Guild Wars 2

Topic title, my main character is a burn guardian that i use for pvp and wvw but it really lacks usefulness in alot of pve aspects. So I would like to try to make a turret based engineer build work for dungeons and such, anyone run this type of build?

if you want to be useful?

no, it sucks. play 4 kits + healing turret and learn the ins and outs of engi

The only turret worth slotting 100% of the time is the healing turret. All the other turrets are useless filler skills to make the engineer look cool from a marketing perspective, but serve no viable function. They’ve been gradually nerfed over the last 4 years and will only handicap you for each one you equip. The only time I use offensive turrets is during some world boss events to tag mobs for loot while I chill-out and wait for the boss to spawn. Other than that, they’re relics of an old game that no longer exists.

Yobculture.5786:

if you want to be useful?

no, it sucks. play 4 kits + healing turret and learn the ins and outs of engi

There’s not really anything about the engineer to make me want to take the time to play it if turrets suck :P so that’s not gonna happen xD thanks for reply anyways though I appreciate it!

Nate.8146:

The only turret worth slotting 100% of the time is the healing turret. All the other turrets are useless filler skills to make the engineer look cool from a marketing perspective, but serve no viable function. They’ve been gradually nerfed over the last 4 years and will only handicap you for each one you equip. The only time I use offensive turrets is during some world boss events to tag mobs for loot while I chill-out and wait for the boss to spawn. Other than that, they’re relics of an old game that no longer exists.

Well that sucks, see previous reply to the rest of it so i dont have to type twice xD thank you for your reply! on to look for a different class.

If you only like engie for its turrets, you should change profession.

They fun to mess around with but actually being useful…yea, stick with what has been proven. But don’t drop the class just because of them, unless its the only thing you liked, then yea, you hosed.

(Post is about PvE only!)

Wahoo and heya!

Turrets are very useful, but they need expirience to be useful. Here a short list wich turret is good for what:

Healing Turret (Both)
Plain simple the best heal skill we have. Condi cleanse, water field, blast finisher, aoe heal, everything you want.

Rifle Turret (Power Build)
Never leaves your bar as a max dps power Engi. You will mainly be using it’s toolbelt, a simply shot with a low cd and no cast time. Spam it! You will use the Rifle Turret itself only as a blast finisher and for cc (blowing up turrets causes knockback (trait)).

Rocket Turret (Power Build)
While weaker than the Rifle Turret dps wise (the utility slot, not the turret itself), it’s toolbelt still is a strong wide AoE, equally strong as Big Ol’ Bomb of the Bomb Kit. You want to use the turret itself for cc only. Place it, immediately overcharge it, wich launches a rocket with a wide aoe 3s knockdown (tooltip lies), then blow it up for more cc. It’s a good utility skill for long lasting wide stuns against trash or as a breakbar wrecker.

Thumper Turret (Both)
This turret is quite special. It has 3 blast finishers and also the highest amount of cc of any skill the Engi has. It alone deals over 600 defiance bar damage, wich is massive. Due to it’s mutltiple finishers, it’s very easy to stack lots of might, stealth or heal with it. It’s not really a dps increase however, so only use it if you really have to.

Flame Turret (Condi Build)
While normally the Flame Thrower is the 3rd meta kit for a condi Engi, you can also use a Flame Turret instead if you fight trash mobs. The FT has too high cds and only a small aoe. The Flame Turret’s toolbelt acts like a 2nd Fire Bomb, the Turret overcharge like a 2nd Smoke Bomb with some cleave burn. Use it for trash mobs. Pick the turret up so you get 25% cdr, since you might wanna swap it for boss fights.

Net Turret (… None)
Well … NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG! :o

The thing about Turrets in PvE is: a) You don’t use all of them at the same time and b) when you use them, then only for a short amount of time. You either blow or pick them up (-25% cd) right after the overcharge.

Engi is mainly about using Grenades and Bombs. The last utility skill can be a turret. Just pick that skill according to the situation.

If you have any questions, just go ask.

Greez!

Xyonon.3987:

(Post is about PvE only!)

Wahoo and heya!

Turrets are very useful, but they need expirience to be useful.
Engi is mainly about using Grenades and Bombs. The last utility skill can be a turret. Just pick that skill according to the situation.

If you have any questions, just go ask.

---

Greez!

Have so missed you mate!! See right there, put us all in our places. I had a feeling that they could be good in certain situations, glad to see my hunch was right.

Turrets are currently better solely for supportive Engineers since with max boon duration you have the ability to buff a party with steady streams of buffs that require no further input from the player. For instance dropping a thumping turret and running around with a PUG keeping them protected 60% of the time generally ensures that the ones who are new don’t just instantly wipe.

Otherwise there are better options no matter how you spin it.

Turret engi is meta.

@Xyonon thanks for the breakdown of the different turrets. Regardless of whether one agrees with your conclusion that turrets are in the end worth taking your advice will surely help those who do field them to get the most out of them ::)

Your advice also draws attention to one of the main issues holding back turrets right now: they are not worth leaving out. The only exception to this is (again) the healing turret – giving everyone who stays in the area permanent regen and instant-cast cleansing bursts can be good for point defence tasks in PvE.

I only play turret or gyro engineer. I hate kits.

Xyonon.3987:

Rocket Turret (Power Build)
While weaker than the Rifle Turret dps wise (the utility slot, not the turret itself), it’s toolbelt still is a strong wide AoE, equally strong as Big Ol’ Bomb of the Bomb Kit. You want to use the turret itself for cc only. Place it, immediately overcharge it, wich launches a rocket with a wide aoe 3s knockdown (tooltip lies), then blow it up for more cc. It’s a good utility skill for long lasting wide stuns against trash or as a breakbar wrecker.

Wait. Hang on. So for as far as i remember the rocket turret used to only knock down one target (its also stated as a note on the earlier wiki pages).

Then they update the tooltip to specifically say one target only. And THEN it hits five targets?? Wow. After all these years and they still find ways to surprise me.

Hehe yea, the turrets are kinda weird. Like Thumper turrets overcharged immediately will use it’s skill twice, causing 2x knockback, but only the first one is a blast finisher :| The blast finisher also occures on the turrets place, but the toolbelt to blow up turrets always happens at your position. So dual blast at two different positions xP

#justengithings

Nate.8146:

The only turret worth slotting 100% of the time is the healing turret. All the other turrets are useless filler skills to make the engineer look cool from a marketing perspective, but serve no viable function. They’ve been gradually nerfed over the last 4 years and will only handicap you for each one you equip. The only time I use offensive turrets is during some world boss events to tag mobs for loot while I chill-out and wait for the boss to spawn. Other than that, they’re relics of an old game that no longer exists.

Why are you using so many kits? I am using two.

Ishmael.3642:

Nate.8146:

The only turret worth slotting 100% of the time is the healing turret. All the other turrets are useless filler skills to make the engineer look cool from a marketing perspective, but serve no viable function. They’ve been gradually nerfed over the last 4 years and will only handicap you for each one you equip. The only time I use offensive turrets is during some world boss events to tag mobs for loot while I chill-out and wait for the boss to spawn. Other than that, they’re relics of an old game that no longer exists.

Why are you using so many kits? I am using two.

One kit gives 5 skills – it’s kind of a no-brainer once you explore the inner workings of the Engineer class, especially if you play Condition builds. Plus, kits are where Engineer gets most of its utility from. Even if you’re not indirectly trying to get the most out of your Engineer damage-wise, you’re still going end up using at least 3 kits in PvE regularly – Grenade, Bomb and Mortar. Elixir gun has free condition clear, AoE condition clear, an escape/blast finisher and leap backwards, Flamethrower has blind and a momentary projectile reflect which counts as a pushback that deals a considerable amount of CC damage, and Toolkit has… well… the shield, which is a completely fine substitute for Bomb or FT kit on a condition Engineer build under certain circumstances (ie, soloing content).

I basically use Mortar kit because it’s the only one that isn’t completely trash out of all the elites, but you can use Elixir X to some extent although the cooldown is ridiculous. The toolbelt skill on Mortar Kit also does considerable damage for a Power build.

I’m surprised how often I see this explanation since you only need the bomb kit if you’re just looking for damage and it’s a physical build in regular PvE. Anything else is really a liability and just makes things take longer.

DGraves.3720:

I’m surprised how often I see this explanation since you only need the bomb kit if you’re just looking for damage and it’s a physical build in regular PvE. Anything else is really a liability and just makes things take longer.

Grenade Kit toolbelt skill deals 30k crits in raids, which is basically self-explanatory. Grenade 2, 4 and 5 should be a theoretical DPS increase over Bomb 1 but I’ll have to do some testing later. Your choice after that basically depends on what you need but I normally take Rifle Turret for extra DPS off the toolbelt skill.

I mean it’s true that Bomb kit does do a whole load of damage, but you might as well squeeze a bit more out with the other utility slots that you have.

Raids are hardly “Regular PvE”.

No grenade skill is a DPS increase over Bomb 1 if you’re running power. Even if you ran a basic theoretical run:

1000 power x 1 weapon placeholder x 1.25 coefficient / 1 defense = 1250 bomb damage

1000 power x 1 weapon placeholder x .99 coefficient / 1 defense = 990 grenade damage

990 grenade physical damage + X condition damage = 1250 bomb damage

1250 – 990 = 260 damage to “equal”.

Since we are looking for “greater than” we add one to equilibrium: 260 + 1 = 261

261 total condition damage across three grenades / 3 three grenades = 87 condition damage per grenade per second.

Just thinking quickly without any interesting depth you would need a condition attached to your grenade that does 87 damage at zero condition damage for each grenade every second. Burning isn’t an option so it just doesn’t compare.

But that’s off topic.

DGraves you’re forgetting that shrapnel/freeze/poison grenades all do more than your standard .99 coefficient grenade just in pure damage before the conditions. (1.5 coefficient for poison/freeze, and 1.65 for shrapnel).

That is very true and I had forgotten that. Thanks for the correction.

So then there’s nothing to test theoretically since kits don’t have a varying weapon power.

The only thing that would be left to consider is swap / activation / swap vs. just not swapping but that’s time related and gets more tricky.

Wahoo.

I’m creating skill priority lists for each major balance patch for the Engi. Unfortunately I currently have a broken computer and am playing on my Laptop, so I can’t give you the up to date numbers. However slightly older ones should still do it.

The skills in the lists gained a DpiSCT number. It’s the combination of total damage applied and the cast time required to do so.

For example: The discussion above – bomb #1 vs let’s say grenade #4 (freeze) was only made based on damage, not cast time. Those two skills deal almost exactly the same damage, since Freeze Grenade takes way longer to cast (1s or 0.67s with Quickness) than bomb #1 (0.84s or 0.56s with Quickness).

This is the power Scrapper list (Engi deals 10% more power damage, so it might be a little bit different from Scrapper. Don’t have vanilla Engi rdy for now):

• Surprise Shot (?)
• Incendiary Ammo (?)
• Grenade Barrage (50’500)
• Thunderclap (48’000)
• Mine Field (46’000)
• Big Ol’ Bomb (42’000)
• Napalm (38’500)
• Rocket (35’500)
• Electro-whirl (34’500)
• Pry Bar (34’000)
• Acid Bomb (34’000)
• Blowtorch (33’500)
• Blunderbuss (33’000)
• Launch personal Battering Ram (32’000)
• Shrapnel Grenade (30’500)
• Thump (28’500)
• Throw Wrench (28’500)
• Fire Bomb (27’000)
• Poison Grenade (26’500)
• Flame Blast (25’000)
• Rocket Kick (23’500)
• Personal Battering Ram (22’500)
• Freeze Grenade (21’500)
• Jump Shot (21’000)
• Bomb (20’000)

Most of those skills have a very high cd or are simply bound to otherwise horrible weapons, like Blowtorch for power. For example, while Freeze Grenade deals ~5% more damage than a bomb aa, over the cd that results into +50 dps… yes, 50. So don’t get fooled by nice numbers.

Also got a “flat dps increase over bomb aa”- list somewhere…

But there are plenty of skills, stronger than the bomb aa. I suggest to use them :P

Greez!

Dravyn.4671:

I only play turret or gyro engineer. I hate kits.

This is a theme amung MANY who try engineer. Swapping kits to be effective is NOT FUN for the majority of people, and is a total pain to balance.
Frankly they need to rethink this whole idea and make the kits f-skills and just remove the toolbelt. Removal of the toolbelt means our skills can then be buffed to one degree or another. The Irony here is this would allow for easier balancing, and thus better inclusion into meta and finding a niche for engineer to fill, but the current rabid engineer player base would throw a tantrum of epic proportions if you did anything this radical.

Kits should NEVER have been made the engineer’s “thing” IMO…they should have stuck with direct grenade skills, land mines, rocket skills, and turrets. Keep the toolbelt skills, give the engineer some more weapons (dual axes should have always been a thing for engi), maybe an offhand focus/dagger but it just acts as a grenade holster or something.
I say this as someone that LOVES the flamethrower.

The kits have never been a uniquely engineer thing anyway, elementalists have them as well on a cooldown (elemental weapon conjuring) and they can share there kits with other players! Warriors also have kits purely for buff purposes but they have them (banners) and other players can again make use of them. What has been unique to engineers has always been the TURRETS and the focus on explosives/mines/grenades.