Guild Wars 2

So I looked through the forum and only found a couple of topics that addressed turrets one was PvP centric and the other wasn’t really an open discussion so I thought I would create a topic and invite the whole engineer community to discuss them.

It’s no secret that they aren’t as great as they could be and they certainly don’t feel as indispensable as kits in an engineer build. So what do you all think? Where are they lacking? How could they be improved?

My personal opinion:

It seems that in their current implementation they’re meant to be kind set and last for the duration of a fight through one means of the other. I think this poses a few problems:

1)It’s kind of boring.
2)It’s risky.

If you look at the most widely used turret, the healing turret a good example most engineers blow it up almost immediately. The cooldown is penalized but it’s still only 20 seconds and if you use a lot of blast finishers your healing effectiveness is restricted to their cooldowns as well. It results in a really fun, interactive skill that I believe is quite well balanced.

Basically, my idea is that if turret cooldowns were reduced it would reduce the risk rendering one of your Util slots useless because you lost a turret. It would open up more interactive gameplay like the healing turret promotes and overall lead to a better experience. Obviously they would need to have their Toolbelt Skills and DPS balanced as a result but even if those took a dip I still think it would be an improvement.

Anyways, that was way more than I should have typed in a discussion post. Please don’t feel obliged to touch on what I’ve said. I really like the idea of turrets and I want to promote discussion as much as possible and hear what everyone thinks.

I suspect that a large reason for the deploy and destroy behavior with healing turret is that turret cooldowns do not start until after the turret is destroyed. As such, leaving the turret out is much less cost effective in terms of health pr second than using it as any other healing skill (fire and forget).

This is why the other turrets are getting so much flak, because they have long cooldowns, that only start after destruction, and have paper thin armor.

My personal fix would be to remove overcharge and detonate fully, and rebalance the turrets around being disposables. Meaning that once deployed they stay out until destroyed, and utility skill cooldown starts on deployment.

This would make fighting a turret engineer an escalating threat unless the enemy makes sure to keep the turrets culled.

And it would fix the issue with turrets being a siege mentality while the rest of the game is about mobility.

+1
Makes turrets harder to kill
Recharge starts when they are deployed not when destroyed

I dont even play engi but I would like to see this part of their skills buffed.

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.
2. Implement more scaling, such as Power, Vitality and Toughness scaling.
3. Make cooldowns start when deployed.

And I suppose a trait to be able to make Turrets move would be appreciated, though I can’t help but wonder if it would play nice with the other suggestions.

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

As for making Turrets move with the Engineer, I think it’s a bad idea, because it sounds like another Spirit Ranger fiasco just waiting to happen; whilst diminishing the special status that the Minionmancer enjoys.

There are plenty of things wrong with turrets and honestly I would love to see them fixed but am terrified the effect that could have on healing turret which I believe is working fine.

With that being said, the cd starting on detonation is terrible and counteracts the point of turrets. Although accelerant packed turrets already promotes this and is a viable option to some extent.

Overcharge works, but the effect could be improved and made more reliable. I never drop a turret without immediately overcharging it because if i don’t it will not happen.

Detonation works well but the fact that it covers up the toolkit which is the defining trait of an engi makes keeping a turret out incredibly counter intuitive.

If it was working fine, we would have a incentive to keep it deployed. But right now the HT meta is D(eploy)O(vercharge)D(etonate)/DOP. Meaning it is more like a healing bomb than a turret.

And i have seen similar attitudes expressed towards the other turrets, using them more like remote controlled bombs than actual turrets.

Engi is by far the most balanced class in the game, you dont Need more uptime for your turrets or more life on it, or do you want a “Petting zoo reloaded” like rangers, necros troll build????
you have very good healing ability with Combo finisher, very good boons+ perma Speed + vigor and immunites + invulnerable skill, block, blind + stealth Combo+ Elixier
although, you a mid range class with much condi/dmg granade spamming abilities

I think what engi rly Needs is a range indicator for your supply crate and also for granades by 600 to prevent engis from spamming so much ae/condi/dmg and not beeing rly engage into the fight…..

Arkantos = Got myself destroyed by a skilled enginer in pvp and dont want to see their bad build getting better because the guy who has to play 10 time better then i do to actualy get the same result got me killed anyway so please nerf them!

I see this very often in the game especialy in Spvp where playing an enginer takes a lot of hard work. Your reaction is understandable but is as legitimate as anyone crying about getting himself slain by a condition ranger or an elementalist.

truth is we work very hard to get our build working and that if they actualy weakened them theid have to strenghten them back elsewhere to compensate for the loss.

Turrets needs better damage, a return of the condition damage (as in better then before) or a major improve on the turrets defensive and offansive ability. I wonder if you played enginer in the first place or actualy ran anything but static discharge bombs and grenade because right now enginer is prety much trashy save for SD and Explosive using bombs or grenade. Heck most people who run enginer created their engy to run turret in the first place yet the build is so poor theres no actual way to run it effectively.

I take it you realy hate on minion master spirit ranger and beastmasters Arkantos.

your advice tells truth

kill people with enginer in spvp without running static discharge or bombs then you can come back here and talk about balanced builds. Just because a class has some build that works doesnt mean there aint room to improve other non used build. This doesnt make the class stronguer then the others it just create something called variety.

I did ran static discharge bomb and grenade in pvp and made my kills. I can see however and its proly obvious to anyone who played it that offansive turrets is useless no mather if its in pvp or in pve when it comes to therm with possible damage builds.

instead of offending ppl, you should try a to argue first and after running out of arguments …..

at last you edited some well-natured arguments

Awesome! I’m glad to see some discussion. I’m going to try to maintain this thread as best as well as I can.

I haven’t gotten around to reading everything yet since I’ve just popped in to check out the status of the thread but, I think it might be beneficial for some readers to explain what the known turret bugs are.

I think there’s already a list online somewhere, could someone who is familiar with it post it?

Principe arkantos is enginer is far from behing in a good spot yet and could use having some of its build improved to create variation, starting with turret and flamethrower.

I don’t think we will see any significant buffs to turrets that will make them viable ever, considering the fact that they actually got their good aspect (dps) lowered (no more burning on rocket, underwater rifle turrets hit etc)…

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

Not that a balance isn’t wanted, just that having bugs on a mechanic for over a year is unacceptable.

digiowl.9620:

If it was working fine, we would have a incentive to keep it deployed. But right now the HT meta is D(eploy)O(vercharge)D(etonate)/DOP. Meaning it is more like a healing bomb than a turret.

And i have seen similar attitudes expressed towards the other turrets, using them more like remote controlled bombs than actual turrets.

Though I agree with your opinion and think that sort of playstyle with turrets should be viable I also think it’s important to remember that just because it’s called a turret doesn’t mean it needs to behave exactly like the turrets were familiar with in other games.
I guess I’m just trying to say, I don’t think it’s fair to say they aren’t working “fine” because there’s no incentive to keep a turret deployed. I happen to like the current turret playstyle. It’s added a new dimension to what I know as turret.

I think in a perfect world there could be room for both. It could be fun if both were equally balanced. There were actually some hesitation involved in trying to decide whether I’m going to detonate a turret. That is to say, as opposed to now where I’m certain to do it after it’s been out for a few seconds.

Also I love the term Deploy and Destroy. I’m going to use that.

Arkantos.7460:

Engi is by far the most balanced class in the game, you dont Need more uptime for your turrets or more life on it, or do you want a “Petting zoo reloaded” like rangers, necros troll build????
you have very good healing ability with Combo finisher, very good boons+ perma Speed + vigor and immunites + invulnerable skill, block, blind + stealth Combo+ Elixier
although, you a mid range class with much condi/dmg granade spamming abilities

I think what engi rly Needs is a range indicator for your supply crate and also for granades by 600 to prevent engis from spamming so much ae/condi/dmg and not beeing rly engage into the fight…..

This is a thread about making turrets viable since they’re mostly unused by the engineer community. In effect it’s about balancing the entire engineer class in such a way that turrets will be as fun to use as kits, elixirs and gadgets can be.

I think it goes without saying that if something makes us OP we should be nerfed. Thanks for pointing that out though for those that hadn’t thought of it.

Stillshade.7634:

There are plenty of things wrong with turrets and honestly I would love to see them fixed but am terrified the effect that could have on healing turret which I believe is working fine.

With that being said, the cd starting on detonation is terrible and counteracts the point of turrets. Although accelerant packed turrets already promotes this and is a viable option to some extent.

Overcharge works, but the effect could be improved and made more reliable. I never drop a turret without immediately overcharging it because if i don’t it will not happen.

Detonation works well but the fact that it covers up the toolkit which is the defining trait of an engi makes keeping a turret out incredibly counter intuitive.

I think that’s a good point. I always overcharge immediately because I know it’s the only chance I’ll get. Sometimes I don’t even get a chance to reap the benefits before my turret goes down.

It comes back to the risk factor. It’s not like getting a normal cooldown interrupted, you genuinely risk being useless for 15-20 seconds minimum if your turret doesn’t work out.

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

I think there are 2 very big issues with turrets,

First one beeing the countless bugs related to them. I think Anymras covered very well the extensive bug list and I think if they could fix the bugs and bring back the turrets on par with their state back in March 2013 (the only month they worked as intended and without any bugs) they would already been a lot more appreciated by people.

Secondly, some changes needs to be done about turrets overcharge abilities. Right now they are all about fire and forget wich doesn’t reward reactive gameplay. They could be render much more attractive and usefull for both PvE and PvP if they were instant abilities, at least most of them.

- Flame Turret wouldn’t need a target to activate the smoke screen giving more versatility to the turret. Would it be by covering your rifle turret and combo it with the smoke screen or just use it to allow your team/self to stealth finisher for infiltration.

- Rocket, Thumper and Net Turrets don’t need any overcharge duration sinds the maximum of shots got reduce to 1 instead of 2 (without any patchnote). Making it instant would grant Turrets Engineers some counter play against CC builds, by CC backfiring at them. Currently, overcharge abilities are instant and can be used while under a CC but there is no effective counterplay if you have to wait 3sec for your turret attack cycle, we need something that reacts fast.

- Thumper Turret instant would also work very well in conjunture with Flame Turret (+toolbelt) and Healing Turret feilds, allowing the overcharge to be a lot more responsive and effective at the same time.

- Rifle Turret is probably the most important of all of them, I think this one should have its overcharge replaced by some bursting ability, I was thinking about a short volley of projectile shooting 9 times over 3sec and applying 1stack of vulnerability, per shot, during 10sec.
I also think the auto-attack should be at least a 100% finisher, this way the Rifle Turret would actualy become a key ability for team play in the Turret Engineer gameplay allowing many synergies for extra condition application or removal and with its rather slow firerate (2sec + rotation time) I don’ t think it wouldn’t be overpowered.
*if you disagree feel free to debate.

Finaly, some traits should be fused together, Auto-tool instalation is a very underused trait and I could see this trait work with Powerwrench from Tools to make a new master trait wich could be called “repair specialist”. This way players playing with the wrench and turrets don’t need to go deeper in tool traitline and focus on turret traits. Auto-tool instalation becomes a nice bonus trait and it leaves room for a new master trait in the Tools line wich could, and should in my oppinion, be focused around gadgets and give them some additional cool special effects.

Edit : to add something on Turrets cooldown, they should indeed reward the play for keeping turrets alive but at the same time punishing them if they die to fast.
I already posted that idea on other threads, but basicaly, I would remove the clunky pick up function, and put the CD reduction on the self destruct instead and change it so instead of reducing the cooldown by 25% it reduce the cooldown for each second it stayed alive.

Doing so rewards the player for keeping the turrets alive by giving more mobility to the Engineer and you also get some free blast finishers each time you effectively build up a fight.

On the other hand, destroyed turrets get on full cooldown and would punish the Engineer for beeing careless with his turrets.

Edit 2 : Also, we need Healing Turret underwater!

adrianz.9672:

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

I have two links. I should, as I’ve pretty much taken it upon myself to curate said lists.

Here’s the list on the Game Bugs forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/27-Turret-Bugs-I-ve-lost-count/first#post2601719

and here’s the reference guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Bug-Reference-Guide-1/first#post3364904

I also have to agree that fixing the turret bugs would be the better priority. Anymras’ list is a good layout of the problems, and (by themselves) would go a long way toward their own balancing. (Thank you, btw)

One possible good news toward this, was something I read (or perhaps had implied) that the turret code was separate from other minions/pets. If that’s the case we may be in luck, as (apparently) the normal pet AI is tied to some world monsters, making them very difficult to tweak.

Wow, this thread went downhill swiftly. I suppose it’s to be expected, but it’s kinda disheartening to watch responses devolve into knee-jerk reactions and ad hominem.

As an Engineer, Turret buffs would be appreciated, but care needs to be taken to keep them from turning Engineer into turning into yet another Spirit Ranger. Net Turret and Rocket Turret Overcharge have (potentially) the greatest amount of recurring CC in the entire game – as long as they’re actually targeting your opponent.

Fixing their AI should take priority before re-evaluation of anything about Turrets. Even the Cooldown starting after placing a Turret should be carefully considered only after fixing Turret bugs. Speaking of which, Anymras, any news on your buglist?

MonMalthias.4763:

Wow, this thread went downhill swiftly. I suppose it’s to be expected, but it’s kinda disheartening to watch responses devolve into knee-jerk reactions and ad hominem.

I try not to worry about that too much. It’s just the nature of the Internet.

MonMalthias.4763:

As an Engineer, Turret buffs would be appreciated, but care needs to be taken to keep them from turning Engineer into turning into yet another Spirit Ranger.

Well the only way Turrets would become the next Ranger spirit build would be to give them wheels and allow them to follow the Engineer in combat with a trait. I am pretty much against that idea. Turrets should remain stationary battle tools supporting players in combat with the extra control et synergies they provide between each other.

I also see another problem if you make them mobile, they get to stay all around you and will get hit by any occuring cleaves and AoEs targeted at you or any of your turrets. Wich means you are probably going to loose them way sooner than expected and all together because of such a trait.

Finaly we already have a deployable turret trait, what is the point to keep this trait if another would make our turrets mobile and follow us right away after throwing it at a distance?

Traits should always work together, not against each other.

MonMalthias.4763:

Net Turret and Rocket Turret Overcharge have (potentially) the greatest amount of recurring CC in the entire game – as long as they’re actually targeting your opponent.

Correction, those had a great amount of recurring CC when they were still affected by the entire duration of the overcharge and not limited to a single CC. Rocket Turret overcharge now has a pretty standard cooldown for its utility and Net Turret remains a bit superior to the rest but still nothing close to what it used to do.

MonMalthias.4763:

Fixing their AI should take priority before re-evaluation of anything about Turrets. Even the Cooldown starting after placing a Turret should be carefully considered only after fixing Turret bugs. Speaking of which, Anymras, any news on your buglist?

Fixing their AI shouldn’t be to difficult, A-net clearly showed us they could create a new concept of AI while keeping the older AI in fonction. They just need to swap the last target hit script with an Engineer current target script to solve the whole target acquisition with turrets when using AoEs.

adrianz.9672:

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

Anymras’s 27+ Turret Bug list of fear and wonderment

Thanks for the links guys. I’ll try to post a concise list bullet point list of bugs today when I get downtime at work.

I’d like to try and provide an easy to read page by page summary of what goes on in this thread too. I’m going to do my best not to be biased. If I do so. Please don’t be shy of calling me out if I miss anything.

Also, in the interest of making this a productive thread that is taken seriously, it would be great if everyone kept their emotions in check. We’re all passionate about the game and the class and we want what’s best for both. There’s no need to argue.

Also x2, just food for thought… I’ve gathered from reading the recent CDI threads that changes are more likely to get implemented if they can be made within the existing game systems. That is to say, I don’t think we’re going to get a huge turret overhaul any time soon but, maybe if we can come up with some improvements to the current turret mechanics of turrets we can get someone to notice. Maybe not though… I don’t know if this thread can potentially accomplish anything but I’ve got time to kill at work and I think it’s worth a try.

MonMalthias.4763:

Speaking of which, Anymras, any news on your buglist?

Well, there’s been one bug added recently; apparently Victoitor discovered that Healing Turret’s Overcharge doesn’t scale with Healing Power. I accepted video evidence of said bug.

The buglist has been around for five months on the Game Bugs board, has been acknowledged by the staff, staff do occasionally respond to issues posted on it, but anything that hasn’t been added in recent patches (Rocket Turret dealing less damage with RTB on, and Net Turret turning off when overcharged, as opposed to literally everything else on the list) has yet to be fixed.

I’m really just…hoping there’s some fixes on the 21st’s patch. That the 21st doesn’t bump the buglist up past 30. That maybe, eventually, I’ll actually have a reason to play again because the build I want to use functions properly.
I’ll still have paid, effectively, to bugtest Turrets, and as a result I will never buy a single gem from the gemstore, and am unlikely to buy anything from Anet ever again.
But it would be nice for Turrets to work. Might get me playing again.

adrianz: There already is a concise list of Turret bugs. It’s currently on the Engineer boards. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Bug-Reference-Guide-1/first#post3364904

So a bunch of Engineers, Anymras.5729, in particular have taken it up on themselves to contribute to and compile a list of of existing turret issues. The original lists are here:

Anymras.5729:

Here’s the list on the Game Bugs forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/27-Turret-Bugs-I-ve-lost-count/first#post2601719

and here’s the reference guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Bug-Reference-Guide-1/first#post3364904

For posterity’s sake I think we should include the list from the reference guide here for newcomers to see.

• Turrets cannot attack epic world bosses
• Turrets have oversized hitboxes
• Some turret fire rates are a slower than tooltips would suggest
• When overcharged, the Rifle and Net Turrets do not benefit form an increased fire rate as the tooltips indicate.
• In exception to the above, if overcharged immediately after deploying, the Rifle Turret fire rate is permanently increased until it’s destroyed.
• On all turrets, the first shot after deploying benefit from the Rifled Turret Barrels trait or scale to your current level.
• The RocketTurret’s overcharge skill does not last as long as the tooltip indicates.
• Deployable Turrets can be detonated twice – once in midair before landing, and once after landing.
• Once overcharged, the Rocket, Thumper and, Flamethrower turrets do not benefit from the range increase granted by the Rifled Turret Barrels trait. — I’m not sure I correctly understood this one from Anymras’ list
• Turret tooltips indicate that their damage scales with power however their actual damage does not appear to.
• The Healing Turret’s overcharge ability does not scale with Healing Power. —I’m curious, is it officially indicated anywhere that it should?
• Turrets do not trigger the Runes of Perplexity on interrupt.

There are a couple that I think could comfortably be rolled in together and I propose that we do to better suit the forum guidelines.

These are:

• Turrets do not contribute to the skill interrupter daily.
• Turrets do not contribute to the condition applier daily.

These could easily be expressed as “Turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.” However, that may depend on whether the Healing Turret contributes to condition remover.

Finally, I would love some clarification on these 2 bugs:

1. Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the range indicators on Turret placement skills.
2. Deployable Turrets do not receive Rifled Turret Barrels’ range increase.

As I understand it, the first pertains to the tooltip not indicating a boost in range and the second being that turret placement skills doe not benefit from a boost in range. Is that correct?

I’ll roll down and attempt clarifications (and I’ll also note that I probably haven’t kept the bug reference guide quite as up-to-date as the Game Bugs list; given that it’s only a month old, I’m not sure how much I need to update it):

• “Once overcharged, the Rocket, Thumper and, Flamethrower turrets do not benefit from the range increase granted by the Rifled Turret Barrels trait. — I’m not sure I correctly understood this one from Anymras’ list”

The overcharge turns off the range increase on Thumper and Rocket Turret – the Overcharge itself benefits, and Rocket Turret specifically will fire one normal rocket at traited range, and all attacks after that are at untraited range.
Flame Turret’s overcharge does not trigger (creating a smoke field) unless the turret’s target is within untraited maximum range.

• “The Healing Turret’s overcharge ability does not scale with Healing Power. —I’m curious, is it officially indicated anywhere that it should?”

It’s certainly not indicated that it shouldn’t, and the tooltip does change; the function doesn’t, however. As the heal was split 50/50 between deployment and overcharge, as well, it seems odd for it not to scale.
On the flip side, any damaging turret shows Power-scaling, though this has never been the case and there has been no indication that it should be.
If the Overcharge is not supposed to scale, then it’s a tooltip error.

Healing Turret does not affect Condition Remover. Some of the Turrets do contribute to dailies, which is why I didn’t just roll them together, but it’s…very hit-or-miss.

1. Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the indicator on the skill’s icon itself – if you’re too far away from a target for a given skill to affect said target, a red bar appears on the bottom of the skill’s icon.
Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the distance at which this red bar appears, obfuscating when traited Turrets are in range of a given target.

2. Deployable Turrets do not gain the range increase from Rifled Turret Barrels, no. They have the same maximum range as if Rifled Turret Barrels were inactive, but they do gain the damage.

Sorry if this is a tangent, but i get the impression that each trait permutation of a skill have its own entry in the game database.

This includes skills that turrets and other AI use.

We can observe how any weapon or utility skill seems to “flip” into its new form upon applying a trait.

As such, i wonder if hitting overcharge makes the turret swap skills for a while. And upon swapping back the server code for some reason reads the wrong skill entry from the database, resulting in the untraited skill being the one used.

MonMalthias.4763:

adrianz.9672:

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

Anymras’s 27+ Turret Bug list of fear and wonderment

Anywhere that I don’t have to click all these links?

It is terribly unorganized.

Here’s the version that’s on the Engineer boards, which doesn’t function as a list of links to bug reports:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Bug-Reference-Guide-1/first#post3364904

I would like to see turrets give off a buff specifically stability which I think engineers need better access to. I don’t mind turrets being stationary (they’re turrets after all) but we need help to be able to stand around it to at least try and defend it (the thing is made of glass) without being tossed around by hammers or perma-feared everywhere..

herrard.1274:

I would like to see turrets give off a buff specifically stability which I think engineers need better access to. I don’t mind turrets being stationary (they’re turrets after all) but we need help to be able to stand around it to at least try and defend it (the thing is made of glass) without being tossed around by hammers or perma-feared everywhere..

While Engineer as a profession has poor access to Stability, more passive procs and auras is not what it needs right now given how many there are already on Engineer:

• From critical hits (Incendiary Powder, Shrapnel, Sharpshooter, Infused Precision, Precise Sights, Go for the Eyes),
• From health thresholds (Reserve Mines, Exploit Weakness, Target the Weak, Low Health Response System, Automated Medical Response, Hidden Flask, Self Regulating Defenses, Protection Injection, Automated Response, Inertial Converter)
• From enemy triggers such as enemy hits and critical hits (Protective Shield, Stabilised Armour, Cloaking Device, Acidic Coating, Protection Injection)

As you can see, there are a lot. Trait passives are also rarely playstyle-altering. How would a Turret Engineer play any different if instead he had perma-Stability? I’m going to take a wild guess and say – not too much different, except he now laughs at CC. The same can also be said of things like Self Regulating Defenses. Engineers have exactly the same order of priorities and thoughts at 100% HP as they do at 25% HP – except now they get a brief invuln at 25%.

Turrets already have Passive traits – Metal Plating, Autotool Installation, Rifled Turret Barrels. The only 2 out of 5 “Active” Traits are Accelerant Packed Turrets and Deployable Turrets. Less than half. Adding a Stability aura won’t change how Turret Engineer plays aside from introducing new imbalance.6

Now, presuming all Turret bugs are fixed, sometime in the near future (hopefully before 2101AD, when War was Beginning), there are several aspects of Turret builds that Engineers lack:

• Burst damage – Turrets have a dire lack of followup DPS after their CC, while their inconsistent Condi application means that even if they do scale with Condi damage, they still suck in a Condi build. Lack of Power Scaling also severely curtails any direct damage Turret build.
• Condition Clear – Only Healing Turret can Cleanse and no traits support Cleansing from Toolbelts or Turrets
• Down State control – (By which I mean, Stealth/Stability uptime to secure stomps and rezzes, corpse cleave, Poison uptime) – The only “hard CC” Engineers have for stomp denial is Accelerant Packed Turrets, Overcharged Net Turret, Overcharged Rocket Turret – but all other aspects of Down State Control are completely absent
• Immobility – Turrets may establish a strong firebase of CC and condi application, but their immobility means that many opponents can engage outside of their range, and their fragility makes Turrets a liability in today’s AOE heavy meta. Turrets by themselves also have no ability to bring an opponent into range – they are only threatening if an opponent chooses to engage.
• Dull and Weak Toolbelt Skills – Turret Toolbelt skills are almost entirely boring – from straight damage like Surprise Shot and Rocket, to situational utility like Rumble.
• Finisher heavy, Field weak – Weapon Kits can bring so many more Combo Fields and Finishers to the table that Turrets are completely outclassed. Blast Finishers dominate the Turret skills, yet Engineer Weapon skills by themselves have no Combo Field. Also keep in mind that while Blast Finishers do dominate, to execute one requires the sacrifice of a Turret – often for inconsequential reward.

Hopefully this post can spur some discussion to address some of these weaknesses in Turret builds – while remaining fair and readable (and therefore counterplayable) and keeping in mind the possibility of Power Creep. Remember, builds other than Turret Only builds can also utilise Turrets. Keep in mind the abuse potential that may result.

kyubi.3620:

kill people with enginer in spvp without running static discharge or bombs then you can come back here and talk about balanced builds. Just because a class has some build that works doesnt mean there aint room to improve other non used build. This doesnt make the class stronguer then the others it just create something called variety.

I did ran static discharge bomb and grenade in pvp and made my kills. I can see however and its proly obvious to anyone who played it that offansive turrets is useless no mather if its in pvp or in pve when it comes to therm with possible damage builds.

HGH

/trollface

turret survivability is ok they need a huge damage buff now

MonMalthias.4763:

While Engineer as a profession has poor access to Stability, more passive procs and auras is not what it needs right now given how many there are already on Engineer:

• From critical hits (Incendiary Powder, Shrapnel, Sharpshooter, Infused Precision, Precise Sights, Go for the Eyes),
• From health thresholds (Reserve Mines, Exploit Weakness, Target the Weak, Low Health Response System, Automated Medical Response, Hidden Flask, Self Regulating Defenses, Protection Injection, Automated Response, Inertial Converter)
• From enemy triggers such as enemy hits and critical hits (Protective Shield, Stabilised Armour, Cloaking Device, Acidic Coating, Protection Injection)

As you can see, there are a lot. Trait passives are also rarely playstyle-altering. How would a Turret Engineer play any different if instead he had perma-Stability? I’m going to take a wild guess and say – not too much different, except he now laughs at CC. The same can also be said of things like Self Regulating Defenses. Engineers have exactly the same order of priorities and thoughts at 100% HP as they do at 25% HP – except now they get a brief invuln at 25%.

Turrets already have Passive traits – Metal Plating, Autotool Installation, Rifled Turret Barrels. The only 2 out of 5 “Active” Traits are Accelerant Packed Turrets and Deployable Turrets. Less than half. Adding a Stability aura won’t change how Turret Engineer plays aside from introducing new imbalance.6

While I agree that Engineers have a lot of access to passive proc, each one of these traits that you listed require investment in a specific trait line. I am in no way suggesting that we should get stability from turrets for free. I envision this to be a grandmaster trait next to elixir infused bombs in the Inventions trait line.

How would a Turret Engineer play any different if instead he had perma-Stability?
- In PvP, instead of placing his turret on some obscure corner to avoid damage, he would put it in the middle of the point and fight around it. His stability lasts only as long as the turret is alive and how long will that be? Far from being OP. It might not sway PvPers to change at all.
- In WvW, however, there would now at least be some incentive to equip turrets to defend chokes and the lord’s room. In big fights, they won’t last too long either but the few seconds of stability in the initial engagement is not anything to laugh at.
- In PvE, an engineer would plant his turret next to him as he throws grenades at a world boss from a safe distance. How glorious!

IMHO damage buffs won’t convince anyone to take a turret over a kit. There’s just too much utility that you give up. However, the promise of stability will convince a lot more people to equip turrets and invest in the Invention trait line. Most people would probably forgive the bugs about targeting and damage since turrets won’t be viewed as damage dealers anymore and instead as givers of stability.

digiowl.9620:

Sorry if this is a tangent, but i get the impression that each trait permutation of a skill have its own entry in the game database.

This includes skills that turrets and other AI use.

We can observe how any weapon or utility skill seems to “flip” into its new form upon applying a trait.

As such, i wonder if hitting overcharge makes the turret swap skills for a while. And upon swapping back the server code for some reason reads the wrong skill entry from the database, resulting in the untraited skill being the one used.

Yeah actually that sounds like it could be possible. I’ve had some similar thoughts about a lot of these bugs.

Anymras.5729:

I’ll roll down and attempt clarifications

Thanks! I’ll update my post.

Anymras.5729:

The overcharge turns off the range increase on Thumper and Rocket Turret – the Overcharge itself benefits, and Rocket Turret specifically will fire one normal rocket at traited range, and all attacks after that are at untraited range.
Flame Turret’s overcharge does not trigger (creating a smoke field) unless the turret’s target is within untraited maximum range.

Will split this off into two points.

Anymras.5729:

It’s certainly not indicated that it shouldn’t, and the tooltip does change; the function doesn’t, however.

Sounds like a bug.

The challenging part here and with the power scaling on other turrets is determining whether the tooltips are incorrectly displaying the scaled numbers or the turrets are not scaling as expected. I doubt we’ll be able to determine this ourselves. My feeling is that turrets aren’t meant to scale with stats but use the same tooltips, which are made to scale, as every other skill.

Anymras.5729:

Healing Turret does not affect Condition Remover. Some of the Turrets do contribute to dailies, which is why I didn’t just roll them together, but it’s…very hit-or-miss.

I think it’s safe to say this:

• With some exceptions, turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.

Do you agree?

Anymras.5729:

1. Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the indicator on the skill’s icon itself – if you’re too far away from a target for a given skill to affect said target, a red bar appears on the bottom of the skill’s icon.
Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the distance at which this red bar appears, obfuscating when traited Turrets are in range of a given target.

2. Deployable Turrets do not gain the range increase from Rifled Turret Barrels, no. They have the same maximum range as if Rifled Turret Barrels were inactive, but they do gain the damage.

Thanks for clearing those up too.

runeblade.7514:

MonMalthias.4763:

adrianz.9672:

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

Anymras’s 27+ Turret Bug list of fear and wonderment

Anywhere that I don’t have to click all these links?

It is terribly unorganized.

I’m working on that.

Anymras has already posted his text version a few times too.

herrard.1274:

I would like to see turrets give off a buff specifically stability which I think engineers need better access to. I don’t mind turrets being stationary (they’re turrets after all) but we need help to be able to stand around it to at least try and defend it (the thing is made of glass) without being tossed around by hammers or perma-feared everywhere..

Toss elixir B?
If you’re traited to 30 tools that’s 4 seconds of stability on a 21 second cooldown.
Aside from Warriors and Guardians we have the best stability up-time of any class as far as I can tell.

MonMalthias.4763:

Now, presuming all Turret bugs are fixed, sometime in the near future (hopefully before 2101AD, when War was Beginning), there are several aspects of Turret builds that Engineers lack:
…

• Dull and Weak Toolbelt Skills – Turret Toolbelt skills are almost entirely boring –
  from straight damage like Surprise Shot and Rocket, to situational utility like Rumble.

…

I’m looking over you list but I just wanted to see what others think about this.

I feel like turrets have a lot of DD tool belt skills to make up for the fact that their damage is underwhelming. This has kind of made the toolbelt skills the main attraction as far as using turrets go.

I think it we’re all in agreement that it would be more fun if the turret was the center of attention and the toolbelt skills were more utility centric.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Burst damage – Turrets have a dire lack of followup DPS after their CC, while their inconsistent Condi application means that even if they do scale with Condi damage, they still suck in a Condi build. Lack of Power Scaling also severely curtails any direct damage Turret build.

I personally don’t see turrets having too much to contribute to a condi build, particularly considering how condi heavy we already are. What does everyone else think about that?

MonMalthias.4763:

• Condition Clear – Only Healing Turret can Cleanse and no traits support Cleansing from Toolbelts or Turrets

The class itself is not in a great place cleanse-wise. I imagine this was intentional since we are pretty well rounded in terms of damage mitigation otherwise. That being said, I wouldn’t say no to some more options.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Down State control – (By which I mean, Stealth/Stability uptime to secure stomps and rezzes, corpse cleave, Poison uptime) – The only “hard CC” Engineers have for stomp denial is Accelerant Packed Turrets, Overcharged Net Turret, Overcharged Rocket Turret – but all other aspects of Down State Control are completely absent

This is not my wheelhouse as I mostly PvE. Would love to hear what people have to say about it.
Also, completely off topic, I would love to see more of this aspect of the game in PvE.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Immobility – Turrets may establish a strong firebase of CC and condi application, but their immobility means that many opponents can engage outside of their range, and their fragility makes Turrets a liability in today’s AOE heavy meta. Turrets by themselves also have no ability to bring an opponent into range – they are only threatening if an opponent chooses to engage.

I think that the Magnet skill on the Tool Kit was added for this purpose. Ideally I would be sucking someone into turret range and then doing my best to CC them so that they can’t get out. Between that and trying to keep my turrets up, the skill ceiling for that playstyle would be pretty high. Ideally the rewards would justify it but they don’t at the moment and I would rather just take a kit which is easier to use rewards me with higher dps/survivability.

Here’s an interesting idea I just had: What if turret DPS increased the longer you were able to keep them alive? Maybe the overcharge cooldown triggers as soon as you place the turret but activating the overcharge actually works/makes the turret significantly more powerful?

Or maybe thwacking it with the wrench could build up stacks of a turret buff? I like that idea so much I’m actually a little disappointed that it doesn’t.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Finisher heavy, Field weak – Weapon Kits can bring so many more Combo Fields and Finishers to the table that Turrets are completely outclassed. Blast Finishers dominate the Turret skills, yet Engineer Weapon skills by themselves have no Combo Field. Also keep in mind that while Blast Finishers do dominate, to execute one requires the sacrifice of a Turret – often for inconsequential reward.

I think giving turrets more fields would be interesting. It could give me some incentive to pick up a turret over a bomb kit in certain builds. It could easily be OP though, for other builds it could be an extra 3 stacks of might or few seconds more of stealth that take them a bit over the top.

With that in mind I think it’s more likely that a dedicated turret build would not be very combo heavy.

Warriors are a very combo-light class with access to only on combo field. What are some other classes that don’t rely much on combo fields to be effective? I feel like some good inspiration could come from there.

adrianz.9672:

Anymras.5729:

It’s certainly not indicated that it shouldn’t, and the tooltip does change; the function doesn’t, however.

Sounds like a bug.

The challenging part here and with the power scaling on other turrets is determining whether the tooltips are incorrectly displaying the scaled numbers or the turrets are not scaling as expected. I doubt we’ll be able to determine this ourselves. My feeling is that turrets aren’t meant to scale with stats but use the same tooltips, which are made to scale, as every other skill.

Anymras.5729:

Healing Turret does not affect Condition Remover. Some of the Turrets do contribute to dailies, which is why I didn’t just roll them together, but it’s…very hit-or-miss.

I think it’s safe to say this:

• With some exceptions, turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.

Do you agree?

Turrets were specifically given Condition Duration, Condition Damage, Boon Duration and Healing Power in a patch, so there’s at least some stats they should be scaling with.

And yes, I’d agree with ‘With some exceptions, Turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.’ It might be a bit inspecific for my taste, but it’s a general advisory not to use Turrets for achievements.

Anymras.5729:

And yes, I’d agree with ‘With some exceptions, Turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.’ It might be a bit inspecific for my taste, but it’s a general advisory not to use Turrets for achievements.

Keep in mind, I’m not trying to advise players here. You already have 2 great lists geared towards players. I’m trying to come up with a list that suits this particular forum’s guidelines. As I understand it that would be the shortest most well organized list possible.

Ah, good point. Perfectly fine, then; it gets the point that they’re not working across, after all.

Here’s hoping they start fixing the issues soon. It’s been five months since the list was acknowledged, and I think perhaps two issues from the original list have been addressed.

“Update Engineer: Turret that needs a nerf… Reduce immobilize on net turret by 1 second. (Due to supply drop + net turret combos) Reduced for counter play. Josh explains the Nerfs.”

Well even our utility turrets are getting hit now. If that turret needed a nerf, then do you guys really think our other turrets will actually be buffed? It seems to me our turrets are in a position that anet wants them to be at. Bleed removed from rifle turret, rocket turret had its burning removed…. I’m really just not expecting any buff to turrets at all.

If anything flamethrower and healing turrets will get hit next at this rate.

If they want them to be useless then sure, they’re in a good position.
What about directly deleting the category? Would be faster, after all. It isn’t like they had any use before, and since all they seem to do is making them even more bad patch after patch*, surely they won’t get any in the future as well.

*net turret was supposed to be a 3s immobilize on 10s cooldown; with that patch it will become a 2s on 13s cooldown. And that’s without considering the nerf – no, they call it bug fix – on the overcharge…