Guild Wars 2

The one topic that keeps on coming up over and over again is about turret engineers (and for good reason). I have my own opinions about turret engineers, and I wanted to see what you guys think.

Turret Traits

Let’s look at all of the turret traits. Any trait that is taken in the meta is underlined.

Notice anything about them? All of the traits that focus on the least skillful part of being a turret engineer are taken. Fortified Turrets (a very active trait) isn’t taken very often. Deployable turrets isn’t taken mostly because it’s in an out of reach line and sort of ruins healing turret by giving it a longer cast time.

The Skill of Turrets

There are skillful parts of turret engineers, or at least things that separate the good from the bad:

The only turret trait that focuses on these skillful parts of turret engineer is Fortified Turrets (Placement Timing/Placement), Accelerant Packed Turrets (Detonation) and Deployable Turrets (Placement). Even APT is generally just there to annoy people with Crate! Everything else is about just having the turrets do things on their own more effectively!

Solution

The traits that focus on making turrets better at simply sitting there and being turrets need to be reworked. Effective Turrets should revolve around being aware of your turrets, not simply placing them in OP spots (Or miraculously floating them in air) and forgetting about them.

Here are some suggestions:

Any suggestions on how to make turret engineers more skillful? What would make you say “Dude, YOU try playing turret engi. It’s tough.”?

loving it

the tears are delicious when i play it on my engineer

especially when you put them on a point then leave for a bit come back and see a downed thief laying there starting to flame like a madman

pls dont nerf its the best troll spec in the game right after full glas bearbow (bear just for the lolz)

only play it in hotjoin though

Sizzle Hint.1820:

loving it

the tears are delicious when i play it on my engineer

especially when you put them on a point then leave for a bit come back and see a downed thief laying there starting to flame like a madman

pls dont nerf its the best troll spec in the game right after full glas bearbow (bear just for the lolz)

only play it in hotjoin though

The idea isn’t to nerf it, but rather turning it into a spec that requires a pulse.

Some things I’d like to see:

• Turrets besides Healing Turret are placed where you begin the cast, not where you end it (no more floating turrets— if you want your turrets to be in more protected positions, you must trait for thrown turrets)
• Protection Injection and Stabilized Armor switch places. Turret engineers have to choose between their turrets being squishier or they themselves being more susceptible to focus fire.
• Fix that glitch that removes the effects of Rifle Barreled Turrets on overcharging some turrets

Turrets should remain as immobile area denial, but should not be unreachable for most skills. Other than that I don’t really see any problems with them, though I can understand how many are angry about the survivability they have since the introduction of Sentinel’s Amulet. I still can’t see of any way to make them actually compete with kits in usefulness, short of adding stunbreaks to some overcharge effects, but I imagine people would complain even more about that.

Swap Elixir Infused Bombs with Experimental Turrets! Brings out a potentially nice trait in healing bombs into an actual good trait line and forces turret Engineers to choose between turret damage and boons! Namely that huge protection/vigor uptime from Thumper/Healing Turrets! Plus it just makes sense! ELIXIR Infused Bombs can go into the trait line that deals with elixirs, and Experimental Turrets can go into the line that deals with turrets!

As for making turrets more skillful, it’s just impossible! AI builds are by nature super easy and not skillful! Let the AI do the work for you! The issue is that in the case of the Engineer, he can just build super tank and the turrets will still do the same damage!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Sins.4782:

Some things I’d like to see:

• Turrets besides Healing Turret are placed where you begin the cast, not where you end it (no more floating turrets— if you want your turrets to be in more protected positions, you must trait for thrown turrets)
• Protection Injection and Stabilized Armor switch places. Turret engineers have to choose between their turrets being squishier or they themselves being more susceptible to focus fire.
• Fix that glitch that removes the effects of Rifle Barreled Turrets on overcharging some turrets

Turrets should remain as immobile area denial, but should not be unreachable for most skills. Other than that I don’t really see any problems with them, though I can understand how many are angry about the survivability they have since the introduction of Sentinel’s Amulet. I still can’t see of any way to make them actually compete with kits in usefulness, short of adding stunbreaks to some overcharge effects, but I imagine people would complain even more about that.

Put fortified turrets on and try the floating trick. You’ll be pleasantly surprised…and possibly annoyed. It’ll shoot down to the ground.

My suggestion is to turn them into a kit, where you can only have one active at a time…

Ok, for a serious suggestion, just make them only spawn for 20 seconds on a 40 second cooldown, and greatly reduce the base HP so killing them isn’t twice as hard as killing a player.

Damage scaling with rune sets.

ArrDee.2573:

Swap Elixir Infused Bombs with Experimental Turrets! Brings out a potentially nice trait in healing bombs into an actual good trait line and forces turret Engineers to choose between turret damage and boons! Namely that huge protection/vigor uptime from Thumper/Healing Turrets! Plus it just makes sense! ELIXIR Infused Bombs can go into the trait line that deals with elixirs, and Experimental Turrets can go into the line that deals with turrets!

As for making turrets more skillful, it’s just impossible! AI builds are by nature super easy and not skillful! Let the AI do the work for you! The issue is that in the case of the Engineer, he can just build super tank and the turrets will still do the same damage!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

I actually love this Idea VeeWee.

I played bunker/tank engi back in the day with elixir infused bombs and Automated response (I was not decap and did not try to be plain and simple.) I think swapping these two traits around would be kind of funny, it would force engineers to choose more damage, or more boons. Sick of them getting cake and eating it to, while I’m over here on my mesmer like “ugh turrets again, Hey guys don’t go fight the engi turret on a point, please.”

We get a two cap, and two people from my team rush the turret engi on one point, making the other fight outmanned, annnddd snowball.

Scaling with amulet and rune does nothing because since they can’t crit you can go full soldier.
You can’t make a npc build skillful.

robertul.3679:

Scaling with amulet and rune does nothing because since they can’t crit you can go full soldier.
You can’t make a npc build skillful.

I used to see decent turret users before, placing turret to reflect while rezzing, purposely destroying the turret to interrupt heal and good throwing skills. When it got first made viable it wasn’t seen as cancer, you can make it more active if not skillful. The passive variation of the build hinders both sides.

This thread looks interesting, at least it’s the first time that someone suggests reasonable changes, instead of plain nerfs.
Some ideas already mentioned that would be awesome:
- switch elixir infused bombs with experimental turrets.
As Arrdee pointed out (and others previously in the engi-subforum) this would add great synergy to the alchemy trait-line and reduce the insane trait-stacking one can achieve for turrets. You wanna have increased dmg/range OR refection-bubbles OR ticking buffs to support you/allies? sure, choose freely.

-spawn turrets where the cast was started.
This will fix the current placement-exploits possible with turrets, while still maintaining the option to perform the healing-turret combo with swiftness while keep running, so a fix that would not hurt all the engi specs relying on healing turret as heal.

Appart from that, yes relying too much on AI is a issue, but one you face on many specs from various classes. But fixing it for turrets is iffy since their intended design is to deny an area properly (and recently also to deliver support for allies within their range).

So I’d change the traits as following:
- Accelerant Packed Turrets
turrets self-destruct with a turret specific effect when blown up:
flame turret: blows up in a combustion, dealing minor damage and applying burn to enemies for 3 seconds in 300 range
net-turret (also for its underwater version): releases ripped-apart nets, applying cripple to enemies for 5 seconds in 300 range
rocket-turret (also for its underwater version): releases a big explosion, dealing medium damage to enemies in 300 range
rifle-turret (also for its underwater version): releases a load of shrapnel, that applies 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds and deals minor damage to enemies in 300 range
thumper-turret: releases a shock-wave that launches enemies 300 away in a 300 range.
healing turret: releases a healing-wave that clears 1 condition and heals allies for 1k
Additionally turrets will count as blast-finisher upon violent destruction, not only on the self-destruct.
(It maybe sounds like a buff at first, but the rather powerful ones actually belong to turrets who go on a 50sec cd upon destruction, and the fact that all these melee-interrupts are gone should balance this change to the current version quite nicely.)

-Metal Plating :
renamed to “Reactive plating”
turrets receive 50% less damage while being overcharged
(l like the idea that the overcharge is protecting them, but this in turn should actually increase the traits’ effectiveness)

-Auto-tool installation:
turrets regenerate 100 health per 3 seconds for allies. The effect can stack with itself and the regeneration-boon.
(instead of 1-uping the tankiness of the turret itself, they now support their owner and allies around them with direct heal. since turrets will not auto-heal anymore that also punishes the playstyle of “place and forget”)

-Rifled Turret Barrels:
Increases turret damage by 15% and range by 20%
(I think choosing to increase the turrets plain dps is a valid decision one should be able to make, but the current range-increase is simply too insane. Allowing the rifle and rocket-turret to hit on 1.2k instead of 1.5k is a reasonable-enough nerf since that is also the range increase one could get for the rifle itself when traited. Now rangers and nade-engis both are able to out-range turrets and therefore forcing the owning engi to actively react to the situation, further punishing to leave turrets completely unattended.)

- Experimental Turrets
remains as is, but switches places with elixir-infused bombs
(since it’s not in the boon-duration line anymore I guess it’s toned down reasonably enough. It is still a grandmaster-trait, that one would need to sacrifice bubbles or dmg/range for.)

Deployable Turrets:
Renamed to “Tele-Turrets”
Overcharging a turret teleports it straight to the engi’s current position.
(Overcharges are insta-casts, so that would actually add nice active play to the thumper f.e., which would deliver the knockback always under the engi’s feet, even if he happens to be stun-locked, without the need to blow it up to access the actual stun-breaker from its toolbelt ability. Further, insta-casts usually can’t be performed mid-air, so this trait would also get rid of turrets being thrown high into walls, like in khylo clock-tower f.e. Additionally this would increase the mobility of turrets since one can re-arrange their position without needing to blow them up first. Since supply-crate turrets can’t be overcharged this won’t affect the elite-skill, and is also a limited option, since usually a overcharge-cd is 30sec. Overall this would increase the active and smart use of overcharges quite nicely, since spaming all overcharges just creats a pile of junk, perfect to be bursted by aoe, so the increased mobility gets balanced by the fact that one can not simply panic-spam all the overcharges without punishment.)

Yess turret engis. Its awesome to have this spec specially since matchmaking insthis game si complete kitten. Most of my ranked queus are my 5 solo team players vs 5 full premade. These premade always ALWAYS have atlaest 2 turrent engis. Not to mention the gmaes hwere is ee 4 or 5 turret engis in one game. this kitten is ridiculous. No skill most damage most tanky.

Any changes to Turrets that would make them skillful I believe will require an overhaul of their sustain when used with Plating/Autotool. If you want to encourage the use of traits like Fortified Turrets over Rifled Barrels then you’ll have to be able to place them more often. As a tradeoff, their current sustain should be much lower than it currently is. The sustain traits can be used to make them a bit tougher, but they currently require far too much effort to kill.

With reduced cooldowns on pickup but lower sustain you would be required to “babysit” your turrets to make sure you avoid the long full CD and in exchange you have a reduced pickup CD. Maybe tie this in with Deployable Turrets so the trait sees use. An additional tradeoff to positioning your turrets off point would be that you may not be able to save them from being focus fired. However, with them being on point they will be more vulnerable but with careful management you will be able to place them back down again more often.

If you wanted to go crazy, maybe make the CD reduction greater the lower the turret’s HP.

Summary:

• Reduce the effectiveness of Metal Plating and Autotool Installation.

• Add a new effect to Deployable Turrets that reduces the CD when the turret is picked up. I have no idea what a fair reduction would be.

• If you wanted to be really creative, tie the reduction to how low the turret’s health is when picked up. The lower the HP, the greater the reduction. This would mean more incentive to run Fortified Turrets in theory.

I feel like these changes could lead to rewarding active turret users, while punishing those who use them passively. The reduced sustain would not hurt active users, while passive users will quickly lose steam when their turrets sitting off point are targeted.