Guild Wars 2

Hey, this turned into a much bigger post then i intended but i feel its needed and give me and give me a few mins befor you reply so i can post all it, anyway i presume everyones heard by now anets purposed changes to turrets to bring them inline with other builds?

Well they are really bad changes, its not fixing turrets at all its compleatly nerfing them and that’s a stupid decision, now i dont play turret engineer and i may never want to and i understand they are kittening annoying at this point in time but anet could atleast Fix turrets instead of nerfing them and that short rant aside the clear problem with turrets isnt how to kill them, its a bunker build you shouldn’t be killing it easily by yourself the problem is that its killing people without trying so with that in mind here is how you fix turret engineers without giving them the good old anet nerf bat (we all know how well that’s worked out before).

Now when i say “without trying” what i mean is a turret engineer dosent have to try to deal damage it just happens, so nerf turret damage some more or less depending on the turret but for the sake of this post lets say 50% and get down to numbers later, this in its self is a nerf to other aspects of the build and not just the damage, it loses pressure and without the pressure classes that currently cant beat them will be able to take down the turrets without worrying about turret damage and an engineer without a kit and wearing a tank amulet dosent really deal that great of damage now you might say well ukune whats the point of having turrets if they dont deal decent sustained damage and my answer is read what i have to say first.

So with greatly reduced damage its just a build that can hold out on a point for a long time and without pressure that jobs alot harder, with the damage reduced that much you might not even need to worry about the turrets at all and can easily focus the engineer which im sure alot of people would love but bringing us back to the “without trying”thing if we are going to remove some of that damage its only fair that we give it something that you need tothink about in order to make it work, and for this we need a rework to the overcharges on turrets and changes to certain traits to make them more meaningful to use and give the turret build a much more active play style to bring it into line with other builds.

A rework with the turret over charges is where things (in my mind) get fun, how about for rocket turret instead of firing a homing rocket that deals a bit more damage then normal that also knocks down a foe and remember with greatly reduced damage on the basic attack in mind we change it to a highly telegraphed heat seeking nuke that deals a decent amount of damage (maybe 3-4ishk) and follows you to the ends of the earth and dosent knock you down but since it is so telegraphed an engineer has to set the shot up to ensure it hits and remember with reduced damage across all the turrets basic attack your less likely to waste dodges or other defensive skills trying to survive making it that much harder for a turret engineer to set up a high damage skill, the other side to this is what an engineer has to do to make it land, like baiting dodges and stunbreaks, or setting it up with an over charged shot and since it will be highly telegraphed and launched at the rocket turret launch interval he has to think a bit more to ensure it hits other wise its just back to small extra damage every few seconds.

Rifle turret can be changed in a similar sense, instead of just increasing its overall dps when it over charges we give it something similar to its surprise shot with some added goodies, so how about making the rifle turrets overcharge a light hitting attack that inflicts 10 vulnerability and activates instantly, use it at the right time to add extra damage to burst combos otherwise its just doing some light damage (just a reminder this is with greatly reduced damage to the regular turret auto in mind), so now instead of turrets just quickly witteling away at people we have “okay im getting no where unless i use a jumpshot with a rifle turret overcharged shot followed up with a rifle overcharged shot/net shot to ensure the rocket turrets overcharge hits with all that vulnerability stacked up increasing the damage even more” that should do some nice damage but that’s a decent investment atleast and requires people to think about what they are doing a bit more then what they currently are, this is also a slight buff to an engineer build thats been asking for a buff the static discharge engineer.

Thumper turret is a bit different, you cant really makes its over charge any better or worse givin how it works but its basic attacks radius could take a nerf, currently it hits the whole point i say half its radius this way people can atleast kite it and an engineer can utilize its staying power in a more appropriate way like forcing people into it like any single class that needs to be in melee range to burst or deal damage or for classes with staying power they can kite the thumper turret without leaving the point, also nerf the radius on the overcharged (which ill talk more on later).

the other 2 turrets are barely used and since ive already typed heaps ill leave them out and healing turret isnt a turret its a regular heal that gives people a false sense of being skilled because they can hit 3 buttons just to use it.

now with greatly reduced damage on the turrets basic attack the traits are fine since the build is a bunker build and they help it do just that, except for rifled turret barrels which is a straight up damage bonus to all the turrets, so keeping inline with nerfing the sustained damage output and buffing the overcharges to promote more skillful play and counterplay we change it, change the name to “super Charged”(or something along those lines im bad with names) and instead of always effecting the turret it only effects the overcharge skills, so instead of perm 15% damage we give it 50% damage bonus to overcharged skills, instead of 50% increased to range we give overcharged skills 100% increase to range, and something i feel should be added if my changes were put in is an 20% reduction to overcharge cooldowns, also change fortify turrets to activate on overcharge instead of setting the turrets because with my suggested changes if you dont have improved damage/range on your overcharges atleast you can have an amazing active tank and will also counter opponents that will be able to attack from 1000 range+ which with my changes long range enemys will stand a much better chance versus a spam happy turret engi.

On to the outcomes these changes have to the turret build and other possibilitys, the current turret engineer would still be an okay noob versus noob build but in no way could a decent player lose to a turret engi mindlessly spamming everything at his disposal and turns fighting a skilled turret engineer into a meaningful fight that requires both players to use a certain amount of intelligence, an engineer would be able to use turrets more effectively in situations they previously couldn’t from the changes to both the overcharges and my idea for the fortified turrets opening up much more options for variation.

…….there was more but i somehow managed to delete it and its getting late so ill just leave it at this and join what ever discussion this sparks up and talk more about my thoughts on it when i can

Imho, it wouldn’t work.
There are just not enough instruments to work with. It’s a design flaw of the current model. As toolbelts aren’t available while the turrets are down, in a turret build you’ve got just 5 weapon skills and 3 overcharges at most (with cooldowns comparable to a #4 or #5 weapon skill).
It ends up being the exact opposite situation of a kit build: too few skills to work with.
You made an example above.

use a jumpshot with a rifle turret overcharged shot followed up with a rifle overcharged shot/net shot to ensure the rocket turrets overcharge hits with all that vulnerability stacked up increasing the damage even more”

You’ve used up almost all the skills said build had available to do that (it just lacks a blunderbuss somewhere).
A normal class, at this point, would just switch weapons. Engineer can’t. That engineer won’t be able to do anything other than autoattacking for the next 10s.
Unless that chain attack was able to kill the enemy (with the damage values you provide it likely won’t, even if the was using zerker stats, since only weapon skills would be affected) the engineer is basically screwed. Sure, he can use the elite, but those turrets won’t do damage either, so they can be ignored. It would just prolong the fight for a bit.
Also, having such few skills makes the means of avoiding them all the more powerful.
A couple dodges would be enough to avoid all the skills. I’m not even talking about defensive skills – just dodges. And with how those attacks are telegraphed, using them is no issue. Even assuming that you hit him and he dies, it all ends there. Having few skills means also having few means of combining them. It becomes easily predictable, and thus easily counterable as well – be it via dodges, CC or defensive skills.
Defensive skills that we won’t have available, by the way. And neither condition clears, apart from the healing turret. And no stun break either, unless you’ve got the thumper turret toolbelt available (meaning that you just detonated it).

Imho, unless they ever plan to completely change the whole turret design, the only way to go is some kind of redesign to make overcharges chain-skill-like. I reposted (i made it a month ago or so) such a redesign in another thread (Why do people play turret? -Brainstorm, by naphack). Maybe coupled with some kind of energy system, given per turret. So that some element of micromanagement is added to turrets, we have more skills available (and thus ways to chain them) but at the same time, they get to have sensible costs involved (making spamming them very counterproductive – similar to your rework, the autoattack would be terrible). And preventing the current turret use as something that is just placed down, overcharged and blasted (or picked up), since they will need to charge up to do the “higher-tiered” overcharges.