Guild Wars 2

Hey guys. In general the engi’s turrets are quite fragile and are often destroyed in the heat of battle, most of the time rendering them useless. However, if they’re mostly never in range of the attacks that are killing them, they’re quite viable. I was experimenting with the Deployable Turrets trait (Tools V) in PvP, and was able to put the turrets on the pillars over by the profession npc area. During the fights the turrets couldn’t be hurt at all, and I was able to defeat each profession with relative ease just because of my use of terrain. I tested my prototype build in several PvP matches, and every time I took on somebody 1v1 I would win. When more people came it was harder (obviously), but I still ended up surviving for a decent amount of time. After some more testing I found out that for some reason when I would put the turrets up they would just shoot into the wall and wouldn’t turn to shoot at the enemies. I’m not sure if that’s a bug or if that’s how it’s supposed to work, but that only happened once.

So, my question for all of the master engineers out there is:

Is Deployable Turrets a viable way to use turrets effectively in a PvP or WvWvW situation?

Let me know your thoughts on it. If there’s something about it that I don’t know (a bug, etc.) then let me know, because besides the issue of turret cooldowns and not being able to pick them up off the wall this looks like a plausible idea.

Below is a picture of me using the deployable turrets trait on the pillars over by where the profession npcs are for those who might not know what I’m talking about.

Turrets have this annoying habit of picking the closest available target, ignoring line of sight completely. Meaning that they will happily blast walls and such if there is a enemy behind it, that are considered closer than one in clear line of sight.

Ah, gotcha. That makes a lot of my battles make sense lol. Most of the time I did fairly well with them. I suppose unless they fix it then I’ll have to put it in a place that counteracts that.
Thanks.

I first noticed the issue when the rocket turret was blasting a bridge in Maelstrom to bits. Checked, and sure enough a risen was hiding under it.

Later the rifle turret started plonking at a ruined wall when i placed it and planned to attack a flame legion in Iron Marches. And waddayknow, behind said wall was another flame legion…

Between that and their paper based armor, i have written turrets off as pointless outside of SPVP point bunkering (no way to pick the wrong target then).

I find deployable turrets a mandatory trait if you are going to use turrets. So much so I feel it should come standard.
Its pretty much the only way to get the rifle and rocket turret to survive long enough to deal any damage, even if you dont deploy them on stuff, just placing them out of harms way helps. Sadly the other short ranged turrets are sol either way.

If your in a tunnel or other area with a low ceiling, you and toss your healing turret straight up and it will rain healing goodness over all. Same works for a wall the group is stacking near.

The only down side I constantly run into is you have to wait until the turret lands to use its over charge, and sense you cant watch the bundle slowly fly through the air while in a fight you often dont time it perfectly causing you to have to wait the 3 sec on healing turrets to get the waterfield, or your rocket turret only being able to fire 1 knockdown rocket.

Note tho that most ranged attackers can likely drop that thing in a hurry.

Tried to be clever with it at Steampipe (Southsun central camp), and the nearby karka trashed the turret in a single burst. 900 range feels kinda limited after being used to throwing grenade 1500…

Currently, I’ve actually stopped using Deployable Turrets because it’s slowing my placement down.

Of course, at the moment I’m also essentially a point-blank gunslinger, using the short-range turrets, so that might have something to do with it – it’s simply easier, since I’m already close to the enemy, to close distance entirely and start dropping them. (This is in PvE, as I haven’t played WvW since a bit before the new matchup code was implemented.)

For turrets like Rocket, Rifle, and Net, of course, or for an Engineer who prefers to stay at range (like, perhaps, a Grenadier, who could benefit from Thumper’s Cripple, Net’s Immobilize or Rocket’s Knockdown to land more hits, or basically anybody not intent on Blowtorching faces off), Deployable Turrets is probably far more useful, and for comedic purposes, I imagine there’s little that quite matches Thumping the center of a good-sized zerg (and then detonating the turret a moment later when the bubble collapses). It just all comes down to playstyle.

All that said, though…I honestly wouldn’t object to Deployable Turrets being made the default, if only so we could get another Turret trait.

I could never find a place for deployable turrets in sPVP. In most of the fights I engage in, just putting the turrets down where I am is sufficient enough. Once all of the control starts flying, most people can’t destroy them. If they do destroy them, the turrets go boom and I get access to my toolbelt. When taking a point I"ll make a short lap around the area to spread turrets far enough apart that they don’t get all hit by the same AoEs.

Deployable turrets is much more fun in WvW. The cool thing about them is that you can throw the turrets on top of the walls of a tower or keep, and they provide can then hit things that you couldn’t hit originally, like those guys who hide on arrow carts sometimes. Although you would have to fully trait up turrets to make the best use of this, and turrets just aren’t as useful in WvW in the first place.