Guild Wars 2

This is probably already a subject that is posted serveral times. The Engineer is a very interesting class. And in my opinion, a class unique to Guild Wars 2. Sadly the Class is underpowered.

There were to major keypoints brought up to play Engineer:

Kits and Turrets.

While we have many problems with the class the major one is Turrets. And this topic is all about ideas to make it better. And hopefully a Shout-out to members of the Arenanet team to let us know what kind of ideas they have for Turrets and the global future of the Engineer.

So what kind of ideas should make the Turrets better?

Survivability

No-Damage

Make it so Turrets don’t get damage at all. Turrets get blasted out to soon and there is nothing you can do about it. Turrets should be a skill that stays a moment and can be used on different places.

To counter the god-mode of the Turrets is that they only stay online for like 1 minute. This way you can’t spam them. And they are actually used for something.

Merg Traits and change them

Make the Metal Plating and Autotool Installation merge and make it so that instead of 30% less damage dealt on turrets. Change it to be a double amount of health or make it so that your healing power/Thoughness/Vitalty an percentage of it gives the damage reduction, more health and more healing per second. Make it so that they are part of us.

The Walking Turrets

Gives us a new trait which make us able to augment the turrets with spider-like, legs. They move with us like pets. This way they survive, hopefully, more AoE attacks and we are less grounded by the Cooldowns of the Turret skills.

Global

Give the turrets better AI, let them attack the same person we are targetting. Not that we are fighting the boss and my turret decides that a crystal is more scary.

These are just examples. I am going to post more later on. But I want to play some Aetherblade now. I like to know what you guys think and what your ideas are.

ENGINEERS UNITE

Yes! Turrets really do need a proper fix. Currently they give very little damage and their health really not help the situation, turrets seem to spend more time on cooldown than in use. Whilst I am not sure on walking turrets (that perhaps would be a little OP – being confined to one area would counteract a higher damage output, keeping a strong balance between the two.

Engineer’s are not underpowered … not even close. But of course some turret buffs would be amazing!

Edit: I love your Walking Turrets idea. Would make them way more interesting in PvE.

Gotta comment on the walking turrets. The idea of having some kind of steam pet’d make a lot of us feel more like an engineer. Dunno how the balance’d go, but it’s not really my job to balance the game, of course. But i do dig the whole idea.

+Net turret looks like a steam spider.

+Flame turret looks like a steam drake.

Not all need to look like a steam creature of course.

+Thumper turret a mini cannon on tank tread

+Blah blah, et cetra.

Oh, and our class is the class made for creative thinking and dancing around like an action hero to survive. That’s not underpowered, that’s bacon. I always liked the idea that only a select few can handle the Engineer.

Turrets are what drew me to the engineer in the first beta but now its only the heal turret I use. I agree they need to be more like pets with toughness due to being made of metal. The elite is fun but can be taken out in no time.

Hmm, I think walking turrets would go against the idea of turrets as an area denial skill. admittedly it is a choice (trait) and also as stated Turrets aren’t really working as an area denial tool at all at the moment as they die like flys (necro joke).

I like the idea of just no damage or exceptional high toughness.. You need to think twice about fighting a turreted up engineer on his own turf, This plays into the GW2 combat concepts on movement being a significant factor (eg the supposed reason for the torment condition). In this case the denial of movement or dangerous movement.

Whereas Guardian has a number of skills that are about defensive area denial. Turret Engineer should excel at offensive area denial.

Anet made wallpapers of turrets with wheels.

Give them a high innate toughness, and immunity to bleed and poison.

Metal Plating → Reactive armor: Turrets have retaliation.

RobinotX.1604:

To counter the god-mode of the Turrets is that they only stay online for like 1 minute. This way you can’t spam them. And they are actually used for something.

One minute is 30 seconds too long for indestructible predator drones. Even the Asura racial elite golems (which are basically what walking turrets are) don’t last longer (40 seconds) than that. Either drop the duration down to 30 seconds, or buff all the other summons’ durations across the board (maybe doubling the golems’ duration to a minute and a quarter, and others like the Silvari wolf to a minute and a half).

the walking turrets, the fix of the AI, and in general this quote “Make it so that they are part of us.” is what i need too !!!

i would disagree with the god mode turrets though :p

please is there anyone who wants a steampunk exoskeleton for engineers elite ???

Imho, they should be really, really resistant. And that should be a baseline feature, to counter the huge drawback that is “no mobility”.
They may rework them so and change the traits. Remove the current adept and master trait in inventions. Make the adept one give some passive buff or boon to them (dunno, retaliation as said above) and then, maybe, make the master trait giving them mobility, but reducing resistance and range (basically giving the choice of a strong offensive area denial or, basically, using them like mechanical minions).

Overkillengine.6084:

Give them a high innate toughness, and immunity to bleed and poison.

Metal Plating -> Reactive armor: Turrets have retaliation.

Only thing which could work without breaking turrets.

+1 for FIXING turrents at least once!

I disagree. Especially the Walking turret traits. Turrets were not designed to be pets

Alternative:

Grandmaster trait:
Turret Territory- Engineer gets 8.25% damage reduction for every turret deployed. They also get 33% stun reduction and regeneration if they are near a turret.

4 turrets out give 33% damage reduction.

With this, there would be two ways to play Turret Engineers:

Roaming or bunkering.

When bunkering, you choose a spot to place turrets down and defend it with your life.

When roaming, you can place turrets in strategic area like Ritualist profession did in Jade Quarry. Ritualist would put spirits in the center of the map to damage incoming enemies, turtles or juggernaut. The engineer would run around with the 33% damage reduction.

Skribulous.3521:

RobinotX.1604:

To counter the god-mode of the Turrets is that they only stay online for like 1 minute. This way you can’t spam them. And they are actually used for something.

One minute is 30 seconds too long for indestructible predator drones. Even the Asura racial elite golems (which are basically what walking turrets are) don’t last longer (40 seconds) than that. Either drop the duration down to 30 seconds, or buff all the other summons’ durations across the board (maybe doubling the golems’ duration to a minute and a quarter, and others like the Silvari wolf to a minute and a half).

Golem is a racial skill, and therefore is supposed to be inferior to all normal skills. 40 seconds to the normals 1 minute is about right.

I had to log just to participate at this thread.

I love turrets as an engineer, i really do! I think they are awesome… when they survive.

So here is what happen to my turrets most of the time

-Drop a turret with the mobs half health to help me get a boost in damage to finish it, EVERY SINGLE ENEMIES change to my turret and gang…. it, it take nearly a second and no more turret. Sometime my rocket launcher turret doesnt even have time to do it special move. I dont mind that my turret take the heat for me but it now turn it into a 60 seconds for a single attack that it take instead of me.

-Veteran mobs usually 2 shots my turret

-Tried metal plating, tried to be specced in power wrench, i cannot make my turret live through a veteran that decide to attack it. Even worse, to heal my turret, i usually have to place myself in the cleave cone and still take damage to try to maintain a subpar turret damage. So i lose life and i lose attacks i could be doing myself to maintain the turrets. I can sometime position myself good and get both the turret and the enemy but usually its not worth it, my turret die

-Champion one shot my turrets, even the thumper

-Except for world pve (not talking about pvp, didnt try my engi in pvp), my turrets are useless. In dungeon, often its the smart target/wide aoe that kill it. The enemies doesnt even have to go to my turret and destroy it. Even if its not an aoe, i dropped yesterday a rocket turret and as soon as it was deployed, a ghost soldier immediatly ran toward it, one shot it and went back to its target… i was like … O.O … -_-’

-Does not fire on my enemy. For exemple the Rocket turret special move. I was fighting an ogre, had it highlighted and was firing on him. I drop my turret, select the ogre, press it special attack and it fire on a rock dog on the other side …

So even if you spec with everything, self repair, higher health, run tool kit, it is not even worth it, not a small bit. Their cooldown is long, you can yourself in danger trying to repair them.

The only usefulness they have is if you take the trait to deploy them where you want to (deployable turret), you can peel the enemy for a couple seconds. They run to your turret, destroy it and come back on you.

Would love to make a turret build, sadly they can only be useful in world pve and even there —-- …

Turrets need a lot of work to be viable. Wasting 30 points in their tree is simply wasting 30 points.

I’ll post again.

For all pets including turrets, pets need a minimum of 80% AOE damage immunity, they need to all have mobility options like the spirits of the rangers, and they need to have options that dramatically increase their damage in the traits even if they are grandmaster traits (and 15% doesn’t cut it seriously).

Until these things happen all pets will be mediocre at best especially turrets.

Turrets?

You mean those things that give me a toolbelt skill, and when I use the actual skill it gives me a blast finisher toolbelt skill?

Who knew they actually do other things if you don’t immediately blow them up!?

…oh but those things are crappy?

…so why don’t they turn off those things and make them do something else?

Seriously though, the AI in GW2 is so @#$%in’ bad it makes Jessica @#$%in’ Simpson look like Stephen @#$%in’ Hawking!

Fix:
1) make your AI at least take some night classes at a community college, cause its got less smarts than a soap dish…and saying that gives me the urge to apologize for insulting the soap dish.
2) Reduce the cool downs to place turrets to be the same as kit recharges but retain the cool downs for the activated skills and create a 15 second cool down for the Detonate toolbelt skill for each turret. That way you can spam the turrets but not always activate them. And who cares if you can spam the turret? They do mediocre damage unless you trait for when they explode on destroyed. Toss a global 10 second CD on that trait and call it a day.

Obscure One.4357:

Turrets?

You mean those things that give me a toolbelt skill, and when I use the actual skill it gives me a blast finisher toolbelt skill?

Who knew they actually do other things if you don’t immediately blow them up!?

…oh but those things are crappy?

…so why don’t they turn off those things and make them do something else?

Seriously though, the AI in GW2 is so @#$%in’ bad it makes Jessica @#$%in’ Simpson look like Stephen @#$%in’ Hawking!

Fix:
1) make your AI at least take some night classes at a community college, cause its got less smarts than a soap dish…and saying that gives me the urge to apologize for insulting the soap dish.
2) Reduce the cool downs to place turrets to be the same as kit recharges but retain the cool downs for the activated skills and create a 15 second cool down for the Detonate toolbelt skill for each turret. That way you can spam the turrets but not always activate them. And who cares if you can spam the turret? They do mediocre damage unless you trait for when they explode on destroyed. Toss a global 10 second CD on that trait and call it a day.

Turrets without a CD would be ridiculous. Always having a turret that heals you? Always having access to passive attacks that proc traits and have burning, immobilize, and cripple? Come on, now.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Obscure One.4357:

Turrets?

You mean those things that give me a toolbelt skill, and when I use the actual skill it gives me a blast finisher toolbelt skill?

Who knew they actually do other things if you don’t immediately blow them up!?

…oh but those things are crappy?

…so why don’t they turn off those things and make them do something else?

Seriously though, the AI in GW2 is so @#$%in’ bad it makes Jessica @#$%in’ Simpson look like Stephen @#$%in’ Hawking!

Fix:
1) make your AI at least take some night classes at a community college, cause its got less smarts than a soap dish…and saying that gives me the urge to apologize for insulting the soap dish.
2) Reduce the cool downs to place turrets to be the same as kit recharges but retain the cool downs for the activated skills and create a 15 second cool down for the Detonate toolbelt skill for each turret. That way you can spam the turrets but not always activate them. And who cares if you can spam the turret? They do mediocre damage unless you trait for when they explode on destroyed. Toss a global 10 second CD on that trait and call it a day.

Turrets without a CD would be ridiculous. Always having a turret that heals you? Always having access to passive attacks that proc traits and have burning, immobilize, and cripple? Come on, now.

Ok ok ok. I admit no CD may be a bit much. How about a buff for while they are on CD then?

…no that just puts in more emphasis to just explode them…

Umm, how about Turrets are invulnerable for 5 seconds when placed and a trait, maybe Power Wrench, allows you to increase the invulnerablity by 1 second as long as you hit them with your Wrench?

Make turret recovery like Axton in BL2, maybe? If you detonate your turret or lose it, you suffer the full cool down. If you recover it, it gives you a buff that reduces the cool down time on that specific turret.

Obscure One.4357:

AlietteFaye.7316:

Obscure One.4357:

Turrets?

You mean those things that give me a toolbelt skill, and when I use the actual skill it gives me a blast finisher toolbelt skill?

Who knew they actually do other things if you don’t immediately blow them up!?

…oh but those things are crappy?

…so why don’t they turn off those things and make them do something else?

Seriously though, the AI in GW2 is so @#$%in’ bad it makes Jessica @#$%in’ Simpson look like Stephen @#$%in’ Hawking!

Fix:
1) make your AI at least take some night classes at a community college, cause its got less smarts than a soap dish…and saying that gives me the urge to apologize for insulting the soap dish.
2) Reduce the cool downs to place turrets to be the same as kit recharges but retain the cool downs for the activated skills and create a 15 second cool down for the Detonate toolbelt skill for each turret. That way you can spam the turrets but not always activate them. And who cares if you can spam the turret? They do mediocre damage unless you trait for when they explode on destroyed. Toss a global 10 second CD on that trait and call it a day.

Turrets without a CD would be ridiculous. Always having a turret that heals you? Always having access to passive attacks that proc traits and have burning, immobilize, and cripple? Come on, now.

Ok ok ok. I admit no CD may be a bit much. How about a buff for while they are on CD then?

…no that just puts in more emphasis to just explode them…

Umm, how about Turrets are invulnerable for 5 seconds when placed and a trait, maybe Power Wrench, allows you to increase the invulnerablity by 1 second as long as you hit them with your Wrench?

Are we talking about PvP or PvE here? Because honestly, Turrets are pretty okay in PvP at the moment. Some are used more than others because of how PvP emphasizes on holding points, of course. But for the most part, they aren’t instantly dead and they definitely help the Engineer out.

digitalruse.9085:

Make turret recovery like Axton in BL2, maybe? If you detonate your turret or lose it, you suffer the full cool down. If you recover it, it gives you a buff that reduces the cool down time on that specific turret.

That’s already how it works..

AlietteFaye.7316:

Are we talking about PvP or PvE here? Because honestly, Turrets are pretty okay in PvP at the moment. Some are used more than others because of how PvP emphasizes on holding points, of course. But for the most part, they aren’t instantly dead and they definitely help the Engineer out.

PvE and WvW. In sPvP the thumper, net, and rocket are useful for holding a point but with the Accelerant Packed Turrets trait, it encourages using them for the activated skill, and detonating them immediately after since they wear out their usefulness literally that quickly.

Obscure One.4357:

digitalruse.9085:

Make turret recovery like Axton in BL2, maybe? If you detonate your turret or lose it, you suffer the full cool down. If you recover it, it gives you a buff that reduces the cool down time on that specific turret.

That’s already how it works..

Huh… must not be significant enough to notice.

(25%. Blech. On the 20s cooldowns that is a whole 5 seconds… weee… On the minute ones you can probably feel that difference, but I pretty much never recover my healing turret and just det for the water blast.)

digitalruse.9085:

Obscure One.4357:

digitalruse.9085:

Make turret recovery like Axton in BL2, maybe? If you detonate your turret or lose it, you suffer the full cool down. If you recover it, it gives you a buff that reduces the cool down time on that specific turret.

That’s already how it works..

Huh… must not be significant enough to notice.

(25%. Blech. On the 20s cooldowns that is a whole 5 seconds… weee… On the minute ones you can probably feel that difference, but I pretty much never recover my healing turret and just det for the water blast.)

There in lies the problem. It’s significantly more useful to ritualistically sacrifice your turrets on the altar of a combo field than to use them as actual turrets. I’ve been playing Engineer since launch and still have no idea how long a turret can stay placed before it self destructs…namely because either myself or an enemy never let’s it get to that point.

Obscure One.4357:

digitalruse.9085:

Obscure One.4357:

digitalruse.9085:

Make turret recovery like Axton in BL2, maybe? If you detonate your turret or lose it, you suffer the full cool down. If you recover it, it gives you a buff that reduces the cool down time on that specific turret.

That’s already how it works..

Huh… must not be significant enough to notice.

(25%. Blech. On the 20s cooldowns that is a whole 5 seconds… weee… On the minute ones you can probably feel that difference, but I pretty much never recover my healing turret and just det for the water blast.)

There in lies the problem. It’s significantly more useful to ritualistically sacrifice your turrets on the altar of a combo field than to use them as actual turrets. I’ve been playing Engineer since launch and still have no idea how long a turret can stay placed before it self destructs…namely because either myself or an enemy never let’s it get to that point.

That’s only true for Healing Turret, imo. (Maybe Flame) Detonating any other turrets would seem to be more detrimental otherwise.
As for how long you can place them down, they have recently changed this to be 5 minutes. Previously there was no limit on how long you could keep them out.

digitalruse.9085:

Huh… must not be significant enough to notice.

(25%. Blech. On the 20s cooldowns that is a whole 5 seconds… weee… On the minute ones you can probably feel that difference, but I pretty much never recover my healing turret and just det for the water blast.)

I think 25% is a pretty good CD reduction. However, the usefulness on detonating Healing Turret overshadows the point of picking up a turret. The others are okay for picking up, but you’re usually too busy to do so.

AlietteFaye.7316:

I think 25% is a pretty good CD reduction. However, the usefulness on detonating Healing Turret overshadows the point of picking up a turret. The others are okay for picking up, but you’re usually too busy to do so.

Like I was saying, on the 20s ones, a whole 5 seconds isn’t going to make or break anything. As I was leveling I tried various turrets (Even tried a rifle + 3 turret build) and my experience was kinda sad. The turrets are either so fragile anyway that you just want to drop and pop before they are broken and then the 25% doesn’t even matter, or the CD on them slows down your progress way more than the engi skipping along like the TF2 Pyro murdering all who come before him.

I only hit 80 last week and am just scraping the surface on end game content, but many parties either flat out do not want Engis and ask if I have an alt, or tell me how I have to spec. Very reminiscent of my time playing a Warden in DAoC (Bubble Chant), an RDM in FFXI (Refresh), or a Druid in WoW (Innervate), or a Ritualist in GW1, or a Chanter in Aion or a Science Vessel in SWO, etc…

No MMO maker that I can think of gets the hybrid/support classes correct right out the gate. Eventually they get the polish and respect they deserve, but it is frustrating for someone who is drawn to these types of classes to relive the deja vu over and over again. There is just something about their dynamic that irritates/breaks the “holy trinity”. That said, I had hopes with ArenaNet eschewing that paradigm that things would be radically different. The engineer is certainly not a hopeless/lost cause like some of the above are/were, but it can still be frustrating.

Again, in the end, this thread and efforts by the devs in the last couple of months (from what I have read) has been about breaking the idea that you have to be a grenadier, or juggernaut, or HGH to be an effective engineer. So there is progress, I think some of the long time players just want assurances that the momentum continues in that direction and can break the already existing molds/stereotypes that seem to haunt the class.

tigirius.9014:

I’ll post again.

For all pets including turrets, pets need a minimum of 80% AOE damage immunity, they need to all have mobility options like the spirits of the rangers, and they need to have options that dramatically increase their damage in the traits even if they are grandmaster traits (and 15% doesn’t cut it seriously).

Until these things happen all pets will be mediocre at best especially turrets.

No, no and no! Pets should never have any AoE damage resistance when you play a game wich has a target limit on every AoE for the simple reason it will get exploited. Get a team of Engies with turrets and they will soak up all the damage done by ennemies AoE while those are regenerating in combat. It is like 40K AoE shield wich is immune to condition in game. People always say they are fragile but they always seems to forget they are completely immune to condition damage, wich is usualy the main reason why other pets are going to die. In this case, AoEs are turrets main ennemy and we should be able to paliate to this problem partialy while not making it OP.

To fix the AoE issue, Anet could arleady start by reducing the hitbox from every turrets, right now it is not far from the size of a Giganticus Lupicus and they will often get stucked by AoEs while those should clearly be out of the red circles. Secondly, if they realy want to make turrets stronger against area denial they could always add a way to give temporary protection to turrets (like Eagis or Protection) when turrets are targeted by AoE or they could increase the frequency and healing powers of Autotool instalation.

The grandmaster trait “Turrets Rifled Barrels” is more about the extra range, the extra damage is more a gimick I agree. I made a post recently about turrets and my idea was to increase the intial condition duration from every turrets while keeping the already existing advantages and tweaking them a bit. Another way to improve this trait would be to improve the frequency between attacks or reduce the cooldown of the overcharge abilities.

I made a post not long ago about turrets and how to improve them, you can check it on the lin bellow :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Engineer-Ideas-Discussion/first#post2320144

Not only are turrets underpowered, they can’t even target big bosses (like dragons)! I just found this out after spending 8 gold and 50 laurels kitting out my engineer for magic find. What the hell, ArenaNet? There is absolutely no excuse for that, especially when Necro pets target bosses just fine! Fix it!

I have mentioned mobile turrets before, and I still think it is needed, as is a more minor thing of changing the turret skins for the most part, most look horrible, but admittedly that is a tiny thing to worry about.

On a side note, and I don’t mean to hijack the thread, medkits should explode like grenades when they hit the ground and do some reasonable AoE healing.

terzaerian.8624:

Not only are turrets underpowered, they can’t even target big bosses (like dragons)! I just found this out after spending 8 gold and 50 laurels kitting out my engineer for magic find. What the hell, ArenaNet? There is absolutely no excuse for that, especially when Necro pets target bosses just fine! Fix it!

That’s a bug, it worked pretty well on anything before Southsun Cove…

kitten turrets!