Guild Wars 2

Due to the current state of Turrets, I am sure most players do not find them threatening in any way. The effects are weak and often bugged, the turrets themselves are easily destroyed, and most people only take turrets for the overcharge or detonate/toolbelt effect. So to make turrets slightly better, my suggestion is to simply remove the cooldown on a turret (excluding the healing turret) when it is picked up.
*This means in PvE, you can use your turrets in more encounters.
*It would encourage more active management of turrets.
*It would not become OP because turrets themselves are weak, bugged, can easily be destroyed, and a cooldown still remains on the overcharge effect.
I feel this would be a simple solution to make turrets more pleasant to work with until the deeper issues can be properly sorted out.

+100

Maybe und this is finally getting heared in the balance forums. This has been proposed since release, along with the bug fixes.

Ofc, pvp would maybe be an issue. Thats what everyone fears. Do not see why though.

I don’t see PvP being an issue since the counter play is to simply sneeze in the direction of the turrets to destroy them before the engineer can pick them back up, thus placing the full cd on the turret.

This has its upsides and downsides. Using the current state of Turrets as justification, though, is a bad idea; any potential change needs to be something that can be kept even in the face of improvements.
In addition, the entire cycle of putting down and picking up would have less downtime than there is between shots – even with Rifle Turret, which currently has the quickest firing cycle, this would result in more attacks than intended and ultimately cause issues. There’s also a couple bugs affecting on-placement shots, but I’m not going into those here.
Josh Davis says they’re working on the bugs, so let’s try to come up with ways to improve them that don’t hinge on them not working.

I think there’s a slightly different version that I, personally, favor:
Cooldown starts when Turret is placed.
Picking Turret up still causes the 25% reduction to cooldown.

Example of effect:
Rifle Turret has a cooldown of 20 seconds. I’ll use this as the example.
If this idea were implemented, if Rifle Turret remained on the field for 20 seconds and was destroyed, it would immediately come off of cooldown.
(20-20=0)
If it were on the field for 15 seconds and was destroyed, it would have 5 seconds left on its cooldown.
(20-15=5)
Pick it up instead, and it’s off cooldown.
(20/4=5, 5+15=20, 20-20=0)

By subtracting uptime from downtime:

• Turret-users would be encouraged to keep Turrets out rather than drop-and-pop – but strategic detonation would become far more effective a tactic due to increased frequency, encouraging a more active style of play – there’s precious little to be gained by having the Turret out for the full five minutes, so why not Detonate it and reposition?
• Turreteers would be more inclined toward riskier, but more tactical, placement of Turrets if the punishment for their destruction was less severe.
• Also, if this were implemented and Turrets made capable of being threatening, enemies in PvP would find it important to cull the Turrets in order to slow the Engineer’s placement down.

I believe this would increase the fun quotient of Turret Engineers, from both the viewpoint of the person fighting them and the person playing them, without creating exploitable issues.

heres the thing even if turrets had the survivability of a bunker warrior with guardian heals and regens they would lack any actual threat and damage the only turret posing a minimal threat for targets would be Net turret in pvp wich is getting nerfed soon so yeah.. tough luck

turrets are only good against bunker players since they deal fixed damage
out of that they are utterly useless since they dont even target world bosses
they sure would be a huge aid against field bosses since they deal fixed damage

I know they plan to address turret bugs, but have no knowledge of damage or survival of turrets being addressed. If the bugs were fixed and all else remained the same, my proposed changes would still be acceptable without creating balance issues.

That being said, my changes would not work of course if the turrets still fired the first shot upon being deployed. I would assume some sort of cooldown be placed on the shots that prevented an immediate re-fire if one were to pick up a turret and immediately place it back down. Otherwise, turrets such as the Net Turret could be easily exploited.

However, I see nothing wrong with the cooldown starting when the turret is deployed instead of when it is destroyed as you suggest. Either way, turret cooldowns is something that needs to be addressed.

First and foremost, they should clearly say what’s the philosophy behind turrets. As now, it doesn’t even seem there is one. They could have low dps but supposed to resist for a long time, they could be strong yet disposable…as now, they’re weak, disposable and with relatively long cooldowns in some cases.

Is there even a point to Turrets other then to satisfy some design aesthetic that Engineers need Turrets in some devs opinions?
Because other then being a token ability, it doesnt really satisfy much in terms of gameplay at all.
Lets not forget the 4 mandatory traits that are spread out across 3 different traitlines.

Imagine a Necro pet. But with worst AI, worst abilities, longer cooldowns, squishier and immobile.
And that’s if Turrets worked as intented, and werent so bugged im not sure if we should keep making forum posts or call a professional exterminator.

The only Turret that is actually used isnt really used as a Turret at all. Its dropped, overcharged and immediatly detonated. In what universe is a Turrets primairy function to self-destruct as fast as possible?

If there’s something strange
in your Engi’s skillbar
Who ya gonna call?
TURRETBUSTERS!

If there’s something weird
and it don’t do any good
Who ya gonna call?
TURRETBUSTERS!

(beware my mighty paint skills )

pza.8024:

If there’s something strange
in your Engi’s skillbar
Who ya gonna call?
TURRETBUSTERS!

If there’s something weird
and it don’t do any good
Who ya gonna call?
TURRETBUSTERS!

(beware my mighty paint skills )

you sir just made my day a little better.

I wish that buffing turret’s cd was the only thing needed..i’m afraid that turrets need to be reworked pretty much completely (starting with bug fixing maybe?) if they want them to be viable..

I can’t think of another class completely locked out from a skill type..

While turrets do need some expansive work, fixing a cooldown issue seems like something that could be quick and easy to fix to at least somewhat alleviate the problem.

Making Turrets competitive starts with two things, in my opinion – aside from the bugfixing.
Ranked in order of probable ease:

1. Cooldown adjustment. I’m a fan of the start-on-placement, myself.
2. Scaling.

I’d much prefer this, and turrets being balanced around this, to the current system.

I don’t think it would be OP at all. I enter into evidence the following:

1. Turrets already have a cooldown for their secondary skill.
2. Having to pick up your turrets is a non-trivial downside; it severely limits mobility, and any aoe-heavy fight will still kill them easily.
3. Having a turret deployed blocks the toolbelt skill for that slot.
4. Keeping turrets up prevents using them as blast finishers (toolbelt self destruct).
5. The additional DPS uptime is easily compensated for by requiring traits to give them good dps, making them primarily for utility when not traited.

In exchange, we get an entrenched area-denial style of gameplay that no other class has. Me wants.

Most (all) turrets have less damage and significantly less resistance than necromancer minions. They have higher cooldowns on average and cannot crit, making their damage even lower.

I would say keep the long-ish cooldowns they have now, and aside from fixing the bugs, make them powerful area denial tools. They can’t move, so they should be really good at their job.

- Double the overcharge shot damage on the rocket turret and make it a direct line shot, not an exaggerated arc that smashes into the ceiling and becomes wasted.

- Triple the thumper turret damage. Seriously, this thing is an immobile turret that fights at melee range. It should really hurt if you stand next to it. Possibly add a 2s period of inactivity after being deployed so you can’t just slam it down on people’s faces.

- Double the damage of overcharged rifle turret shots, and bring back the old bleeding effect.

- After nerfing the net turret immobilize duration, bring its attacking period from the bugged value of 13s down to the original intended value of 10s. Double the amount of damage dealt by the shock net overcharge. It’s pitiful.

- Double the health of all turrets (PvE change only).

- Merge the 33% reduced damage trait and the automatic healing trait into one adept trait.

- Move rifled turret barrels to master level (bonus damage and range).

- Add a new grandmaster turret trait: Reactionary Turrets – All turrets instantly and immediately launch their overcharge skill when deployed. This activation does not trigger the overcharge skill’s cooldown.

- Modify accelerant-packed turrets trait: instead of causing a damaging explosion on death, all turrets launch their overcharge skill instantly on death. This happens even if the overcharge was on cooldown.

Tulki.1458:

Most (all) turrets have less damage and significantly less resistance than necromancer minions. They have higher cooldowns on average and cannot crit, making their damage even lower.

I would say keep the long-ish cooldowns they have now, and aside from fixing the bugs, make them powerful area denial tools. They can’t move, so they should be really good at their job.

- Double the overcharge shot damage on the rocket turret and make it a direct line shot, not an exaggerated arc that smashes into the ceiling and becomes wasted.

- Triple the thumper turret damage. Seriously, this thing is an immobile turret that fights at melee range. It should really hurt if you stand next to it. Possibly add a 2s period of inactivity after being deployed so you can’t just slam it down on people’s faces.

- Double the damage of overcharged rifle turret shots, and bring back the old bleeding effect.

- After nerfing the net turret immobilize duration, bring its attacking period from the bugged value of 13s down to the original intended value of 10s. Double the amount of damage dealt by the shock net overcharge. It’s pitiful.

- Double the health of all turrets (PvE change only).

- Merge the 33% reduced damage trait and the automatic healing trait into one adept trait.

- Move rifled turret barrels to master level (bonus damage and range).

- Add a new grandmaster turret trait: Reactionary Turrets – All turrets instantly and immediately launch their overcharge skill when deployed. This activation does not trigger the overcharge skill’s cooldown.

- Modify accelerant-packed turrets trait: instead of causing a damaging explosion on death, all turrets launch their overcharge skill instantly on death. This happens even if the overcharge was on cooldown.

That’s great and all for point defense PvP, but for literally every other mobile aspect of this game, stationary turrets with long cooldowns just don’t work.

^+1

the game is just not stationary enough for stationary turrets. ask rangers. even with mobile pets/spirits their minions lack survivability due to not moving away from aoe. in case of spirits, they’re kept way out of the damage source, which in case of turrets, would be just stupid.

Turrets need to be balanced and designed for how most of the game is actually played, on the move.

Seriously, kitten pvp. Conquest mode spvp is absolutely not representative of how most people actually play the game, and how most things are actually “balanced”.

Skills like Turrets, are designed for this stupid point defense crap that applies nowhere like it does in Conquest mode. Certainly not in PvE and not anywhere close in WvW.

The majority of the players suffer from poorly designed skills because these skills are designed for a playstyle that they do not relate with.
Look at this stupid Engi-decap build. Its the most níche build ive ever seen, it is useless in PvE and terrible in WvW. And in any other gametype (when they finally add them) thats not about small teams fighting over small capture points, it will absolutely suck.

And yet we balance pve and wvw around it, and bam, nerf all engineers across all gamemodes. All because of the tipping point for arenanets balancing is so utterly out of touch with the vast majority of the game, and what the vast majority of the playerbase experiences.

Pretty much, Terrahero. And for anyone else, no the fix is not to allow turrets to become mobile via a trait. We already have that with ranger spirits.

Honestly, engineer turrets seems like one of those “because we can” designs. Its like the engine devs one day announced they had added the ability to stack skills, and everyone scrambled to make use of that feature in the profession designs.

The real problem is low input / high reward. The turrets need to have some active function to them, otherwise you end up with builds like MM necro where you pretty much just activate all the minions then run around autoattacking people to death. There’s rarely any input required.

We can let turrets explode for blast finishers, traited knockback and damage. Devs could use this as a base.

I’ll try something to see what you think. Tell me your opinion.

Rifle turret:
Cooldown 30 seconds, 5s when picking up. 3s channel to place it. Can be used on the move.
Fires pistol #1 damage, traitable with target pierce, without explosion or conditions. Traitable with bleeding on shot.
Attacks per second: 1.0, range: 600
Overcharge: fires 12 shots in a circle around the turret, 600 range, each bullet crippling for 1 second. 30s cooldown.
Toolbelt skill: same as overcharge, but from your character.

15k health 3k armor, trait for -10% damage received & 10% more damage dealt.
Immune to conditions but not to CC. They can be pushed around.

Rifle turret:
Cooldown 30 seconds, 5s when picking up. 3s channel to place it. Can be used on the move.

I’m not a fan of this line at all. The increased cooldown is a problem, and the channeling…I just don’t see that ending well. I don’t expect the pickup cooldown to actually be useful, in light of the rest of this Turret, either.

Fires pistol #1 damage, traitable with target pierce, without explosion or conditions. Traitable with bleeding on shot.
Attacks per second: 1.0, range: 600

…so its regular attack is basically a worse Pistol #1 that can be traited to give Bleeding and Pierce. The faster fire rate might make up for that, but…I don’t know, really. Requires a bit more math than I’m going to subject myself to.
Edit: It would, as this would reduce the damage by…about a third, I guess, while doubling or tripling the fire rate.

Also, 600 Range, really? Increase the on-destroy cooldown, decrease the range, and hope people can pick it up before it gets destroyed? Not liking that. Even has shorter range than Pistol #1, now that I think about it.

Overcharge: fires 12 shots in a circle around the turret, 600 range, each bullet crippling for 1 second. 30s cooldown.
Toolbelt skill: same as overcharge, but from your character.

Let’s leave Cripple to the Thumper turret. Especially relatively close-range Cripple. Rifle Turret shouldn’t be in the fray, it should be firing into it.

15k health 3k armor, trait for -10% damage received & 10% more damage dealt.
Immune to conditions but not to CC. They can be pushed around.

I’m not sure what those HP/Armor numbers would be equivalent to, honestly, so I’m not going to comment on those. However…it does look like you’ve nerfed traits. Really not a fan of that. Especially with this interpretation of Rifle Turret.

Cons: Longer on-destroy cooldown, shorter range, nerfed traits, channeling required.
Pros: Increase in damage, possible increase in survivability (don’t know current Rifle Turret HP/armor numbers), shorter on-pickup cooldown.

I wouldn’t use this.

i believe i overdid that damage nerf a littlebit. i looked up the pistol damage again, and found it definetly should do more than that. i was thinking it should do less than #1 rifle itself, since if would basically double your dps if you just stood next to it and pushed #1 with the rifle. that’d be too much for a utility slot.

the overcharge should EXCLUSIVELY be a situational skill. otherwise you just spam it while your turret is out and try to keep it on cooldown. so it should either come with a tradeoff (like 100% more damage on next attack, but no more attacks for next 3 seconds) or just a skill you don’t always need (depending on situation or enemy proximity, like thumper turrets current one). it should definetly be painful.

HP and armor should be a “medium” untraited pet – since you can have up to 3 of them and they’re immune to conditions. nonimmunity to CC would make it easier for enemies to counterplay – not much though.

The damage adjustment wouldn’t, due to increased rate of fire, be a nerf, actually. Current Turret deals 188 base, with a fire rate of (theoretically) 2 seconds, while this would deal 118 base, with a fire rate of (theoretically) 1 second.
Damage per two seconds, therefore, might be 188 vs 236.
The issue with the attack is the reduced range, in conjunction with the proposed increase of on-destroy cooldown.
Increased on-destroy + reduced range = “Well, I guess it’s not like I was playing anyway.”

The Overcharge should also fit what the Turret is supposed to be. A Rifle Turret might, instead fire more slowly, with each shot dealing more damage and possibly Dazing or dealing knockback (though they could telegraphed with a laser sight).
Thumper Turret’s regular attack makes the suggested 600-radius Cripple redundant, besides.

Anymras.5729:

The damage adjustment wouldn’t, due to increased rate of fire, be a nerf, actually.

i didn’t say DPS, but for sure damage. rifle turret NEEDS a dps boost. a strong one. people need to fear that turret and not just out-Healing-Signet their dps.

Increased on-destroy + reduced range = “Well, I guess it’s not like I was playing anyway.”

i didn’t get what you mean here.

The Overcharge should also fit what the Turret is supposed to be. A Rifle Turret might, instead fire more slowly, with each shot dealing more damage and possibly Dazing or dealing knockback (though they could telegraphed with a laser sight).
Thumper Turret’s regular attack makes the suggested 600-radius Cripple redundant, besides.

yeah i overthought that ability. cripple is not the way to go. since the rifle turret sounds good as sustained flat dps it should be adding to this gameplay. like, say, it’d litteraly “overcharge” for 3 seconds (not attacking) and then release a projectile which deals heavy damage, killshot-like (not as strong though). that overcharging would need to be visible to be able to dodge it but should be strong enough to down a low hp enemy completely. maybe along with a damage bonus for low HP enemies.
This would make a welcome addition to the available skills a sustained dps character has, and not making it too strong for spike builds, since its main dps comes from its regular attacks.

Increased on-destroy + reduced range = “Well, I guess it’s not like I was playing anyway.”

I barely play, because the Turret skillset is so heavily bugged and bugfixing is so lacking. Rifle Turret, when I do play, is a mainstay of my build – because it has A ) decent range (900 untraited, 1000 traited) and B ) a short cooldown (20 seconds).

The decent range gives me room to move while still keeping enemies in range of it. It also makes it less likely to be destroyed.
Decreasing the range makes it more likely to be destroyed (because it’s closer to enemies), as well as reducing its ability to support an area (because it would less range than Pistol #1).

The short cooldown means that if/when it does get destroyed, it’s an inconvenience, but not an excessive one. I can Detonate it if I need/want to, and I view this as a valuable part of the Turret – traited, it brings both damage and control, as well as a blast finisher.
Increasing the on-destroy cooldown would cripple this. I can understand wanting to improve the pickup cooldown, but increasing the most likely cooldown – the one that enemies can trigger – just means more time spent going “Great, Turret’s destroyed.”

Combine the two, and you’ve not only removed the main draws to the Rifle Turret itself, you’ve created a compound issue – now it has to be closer to enemies, and will spend more time on cooldown when destroyed.

Nerfing one of the more versatile (in my opinion) Turrets in such a severe way would pretty well guarantee me simply uninstalling the game, instead of keeping it on my system while I wait to see if they ever fix the bugs.

ok, so you just missed out the double damage and highly increased survivability (as tough as many characters) and increased threat. also i HARDLY think you’d ever pick your turret up to save it from going into cooldown. the reduction of range is just necessary for enemies to counter it. Because due to the good amount of pressure they would be getting, they would either have to concentrate on destroying it, or just get out of the range.

Anyone see the supposed leaked patch notes? Although they are fake, alot of the turret improvements seemed really nice.

Yeah, they did look nice; the increase of a couple of the cooldowns was minimal, while it does also cater to the ‘improve pickup reduction’ crowd.
I really wouldn’t be surprised if those were accurate, and the ’they’re fake’ is supposed to give Anet leeway to modify based on feedback (that we can’t see, because the posts have been removed).

(I still think Turret placement cooldowns should start on placement, rather than on removal.)

Could be a engine limitation, as i think minions and spirits also have the issue of cooldowns only starting on “removal”.

Could very well be that the original code for stacked/chained skills were only intended for no cooldown weapon attack slots, and once implemented ANet had one of their “we can do X now, lets use it everywhere!” moments.

They definetly were not made by anet. Not their kind of phrasing, inaccurate and misinterpretable like no patchnotes before. Also silly dumbkitten in it, like totally op kit refinement. They would be silly if they leaked something to see the feedback, say they are not real and then release it anyway because the feedback was good. They would lose their credibility.

if it helps any turrets are about as effective as most minions/summons/pets so don’t feel to bad about.

It doesn’t, really. Most minions/summons/pets got that HP buff, and can move or be traited to move.

Turrets are permanently immobile, and didn’t get the HP buff.

Turrets being immobile has always been their greatest weakness, but there were occasionally some perks to it, since you could put down a turret and go leave to do other things. In PvP especially, this meant you could leave a turret behind on a point to help defend.

Then they completely removed this unique functionality by giving the turrets a self-destruct timer.

I thought they might have finally eased up on this obviously PvE-directed nerf with the leaked patch notes, but after being declaimed as fake I honestly have no hope for the next patch.

I already posted my point elsewhere, but hier it goes again.

The idea to have two seperated ways to “destroy” your turrets, I believe, is wrong. If you completely remove the cooldown from turrets when picked up you make the self-destruct toolbelt skill a very punishing option to use.

I think the best way to improve turrets would be like Anymras said : “Cooldown starts when turret is placed”

But I would elaborate that option a bit more to not make Turrets about drop and forget but instead give its upside with a couple of downsides too. Those are my following steps to make turrets gameplay more appealing :

1) Fixing every turrets related bugs

2) Remove the pick up option from turrets and leave the self-destruct toolbelt skill for every turret abilities.

3) Cooldown starts when turret is deployed, is confirmed when self-destructed, but is negated if the turret gets destroyed.

If you follow those three steps you get a whole new dynamic of gameplay. Instead of focussing around droping and picking up turrets for their overcharge, you instead drop them at full extend and use the self destruct to recover some of their cooldown while also supporting your party with very precious blast finishers, thus rewarding you for micromanadging them and at the same time making them more mobile on the battlefield.

On the other hand, if an ennemy destroy your turrets you get punished and get full cooldown, wich incite the player to watch out for his turrets.

(PS : My idea also gives the Engineer a reason to keep his Healing turret deployed.)

I like it, but the only downside to the cooldown starting when you place the turret would be the only way to track how long you have left on that cooldown is by memory. The cooldown remaining on the turret itself wouldn’t be displayed because the overcharge ability and it’s current cooldown is being displayed. Then again, I suppose this only really affects the healing turret, since it is the only turret that provides an additional effect (our heal) when placing it down. An Engineer would have a hard time deciding whether it would be better to continue benefiting from the regeneration or to detonate and use his heal (which may or may not be ready).

They could, if they really wanted, implement an inset cooldown timer on the secondary skill, which would vanish when the turret came off cooldown.
Or they could do a variation of their ammo counters, having each turret generate an ammo count that would decrease at a rate of one-per-second from their cooldown to 0.

Revived my guardian alt today, just to ram through the racial part of the personal story, and i discovered that GS #5 actually do cooldown in the background while the option to pull in mobs are presented.

Thing is tho that said pull have no cooldown of its own, same as with #1 chains on all weapons.

I do wonder if this is the limitation of the engine that makes turrets, minions and similar wait until destruction/removal.

the easy fix to this would be to put the selfdestruction button on the utility slot instead of the f-slot and the overcharge abilit on the f-slot instead the utility slot. selfdestruction doesn’t have a cooldown, so this would circumvent the engine limitation, if there is one.

I think turrets should drop like warrior banners (ground targeted, take no damage) and have charges (like ele weapon summons). Drop turret, it fires its salvo, say twice over a certain amount of time, then self-destructs. Once it dies, it begins to recharge. Lower cooldowns so they’re useable. Allow traiting for more charges and/or shorter time between salvos.

Problem solved.

Seras.5702:

I think turrets should drop like warrior banners (ground targeted, take no damage) and have charges (like ele weapon summons). Drop turret, it fires its salvo, say twice over a certain amount of time, then self-destructs. Once it dies, it begins to recharge. Lower cooldowns so they’re useable. Allow traiting for more charges and/or shorter time between salvos.

Problem solved.

No offense, but that sounds like a horrible idea.

Shaogin.2679:

Seras.5702:

I think turrets should drop like warrior banners (ground targeted, take no damage) and have charges (like ele weapon summons). Drop turret, it fires its salvo, say twice over a certain amount of time, then self-destructs. Once it dies, it begins to recharge. Lower cooldowns so they’re useable. Allow traiting for more charges and/or shorter time between salvos.

Problem solved.

No offense, but that sounds like a horrible idea.

None taken. My idea is simply an attempt to think very outside the box. When discussing pets, spirits, turrets, spirit weapons, etc, everyone compares them to warrior banners because banners take no damage. I figured that the turrets acting this way would alleviate the whole “they die so fast!” argument, but giving them charges would ensure them not just sticking around forever. Ground targeting would allow area denial and could strategically force enemy movement (eg – drop net turret behind target to discourage fleeing, drop thumper turret in choke point to slow reinforcements while engaged in 1v1).

I at least like the fact that some turret bugs are being addressed, but again, the cooldowns definitely need a fix of some sort, especially if they are to ever be viable in a PvE environment.

Balancing without knowing what functioning Turrets are like is a bad idea. Not that Anet’s stinted on trying, of course.

In any case, I think getting the bugs fixed is a step in the right direction – with Turrets functioning properly, it will be easier to tell what needs done.

Seras.5702:

I think turrets should drop like warrior banners (ground targeted, take no damage) and have charges (like ele weapon summons). Drop turret, it fires its salvo, say twice over a certain amount of time, then self-destructs. Once it dies, it begins to recharge. Lower cooldowns so they’re useable. Allow traiting for more charges and/or shorter time between salvos.

Problem solved.

I love this idea. The way it is now, I don’t see the point of turrets.