Guild Wars 2

Original post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineers-Literally-a-Developer-s-Punchline/first#post1414471

What I am going for but don’t have yet
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQFAUlIqyUnqSbF17IRoHJWwLGkCAj3PKYLdB;T8AA1ysEYJxSllCLqtMbJ2yulbL5WDHOOMhA

Turrets vs PVE…

I ran around Iron Marches working on map completion and dailies to see how this build works. I normally run a
Pryotank flamethrower build and was looking for something that would A) not rely on burn and work underwater and C) not be grenades.

In a word…Chaos. Were I normally feel very in control of fight, deploying smoke and push back with the flamethrower. Here I felt like the turrets create a “Death Zone” that I operate around, and draw enemies into.

I tried to use my tool belt abilities before deploying the turret, to good effect, and overcharge the turrets every chance I got. I would Drop the Rocket turret to the rear of the encounter, then the flame turret at where I would make my center. Move up and drop the Rife turret at the “front” and overcharge it.

Prefix: My gear is nowhere near what it needs to be; I just hit 80 last week and am working on gearing up.

Personal damage seems low compared to the Flamethrower, but when combined with the turrets, stuff dies just fine.
Survivability seems…better. But that may be more from not being on the front line so much and using the range of the rifle over the flamethrower. I got downed once, by surprise when some Branded Devourer attacked the Sentinel Tower during an event. I rallied and deployed the Healing turret and turned the event around.

Tested underwater combat at Lake Desolann switching the flame turret for the net turret. As always, underwater is such a mess. Having automated attacks helps, but at the same time can draw in extra combatants into an already disadvantaged fight. It makes me want to place my turrets close together and placing them is also “harder” for having to swim to where I want them. That could just be my skill level underwater more than anything.

I would say that the lack of control is strange, allowing the automated attacks of the turrets to tear away at mobs while I try to stand back and contribute, kiting the enemy around and “protecting” the turrets as they attack the mob.

The one major dislike is the slowness I feel with this build. No speed boost running across maps, and defeating mobs feels a little slow.

Plan tonight on taking turrets into CoF and seeing how it works in a dungeon. First time through story so it should be fun.

SPOILERS IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE Citadel of Fire…

Turrets vs Dungeon – Citadel of Fire (Story)

Or how fast can I get another turret deployed…

Turrets draw aggro, I am not sure why but I seem to keep my friends alive by deploying more turrets. It is like cowbell, you just can’t keep enough of them out. The dungeon mobs crushed the turrets, and luckily ate the explosion for it, but the recharge kept me punching my tool belt option far more than in regular PVE.

I lost a lot of turrets to AOE fireballs from above. Almost like the effect was targeting them specifically. It became such a problem that I really had to work at separating out my “Death Zone” to keep from losing all my turrets in one blast.

Does anyone know if Condition damage affects turrets? They seem to be fine and survive well in fire effects, almost like they did not take damage from burn. I notice the same in PVE while I attack objects and thought that the Burn was not affecting the target.

I died to Bolok Firebringer. Note to self, yet again, “Do not stand in fire.” I know it is pretty, and warm, and oh so nice. But fire burns. Get out of it.

Rozgar the Forge…well at least my turrets exploded as he went through them. Fight was long as we whittled him down, there was a strange bug that seemed to have him teleport around the map so keeping him targeted became a problem. Every time he popped in and out we would lose the target assist and everyone would have to scan around the area to find him.

Hierophant Improaster went down easy. Turrets seemed to keep the imps in control and quickly taken down, While most of the rest of our party burned down the Hierophant.

For the Flame Legion Effigy the turrets worked pretty well. I got around back to the Acolytes and set up the turrets and as soon as the shields dropped on them the turrets started taking them out. I think they might have taken some damage early on from shooting the shield but over all they seemed to take it well. Again I think the burn on the attacks wasn’t affecting the turrets, but I am not sure. I set my healing turret up on one side of the room and when people needed to heal up they would run over to it. It never took enough damage to explode during the fight so it became a rest stop for our more melee oriented members until they decided to switch to range.

Gaheron Baelfire. At first I thought the turrets would not help. I set up the healing turret at the back of the bubble to help the others regen as they got back to the bubble. Setup Thumper, Rifle and Rocket at the front and let them fire on the walls Baelfire put up, clearing the way for the runners. I am not sure about the Thumper, but I thought it better than the flame turret against Baelfire.

Talking with my group after the run, I asked what they thought. I got a general, “I think it is pretty good.” response. They liked the healing turret and knowing where they could go or be if they needed to heal some. They also felt that the turrets helped whittle down the mobs faster. A kind of “Economy of Actions” help; that each turret operates as yet and extra set of options on top of what I am doing to aid the fight.

What I noticed most, Condition removal. Cleansing Burst off the healing turret is the only Condition removal I have, if its up and if the turret is deployed.

So, now, do I take it into WvW? I have not gone into that arena at all yet, so being a complete noob with turrets sounds like a long day. I may give it a go this weekend and see where it takes me. You see a human engineer from Tarnish Coast getting owned in WvW lend a hand or at least go easy on him. I’ll need it.

Each turret has a time and place to be used. Learn the full effect of each turret, use one at the right time and you’ll get comments like “@#$# turrets are op.”

I’ll give you a few example, in fotm Cliffside Fractal on the seal right before the final boss you can set a thumper turret next to one of the seal to distract a healer. Since turrets take no condition damage, they are extremely durable.

You can use a flame turret to cause an aoe cloak or simply cause the most op field in the game, the “smoke field”.

Edit Tip:
In WvW, if you are 1v1 a thief, a net turret is quite good. It will instantly immobilize the thief the instant he/she exits stealth. If you use the overcharge it’ll instantly stun the thief the instant he/she exits stealth. Just watch where the net lands and you can track the thief without knowing where he/she is due to lag imaging issues.

Volstag.6371:

So, now, do I take it into WvW? I have not gone into that arena at all yet, so being a complete noob with turrets sounds like a long day. I may give it a go this weekend and see where it takes me. You see a human engineer from Tarnish Coast getting owned in WvW lend a hand or at least go easy on him. I’ll need it.

Thanks for sharing your experience in PVE so far. I’m more focused on sPvP and WvW, so I’d like to share my experience in WvW to help you get started. Please keep in mind that these are just my opinions.

Performing well in WvW requires you to be mobile, and somewhat self sufficient because you never know if you’ll get the help you need. Unfortunately it is very hard to fit turrets into a WvW build. For mobility, I choose Speedy Kits and run at least one kit—usually Grenade Kit. This gives me mobility, and the capability to add constant pressure through direct damage and conditions during larger team fights. I feel that this is crucial to being an asset to your team whether you’re with a small group of 3-5 people hitting caravans and camps, or with a squad attacking or defending larger objectives.

So now I’m 10 points into Tools, and down one utility slot. If I then choose to run turrets I would select Healing Turret and Rocket Turret. Now I’m down to one utility slot and I have no condition removal (Healing Turret’s “cleansing burst” is unreliable due to the turret’s fragility) or stun breaker. For your elite, it doesn’t matter what you choose. You can switch on the fly when you’re out of combat. When defending a fort I use Mortar or one of my Golems (Asura racial) to disrupt enemies at the gate. When I’m attacking I use Supply Crate, Elixir X (Tornado is great for clearing walls of pesky defenders), or my Power Suit (nice tanky option and can deal significant damage to champs and clear walls with whirling assault).

So what should you choose for your last utility. If you’re running with a party, you could risk a third turret and no stun breaker and hope they are good about reviving people. If you do I would choose Flame Turret. The Smoke field allows you to apply Blind, or detonate turret for a stealthy getaway. (Personally I would choose Toolkit as my third option. The 3 second block and Magnet Pull have many applications in WvW.)

I would recommend running Pistol/Shield. In WvW it’s important to be able to get past attackers and into a fort. You might be late to a fight or you may have been pulled off of a wall, and you need to get back inside. Magnetic Inversion and Static Shield (the latter can be channeled while moving) can buy you precious seconds to slip past a zerg. Magnetic Inversion is also a handy Blast finisher to add some area healing or buffs in large fights.

In conclusion, I’m not excited about turrets in WvW. If they were immune to area damage or took significantly less area damage, I might consider them. Even then their range would have to be increased or we would need to be given the ability to cause our turrets to focus on one target. I would settle for turrets attacking a marked target when we hit T to assist.

I’ve tried a more supportive turret build that allowed me to rush into fights and revive people, but the turrets were getting destroyed too quickly. It consisted of Pistol/Shield, Healing Turret, Flame Turret, Thumper Turret, and Bomb Kit. I would use Big ol’ Bomb, Thumper Turret overcharge, or Magnetic Inversion to clear some space for a quick revive, or I would use Flame Turret overcharge + a blast finisher to stealth myself and my revive target. It was fun for a little while, but ultimately didn’t work often enough to make a difference.

I hope this information was helpful or at least interesting.

Good luck with your turrets syndrome.

I treat turrets in WvWvW more like mines and handy blast finishers. Requires at least 20 into Explosives.

All this shows that Turrets work fine! Maybe need a slight boost, but people just don’t know how to play with them. Like Rangers complaining about their pets, it’s one of your core mechanics (not really the case with turrets as is with pets, but still) and, quite harshly put: learn to play with it.

I leveled with turrets and loved it. They can tank pretty well and in conjunction with pistol/shield I could also make sure they stayed away from my turrets so they would live longer. Traiting into turrets to make them more durable is worthwhile for simple mobs, in dungeons and the like it is obsolete, UNLESS you place them well out of reach and such. Each turret calls for a different scenario and they all work great if you ask me. Weak: yes, but not terribly so. Eventhough I now focus on Elixers and the Elixer Gun some turrets are still worthwhile to take here and there!

Direksone.3867:

All this shows that Turrets work fine! Maybe need a slight boost, but people just don’t know how to play with them. Like Rangers complaining about their pets, it’s one of your core mechanics (not really the case with turrets as is with pets, but still) and, quite harshly put: learn to play with it.

I leveled with turrets and loved it. They can tank pretty well and in conjunction with pistol/shield I could also make sure they stayed away from my turrets so they would live longer. Traiting into turrets to make them more durable is worthwhile for simple mobs, in dungeons and the like it is obsolete, UNLESS you place them well out of reach and such. Each turret calls for a different scenario and they all work great if you ask me. Weak: yes, but not terribly so. Eventhough I now focus on Elixers and the Elixer Gun some turrets are still worthwhile to take here and there!

I agree with you for the most part. I think turrets are playable, but as compared to other builds they are just not as efficient. You remove a lot of your utility by building to turrets, since in order to make them function you need to devote a lot of your traits to them. In my mind if a few adjustments could be made to the turret tool belt skills to give you a few more options it would be fine.

For example:
1. Making the net turret tool belt some sort of stun breaker.
2. Give a single condition remove to the healing turret tool belt
3. Make the thumper turrets tool belt a know back
4. Make the Flame turrets tool belt a blind

In short give the tool belt for each turret a weaker version of its overload ability.

True, but then again you need to put traits into anything for it to work effectively in my experience. Turrets need a slight, slight buff, but overall I do think they work fine.

I think the only toolbelt skill that’s very weak is the Rifle Turret one.

They might be fine to level, but they aren’t in any other arewa of the game.

Dungeon : They aggro a lot! I don’t know why, but Each time I place one, the boss goes straight to hit and one kitten hit. I’m stuck with 2 enormous CD as utility.

tPvP : They don’t have any mobility, they take too much place in the utility bar (you need a CC breaker and I prefer to have a kit, so that’s leaving me with 1 turret).They do weak damage, and AoE class like warrior, elem, guardian, others engis, mesmer ( nearly everyone) will one shot your turrets.

WvW : Only fought some utility with static discharge build, but even then it was lacking. Again, you have no room for CC breaker, cond removal and kits. They do weak damage, the missile turret miss a lot, are destroyed by AoE and don’t move. You are always on the move in WvW.

I hope they buff the turret next patch, because I don’t see anyone running it in WvW/tPvP. They should at least attack the same target then you if they are in range. Using them versus a mesmer/mm necro/ ranger is useless because it will attack their pet/phantams.

The AI is a bit stupid sometimes, that’s true. In dungeons sometimes they were firing through a wall or something because there was a mob behind it or they started firing without I wanted them to. However if you place them far away (I only used Rocket and Rifle, sometimes a 3rd), especially out of reach on high places (obv. you can’t always do that), they should do fine. In PvP a full on turret build is not effective no. 1 or 2 Turrets is all you can do.