Do you like playing with Engineering Kits?

[Stx.4857]

I like using 1-2 kits.  I don't enjoy the classic 4 kit builds, mainly because you give up important things like stunbreaks, boons, defenses etc.  But I would most likely never play with 0 kits..  that would get boring fast.

[Rising Blade.9206]

Like that one guy said, i wouldn't say that engie should be balanced or favoured towards a kit-centric playstyle but it's hard to ignore that it's important to its identity especially considering that it doesn't have options when it comes to weapon swap. Engineer has always been that "have a solution for every problem" class, it lets you free form your playstyle and kits contribute to that, gutting kits would hurt that identity and all we're left is just a pure ranged class that requires you to cough up extra money to get an upgrade and melee weapons

[coro.3176]

40 minutes ago, Rising Blade.9206 said:

Like that one guy said, i wouldn't say that engie should be balanced or favoured towards a kit-centric playstyle but it's hard to ignore that it's important to its identity especially considering that it doesn't have options when it comes to weapon swap. Engineer has always been that "have a solution for every problem" class, it lets you free form your playstyle and kits contribute to that, gutting kits would hurt that identity and all we're left is just a pure ranged class that requires you to cough up extra money to get an upgrade and melee weapons

Right. Engi kits aren't just about having more skills in place of a weapon swap, they're also about having the skills *when* you want them free from the usual weapon rotations.

Eg. Toolkit: You're using your weapon and suddenly an enemy attacks you. On reaction, you swap to toolkit and block with Gear Shield, then swap back to your weapon to counterattack. A few seconds later, the enemy has gained distance, but you want to finish them off. You swap to toolkit again and use Magnet to pull them back and smack them with Pry Bar.

That's the kind of flexible play that defines Engineer.

Edited June 27, 2022 by coro.3176

[Stalima.5490]

This vote is flawed since there is multiple ways to use kits, someone may like to play with 1 kit and not 3 kits but your question only poses kits in general which would not accurately describe how people feel.

 

I like to play with 1 or 0 kits, the single kit being the fun and defining point of the build when present.

 

multiple kits rather just undermines the point in kits since you just swap out, use one button then swap out which is weird and like not having kits anyway as opposed to just an additional utility button.

[Jerus.4350]

4 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

multiple kits rather just undermines the point in kits since you just swap out, use one button then swap out which is weird and like not having kits anyway as opposed to just an additional utility button.

How?  Why would I use a hammer, an adjustable wrench, AND a screwdriver when I'm just trying to remove a screw?  Kits are a set of utilities for us to use, by having kits we get 5 (6 with toolbelt) options instead of 1.  Doesn't mean I should be using every option every time I need 1 of them.

 

Coro said it very well above.  Kits are about having on demand options to deal with situations.  Most of the time I'm using bombs for the damage, but that blind field is just amazing when you can negate the damage of an entire pack of enemies.  Every skill does have uses.

 

I do agree with your other points though and personally 2-3 kits is generally where I like it.  4 gets to be a bit much, and 5 is just silly (but I have a build with it >.<).

 

[UntimelyM.7860]

I play engineer because of the kits. In WvW, 2-3 kits is perfect for being able to deal with a large number of situations. This is what I use on almost every single engi build that I run.

I dislike playing an engineer without at least 1 kit, even on Mech.

 

Having Mace + Signets become the optimal choice would make me sad.

 

- Prozap 

[padreadamo.3986]

I stopped playing my engineer because of mechanist. I thought they were trying to make the class less complex and not fix the other broken aspects of engineer. It turns out most of us were right. They don't want to fix engineer kits they want them to fade into oblivion which is why Mechanist feels so alien to most of us who have played engineer for years. A shame.

[Dawdler.8521]

On 6/25/2022 at 9:52 PM, bethekey.8314 said:

Kits and the toolbelt are literally why Engineer doesn't have a weapon swap. They're integral to the class design.

They missed the boat to actually cement that idea. 

Instead of an OOC weaponswap (which is pointless with dedicated power/condi weapons), the engineer should have had a selectable kit on the regular 9s cooldown. IE you could have p/p/flamethrower with toolkit on a utility skill. Weaponswapping would flip between p/p and flamethrower. Flipping to a utility kit would be like normal. Pro is a kit to all engineers and freeing up a potential utility slot, con is missing stack sigil (unless we could attach sigils to the offhand kit). 

Personally I run around with a traited toolkit as my only kit in WvW and I am probably pretty alone with that 😞

[Kodra.7860]

I don't mind running 1 kit and treating it like a weapon swap, but the previous "piano player" style of "always run 4 kits" was incredibly frustrating to play.

There was always a design challenge around kits that their cost was the same resource as a turret, or an elixir, or any gadget, and the power a kit provided for that resource cost ALWAYS exceeded what you could get for using something else.  It greatly reduced the available spec options.  I like Mechanist and Signets because the fact that kits are weaker on Mechanist means I feel less obligated to take them

[RabbitUp.8294]

The thing is, if you actually like kits, then you shouldn't be satisfied with the current balance/implementation. Going into a kit to use 1-2 skills before dropping it defeats the whole point of having a kit, and you might as well replace it with a utility skill.

[coro.3176]

26 minutes ago, RabbitUp.8294 said:

The thing is, if you actually like kits, then you shouldn't be satisfied with the current balance/implementation. Going into a kit to use 1-2 skills before dropping it defeats the whole point of having a kit, and you might as well replace it with a utility skill.

You might *normally* only use 1 or 2 skills, but sometimes you want the other ones, and that's why kits are nice. Eg. my WvW roamer uses 3 kits - toolkit, grenade kit, medkit

• Often I'll swap into med kit for the cleanse field and then back out if I only need to clear condi
• When facing heavy reflect, I'll swap into grenade kit for the unblockable poison grenades and then back out
• When fleeing opponents, I'll swap into toolkit to block and then drop box of nails
• When chasing opponents, I'll swap into toolkit to magnet-prybar
• When bombing downs, I'll swap into grenade kit to chill/blind/bleed applying cover condi on top of my blowtorch burns
• When under pressure, I'll swap into med kit to trigger a heal blast and pulse 4 for a bit of extra healing.

So yeah, I'm satisfied with the current implementation. I just don't want to be forced to stop using kits because other things are *more* effective. That would be losing what makes engineer a unique class.

[santenal.1054]

Ranger keeps getting new pets but we never get new engineering kits. 😡 RIOT!

 

(since the replacement of mortar by mortar kit in 2015)

Edited June 28, 2022 by santenal.1054

[Fwog.9387]

On 6/25/2022 at 12:07 PM, santenal.1054 said:

With the recent revelations of an anet dev thinking that most engineers dont like playing with engineering kits, voice your opinion. 

I don't mind low intensity builds existing or being raid viable. But if people are gonna be playing the harder build, it seems reasonable they should do more damage. 

[Luthan.5236]

I dislike them. But I think one kit can be okay. Using more than 1 ... gets a bit too much and I find myself to not utilize all of the skills. (There are some builds that require extreme keyboard acrobatics while switching between different kits.)

I'd rather have the in-combat weapon swap allowed - if no kit was selected. Especially with the mechanist and mace + shield it would be nice to be allowed to swap between that one and rifle. (While most of the utility slots are filled with other stuff than kits.)

Mainly like the bomb kit and the tool kit.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Teratus.2859]

Personally, nah not really.

But I don't play Engi much.

 

That might change soon though because they broke Rifle so hard with the latest patch and when I do play Engi.. I play rifle engi xD

[Okhu.7948]

I can live with or without kits. Enjoying all the LI builds that don't require them after 10 years of kit juggling. It's very relaxing and my fingers and wrists don't hate me.

[Scolix.4879]

No not really i hate how clunky the whole class feels and that it has the least options what weapons to use is why i eventually got bored of engineer and just rerolled.

Also it really doesn't help  that grenades have been the king of kits sinse forever and i hate spamming them.

[draxynnic.3719]

Had some "fridge thoughts" on this over the last couple of days.

See, I've been considering whether my second legendary armour set should be light or medium, and it struck me that one of the things that was in the cons column was that with grenades having been stapled to basically every engineer DPS build pretty much forever, if I expanded my raid builds to include engineer, I'd be expected to run grenades and, well, Blow That For A Game Of Soldiers. Sure, there are options that make it easier to use, but that's still only easier, and that requires messing around with options that you might not want to keep when playing another profession.

This shouldn't be seen as a reason to program in obsolescence for kits, though, but to make them more user-friendly. And it's pretty much only a problem for the kits which are ground-targeted on all skills. Don't think I've ever seen people complaining about flamethrower - if anything, people often find excuses to use it even when it's mechanically bad.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

I like gadgets more conceptually than kits and love to mess around with rocket boots even if they're not meta, I think the bias towards anyone who doesn't use kits isn't a really engineer is kind of a pretty bad mentality. So my opinion on them is mixed and I think the options in the poll are worded poorly, kits should be fine for those who want to use them and other stuff should be good for people who don't want to use them is what I think the best approach is. 

[Scolix.4879]

On another note on kits i might be only one but one of the reasons i started to hate engineer was when they removed the kit "backpacks" i know lot of people hated them but i really wish they had made them as cosmetic backpack items when they removed them fom engineer kits now most kits just look idiotic without the backpiece especially flamethrower and elixir gun.

 

 

[Fwog.9387]

I feel like picking engie, and not using kits is like picking elementalist and camping fire attunement, or picking mesmer when you hate managing clones. (or at least it was pre-virtuoso)

It is kind of an important core part of the class, and its the reason why we have so few weapons and no weapon swap. Designing the class moving forward around not needing kits, would simply dumb the class down. 

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Scolix.4879 said:

On another note on kits i might be only one but one of the reasons i started to hate engineer was when they removed the kit "backpacks" i know lot of people hated them but i really wish they had made them as cosmetic backpack items when they removed them fom engineer kits now most kits just look idiotic without the backpiece especially flamethrower and elixir gun.

 

 

Agreed - they should, at the very least, have made them available as cosmetics. I know a lot of people wanted to be able to show off their chosen back items, but personally, I've been finding it hard to find back items that fit as well as the kit packs did, especially since most back items have a tendency to end up awkwardly floating on a female charr.

[Jimbru.6014]

The poll answers are so heavily polarized that I had to say NO PREFERENCE. I like playing with kits and think they should be an equally viable option to weapons, but I don't think Engineer classes should be balanced to favor them.

[PzTnT.7198]

Both should work really. 

Myself i really don't like kit builds as they feel like the epitome of clunky design. But with holosmith i could put together a fully viable build with no kits at all. It even runs on power rather than conditions which is a huge plus as ive never been a fan of the condi builds either. 

Now i just got back to the game after a very, very long break and found that most of my builds have been nerfed into the dirt. I used to run with a power soulbeast and power reaper builds back when they were still good, and of course the power holosmith. At least the latter still works.

I also got the mechanist unlocked and that is a spec i really like so far. Not only does it also work well with a power build but its also not one that requires kits in any way. I set it up to be all selfish dps with signets which has worked really well for what ive played so far. I really hope they wont nerf it to death over the coming months. 

 

In either case to go back on topic. I think that kits should be usable but not required, their damage should be on par with a good non kit build. But a kit build should have additional utility to make up for its difficulty of use. 

[Alice.6327]

One of the things I like more about the Engineer is the versatility of its kits, the build that I have enjoyed the most is the Core Engineer Condi. I think it is part of his personality, and if there is something that should be balanced or adjusted, it would be his area combos.