Guild Wars 2

I know this is a thread in the PvP forum, but please, whatever changes you make, please consider how they will affect PvE too; where Engi turrets are already underpowered and underused, because a second after dropping them they’re killed by enemy AoE.
Any increased vulnerability to them should probably be split to only where it’s needed (ie PvP, maybe WvW?)

Yeah, turret engies need to be balanced, and I like the crit idea, but the condition thing bothers me, especially the justification that it makes it more like other minions. The thing that really turned me off of StarCraft 2 was that all of the races became much more similar to each other. The beauty of original SC was achieving balance with the races having distinct mechanics. Don’t decrease the diversity of the mechanics by making all minions the same. Instead make a weakness specific to turrets.

On the specific changes suggested, I suspect turret engineer will no longer be viable, but we’ll see. I’d personally like to see the crit damage added first, see the impact, and then add another nerf if the crit change doesn’t go far enough. IMHO better to do it that way than to over-nerf and then have to buff, or just allow turret builds to drop from play.

Would be nice to see something that makes turrets viable in WvW or PvE (imho they’re not currently). Or maybe some change to WvW that makes them useful…

dadada.1306:

Yeah, turret engies need to be balanced, and I like the crit idea, but the condition thing bothers me, especially the justification that it makes it more like other minions. The thing that really turned me off of StarCraft 2 was that all of the races became much more similar to each other. The beauty of original SC was achieving balance with the races having distinct mechanics. Don’t decrease the diversity of the mechanics by making all minions the same. Instead make a weakness specific to turrets.

On the specific changes suggested, I suspect turret engineer will no longer be viable, but we’ll see. I’d personally like to see the crit damage added first, see the impact, and then add another nerf if the crit change doesn’t go far enough. IMHO better to do it that way than to over-nerf and then have to buff, or just allow turret builds to drop from play.

Would be nice to see something that makes turrets viable in WvW or PvE (imho they’re not currently). Or maybe some change to WvW that makes them useful…

Yea, we definitely should change aspects of wvw to make turrets viable there because all these poor players who rather depend on AI and not learn how to play the game don’t have a place to go to annoy everyone actually trying to have some meaningful pvp experience.

Laraley.7695:

dadada.1306:

Yeah, turret engies need to be balanced, and I like the crit idea, but the condition thing bothers me, especially the justification that it makes it more like other minions. The thing that really turned me off of StarCraft 2 was that all of the races became much more similar to each other. The beauty of original SC was achieving balance with the races having distinct mechanics. Don’t decrease the diversity of the mechanics by making all minions the same. Instead make a weakness specific to turrets.

On the specific changes suggested, I suspect turret engineer will no longer be viable, but we’ll see. I’d personally like to see the crit damage added first, see the impact, and then add another nerf if the crit change doesn’t go far enough. IMHO better to do it that way than to over-nerf and then have to buff, or just allow turret builds to drop from play.

Would be nice to see something that makes turrets viable in WvW or PvE (imho they’re not currently). Or maybe some change to WvW that makes them useful…

Yea, we definitely should change aspects of wvw to make turrets viable there because all these poor players who rather depend on AI and not learn how to play the game don’t have a place to go to annoy everyone actually trying to have some meaningful pvp experience.

If people can not win vs stupid AI it means…. Oh, you understand)))))

insanemaniac.2456:

the thing is, no spec in the game ever considered to be OP has ever been overperforming by more than about 20%. turrets are not overperforming so much that a “33% hp nerf” (that increasing damage done to them by 50% would effect) would do anything but simply make them unviable.

I think you are grossly overestimating the contribution of crits to damage. And again, the simple fact is people that are investing in crit or condition damage should not have that investment nullified.

And I can’t be the only game designer that rolls their eyes when people confuse viable with top tier competitiveness.

Anton.1769:

Laraley.7695:

dadada.1306:

Yeah, turret engies need to be balanced, and I like the crit idea, but the condition thing bothers me, especially the justification that it makes it more like other minions. The thing that really turned me off of StarCraft 2 was that all of the races became much more similar to each other. The beauty of original SC was achieving balance with the races having distinct mechanics. Don’t decrease the diversity of the mechanics by making all minions the same. Instead make a weakness specific to turrets.

On the specific changes suggested, I suspect turret engineer will no longer be viable, but we’ll see. I’d personally like to see the crit damage added first, see the impact, and then add another nerf if the crit change doesn’t go far enough. IMHO better to do it that way than to over-nerf and then have to buff, or just allow turret builds to drop from play.

Would be nice to see something that makes turrets viable in WvW or PvE (imho they’re not currently). Or maybe some change to WvW that makes them useful…

Yea, we definitely should change aspects of wvw to make turrets viable there because all these poor players who rather depend on AI and not learn how to play the game don’t have a place to go to annoy everyone actually trying to have some meaningful pvp experience.

If people can not win vs stupid AI it means…. Oh, you understand)))))

Haha, funny. No one said anything about winning or losing to AI. If people cannot read simple words it means…Oh, you understand))))

Laraley.7695:

dadada.1306:

Would be nice to see something that makes turrets viable in WvW or PvE (imho they’re not currently). Or maybe some change to WvW that makes them useful…

Yea, we definitely should change aspects of wvw to make turrets viable there because all these poor players who rather depend on AI and not learn how to play the game don’t have a place to go to annoy everyone actually trying to have some meaningful pvp experience.

Meaningful PvP experience in WvW? Now that’s funny. By the same token, there shouldn’t be any ranger pets, necromancer minions, any NPCs, etc.

Give them jetpacks too.

dadada.1306:

Laraley.7695:

dadada.1306:

Would be nice to see something that makes turrets viable in WvW or PvE (imho they’re not currently). Or maybe some change to WvW that makes them useful…

Yea, we definitely should change aspects of wvw to make turrets viable there because all these poor players who rather depend on AI and not learn how to play the game don’t have a place to go to annoy everyone actually trying to have some meaningful pvp experience.

Meaningful PvP experience in WvW? Now that’s funny. By the same token, there shouldn’t be any ranger pets, necromancer minions, any NPCs, etc.

I was talking about pvp.

Good change, I like it.

Now just fix the bug with turrets levitating in thin air and we are done with cancer.

ronpierce.2760:

Turk.5460:

ronpierce.2760:

Thumper Turret: 11950
Flame Turret: 8960
Rifle Turret: 7470
Net Turret: 7470
Rocket Turret: 7470

Just a heads up, this means:
1 Conbustive shot + 1 Geomancy sigil proc (alone) with celestial gear and no might stacking (less than 500 condi damage) and no bleed duration trait (standard shoutbow)

Combustive shot (3 bars) does 460 damagex12+ 278 damage x4
Total: 5520 + 1112
And 3 stacks of bleed for 10 seconds does 194×10
Total: 1940.

Thats 8572 damage on something that doesn’t move, doesn’t cleanse etc. This is why pets already don’t exist in PVP except turrets.

1 move and a weapon swap (both aoe) can literally kill 3/5 of the turrets in no time at all. Given actual combat scenarios, yes, these are completely useless. Doesn’t take rocket science to realize that this will make them obsolete.

Maybe don’t brainlessly drop all of your turrets in one area?

You’re trying REALLY hard to not get the picture… 1 skill and a swap.

you do realize that your kittenty math does not work because of the autotool installation right? by the time all your condis do that damage the turrets will have repaired some hp

As a turret engi, i find this interesting, i dont mind to take someone on 1v1 =)

Never had a problem with turret-engis, although I don’t like the build, cuz it’s just not fun to play.

I think the changes are a bit too heavy though, can’t see any1 playing turret-engi ever again. Also, the changes are really lazy, as said before by other ppl.

I think turret-engis have some strong counters (Staff-Ele, Conditions, they are easily outpositioned on the map etc.) Maybe just 1 more counter would’ve been enough instead of just bashing them into the ground, so that every solo-Q(Q)-Player can win in a 1v1 with whatever build he happens to run.

but whatever, I don’t like the build, so I really don’t mind if you nerf it into oblivion, even though it’s not warranted at all.

LeftyGamer.8096:

ronpierce.2760:

Turk.5460:

ronpierce.2760:

Thumper Turret: 11950
Flame Turret: 8960
Rifle Turret: 7470
Net Turret: 7470
Rocket Turret: 7470

Just a heads up, this means:
1 Conbustive shot + 1 Geomancy sigil proc (alone) with celestial gear and no might stacking (less than 500 condi damage) and no bleed duration trait (standard shoutbow)

Combustive shot (3 bars) does 460 damagex12+ 278 damage x4
Total: 5520 + 1112
And 3 stacks of bleed for 10 seconds does 194×10
Total: 1940.

Thats 8572 damage on something that doesn’t move, doesn’t cleanse etc. This is why pets already don’t exist in PVP except turrets.

1 move and a weapon swap (both aoe) can literally kill 3/5 of the turrets in no time at all. Given actual combat scenarios, yes, these are completely useless. Doesn’t take rocket science to realize that this will make them obsolete.

Maybe don’t brainlessly drop all of your turrets in one area?

You’re trying REALLY hard to not get the picture… 1 skill and a swap.

you do realize that your kittenty math does not work because of the autotool installation right? by the time all your condis do that damage the turrets will have repaired some hp

Yeah, like 600. It would have still killed the ones I quoted would die. Auto-tool doesn’t heal that much. It was only potent because reduced-noncrit damage and condition immunity inflated the potency of those small heal ticks.

Also, chances are you could spare more than just a single shot and a weapon swap. Trust me, they’d die incredibly easy.

Again with that trying really hard to not believe me thing.

I´ll be honest with you guys…
I´ve been playing engineer for 2 years now. Usually I try to see balancing changes rationally, try to make the most of each meta and I´m rarely frustrated with gimicky builds. About every pvp game has that one troll class/build/champ who´s just plain annoying/hard to beat.
But right now I gotta say, even IF this nerf affects my Supply Crate, the motar, pve, wvw and sd-builds…
… I CAN`T wait to see them nerfed to oblivion!
I have no sympathy left for turret engineers.
None. At. All.

Maybe this IS a lazy way to balance turrets…
(One might argue that turret engineer´s playstyle in itself is lazy, too, but that´s a bit off Topic)
I don´t think we can expect a whole rework for turrets, which would be needed, really. Neither will there be many adjustments to traits.
On the other side they consider doing way more than I thought they´d do to Balance them. I thoguh it would go like: “o hey, let´s increase this cooldown by 10 seconds and this one by 5.”
So yes, this is actually way more than I dared hope. Whereas it´s not completely perfect this solution is satisfying for me.

Random rambling:
I´ve seen some People argue: “Hey, now they´re treated like normal minions, even though they can´t move! That´s not fair! Give them wheels!”
Turrets don´t Need wheels. They already have wings, don´t they?

Posted in the PVP forum. I guess its confirmed you aren’t going to be looking at how this affects pve. I still don’t even think turret are overpowered in pvp… I don’t remmeber a game I lost where I thought: “kitten that turret engineer”. It is a low skill build that gives poor results.

Funny enough, I tried getting into mesmer pvp (I sucked), and my mmr dropped like a sandbag. (ya I probably should of stopped doing ranked) But I am now encountering more turret engineers. They are so easy to play against… This reminds me of people complaining about Moa. The skill has good counterplay (long cast time, it grants the opponent a very good evasion skill and leap skill, and if you choose some decent damage skills), but new players facing this crumble. I (as a giant newbie mesmer player) cast Moa on many noobs once my mmr brought me to opponents my level, and twice the enemy would just type “lol” and stand there until I killed them. And then start complaining about it in map chat… Moa is a slight inconvenience in truth, which is why so many players run mass invisibility, since the benefits are much greater. I’m glad an announcement didn’t come out, Moa now makes you immune to conditions and critical hits. There “balanced”….

Please consider first making turrets vulnerable to crits before making them take condition damage. A single nerf may be enough. The build is only good against bad players (an abundance of them, I’ll give you that, but pvp isn’t supposed to be the most casual thing in this game) Overcoming enemy builds is part of the fun.

Look back to the healing signet nerf (one that caused about as much drama). You removed 20hp/sec from it, and it is now balanced. In fact, some warrior builds aren’t viable anymore due to such a small change. Be careful with nerfs, you don’t want to make the gamee boring, so players who still keyboard turn can defeat their enemies. Although, its obvious that at the lowest skill level, turrets are overpowered, and some nerfs would be nice to help them, but I’d love to see just one tournament with a single turret engineer winning before we call in for nerfs. The build is close to being viable, and in actuality has some skill to it (althogh I don’t enjoy it), if you want to play it at the highest level, you can’t just afk on a point. There is a video exemplifying this point on the engineer forums “how to play turret engineer”. And the players simply alt tabs after setting up his turrets. Guess what? He lost. Of course, if all you do is afk, you are failing your team. Funny enough, a silly thief shows up trying to 1v1 the turret engineer and gets killed. Probably went over to the forums after to complain, or maybe he just wanted to check his luck, now that his team had secured the rest of the map. Either way, sure this build is good for farming leaderboards, since so many players are not very good. (I’m all the time realizing what a noob I am, even after 2 years of playing pvp weekly) Its fun to better yourself, and overcome obstacles. Don’t make this meta of only celestial with thief solidified. Diversity, keeps the game fresh, and thats what this build is doing for me. Fighting turrets has been fun, and I feel confident against them now.

Just yesterday, I was solo rushing lord, and a turret engineer who had been killed came to defend. I was right next to lord, but once he threw down his rocket turret, I just turned around and ran out. As soon as he left, I went back in a killed the lord. The consequence was a turret engineer on some point without his rocket turret for 50 seconds, and us wining the game. He could of stayed there, but it still would of cost his team the game. Turret builds face heavy mobility issues, some have even started including kits into their builds to help alleviate their weaknesses. Let the meta grow!

Also, don’t nerf turrets in pve. I’ll miss them during defend events. And Toxic spore distraction thumper.

Good day. And I hope saying that a lot of players are bad, myself included is not offensive, but I think its the truth. People say this game has little skill, but I seem to find endless room to grow. (or else I wouldn’t be playing this game for so long)

Cero.5132:

I´ll be honest with you guys…
I´ve been playing engineer for 2 years now. Usually I try to see balancing changes rationally, try to make the most of each meta and I´m rarely frustrated with gimicky builds. About every pvp game has that one troll class/build/champ who´s just plain annoying/hard to beat.
But right now I gotta say, even IF this nerf affects my Supply Crate, the motar, pve, wvw and sd-builds…
… I CAN`T wait to see them nerfed to oblivion!
I have no sympathy left for turret engineers.
None. At. All.

Maybe this IS a lazy way to balance turrets…
(One might argue that turret engineer´s playstyle in itself is lazy, too, but that´s a bit off Topic)
I don´t think we can expect a whole rework for turrets, which would be needed, really. Neither will there be many adjustments to traits.
On the other side they consider doing way more than I thought they´d do to Balance them. I thoguh it would go like: “o hey, let´s increase this cooldown by 10 seconds and this one by 5.”
So yes, this is actually way more than I dared hope. Whereas it´s not completely perfect this solution is satisfying for me.

Random rambling:
I´ve seen some People argue: “Hey, now they´re treated like normal minions, even though they can´t move! That´s not fair! Give them wheels!”
Turrets don´t Need wheels. They already have wings, don´t they?

If you could please elaborate, what’s your problem with turret engis, it would certainly help the discussion. As an engineer, you seem to have put some thought into it, especially since you specifically stated, that the playstyle is of-topic, so you gotta have a different reason.

Annoying/hard to beat?
There’s 4 classes, which can easily beat turreteers, of which 2 have been pushed out of the meta by shoutbows and 1 has been pushed out of the meta by tanky builds and thieves. The fourth one is engineer and runs celestial or turrets more often than not, again because shoutbows pushed condi builds out of the meta. Celestial engi is at an advantage, though not to the extent, a pure condi build is. Turrets… Well, unstoppable force against immovable object.
Elementalists have their own tool of beating turrets regardless of build. All they have to do is slot a frost bow. Shoutbows/meditation guardians? I could care less. They are lazy builds and it’s good, that there exists at least SOMETHING, they are bad at. Turret engis brought rock/paper/scissors back to a metagame, where scissors are mostly extinct and everyone plays rock. Of course, the paper turrets will wreck everything. Maybe people should just start bringing more scissors to the fight.

Now I don’t say, turreteers are balanced. But the meta is a large part of the problem. ANother part of the problem is the introduction of sentinel amulet to pvp. From the moment, this amulet was released, it was disaster waiting to happen. Before, turret builds were still mostly in check. Frowned upon, but inefficient and people just found them annoying. The real problem with turrets is, that the damage output is not tied to the damage, the engineer himself can deal. It’s beyone me, how nobody thinks of scaling turrets with the stats of the engineer. Let there be tanky engineers, who can hold the point clear with a tanky thumper. At least thieves will have a chance to fight them without being instantly vaporized by a 4k damage rocket.

The things, people complain the most about are things, any bunker guardian can do, too. The things, people complain the least about(the sick damage) is something, bunker guardians aren’t capable of and turret engis should NEVER be capable of with their current stat spread of 27k hp.

I will say again for the last time: the main problem is in the traits: not only Engineer profession but including the other professions that are not challenging.

Example: if you want to make adjustment to a fast car; changing the car parts-wheels will not fix it. But their engines: the main part of the car.

The traits are the engines-the main parts for the professions. Weapons, sigil, runes etc… are the car parts.

That is why i suggested for the traits of the not challenging professions to be adjusted: they are too powerful!

So why not make adjustments-fix to the engines:traits?

Would that not be a wise thing to do?

I do not understand why this is being ignored??

DarkSyze.8627:

I will say again for the last time: the main problem is in the traits: not only Engineer profession but including the other professions that are not challenging.

Example: if you want to make adjustment to a fast car; changing the car parts-wheels will not fix it. But their engines: the main part of the car.

The traits are the engines-the main parts for the professions. Weapons, sigil, runes etc… are the car parts.

That is why i suggested for the traits of the not challenging professions to be adjusted: they are too powerful!

So why not make adjustments-fix to the engines:traits?

Would that not be a wise thing to do?

I do not understand why this is being ignored??

This guy is smart, but I think the intention is to nerf all engineer builds that use supply crate. As well as the turrets. If not…

Josh Davis.6015:

• Engineer turrets will be able to be critically hit. (Edit for clarity: this change means the turrets can take critical hits against them, but they still cannot deal critical hits themselves.)
• Engineer turrets will be able to be affected by conditions.

Crits and Condis! Wowowow. This is a game changer! Going to see a lot of homeless engies in the mists!

naphack.9346:

- snip -

Actually I thought I wouldn´t need to ellaborate on why I hate them because it´s a dead horse already, really. My reasons are not much different from other´s.
But as you wish, I will now ellaborate.

Personally I don´t have a Problem with turret engineers themselves. What they get out of me whne I see them (wheter they are on my Team or the enemy doesn´t matter) is a mere sigh. No, to a Team that knows just a Little of what it´s doing they pose no threat. Still they´re very annoying to deal with for obvious reasons and I can clearly see why solo/new Players have Problems with them. Heck they even give us Problems more often than I´d like to admit.
Turrets used to be a fun build that needed tons of skill before the bug fixes to turrets. I kid you not, when they were fixed and got new traits I was so happy, I laughed and shouted at my Monitor, my husband thought I´d gone mad.

[Long alternate turret-build explanation inc]
My second “I kid you not” is that I even still use a turret build. Now inbefore you think I´m being hypocritical, hear me out! Ever heard of the “Tesla Coil” build? It was an idea of another engineer and few others and I tried to refine it. The Basic idea is to wear down your enemy with turrets/Support your allies with turrets with low coldown (rifle/flame/net) and their boons. Then, when you Need the burst you make use of the way static discharge works with the turret´s Detonation. It can result in a theoretical burst of 12k damage by only blowing up 3 turrets and using 1 toolbelt skill.
First People are like: “o darn! That damage! Those boons! That survivability! AND O THAT DARN BURST!”
Then they´re like: “Huh… The turrets are gone… hihi :D”
Then: “kitten I´m down, I forgot bout those toolbelt skills -.-*”
[long Explanation end]

By now I´m sure you´re asking yourself: “Okay, nice story, gal, but where are you going with this?”
Long story short.
Tanky turrets are lazy.

Too short? Okay. I´ll use my example of above build again, mostly because that´s how I wished turrets could be played.
Active decision making. Weighing to destroy them for huge burst and the useage for their toolbelt skills for slowly wearing enemies down and granting boons to allies.
In the beginning the build is tough to use but by now my Team down´t want to miss out on this. (Also, we all agree that we like it, because it´s fun, whacky, works, gives hilarious moments and is not meta :D but I´m off Topic again, sorry)

So this turret build has active decision making, nice results and quite the learning curve and the skill floor of the Player becomes quite noticable. You could say its risk/reward factor is within the Charts.

Now compare that to the usual turret engineer.
I dare say the decision making for turret engineers goes from “I think I´ll place the thumper turret on the middle of the node” over “I think I´ll jump off this ledge and place my rocket turret mid air” to “I´ll just use my net shot and overcharged shot on cd” and not further.
The learning curve is kept to a Minimum.
Also i dare say that there is no big difference in play style between an exceptional turreteer and a noobeteer. This build has an extremely low skill ceiling.
As we all probably know, the results of this build are WAY to good for what´s needed to be effective with it.

Yes, that´s the main Problem I have with the usual turret engineer build.

Also…
I´m okay with turreteers being tanky. Heck it´s a bunkers Job to take a Punch. The Problem is that the engi can go as tanky or offensive as he wants. The turrets are not affected at all. So they still hit very hard while the engineer has tons of hp. That´s not okay.
A fix to this would be to let turrets scale with stats, but I guess that´s too much to implement. So I won´t be holding my breath for it.

Also flying turrets…

tl;dr: I don´t like them because they have a learning line instead of a learning curve, require little to no decision making, Very low skill ceiling (you barely notice the difference of a newby engineer and a skilled Player), High damage and strong ccs WHILE being extremely tanky … and compared to all of that very good results.

Also… flying turrets ;)

Zatoichi.1049:

good changes for the most part, but realistically, how exactly does one poison, bleed, and torment a mechanical object?

had I known you could poison mechanical objects, I would have done so to my enemies cars irl by now =D

We’re already able to cause bleeding, poison, and torment to mechanical objects such as Asura golems, Watchknights, and Steam creatures.

Mustafa.7684:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Mustafa.7684:

Its a game… get over it!

Please leave the forums if you don’t care.

I care which is why i am here.

Then why post rude an unproductive posts like that one, and then falsely flag my post? If all you’re going to do is insult other posts with rude comments, it’s better to not comment at all.

tronjeremy.5820:

Josh Davis.6015:

• Engineer turrets will be able to be critically hit. (Edit for clarity: this change means the turrets can take critical hits against them, but they still cannot deal critical hits themselves.)
• Engineer turrets will be able to be affected by conditions.

Crits and Condis! Wowowow. This is a game changer! Going to see a lot of homeless engies in the mists!

Humor lol

Cero.5132:

[snip]

tl;dr: I don´t like them because they have a learning line instead of a learning curve, require little to no decision making, Very low skill ceiling (you barely notice the difference of a newby engineer and a skilled Player), High damage and strong ccs WHILE being extremely tanky … and compared to all of that very good results.

Also… flying turrets

Your build sounds great I like the concept. Still, I’d miss my trusty thumper…

About time constraints and effort of implementing scaling turrets: It shouldn’t be all that hard to implement. Especially, if you make them scale with base stats and ignore might, etc. I just don’t buy this whole argument, because arena.net simply ignored a design flaw(which by the way also makes turrets borderline unplayable in PvE) for way too long.
Having them scale with stats should have been done before they added the sentinel amulet to the game. Really, they had all the time in the world, while turreteers were merely obnoxious. When they added sentinel amulet, maybe they weren’t aware of the consequences, but it turned turreteers into unspeakable abominations. When people caught on, how strong turreteers are against current meta builds, it developed an interesting dynamic: More and more people started to complain, which made more and more people aware of the turret build, which made more and more people play turrets.
Now the house is on fire and instead of putting the fire out, arena.net decided to blow up the entire house “just to make sure.” They probably feel like they can’t afford such a conceived imbalance in PvP while they try to get everyone hyped for the expansion.

naphack.9346:

Your build sounds great I like the concept. Still, I’d miss my trusty thumper…

About time constraints and effort of implementing scaling turrets: It shouldn’t be all that hard to implement. Especially, if you make them scale with base stats and ignore might, etc. I just don’t buy this whole argument, because arena.net simply ignored a design flaw(which by the way also makes turrets borderline unplayable in PvE) for way too long.
Having them scale with stats should have been done before they added the sentinel amulet to the game. Really, they had all the time in the world, while turreteers were merely obnoxious. When they added sentinel amulet, maybe they weren’t aware of the consequences, but it turned turreteers into unspeakable abominations. When people caught on, how strong turreteers are against current meta builds, it developed an interesting dynamic: More and more people started to complain, which made more and more people aware of the turret build, which made more and more people play turrets.
Now the house is on fire and instead of putting the fire out, arena.net decided to blow up the entire house “just to make sure.” They probably feel like they can’t afford such a conceived imbalance in PvP while they try to get everyone hyped for the expansion.

As I said, I wouldn´t hold my breath for them making turrets scale with stats. Sure, it would fix many of the problems and is actually a very logical approach to this problem. But making them be critable and take damage from conditions is way easier and yes, less time consuming.
I´m only an apprentice-developer but I believe that making turrets take crit/condi damage takes WAY less time than adjusting their individual scaling with stats. Just think about the testing and number crunching alone and the tears if f.e. power damage scaled too well. Nope, too many risks, too time consuming.
Time spent developing scaling turrets is money not spent on finishing the new expansion that earns money for anet. So from an economical point they´re doing the right thing…
From a player´s viewpoint… less so.

Just saying that i agree that making them scale with stats would solve most problems… It would even support my own build xD
But as I said… I wouldn´t get my hopes up for this… I just don´t believe that it will happen.

Cero.5132:

naphack.9346:

Your build sounds great I like the concept. Still, I’d miss my trusty thumper…

About time constraints and effort of implementing scaling turrets: It shouldn’t be all that hard to implement. Especially, if you make them scale with base stats and ignore might, etc. I just don’t buy this whole argument, because arena.net simply ignored a design flaw(which by the way also makes turrets borderline unplayable in PvE) for way too long.
Having them scale with stats should have been done before they added the sentinel amulet to the game. Really, they had all the time in the world, while turreteers were merely obnoxious. When they added sentinel amulet, maybe they weren’t aware of the consequences, but it turned turreteers into unspeakable abominations. When people caught on, how strong turreteers are against current meta builds, it developed an interesting dynamic: More and more people started to complain, which made more and more people aware of the turret build, which made more and more people play turrets.
Now the house is on fire and instead of putting the fire out, arena.net decided to blow up the entire house “just to make sure.” They probably feel like they can’t afford such a conceived imbalance in PvP while they try to get everyone hyped for the expansion.

As I said, I wouldn´t hold my breath for them making turrets scale with stats. Sure, it would fix many of the problems and is actually a very logical approach to this problem. But making them be critable and take damage from conditions is way easier and yes, less time consuming.
I´m only an apprentice-developer but I believe that making turrets take crit/condi damage takes WAY less time than adjusting their individual scaling with stats. Just think about the testing and number crunching alone and the tears if f.e. power damage scaled too well. Nope, too many risks, too time consuming.
Time spent developing scaling turrets is money not spent on finishing the new expansion that earns money for anet. So from an economical point they´re doing the right thing…
From a player´s viewpoint… less so.

Just saying that i agree that making them scale with stats would solve most problems… It would even support my own build xD
But as I said… I wouldn´t get my hopes up for this… I just don´t believe that it will happen.

Well, if they can take condi damage, they also need to be affected by condi clear… So you need bug testing for what happens with condi conversion skills.
The crit part is not problematic, but the condi part got some serious implications down the line. Especially, when people start asking, why turrets are the only minion in the game, which can get damaging conditions, but not the regeneration boon.

It’s obnoxious knowing the conflict of interest inherent in economics and game design. It just promotes cynicism and assignment of blame between devs and players, when it’s short sighted publisher/corporate/management that is disrupting what would otherwise be a harmonious relationship.

NCSoft and GW2 makes an enormous amount of profits. The money is there. That is never the problem in these widely advertised and financially successful games. The willingness to spend the money on behalf of the players is what prevents more innovative solutions.

That said, Turrets seem to be so toxic to so many players that even if there were some clever fix the “mob” demands the spec’s demise. It has gone on for too long, and too many people are sick of it, which is the problem with sitting back and letting the players “figure it out themselves” vs. taking proactive action.

Is it a creative death? Absolutely. Is it necessary at this point? Yes.

I would strongly recommend that Arenanet’s management at least attempt to learn from this. You can’t just take the easiest, most economically profitable approach. People need to see that you’re reaching for greater goals than what your shareholders find acceptable, which is never going to be much. You can’t manipulate people into thinking that you’re doing that either. They need to see you addressing things that are broken, like floating turrets, invisible players, “underwater warriors,” etc.

This is why FFXIV is crushing you guys as a rival MMO. The attention to detail, immediate reaction to player concerns, and having a huge horizontal and vertical progression is making it clear that the American economics-driven MMO decision making model is not making players confident enough to continue to invest their time.

naphack.9346:

Well, if they can take condi damage, they also need to be affected by condi clear… So you need bug testing for what happens with condi conversion skills.
The crit part is not problematic, but the condi part got some serious implications down the line. Especially, when people start asking, why turrets are the only minion in the game, which can get damaging conditions, but not the regeneration boon.

You got a point on the condiclear part. I´d even go as far to consider adding a effect to metal plating “condition duration is also reduced by 33%”.
Mathematically seen, yes, conditions without a way to cleans would screw turrets too hard. After all, believe it or not, there are actually engineer players who enjoy playing turrets, because they always dreamed of beign a turret engi and so on… though that´s a minority by now…

I´m actually not sure if it´s a good idea to let them be influenced by boons… bunch of turrets with retaliation, might, fury… SWIFTNESS!? NOPE! No, thank you!

Also there´s to consider that many boon applications/aoe condiclears go only for a certain number of players/npcs.

I´d say make one step at a time. Let them be critable/get condidamage, but also condiclear. Overdoing things in the first step and just trying to fix the first step´s mess in the following steps is what the playerbase is used to… but not what it wants.

I hate when a company knee-jerk reacts to complaints and proposes a quick and poorly thought out way to end them. Just make them scale with the engineer’s stats: tanky but poor damage engie = tanky but poor damage turrets.

The most concerning thing here is you reacted to complaints (too late), you should have prevented them in the first place or shouldn’t have allowed these for so long.

Also turrets are not the only problem, Engineers have too much easy access to protection.

Don’t forget about their celestial variants please, thank you. If you’re only going to balance turrets only, it means you’re just knee-jerk reacting, which is totally unprofessional.

Khenzy.9348:

I hate when a company knee-jerk reacts to complaints and proposes a quick and poorly thought out way to end them.

‘Kneejerk’ would imply that turret engies haven’t been under scrutiny for a while now. We all know that’s not true. Actual ‘kneejerk’ response would have been taking action 6 months ago… We all know that didn’t happen either.

Try a different way of belittling the Devs into reversing a decision you don’t like, because they are laughing out loud at that attempt.

Josh Davis.6015:

Shockwave.1230:

So, fear, taunt, chill, cripple, and weakness. Can we get a breakdown on what the expected effects on turrets will be?

Confusion and Torment questions too?

Will fear cause interrupts and prevent a turret from firing during the condition?
Taunt won’t cause some infinite fire rate glitch due to no recharge on the turret attack skills right? Purely speculation
Is cripple going to be useless or do something like half distance on attacks?
Is chill going to slow the firing rate? Reduce attack range?
Will weakness cause fumble on turrets?

Will confusion apply PvE damage to turrets?
Will torment only apply the min damage, while turrets are rotating will it apply extra damage?

There won’t be any new special cases for turrets that receive conditions. The effects that happen them will match what you’d expect to happen to players. For example, blinding a turret will means that their next attack will miss. Weakness (fumble) will work on turrets. Applying confusion to turrets will cause them to take damage when they attack.

For the most part chill, cripple, and immob wouldn’t have much effect on the turret. For chill, turret cooldown skills are tied to the engineer’s skill bar, not the turret itself. Torment will always tick at its lowest rate since they don’t run (lack of wheels is intended).

Regarding fear, turrets have never been susceptible to CC, and they will continue to be immune to CC. Applying fear to a turret will not cause it to stop attacking. However, if you’re a necromancer with the Terror trait equipped, you will do fear damage to the turret.

For almost every other “thing” in the game that can have confusion applied to it, there’s a way to mitigate the effects of confusion… either through some form of condition clear or by not attacking.

You’ve already stated that boons and healing will not effect turrets, so other than accepting the cool-down penalty (which is generally much longer than the confusion duration) and picking up my turrets, what is my counter-play against an engineer or mesmer applying many stacks of confusion to my turrets?

Khenzy.9348:

I hate when a company knee-jerk reacts to complaints and proposes a quick and poorly thought out way to end them.

This isn’t the first time either.
When the community screamed bloody murder over Automated Response saying it was ‘the reason turret engies dominate conquest’
Anet, the oh so creative devs they are, decided to listen to the crowd and nerfed the trait into the ground.
Turrets are still around. One less trait usable across any build.

Now that it didn’t work, they are taking the more direct approach and just destroying an entire build instead because the previous complaint wasn’t enough (surprise, surprise).

Nike.2631:

insanemaniac.2456:

the thing is, no spec in the game ever considered to be OP has ever been overperforming by more than about 20%. turrets are not overperforming so much that a “33% hp nerf” (that increasing damage done to them by 50% would effect) would do anything but simply make them unviable.

I think you are grossly overestimating the contribution of crits to damage. And again, the simple fact is people that are investing in crit or condition damage should not have that investment nullified.

And I can’t be the only game designer that rolls their eyes when people confuse viable with top tier competitiveness.

nah, 50% crit rate, 200% crit damage gives a 50% dps increase between “cant crit” and “can”.

in pvp, pack+cele is base 32%, 180% without any trait investment, typical cele engi builds get 32%/190% + packs fury access, meaning 45% dps increase between “cant crit” and “can”. i wont think about shoutbows, combustive shot is gonna be silly. dd ele… 00266 with hoelbrak, thats the minimum, at 32%/180% for a 25% increase with no fury. medi guard is a zerk build, it gets around 60% dps increase. same for power necro, prolly around 45-50% cuz it doesnt have crit trait lines.

good wvw roaming builds aim for around 30%/190%. with fury access, maybe from a warrior friend or runes or something, thats a 45% dps increase. thieves and mesmers get more cuz they have stealth access and can go more zerky. plus theres more power in a power build in general in wvw.

all i really care about is that my healing turret lives long enough for me to use it instead of it dying to random aoes in <1/2 a second. double its hp. its not like its good to leave it out anyways, if i do im a fail engi no matter what build i run. :/

Considering that turret engineer builds are a problem pretty much only in pvp, would it be possible to leave them as is in pve and wvw perhaps? Changing this would affect the entire community and it seems that as little as turret engi is played in pve or wvw, doing this change will make the number of players using those builds dwindle.

As far as I’ve seen, counting solely things said in Grouch’s posts, the intent is to:

• Allow conditions to be applied, but not boons.
• Nothing was said about cleansing conditions from or healing the turrets.
• Allow incoming crits to be inflicted, but not outgoing.
• Potentially allow marks to trigger on Turrets alone.

Before I continue, I actually have no problem with the mark thing. The issues I have originate in the apparent ‘so, giving things nothing but the disadvantageous parts of the mechanics is balance, right?’ philosophy.

I’m going to go ahead and suggest a complete rework of the skill set. Barring that, I’ll make one suggestion at the end of this post.

Turrets, for some reason, are simply not in line with a lot of other things. Can’t receive boons or conditions, can’t crit or be crit, don’t scale for the most part (or the scaling doesn’t work, in the case of Healing Turret, which only scales its on-placement heal, not that anybody’s bothered to fix that in the months since it was reported). Can’t move, so they don’t even fit in the basic concept of the game’s combat, aside from the one place they’re evidently too strong.

The proposed changes essentially take the only advantages they have, and don’t give them anything in return. It’s likely a result of the existence of Turret traits; Autotool Installation + Regeneration would be quite a lot of passive healing, Metal Plating + Protection would be 66% less damage taken, Flame Turret and Rifle Turret would pump out Might and Fury for each other…it almost makes sense, especially with Rifled Turret Barrels. But, then I think of the Grenade Kit, which had its baseline damage nerfed because the Grandmaster Trait gave a +50% boost to their effectiveness. There seems an innate terror of changing traits, and that’s stupid - what’s the point of a balance team that’s afraid to modify traits?

So, assuming traits are the problem…rework them. Make them interesting. The bar was set low enough with ‘oh, my turrets will take less damage,’ and ‘oh, they’ll heal on their own,’ that it’s actually a furrow. Give them interesting, active traits, and rework turrets to fit the traits. Go back to the drawing board, come at the problem from a different angle to start with, and it might be far more effective.

For the current iteration of Turrets, my only suggestion is to implement scaling. Nerf the base values – all of them – and allow non-trait stats to affect their performance. High-damage, low durability Engi, high-damage, low durability turrets. High defense, low damage Engi, high-defense, low damage turrets. Give the player something to think about while building the character, as opposed to ‘do nothing but not die,’ as it is currently. Give advantages and drawbacks.

Josh Davis.6015:

A few notes:

• You can cleanse conditions from turrets.
• You cannot heal turrets – nothing has changed in this area. (The exception of course being Thwack, Whack, Smack, and Autotool Installation.
• While boons do not currently affect turrets, this is something we might consider changing in the future depending on how the changes I mentioned in my original post pan out.

will poison reduce healing from tool autos / autotool installation?

Josh Davis.6015:

A few notes:

• You can cleanse conditions from turrets.
• You cannot heal turrets – nothing has changed in this area. (The exception of course being Thwack, Whack, Smack, and Autotool Installation.
• While boons do not currently affect turrets, this is something we might consider changing in the future depending on how the changes I mentioned in my original post pan out.

It won’t be the Turret Engie doing reliable cleansing of its own turrets anyways. They have no method of doing so outside Healing Turret which they aren’t going to waste on such.
Every other AI can be healed from other sources. Minions, Pets, Spirits. 5% is pretty laughable with this new change as well. Especially since apparently Poison is going to counter this.

Nike.2631:

Khenzy.9348:

I hate when a company knee-jerk reacts to complaints and proposes a quick and poorly thought out way to end them.

‘Kneejerk’ would imply that turret engies haven’t been under scrutiny for a while now. We all know that’s not true. Actual ‘kneejerk’ response would have been taking action 6 months ago… We all know that didn’t happen either.

Try a different way of belittling the Devs into reversing a decision you don’t like, because they are laughing out loud at that attempt.

They can do to turreteers anything they so desire for all I care (even though I don’t agree with their direction). I still think it’s a knee-jerk reaction (as in a response based on prejudice, not thought) to calm down the complaints, or else such balance changes would have been made a long time ago. There are so many other balance outliers right now, yet they choose to talk about only, and only turrets. Come on.

While you are at it something really need to be done about that rune of the pirate. That parrot is so OP! How do you expect me to 1v1 on a point with a parrot pecking at my face.

Come on people, qq already and pew pew.

Finally nerf train has come. Praise to the Lord

IDK that this is necessary. What I think would help would be some higher locations so that when I place my anti-gravity turrets they would be in harder to reach places for anyone trying to get them. Or if you could make them float themselves instead of having to jump… that’d be grrrrrrreat.

I think it’s fair enough, no need to nerf more Although they’re a pain, as said several times above, making turrets scale with engie’s stats would make the game more interresting.

For real people. Learn to counter! Don’t scream about nerf, just learn to play.

If you nerf the turrets nobody will ever play engineer again. xD

Josh Davis.6015:

A few notes:

• You can cleanse conditions from turrets.
• You cannot heal turrets – nothing has changed in this area. (The exception of course being Thwack, Whack, Smack, and Autotool Installation.
• While boons do not currently affect turrets, this is something we might consider changing in the future depending on how the changes I mentioned in my original post pan out.

Well, thanks for at least clearing that up.

I still think it’s the wrong way to go about this, but at least now it can be said that Conditions can be cleansed and Boons may, at some point probably six months to a year in the future, be able to be applied to Turrets. I’m pretty sure nobody will be using them by the time that happens, of course.

Josh Davis.6015:

A few notes:

• You can cleanse conditions from turrets.
• You cannot heal turrets – nothing has changed in this area. (The exception of course being Thwack, Whack, Smack, and Autotool Installation.
• While boons do not currently affect turrets, this is something we might consider changing in the future depending on how the changes I mentioned in my original post pan out.

It seems that in your initial post the goal was to get all pets to be equal. Turrets are at a slight disadvantage that they are immobile. I agree that they are overpowered atm and the ability to cleanse conditions from them is one good way to make all pets equal. It might be fair to allow them to be healed (with AOE heals from other players for example) just like every other pet in game.

I do believe allowing turrets to crit will make them too powerful and probably best if they don’t.

Turret being conditioned is immersion breaking. You’re breaking my immersion. This is unacceptable. A turret isn’t alive how can it be poisoned or suffer bleeding?