Guild Wars 2

In essence make turrets fully disposable.

First off, remove Detonate and Overcharge. Instead allow the engineer to access the turret toolbelt skills at all times, and make overcharge the default turret behavior.

Second, have their health deteriorate from the moment of deployment and start the skill recharge at once.

Third, make the deployment animation simply being the engineer throwing a box over his/her shoulder that unfolds to a turret on their own.

Thus turning the turrets from something immobile that the engineer has to babysit (only useful for PVP point defense) to something any engineer can use as something between a well and a banner. In other words, a stationary and temporary boost in DPS, control and/or support.

I do know that the bottom trait line for engineers holds a way to make turrets able to deploy at range.

However, what you have said is true, Turrets do need a revamp.

I was thinking more in the sense that the engineer would be able to deploy turrets effortlessly in mid combat, kinda like how a necromancer drops a well or a mesmer summons a clone.

Right now the turrets are all about setting up a siege. All well and good in SPVP, and certain aspects of WVW, but pointless in PVE.

This mentality comes from the long duration (5 minutes if they can survive that long) and high deployment cost (upto 60 seconds on some of them, after they are destroyed) of turrets.

Picking them up do not make up for this in PVE. Mesmers lose their clones at end of combat, necromancer minions and ranger pets follow along automatically. Warriors may opt to grab a banner. But then they get a bundle weapon that they can put back down instantly, while engineer get a small-ish reduction in recharge time.

And turrets are more in line with mesmer clones than necromancer minions in how much punishment they can take (never mind their oversized hitboxes).

All in all i cant tell if ANet wants them to be disposable or something to manage.