Guild Wars 2

Why was accelerant packed turrets which was paired with Explosive powder been removed for “Explosions cause vulnerability”? Are u kidding me!?!?! I understand that they added Shaped charge to fill in the explosive powder dmg, but what about accelerant packed turrets? It was an incredible tool for kiting and ccing melee characters and setting up bursts. It is also a primary part of the survivability for builds like Static Discharge. It seems like A-nets main goal with the august balance patch (in terms of engineer) was to destroy SD, or at least the survivability of base engi. This along with the change to kinetic battery has basically ruined half of the sustain that base engineer had. Thx A-Net.

its a null issue anyway since they ruined turrets by removing their overcharge,
they can go ahead and ruin whatever turret traits they like now that turrets are utterly worthless.

No it’s not a null issue, it’s a good trait and healing turret is still used alot. (Some people think the trait might return with future traitline changes)

Liewec.2896:

its a null issue anyway since they ruined turrets by removing their overcharge

but the overcharges are still there oO
in fact, they buffed turrets slightly with this.

if you place a turret, it goes immediately into overcharge, guaranteeing that their first frame is the overcharged effect. no more can you kitten yourself by double-tapping faster than the game could recognize it, resulting in the turret not triggering it’s overcharge, so you’d have to correct your mistake after the first attack frame is over.
now you tap the turret once, get a guaranteed overcharge, and can decide yourself when exactly you want to blow it up.
One bit of hectic piano play less.

Additionally, they moved the blow-up command from the toolbelt to the actual skill, allowing you to place a turret, without blocking your toolbelt. This is a great quality of life improvement.
The only builds suffering from this are those who took static discharge, since they can’t spam 2 bolts from a single turret pick anymore. Sure, this is a nerf to s/d directly, but it also means that the trait no longer needs to be balanced around double its potential, opening it up for a slight buff that all toolbelt skills could profit from.

Ofc turret-heavy builds are nowhere near viable currently (nor are s/d builds) but I think that the design team is heading in the right direction with this change of turret mechanics. And who knows, s/d-builds might profit from this on the long run as well.

Arantheal.7396:

Liewec.2896:

its a null issue anyway since they ruined turrets by removing their overcharge

but the overcharges are still there oO
in fact, they buffed turrets slightly with this.

if you place a turret, it goes immediately into overcharge, guaranteeing that their first frame is the overcharged effect. no more can you kitten yourself by double-tapping faster than the game could recognize it, resulting in the turret not triggering it’s overcharge, so you’d have to correct your mistake after the first attack frame is over.
now you tap the turret once, get a guaranteed overcharge, and can decide yourself when exactly you want to blow it up.
One bit of hectic piano play less.

Additionally, they moved the blow-up command from the toolbelt to the actual skill, allowing you to place a turret, without blocking your toolbelt. This is a great quality of life improvement.
The only builds suffering from this are those who took static discharge, since they can’t spam 2 bolts from a single turret pick anymore. Sure, this is a nerf to s/d directly, but it also means that the trait no longer needs to be balanced around double its potential, opening it up for a slight buff that all toolbelt skills could profit from.

Ofc turret-heavy builds are nowhere near viable currently (nor are s/d builds) but I think that the design team is heading in the right direction with this change of turret mechanics. And who knows, s/d-builds might profit from this on the long run as well.

In PvP, yea SD was usless, but in WvW until the 8th it was still completely viable. Now with all of the trait changes I would say as an SD engi main, that they have torn the build limb from limb. Kinetic Battery nerf was devastating, APT was an incredible defense against melee classes(no more), orbital strike command has gone from a useful double blast finisher with some mean dmg if placed right, to a auto proc beam that will never land on someone, a minor nerf to the boon duration in alchemy, and lastly changing turret destruction from toolbelt to utility slot and calling it a “bug”. So yea, they have not only ruined SD engi, but nerfed a component of almost every base engi build in the game.

Yupp, these were the nerfs of that update.
but tbf, orbital strike wasn’t already landing on a foe reliably, it was always way too easy to sidestep it, especially in wvw. Have you ever seen a roamer being dumb enough to get hit twice by it? I mean, sure I have, but that was more a lack of skill on their side, not something I could pull off against a reasonable good player.
but now it only has a 10 sec cd, outside of the actual mortar tb, so you can keep an enemy more effectively on their toes, bait their dodges and blast your fields way more often, especially if you stay close and comfy in melee range. Bonus: I can take this rng blastfinisher and are not even forced to slot mortar itself for it.

>Kinetic Battery nerf was devastating
never really liked that trait, tbh. way too unreliable, but I understand that this is just my personal opinion. Still, in exchange we got the gadgeteer & lock on changes, which especially s/d builds will profit from. PBR both has nice dmg, low cd on the tb skill, and uses the ammo system on a 4sec cd, and especially because of the latter, it kinda serves as successor to the defense from the old APT trait.

Additionally, photon forges’ tb skill particle accelerator only has 8sec cd, that has slightly less dmg than surprise shot, but pierces 5 targets and cripples. Even better, it comes on top of the photon wall that will reflect projectiles above 50% heat while also getting bigger and always moves with you.

so slot rifle, photon wall, PBR and rifle turret, and you can spam s/d bolts on top of fairly hard hitting skills that also apply cripple and – in case of PBR – additionally daze.
S/D probably will have a comeback sooner than you think

As I said, yes this update came with some nerfs, but in general, I’d say the pros way outweight the cons, at least in my opinion. I mean is -5% boon duration really a game-changer? What did we get in turn: EPK has no internal cd anymore. Big boomer, and blasting zone both giving awesome stats, and minesweeper is a surprisingly decent trait, especially in wvw.
Gadgeteer is freakking amazing as well, and outside of s/d builds, if you pick gadgeteer, reactive lenses now profit from it as well.

I had a hiatus for 2 years, and I have to say, the current state of the engineer is the best I’ve seen it in since 3 years, arguably even since the death of 100 nades…

Overcharge on other turrets don’t work as well as they used to really.

The other turrets are fine how they are with the overcharge happening instantly but the healer turret needs work.

Either that or they need to seriously remove the long cooldowns we have on most of them.

The knockback from turrets is a must and they need to add that back to the explosive line.