Guild Wars 2

I am posting this here because when suggestions are made, their class balance is very important. Hence why I want to get feedback from the spvp community (where class balance is most important).

First Engineer, i suggest a whole rework of the entire turret setup.
1. Rifle turret becomes robotic devourer. When using it will construct 3 robotic devours that do 1/2 the damage of your primary weapon. (making one attack by all three do the same as about a shot and a half from your primary). The ability that becomes available when used would be the same as it is now. Toolbelt stays the same.

2. Rocket Turret becomes robotic griffon. Robotic griffons, once constructed, will stay by yourside (basically just fly over your shoulder and not move) and move with you. They will occasionally launch a rocket to whatever target you are currently attacking. The ability that becomes available could be two things. The first is patrol, when activating it a AoE targeter would appear and you would select an area within a certain range. Once you select an area the griffon will leave your side and fly within that selected area launching missiles at a slightly increased rate of fire than by your side periodically at anyone who enters the area. The other idea would be that you would still have an AoE targeter, but the griffon would fire a large missile barrage in that area (much like the grenade toolkit ability) that would apply vulnerability to those hit. Same toolbelt.

3. Thumper Turret would become Robotic Marmox. These would have a slow, but not high damaging auto attack. The marmox would attack whatever target you are attacking. On the inital combat it will charge a the target, slowing him for a certain amount of seconds. the target must be out of close range, but not far away either. (so closing the gap fast before the engineer engages would allow you to bypass the marmox slow). The ability that becomes available would be Stomp that knocks down those around him or push back, or both. Same toolbelt.

4. Flamethrower Turret would become Robotic Drake. These would periodically spray fire in a cone infront of him if target is within a certain range, the drake will not leave a certain range by your side (so attacking a target at max range will not triger the drake to attack, making the idea that rifles are basically shotguns even more reasonable). The ability that becomes available would be the same as it is now, except it would cast at whatver location the drake is out, could be called Mash drake blinding gas or something. Same toolbelt.

5. Net turret would become robotic spider. Robotic spiders stay by yourside, don’t auto attack, don’t leave your side, and will periodically fire nets (same rate as the current turret). Same toolbelt.

6. Healing Turret becomes Robotic Doyak. Upon inital use it will do an AoE heal and give a quick and benefital heal. Now this wont heal as much initally as its counterparts, however its own heal over time (not regen) would make it the highest healing ability over all compared to the others. The custom regen will be considered a boon and can be removed. Same toolbelt. Now the Doyak would attack targets that you attack within a certain range, its attack speed will be slow. What makes it special is that after every attack it will drop a medkit at the location it was when it attacked. The attack must land.

7. Now that those are all the turrets, here are the trait changes. I think they are all perfect where they are at. However the depolyable turrets would be useless, so instead of that you’d have an ability that would make it so when the engineer has a toolkit equip he has an increased state or buff (one that is defensive. Such as stability, or increase vit, etc) that is determed by how many machines he has near him. So more machines, the boon last longer, or more the stat is increased. Making is so that engineers who go this route will rely on their machines to do the damage while trying to heal them with the toolkit.

Mesmers:

I think mesmers are really perfect where they are at right now. Their clones still do a large amount of damage, but that is how the class is designed. However the biggest complain is the uility provided by portal in all areas of the game. Such as in sPvP and map control, WvW and fortress usage and puzzle usage, and finally PvE and kiting enemies. So now while this wont reduce the utility at all, it will cause players to worry about where they are placing them. In PvP mesmer portals can used by enemy players. So when they place one, they have to worry about if any other enemies could use it to their advantage. So no more placing a portal down, jumping down into a group of 10 enemies, casting all your abilities and then taking a portal back up.

So those are just my main suggestions. I really want to see an engineer be an engineer. Right now I feel like the engineer should be renamed Alchemist.

What does the sPvP community think? Do you believe these ideas would cause the engineer to be overpowered, or would he still be underpowered/useless when using turrets? What would you suggest?

None of your ideas will be implemented because they are huge overhauls to existing skills and there is no precedent for making such a huge overhaul, nor would it be a good idea to set a precedent for doing so.

I don’t get why people get so bent out of shape with the turrets. I hate turrets. When an engie places turrets on a capture point I know that if I go inside it, I’m going to die.

Lets talk about a different game. Dota. Not LoL, that game sucks. In Dota there’s a role called an initiator. What they do is change the field of battle to aid their allies. Enigma can maintain a huge AOE whirlpool that stuns and deals damage. Tidehunter can create an immense aoe stun that deals massive damage. Sand King can channel this earthquake that deals large damage unless everyone scatters about, changing their focus into running away.

GW2 is no different. There are still fields of battle, there is still positioning, there are still roles. Engineer Turrets is Tidehunter’s Ravage. They’re not there for your 1v1 action, they’re there for your allies. They’re there to shift the course of battle to your favor. If Tidehunter uses ravage against one person, he gets laughed at. At least here turrets are viable in a 1v1.

Imho, what turrets need, or at least what I’d like to see:

• Aiming System, could be a trait or something that makes the turret target your current autoattack target. At the moment, all it takes for turrets to be useless is a pet.
• Lower cooldowns when picked up. Destroyed turrets should have their cooldown set as is, but keeping them repaired and picking them up should be rewarded with a lower cooldown and the possibility to quickly reposition them.
• Better scaling with stats.

Deified.7520:

I think mesmers are really perfect where they are at right now. Their clones still do a large amount of damage

Have you actually played mesmer since the patch?

They halved iZerkers damage, and phantasmal iMage’s confusion duration is so short it frequently does no damage at all so now the only way to play is with pistol, focus, sword or staff, and to run a shatter or bunker build, definitly not phantasm.

That is of course the general trend in sPvP anyway, but isn’t that the opposite of perfect? – Where one or two builds stand head or shoulders above the others, and everything else is pointless?

@Kita
I understand each class has “roles”, but Anet promised something different than classes having roles. No holy trinity. Right now, as Ryuujin said, many classes lack build diversity except for a few. Theifs have insane burst, guardian can actually do a lot great (i pvp with a guard and they’re great at dps, bunker, and support).

Right now I feel like the PvP has roles and it is not supposed to, as a result you have a lot of roles that are overlapping. Like a lot of classes seem to have dps roles, while others mostly have a bunker role (engineers) that people do not prefer over a guardian bunker. Turrets having mobility will give engineers a chance to have turrets be offensive. It seems stupid 6 of our skills are only good for bunkering on points.