Guild Wars 2

Just been reading a few threads on how buggy turrets are and how weak they are compared to other ‘minion’ skills similar to summoning things with individual life bars; since the main complaints consist of a huge mobility restriction compared to the other Classes’ Summoned Skills, wouldn’t a mobile-Turret like skill be sufficient to replace them, especially as I read about a heavily proofed opinion on A-Net not being ‘able to fix them’ because it had been too long since any buffs towards Turrets(that’s to sum it up)?

… What about a Turret-Equipped Golem? Or a Turret with moving Robotic legs? This would equal us to other Classes’ Summoned Skills, especially as the complaints are meeting my troubles when wanting to switch back to (what was) my favourite Engineer Build… I wouldn’t mind if it was a Traited benefit, it’s just others and I are hoping it’d be available for use whether it’s provided with the skill, with a Gem Store-Purchased Upgrade or whether it’s a Trait; if it’s provided, I will buy/use it, and I’m pretty sure most other complainers would too.

I’m not trying to question Turrets in general, but I’m questioning whether a well-fitted recommendation should be put in place for Turrets to be replaced with choosable benefits since it’s (apparently) been too long since another Buff for Turrets. This is a well-suited recommendation towards all the complaints including my own experience to try and, not buff the Turrets too much, but give a choosable benefit to upgrade them in order to equal other Classes’ summoning Skills

Feel free to share your thoughts and knowledge on this subject!

They’re still freaking annoying when someone supply drops on a point, so I wouldn’t say they’re useless, but they can’t chase, so they have some important, though limited, utility.

elite mobile unit that holds all yer turrets n adds to repair for them

Personally, I wouldn’t contribute “They can’t fix them” to a lack of buffs.
I’d contribute it to “There’s a growing list of bugs, and they’ve only fixed the newest.” The only reason the Turret buglist hasn’t broken 28 is because the two most recent horribly stupid bugs (Rocket Turret half-rolled-back and Net Turret turning off) were hotfixed.
That they insist on attempting to rebalance them when they simply don’t work right is a side-issue.

At this point, I…honestly can’t object to the idea of simply replacing them or performing drastic restructuring. It’s necessary. They’re broken to the point that I simply don’t think they can resolve the issues within the existing design.
There’s something like four different versions of Turrets, which probably isn’t helping bugfixing in the least – or QA.

If Turrets were kept, and their functional difficulties resolved, I’d hope the following would occur, aside from any buffs to specific Turrets:

• Power scaling implemented.
• Trait allowing mobility.
• Turrets actually targeting the user’s target – if they insist on keeping the new targeting system. I didn’t dislike their original targeting, but their new implementation brought with it almost immediate reports of Turrets simply not firing because they were turning.
• Putting Detonation as a third chain skill of Turrets, available while Overcharge is on cooldown, allowing Turret Toolbelt skills to be used while Turrets are active.

A proper Elite Turret would also be appreciated – I’m personally of the belief that every skill type should be represented in each tier of the Elite skills, so I suppose I’d really like to see two proper Elite Turrets…and Kits, and Elixirs, and Gadgets.

Moving on.
Despite my initial attraction to the Engineer, and thus my purchase of the game, being due to Turrets…Replacement doesn’t sound that bad. I’ve been bugtesting Turrets for the last four months, as the majority of my play experience, of course, so that might color my opinions a bit.

Suggestions (any or all, it doesn’t matter):
Replace the Turret skillset with other, mobile minions.

• Possible minions that would theoretically not be a disproportionately massive amount of work: Golems (essentially mobile Turrets, full stop), Engines (Mobile, basic function otherwise similar to Turrets, but Overcharge grants boons to nearby allies and creates combo fields instead of modifying attacks; sidesteps whether to have Overcharges reset attack cycles by making them not attacks).
  These would each have their own merits (Golems being simpler, if they can just get the kitten things working, and Engines being more versatile)

Replace the Turret skillset with Devices, sort of like Iron Man’s armor. Essentially, this would be replacing Turrets with tech-based Signets – with a bit of a twist in that it would require initial activation to receive any benefit. I do try to keep a bit of Turret in there…not necessarily for the best.
My apologies. It’s also entirely possible that it would be beneficial to make them behave exactly like Signets, but I’d like us to actually have some unique skills.

• Skill consists of Equip, [Overcharge] and Deactivate. And Toolbelt, of course.
• Equipping grants an indirect effect (buffing particular stats, giving particular effects to attacks or defenses) of moderate power for a relatively long duration and provides access to Overcharge. Power greater than Signet passive at this stage; it requires activation to grant any benefit. Duration sixty seconds or so (identical to Elementalist Conjures), with an energy bar (similar to Thief’s Initiative, Elementalist Conjures, or the Charrzooka. Does not replenish, barring a skill that increases it). Cooldown probably in the same neighborhood.
• Overcharging grants a short-term, powerful effect at the cost of a certain fraction (let’s go with 25%, these are supposed to be relative show-stoppers) of the energy bar – for example, the next few attacks could create chain lightning effects, or AoE knockback.
• Deactivation would be available while Overcharge was on cooldown. Deactivation would not directly decrease cooldown of the Device. Device’s cooldown would automatically (whether Deactivated or timed-out) be reduced based on the fraction of the Energy Bar remaining for the device in question – more Energy, lower cooldown, to a maximum of 75%. Maximum potentially being a consequence of position of skill is intentional; I don’t trust the programmers. Can you blame me?

• Toolbelt skills…I don’t really have any particularly interesting ideas for toolbelt skills. Maybe Anet does. Or will, in any case.

and that’s what I’ve come up with at 4:30 AM. It’s probably an incomprehensible mess; hopefully somebody will have fun making a flowchart of all the ways one of these is a bad idea.

Maybe replacing the overcharge mechanic with a toggle skill that toggles mobility and stationary mode. More dmg/faster attacks while stationary, turrets follow you and move out of AoEs while in mobility mode.

The Deployable Turrets trait could turn the stationary part of your toggle skill into a ground targeting skill that sends your turret to a location and then plants intself there.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

They’re still freaking annoying when someone supply drops on a point, so I wouldn’t say they’re useless, but they can’t chase, so they have some important, though limited, utility.

And this i think is why they are not mobile. A turret engineer is expected to set up shop on a SPVP point, and stay there. Using turrets, mortar and toolkit to keep his “fortress” up against attackers.

May work as a concept in SPVP, but in PVE (and to some degree in WVW) it ends up being pointless, as the rest of the game is built for mobility.

As such, i think the problem with turrets is not their mobility but their “opportunity cost”.

Notice that we have, somewhat like the warrior with banners, the ability to pick turrets back up. This reduce recharge, but it also means that we have to actually run over and grab them after a fight (if they still stand).

But because of this, the recharge time on destruction (or detonate) are set high. This to avoid and engineer simply running circles and refreshing turrets by picking them up and setting them back down again (and also to not turn them into remove controlled bombs).

IMO, the pick up option should go and the recharge reduced accordingly. Thus the engineer can treat them as disposables. And honestly, remove the detonate as well. instead allowing us to always have the tool belt available.

This would also fix the balancing nightmare that is the healing turret, where it is more effective right now to use it as a quick heal (deploy+overcharge+detonate) than it is to deploy and keep out.

And maybe have the overcharge go as well. It is after all the source of maybe half the bugs at present. Instead have it happen automatically every X attacks or so (maybe have a trait that make the turrets open with a overcharge rather than a normal one).

Meaning that once deployed a turret stays out as long as it can survive, and the engineer may during a long fight deploy multiples of the same turret (not unlike how a mesmer can have multiple phantasms of the same type in play).

Turrets do need a serious overhaul. The notion of a summoned mechanical ally is awesome, and right up Engineer’s alley. But, as they are now, not very well designed.

Mobility: Combat is fast & very movement oriented in GW2. So turrets need to either move with us baseline or have a trait similar to Ranger’s Spirit Unbound trait to give them mobility. If free follow movement is too OP (don’t see how) then they could be anchored to a large area with free movement within that. For instance, summon a turret and it can move 1200-2000 range in any direction from the point of placement.

Golem Redesign: Right now we’ve got stationary turrets with low health and low firing speeds and long cooldowns. Sounds enticing huh? Another idea I’ve had is for them to be redesigned entirely into golems with combat roles rather than a single specific skill. Sort of a mash-up of elemental summons and asura racial golems, these wound have a small but specified variety of skills to use. For example, an offensive golem that attacks at melee range, hits fairly weakly but has control skills (cripple, stun, etc); a defensive golem that slowly fires a healing elixir on the ground near the player and randomly bestows boons on surrounding allies; a golem that fires bursts at range and dishes out conditions (poison, torment, etc); a hard-hitting offensive golem with low hp that beats on enemies and inflicts vuln/weakness. These golems would fulfill a role and would be useful in dungeons, WvW point control, even zergs.

Still Turrets, but with New Usage Concept: As it is, we drop em, overcharge em, detonate em. That’s a clunky mechanic, involving too many button presses, and too much time just to get effective usage out of our turrets. What if they’re redesigned to have charges? So they’re summoned and stay put for their for 5 min duration or until their 5 charges are used up. Each time they attack a charge is removed. Lower cooldowns. This way, turrets can’t be left out attacking for long, but they get their jabs inand can be resummoned quickly if necessary.