You know your elite skills are weak when you wish you could substitute in a standard utility :)

[shion.2084]

I was thinking the other day for my scrapper nades build that I'd rather have  elix U, purge gyro, or maybe Elixir S,  than any of the elites.  Assuming I got to keep the toolbelt.  Then the thought struck me as rather sad.  Maybe they should make the engineer a jack of all trades class which can substitute any of its elites for a vanilla skill 🙂

Edited February 21, 2023 by shion.2084

[Matoro.9708]

I completely agree.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I've found Supply Crate to be really useful in PVE and WvW, such that I feel like I need something pretty beefy to justify taking it off.  So far, the only other elite skill that regularly supplants it is Prime Light Beam.  Otherwise, that 2-3 second stun with an overcharged net turret (more stun then immobilize) and overcharged flame turret (pulsing blind field then fire damage) has been an excellent way to break bars, lock down enemies, protect myself, and shift the tide of battle.  

[Dadnir.5038]

People wanting to replace their (useless) elite skills by regular utility is something that you can find across all professions. It's one of the major issues of the elite skills, most of them feel pointless and are plagued with CDs that are so long that it make you forget that they exist.

[jason.1083]

The way I see it is that elites skill are not supposed to be purely a powerful skill with a long cool down, rather a skill that if used correctly it can be a tide turner in a fight, and for that I'll refer to the elite skill I normally use, 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prime_Light_Beam

A long range, unblockable launch that can hit up to 5 targets, if it's used at the right time it's a great relief skill for both the player and other players, that can also do some damage in the long term. 

I see how some elite skills are not good even for those specific occasions and always end up feeling quite underwhelming, but I guess being able to take another utility skill instead would make for some op stuff in some cases. 

Edited February 22, 2023 by jason.1083

[Sobx.1758]

It's similar for many (most? all?) other professions. It seems they initially wanted elites to be strong "ult-type" skills with long cds, then decided they're too strong, so they started nerfing them while -in most cases- cd remained high and it results in having a way more limited range of skills with higher cooldowns and not as much of an impact they initially were meant to have, which often could be better replaced with one of the utility skills for better -more consistent- impact on the gameplay.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

People wanting to replace their (useless) elite skills by regular utility is something that you can find across all professions. It's one of the major issues of the elite skills, most of them feel pointless and are plagued with CDs that are so long that it make you forget that they exist.

Basically, this. Most elite skills were designed to be something you pull out infrequently to turn a fight, making the regular utility skills more useful overall. Generally, the closer an elite skill is to behaving like a regular utility skill, the better it is in practice. Engineer is actually relatively well of in this capacity: mortar kit is always available, most of the specialisation elites are fairly usable, and while supply drop has a long cooldown it is at least fairly fire-and-forget and does make for a significant impact through healing and CC.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

I would say elixir and recently sneak gyro are the only genuinely problematic elites. And with the former, the tool kit ability is pretty ace in PvP.

 

[Stalima.5490]

21 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

I was thinking the other day for my scrapper nades build that I'd rather have  elix U, purge gyro, or maybe Elixir S,  than any of the elites.  Assuming I got to keep the toolbelt.  Then the thought struck me as rather sad.  Maybe they should make the engineer a jack of all trades class which can substitute any of its elites for a vanilla skill 🙂

 

Just putting this out there, but they should change the kits to be our elite skills, it would solve so many issues, particularly the medkit/mechanist issue.

[shion.2084]

It occurred to me that it might be fun for a future Engineering elite class to be able to substitute its elite with any non-elite core skill from another class (as long as no class specific mechanics were required for said skill).   That could make for some good fun and be thematic in the engineers adaptiveness.

[Drascious.5714]

I'll be honest, i think the elite skill slot is the least interesting slot for every class, there are so few elite skills that actually feel defining or exciting, especially in pve.

You get very little choice in the slot and often times the one added by an elite spec is just the best choice, or there is one core option that overshadows all others by quite a distance.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to allow the elite slot to have any utility skill in it much the same way as the 3rd traitline can be elite or not.

I don't believe we would see any significantly overpowered options come to light, but it would allow a little more tailoring of builds where none of the elite skills really fit very well, or allow another space to bring specific utility tools that can sometimes be hard to fit onto builds.

 

 

 

[shion.2084]

On 2/24/2023 at 3:40 AM, Psykewne.3025 said:

I'll be honest, i think the elite skill slot is the least interesting slot for every class, there are so few elite skills that actually feel defining or exciting, especially in pve.

You get very little choice in the slot and often times the one added by an elite spec is just the best choice, or there is one core option that overshadows all others by quite a distance.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to allow the elite slot to have any utility skill in it much the same way as the 3rd traitline can be elite or not.

I don't believe we would see any significantly overpowered options come to light, but it would allow a little more tailoring of builds where none of the elite skills really fit very well, or allow another space to bring specific utility tools that can sometimes be hard to fit onto builds.

 

 

 

Yeah I was thinking you could do it for the engi as part of their versatility theme to start with.   Anyway it was just a thought of an interesting way to give a unique class feature.

[SleepyBat.9034]

On 2/22/2023 at 12:23 PM, Stalima.5490 said:

 

Just putting this out there, but they should change the kits to be our elite skills, it would solve so many issues, particularly the medkit/mechanist issue

That would ruin any build that runs multiple kits. Also losing access to tool belt skills on the elites? That's a hard no.

[Stalima.5490]

Just to clarify, my reasoning behind saying the kits should be our elites is because It solves the issue of weapon swap, the engineer would then always have a second weapon available to them and would be to much better tailor a build based upon their kit as opposed to the current state of 99% of the time having the crate taken outside of mechanist/holo.

This would quickly solve the terrible balancing issues they have with the kits where taking additional kits adds entire layers of balancing issues as well as fixing the kits vs base weapons issue.

 

Now I know what you're thinking "but what about holo", well don't worry, because I've got you covered, Holo will instead gain Holo kits allowing them to gain heat bonuses on their kits.

[Kulvar.1239]

I wish every class could equip utility skills in the elite slot.