Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! It’s been a long time since I posted one of my brainstorming sessions here. I felt inspired though, so I thought I would share my latest rendition of ideas with everyone. Feel free to contribute, or criticize, or flame/bash/what have you.

Just put this on my blog

If you have trouble getting what I wrote here, look at the attached .RTF or ask me for clarification! Thanks ahead of time for reading, it’s quite a lot.

The premise behind these changes is solve multiple issues people have with Engineer;
1. Engineers are unpopular, these changes may result in a short flavor-of-the-month feel at first, but should bring them to standard popularity with other classes.
2. It will resolve some of the image issues behind engineers being non-engineerish
3. It will simplify, yet make more attractive, one of the more underpopular skill trees in game

These changes are designed specifically for turret engineers, to bring about a new class mechanic that is both fun, unique, and intuitive, while iconifying the class as a whole.

Turrets currently exist in the following form;
Healing: Healing Turret
Utility: Rifle, Rocket, Thumper, Net, Flame
Elite: None

By consolidating all turrets into one turret-based class mechanic (inevitibly replacing the tool belt skills), there can be one overall turret available to the engineer at all times, with different customizations (performed at the Turret Workshop, detailed below).

Turrets will be given independant stats from their owner, also customizable in the same manner. The below stat tables indicate level 80 values (scale appropriately for lower levels).

Rules of Turrets:
-They will have a static 25% chance to crit for 10% crit damage by default.
-They will have 0 natural condition damage by default.
-They will have 5000 HP by default.
-They will have 2000 armor by default.
-Their attack speed, movement speed & cooldown reduction is static, and determined by their configuration.
-The look of the turret is determined by the race of the Engineer. It cannot be changed unless the race of the engineer is changed.
-Turrets will follow the engineer unless directed to a specific location or they are out of range

Look and feel:
The turret will resemble a design similar to it’s race of creation. Asuran turrets will be similar to floating golem construction, whereas charr turrets will be closer to a harrier-jet with a rifle mounted on it. Human would resemble a small propeller-driven wind-ship, and I’m not sure about Sylvari or Norn, but they might have designs with borrowed assistance from one of the other races. This is an attempt at making the player relate more to their Engi and their racial choice, which currently only reflects in that all turrets appear to be of Charr design regardless of race.

Turret Interface:
F1 = Attack my target. The turret does not automatically attack a target, you must tell it when to start combat. Alternatively, you can press F1 again to tell it to stop attacking.
F2 = Defensive Skill. This skill is chosen in the turret workshop and consists of both a passive effect as well as an active one.
F3 = Offensive Skill. This skill is chosen in the turret workshop and consists of both a passive effect as well as an active one.
F4 = Assign Turret. This skill will set your turret to stand in a designated area (ground targetting) with a range of 1200. Using it again will recall your turret to your position. Assign turret is on a 30s cooldown.

Healing a turret:
-Your turrets primary source of healing will be out of combat where it will regenerate health in the same manner as a player, ranger pet, or NPC.
-If your turret dies and you are still in combat, you can [F] interact with it to regen it the same way you would a player, ranger pet, or NPC. This will take a shorter amount of time due to significantly decreased turret health as opposed to any of the above examples.
-If your turret dies and you are out of combat, you can either [F] interact as stated above, or it will slowly regenerate over a period of 20 seconds (unless combat starts in which it will stop)

Turret Workshop:
The user will be able to go to a turret workshop, and customize the turret to fit their playstyle. The turret workshop is located in every capital city including Lions Arch, and has a theme designed to it it’s designated city/race. Configuration is done through an intuitive user interface window which is only available at the workshop itself, and allows the user to create what should usually result in a balanced turret situation at all times. The first two parameters listed below are adjusted with sliders that go toward/away from one of the titles or another. The second 3 are selected either via Radio button or Drop-down. The parameters are as follows:

Power vs. Range – 8 varying levels.
Mobility vs. Attack Speed – 8 varying levels.
Defensive attributes – 1 selectable
Offensive attributes – 1 selectable
Passive attributes – 1 selectable

PWR vs. RNG (slider)
Level___Damage__Range___Crit Dmg____Condition
Lvl 1____320_____2000____49.00%_______0
Lvl 2____370_____1800____42.00%_______75
Lvl 3____430_____1600____35.00%_______150
Lvl 4____480_____1400____28.00%_______225
Lvl 5____530_____1200____21.00%_______300
Lvl 6____580_____1000____14.00%_______375
Lvl 7____630_____800_____7.00%________450
Lvl 8____680_____600_____0.00%________525

MOV vs. A-SPD (slider)
Level___Mov Speed___Atk Speed___Offense CD__Defense CD
Lvl 1____150.00%_____1 per 3.1s____CD -49%____CD -0%
Lvl 2____130.00%_____1 per 2.8s____CD -42%____CD -7%
Lvl 3____110.00%_____1 per 2.5s____CD -35%____CD -14%
Lvl 4____90.00%______1 per 2.2s____CD -28%____CD -21%
Lvl 5____70.00%______1 per 1.9s____CD -21%____CD -28%
Lvl 6____50.00%______1 per 1.6s____CD -14%____CD -35%
Lvl 7____25.00%______1 per 1.3s____CD -7%_____CD -42%
Lvl 8____0.00%_______1 per 1.0s____CD -0%_____CD -49%

Defensive Abilities (F2): You can only have one of these
1. Armored Shell (30s cooldown):
Passive (not lost upon skill usage): Turret gains an additional 500 armor
Active: Turret gains 2 stacks of aegis for 5 seconds.

2. Smoke Screen (30s cooldown):
Passive (not lost upon skill usage): Absorbs 10% of damage taken by Engi
Active: Turret sprays blinding gas for 5 seconds (Combo field: Smoke)

3. Space Distortion (30s cooldown):
Passive (not lost upon skill usage): Energy regeneration +25%
Active: Engi teleports 900 range away in random direction

Offensive Abilities (F3): You can only have one of these
1. Sure Shot (30s cooldown):
Passive (not lost upon skill usage): All turret attacks pierce their target
Active: The next turret attack crits for 100% extra damage

2. Rapid Fire (30s cooldown):
Passive (not lost upon skill usage): All turret attacks have a 50% chance to bounce to an adjacent target for 50% damage
Active: Turrets attack speed doubles for 5 seconds

3. Explosive Shells (30s cooldown):
Passive (not lost upon skill usage): Every seventh turret shot dazes the target for .25 seconds
Active: Turrets next attack knocks the enemy down

Passive Attribute: You can only have one of these
1. Red Shells: Everytime you activate an offensive or defensive turret ability, your turrets next attack will inflict 5s of burning.

2. Blue Chassis: Your turret emits a regenerating mist every 15s which lasts for 5s and effects surrounding allies (and itself).

3. Yellow Battery: If your turret dies, it explodes in an area dealing burning and knockback to nearby enemies.

Key changes required to Engineers:
1. Tool belt skills will need to go away, as there will be too many class mechanics on one bar. However, I don’t feel that this would be a problem, since the tool-belt skills exist in their current form to account for the utility skills being eaten up by kits, and the fact that we didn’t have a class mechanic otherwise. This is a benefit, as I’ll state below…

2. Weapon swapping will need to be enabled on engineers! Kit skills will still take up a spot without providing an extra skill. This can be accounted for by allowing engineers to have weapon swapping. This is more important due to the fact that Engineers will now have more..

3. Weapon combinations! We currently have Pistol/Pistol, Rifle, and Pistol/Shield (in addition to kits if used). We need a real, viable, melee option, and I think that will be allowing the following additional weapon combinations to be possible:
* Hammer
* Mace

4. The above weapon skill additions, in conjunction with the configuration possibilities of the redesigned turrets, will allow engineers to spec into a melee build that does not depend on the Wrench skill.

5. The wrench kit has not been accounted for just yet, neither has the missing utility/healing skills as a result of the now missing 5 turrets. Traits, similarly, are also not yet accounted for.

6. Many parts of Engineer are still broken, non-functional, and non-synergetic. We don’t have a wide variety of builds, and some skills are substantially better than others. This redesign does not account for that, and there will still need to be balancing work done all across the board to make this a whole class.

Benefits of the redesign:
1. Engineers will feel more like engineers.
2. Engineers will have more of a connection to their race.
3. Some (if not all) of the pangs of poor weapon choice, weapon combination and weapon skinning should be alleviated by the racial turrets, and non-dependance on kit-skills.
4. Turrets will finally be viable in all situations, not just PvE leveling. This is a result of allowing the player to choose how their turrets will act, as well as allowing them to have a targetting skill.
5. Engineers should find themselves no longer the least popular class to play.

So lets talk about what is good and bad. Generally (without getting into minor number balance issues) i think this is over all a good idea and would have made a lot of people happy if it existed when the engineer was first introduced to the game.
Very good work.

Now for the ugly downside. Everyones class specific abilitys f1-f4 etc.. are supposed to be unique. For the same reason peoples complaint to make Deathshroud for necros more like Warriors Adr, i’m gonna have to say this is too much like the Ranger.

Not opposed to anything you said, it all sounds a lot of fun. But i think Ranger already have the spot for pet class, and while your system is more about making your own custom pet vs pokemon for rangers. Its still leaves the end result the same. :P

Great ideas though, really well thought through, and your right it would be awsome for all the reasons you mentioned. But that ranger issue is something thats hard to over look.

I agree with zinwrath great idea besides the ranger similarity. possible make it so that turrets stay where you place them but you can “recall” turrets without having to pick them up. It’s a stretch as far as “how did you pick that up if you’re 100 yards away” but could potentially do the same thing as ordering your turrets to stand somewhere

I think the biggest thing that will be hard to change, is not the mobility – but the fact that what turrets suffer from the most right now is our inability to tell them what to target. Seems to be a great oversight even for a NON-Asuran engineer.. to have a turret that shoots dirt mounds or dead corpses. I feel the only solution to it will be the same as the one the Ranger has, in that there is an “attack this” button, or it would be like a mesmer shatter command, “fight this and go on cooldown for 10 seconds”.

An interesting idea, but this would cause the engineer to be reworked from the ground up. Given engineer is generally accepted as the least played class, the amount of time and resources put into this wouldn’t make it worthwhile for anet. I think if turrets could simply gain bonuses to survivability and direct damage as they already do with healing power and condition damage, they could be much more viable. Also, the mortar is considered a turret in most instances (for traits), and it could definitely use a tweak.

All in all, the idea is intuitive and inspired, but not worth the investment on the dev’s part, nor necessary for the class. EXCEPTION! We need differing skins (turrets and backpacks). It’s bugged me since day 1, how a charr and an asura use the exact same tech, despite cultural differences. Just does not make sense tome.

Edit: Saw the post above me, if turrets could attack our target, and auto acquire otherwise, that’d be great.

So how about this; turret has no direct target ability, but instead keeps F2, F3 (defensive and offensive moves) as well as movement. For targetting, it will simply only attack whatever it is we’re attacking?

EDIT: This would remove the similarity to ranger in that we have the same F1 key. Then all 3 remaining mechanic skills are different from what Ranger has.

Just the removal of turrets as utilities constitutes a huge shift in engineer playstyle. Combined with the removal of toolbelts, you have at least 2 trait trees that will need redesigned, and then more changes when you add things in to replace the missing utilities (most likely it would be something akin to signets). Then, adding in at least 2 new weapon sets (proposed hammer/mace, which I wouldn’t mind, given we have a mace skin that looks like a wrench in spvp), all for a class that a minority of people play. Then, you have balancing and bug testing, both of which would take more time and resources.

Sadly, it’s just not a viable option for anet. Most likely you’ll see minor fixes over time, and the engineer will become/remain a middle rank class.

This was an old idea i shot out back in beta that ya might like to consider in your rework. (i had the same feelings you did about turrets being a core part of our profession)

Essentially your idea for the turret only our f2-f4 abilitys are still determined by what utilitys we have. Instead of being new abilitys we cast, they’re new modifications/buffs/abilitys our turrets get. For examp, for having flamethrower in a utility slot f2 might give the ability to make our turrets next attacks apply burning.

This would keep the current mechanic allowing us versitility. But also help with the feeling of being an engineer modifiying our turret as we go to meet our needs.

(this way you keep a lot of the design of the profession consistant, minus removing the turret utility skills, f1 would be place and blow up your turret)

I like the ideas and it would make the engineer into more of a mechanical-master steampunk engineer instead of the alchemy/explosives vibe we’re mostly feeling. However, as some have noted:

—It’s too late for a re-design. Sorry, it just is. Anet has more than they can handle already: they’re scrambling to balance, roll out new PvE content, re-structure PvP, and maintain/improve WvW.
—Engineers are probably the hardest profession to learn and the hardest to master. Personally, I’d love being a rifle/pistol/shield/bombs/flamethrower/grenades/turrets engineer, but it’s not exactly friendly for new players.
—Engineers are already getting better. We’ve gotten several important bugfixes and a few straight-up buffs (as well as some confusing nerfs and unnecessary complications…like KR).

Seriously, good ideas, though. Sadly, it just can’t happen, not even in an expansion.

I like this idea. I’d miss my bunch of turrets, but having one that I could customize would be a great help. Reminds me of one I had a while back, involving extra trait lines, come to think of it, though this is probably better. Having it also incorporate skinning the turrets to fit the race is a nice touch, as well. Might be interesting to include a way to determine the range of the turret, too – having a Thumper Turret with a Smoke Field and Regen ability would be amazing for a melee Engineer, while a Rapid-Fire Net Turret (splash effects only having half the duration, of course) with Space Distortion and the Red Shells would be aces for a ranged Engineer. The later bits with the hammer and all especially make me like the Thumper idea; it’s possible that this would be too much, of course.

Also, it’d be nice for our abilities to balanced to the same standard as those of other classes, which this would pretty much necessitate – with the loss of the Toolbelt would come the elimination of the ‘playing speed piano’ feel, and while it would remove half of our potential utility skills, it would also cause all slotted skills to need to be reworked in consideration of it.

While I also somewhat dislike the idea of becoming more like the Ranger, being able to customize our turret would set us apart in much the same way as our Toolbelt and Kits set us apart from Elementalists – we could choose how it works in the same way we can choose which Kits (here, being likened to Attunements due to their generally similar effect of replacing our weapon skills with something different) to use. This would let us have a single, customized companion capable of diverse effects in much the same way that Kits and the Toolbelt enable us to have a set of ‘utility-like’ skills alongside a massive number of weapon skills. It’d also, as noted above, require a lot of rebalancing to compensate for taking the Toolbelt – some things would need buffed, some would need nerfed, some would need left be.

The interaction with Traits might also need redesigned, but when haven’t Turret traits needed work? Metal Plating is useless as far as I’ve seen (and I’m still using it, for fear of how much more fragile they’d be without it), Autotool Installation is similarly so (especially in a mobile game like GW2)…I suppose that’s all of the Turret traits that immediately leap out as needing work at the moment, to be fair; Deployable Turrets and Accelerant-Packed would both need revamping as well, were this idea used.

Moving on from Turrets: I would love to have a Hammer. I would also love to have Heavy Armor, but I doubt that second one’s going to happen. Perhaps the Turret skills could be replaced with more functional Gadgets, or some sort of Signet-like skills billed as Armor Mods or something?

Edit: Or perhaps some manner of secondary turret set, which would probably be stationary boon/condition dispensers. ’s an idea.

I’ve always kind of wished personally that they’d split the Engi up into two classes, Engineer & Commando; give the non-engineer skills to the commando, and put them in heavy armor, leave the engineer in medium but replace all our now-missing skills with stuff that actually sounds like something an engi would use.

I’ll start by echo’ing that it’s a very thorough suggestion, but I can’t imagine Anet would want to do a complete rework of this magnitude.

I do still love to play my engineer, but as so many others was very disappointed at first when my expectations of “turret dropping mr gadget” turned out to be an illusion.
It’s not right that the class now mostly revolves around elixirs/kits; arguably the least ‘engineerish’ abilities we get.

As far as turrets go the main 2 issues imo are:
- the targeting: reworking them to be almost exactly like ranger pets is not my first choice though. Just having them always target what I am targeting would go a long way already.
- the cooldowns: simply too long for a completely immobile pet that dies very quickly as well. At least reduce or completely remove the cooldown even if you pick up the turret.

I would LOVE this idea. I played Puppetmaster in FFXI and this immediately reminded me of my favorite class.

How about instead of going to town to change out our Turrets, we can press K to change it up? Like Rangers do. We could be restricted to a one minute reset timer, so we can’t abuse it.

Also, everybody mentions Mace/Hammer but what about Torch? I think it would make a great weapon if handled properly

I would surely trade our Tool Belt for this idea as most of our Tool Belt(Not all) skills are “meh” at best.

Where’s that picture of Patrick pushing the problem away?

“Let’s take the ranger’s problem…

…and push it onto Engineers!"

@Aristio: I thought having a rig-shop would be a fun added bonus for playing Engineer personally, and would also be a good way for players to test a turret without changing it a minute later, and actually learning how the different styles could work.

@Kamahl: I don’t play a ranger, so I’m not 100% on this, but is the problem with ranger pets that they don’t attack what you tell them to?

LoreChief.8391:

@Aristio: I thought having a rig-shop would be a fun added bonus for playing Engineer personally, and would also be a good way for players to test a turret without changing it a minute later, and actually learning how the different styles could work.

@Kamahl: I don’t play a ranger, so I’m not 100% on this, but is the problem with ranger pets that they don’t attack what you tell them to?

Pathing issues, not able to dodge, buggy attacks, low health, dies too quickly from AoE.

Put EG, TK, bombs, nades on F1-4.
Put good tool belt skills as util choices adjusting some of the absurdly high CD timers.
Remove trash tool belt and utils.
Add hammer and mace.
Profit

Get rid of bomb kit because who throws a bomb right next to their feet? It makes no sense at all, engineers are losing limbs everywhere. Instead replace it with Rocket kit! A rocket launcher with the same skills as the bomb kit. It would actually make sense and be pretty awesome.

Dyeus.6759:

Get rid of bomb kit because who throws a bomb right next to their feet? It makes no sense at all, engineers are losing limbs everywhere. Instead replace it with Rocket kit! A rocket launcher with the same skills as the bomb kit. It would actually make sense and be pretty awesome.

Get rid of the rifle because who shoots a rifle right at their hip? It makes no sense at all, engineers are recoiling everywhere.

Don’t touch my beloved Bomb Kit you silly person.

Dyeus.6759:

Get rid of bomb kit because who throws a bomb right next to their feet? It makes no sense at all, engineers are losing limbs everywhere. Instead replace it with Rocket kit! A rocket launcher with the same skills as the bomb kit. It would actually make sense and be pretty awesome.

Change mortar elite to this and up its damage

I think the bomb kit would be a lot more awesome if they upped the power, recharge and fuse timer.
They’d be more powerful, but you’d place them less often and have to place them strategically to either lure people into them or use them to pressure someone away.

You could place it in a crowd and watch them scatter away from it, or root someone next to it and watch the pain.