The Scrying Pool: Engineer's Mechanic

In this article of The Scrying Pool, Mattsta speculates about the Engineer specialization coming in Heart of Thorns.

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The Scrying Pool is a Guild Wars 2 column where I simply ask what if? Nothing is off the table as I dive into possible features and future content, looking at what currently exists in Guild Wars 2 before I answer my own what if question with how I think the feature and content could be implemented.

In the last couple of weeks, The Scrying Pool started its speculation series covering the new specialization feature coming in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Two weeks ago I gave my general speculation specialization before jumping into the profession specific speculations last week with Guardian’s Cleric. This week I dive into speculation for another profession with Engineer’s Mechanic.

As I dive into each of these professions and speculate about what their specialization could do, I am looking first at what the profession currently does and then look for what is missing. For Guardian I saw a heavily support focused class that was missing a ranged support option. In my opinion, what Engineer is missing is active gameplay.

While there is a lot of skilled play in swapping kits and using certain skills at the right time, for a lot of the profession—and for most players—Engineer is a very static class. Slow weapon skills, turrets and players sitting in a single kit all lead to a profession that is missing the action offered in every other profession. While the other professions are not always quick-paced, action combat (such as scepter on every profession that can use it), Engineer is almost completely lacking the quicker pace in favor of its slow, deliberate feel.

A big part of the Mechanic improving on this is the introduction of the hammer as a usable weapon. The hammer was revealed as the new weapon for Engineer during the announcement trailer shown at PAX South. In the small amount shown, the hammer looks to be a quicker paced weapon as the Engineer bounces from enemy to enemy.

Specializations are not likely to change the base profession much, replacing a single weapon and some utility skills and not replacing everything that is the profession. Last week with the Guardian, my idea was that changing a skill of each utility type to align the profession more with the goal I saw the specialization fulfilling. With Engineer and the Mechanic, I see the specialization not as replacing a skill of each type but instead as replacing an entire utility type.

The utility type that I envision the profession losing is the Elixirs. With so few weapons available to the Engineer and the inability to swap weapons, weapon kits are going to be hard to swap out for the Engineer with this or future specializations. Meanwhile, turrets can still be seen in the short glimpse of the profession during the announcement trailer. This just leaves Elixirs and Gadgets, the latter of which fits better with both my goal of this specialization as well as the Mechanic theme.

As I get into the specifics of some of these skills, it is important to look at these less as the skills themselves, but instead as a generalization. It is unlikely that these will be the skills that you see the specialization having, but gives a better sense of the goal that I want this specialization to fulfill. Plus, it is really fun to come up with entirely new skills.

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