As an engineer main these are my takes on the Mechanist.
Cool things
Signets
At a first glance, signets are amazing to bring new players into the engineering world by simplifying the class.
Mace
IMO the mace skills look very cool and fit the class identity.
Disadvantages
Pet AI
It was interesting to see how many times the Devs were mentioning how buggy is the pet AI is, this makes me even more worried about this new elite spec.
Toolbelt skills
In my opinion toolbelt skills are the engineer differentiator and I feel like the elite made them useless because if you don't have the mech active you don't have access to them, letting us with 2 trait lines when inactive. (huge disadvantage)
How to improve the elite spec
Let go of the Mech
(I'm considering playability over theme)
I believe that the pet AI will be a headache in all game modes. IMO changing the mech skills into toolbelt ground target skills would make more sense because the player would have control and fit the overall class identity.
TL;DR
The elite spec is cool thematically but makes the engineer a ranger with a mech.
The mech removes class identity by removing the toolbelt skills. Removing the mech and giving us the mech skills as toolbelt skills would be a way out.
Pet AI is a huge problem and when it dies you will lose one trait line and other traits in other lines since the mech will not use them
Does anyone else feel the same?