What if you could swap out Shortbow arrows to change the Chain Reactions you have access to?

[Teletric.3821]

They have the tech for swapping weapon skills as you can swap the Hammer skills on Ranger outside of Untamed, so what if they applied the tech to Engi shortbow to let you choose different essences? Basically, the idea is that you could swap out the essences the blog post mentions in slots 2-5 to different ones, like you can with utility skills. What this would do is change the types of Chain Reactions you'd have access to.

In the example in the blog post, they talked about how the Essence of Animated Sand creates a big AoE of sand that gives allies barrier, and its Chain Reaction effect causes other arrows to grant barrier on the initial detonation. But imagine the ability to swap out the essence in that slot to one that has an inverse effect: creating an AoE of acid that decreases enemies' incoming barrier, and its Chain Reaction effect causing other arrows to inflict damaging conditions (depending on what type of arrow it is) on enemies on the initial detonation. Essentially, you could customize whether you wanted more support oriented Chain Reactions, more damage oriented ones, or maybe a combination of the two.

The way I see this in my head flavor-wise is the engineer deciding what kind of arrows they want to keep in their quiver/Universal Multitool Pack.

[Zzik.5873]

Stop it, you know they wont.

[Bomboed.5697]

What if you could get a real new weapon instead of another kit with 4 similar skills......

[Noah Salazar.5430]

What if you culd get 3 shots on rifle auto

[Bomboed.5697]

What if we could have a decent class designer

[Puck.3697]

Eh, I csn understand this, but at the same time. If they made this a thing everyone would want this done for every weapon in the game. 

I mean realistically every weapon kinda ends up in a role, and yes anyone who doesn't wanna play that role gets left out due to this. 

But if this was to take shape, every build would use the same weapons. And many weapons would be brought up demanding the same treatment. 

Same with rifle for mesmers, its just primarily  support focused weapon. 

Although tbh it does appear that all of its skills are gonna be quite samey. Which doesn't feel amazing. It's the only real critic I have for the idea, the mechanic behind it however sounds quite interesting.