Guild Wars 2

Turrets are cool, but for their investment they’re prone to some problems. Now that we can trait on the fly, I was thinking it would be nice for turret builds to have a way to sacrifice turret utility traits for a little mobility.

This would alleviate some of the problems with WvW and dungeon turret use, or simply add a new way for engineers to use turrets.

Backpack Turrets
Grandmaster – Invention

Picking up one of your turrets no longer reduces its cooldown. In stead, that turret is equipped on your back.
Backpack turrets may not overcharge or be repaired with a wrench, but fire 30% faster. Backpack turrets take the place of kits, and you may only wear one at a time. The cooldown on turret skills begins when the turret is picked up.

This would allow engineers to drop->overcharge->pick up a turret and create some interesting strategies and uses for one-turret and even no-kit builds. Thoughts?

Would you use this? Does it feel balanced?

I’d probably suggest ditching the fire rate increase – Net Turret, in particular, would draw much ire. Thumper would, as well, given that it would keep any enemy near the Engineer in perma-Cripple. The limited mobility itself would be incredibly handy, without being overpowering, and allow roaming Turreteers much more flexibility.
I know *I*’d certainly appreciate being able to have, say, Flame Turret complementing my Pistol attacks between big encounters, as opposed to relying almost entirely on my Toolbelt. Or have Thumper Turret mounted for when I know I’ll want to run out of close combat.

As long as this didn’t allow the user to have two of the same Turret out without using Supply Crate, it’d probably be fine; include a clause about it sticking around until the Turret was placed again or the timer expired, and that’d probably take care of it.

Also: Forcing this Turret to only attack the user’s target, rather than ’user’s last-damaged, or whatever’s hostile and close,’ seems advisable. Common sense also indicates that the backpack should be destroyed if the user unslots the affected Turret.

Questions, though:
If you pick up, say, Healing Turret and then Rifle Turret, with this trait equipped, would Rifle Turret replace Healing Turret as your Backpack Turret, or would a different means be used to determine which stayed on?
What would happen to the Toolbelt skill of the carried Turret? I can see three different options: Toolbelt is treated as if Turret is out (so it stays Detonate), Toolbelt is treated as if Turret is not out (so Toolbelt can be used regardless), or Toolbelt could become how the Turret could be Overcharged while still being carried.

Each has pros and cons, of course.
Option A (Deployed) – Engineer is essentially walking around with more or less an instant-trigger Big Ol’ Bomb. Mostly a potential problem because of the instant traited knockback, Blast Finisher, and damage-dealer.
Option B (Undeployed) – Engineer is able to use the Toolbelts in conjunction with the Turret’s usual attacks. In the case of Net Turret, especially problematic; Rifle #2, Net, and Backpack would be able to inflict a very long-uptime Immobilize.
Option C (Overcharge) – Engineer is able to activate Overcharges (which would share cooldowns with their placed-Turret OCs, of course) centered on their location. Would pretty much remove need to place the Turret, except for tactical positioning purposes, and likely causes other issues that I’m not noticing.
Option D (???) – What’s the plan for this?

I’d rather see a “mobile turrets” trait that hangs the turrets from a balloon (already seems to be this way underwater) with a propeller that allows them to follow the engineer for their duration. Similar concept, but much less confusing fringe scenarios like above.

I’m surprised Engineers lack Mobile Turrets as a Trait. It’d be funny to see ’em lurching along on metallic legs.