of the paragon a little more with the spears being an entire new thing.