Guild Wars 2

I am quite disturbed that nobody made a thread about this matter.

Maybe all of us engineers are too busy crying at the loss of the passive initial water field?

Now I would like to know if the Cleaning Burst/Regenerating Mist change is a worthy tradeoff for the main reason I was playing the turret (the other being Accelerant-Packed Turrets for KD)?

As the healing turret was already the frailest of the turrets we now have to wait for cleaning burst to trigger before considering comboing, that’s a huge loss given that it may die way before we have the opportunity to.

Also, the healing provided by cleaning burst, is it a better or a worse?

And that massive initial heal nerf…

It’s a much better field now because it persists even after you detonate the turret. That, and you can actually see when it works now which is a huge upgrade because where your group never knew there was a field before, now everyone can throw in their finishers because it’s visible. It might fire a fraction of a second later than the old one, but it lasts longer, is easy to see, and even works if the turret is gone (as long as it fired firsts of course).

There really was no heal nerf. Half was moved to Cleansing Burst, not removed all together. Plus it is AOE now, a pretty solid buff IMO.

Listen, if they ever do get this turret to a point where we don’t want to just detonate it immediately it may be a nerf, but until then the Healing Turret was buffed.

I disagree and believe there to be a significant trade off, depending on your spec. For instance… I ran a bunker-like bomb build. I used H turret by summoning then instantly destroying netting me a 5,700 & 1,320 heal within 1 sec. Now it is split between 3 heals with a forced pause of 2-3 seconds. This means you can no longer use it on the run and in my case it sucks for normal play.

EXAMPLE: Fighting in arrow cart range. Previously I would get a 7k heal… now I get a 2.7k heal as H turret is destroyed. Also, in PvE fighting in AEs because you know bombs have short range…

Valar Morghulis.7049:

I disagree and believe there to be a significant trade off, depending on your spec. For instance… I ran a bunker-like bomb build. I used H turret by summoning then instantly destroying netting me a 5,700 & 1,320 heal within 1 sec. Now it is split between 3 heals with a forced pause of 2-3 seconds. This means you can no longer use it on the run and in my case it sucks for normal play.

EXAMPLE: Fighting in arrow cart range. Previously I would get a 7k heal… now I get a 2.7k heal as H turret is destroyed. Also, in PvE fighting in AEs because you know bombs have short range…

I completely agree. I was using a similar build for high level fractals. Now, I can’t even figure out how to properly apply the water field. Maybe you can help.

I drop turret, immediately press the heal skill again. A few things can happen:

1. Some random mist appears.
2. The turret starts to spray water in a circle.
3. The turret does nothing for a few seconds, then starts to spray water in a circle.

I have no idea what is the “water” field, and no idea when to detonate the turret, and no idea why there seems to be a delay in spraying water sometimes but not others. There seems to be no consistency, no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes the water spray never comes. Sometimes I’m looking for the water spray, never find it, detonate the turret anyway and it randomly does the area heal.

No idea what is going on.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Valar Morghulis.7049:

I disagree and believe there to be a significant trade off, depending on your spec. For instance… I ran a bunker-like bomb build. I used H turret by summoning then instantly destroying netting me a 5,700 & 1,320 heal within 1 sec. Now it is split between 3 heals with a forced pause of 2-3 seconds. This means you can no longer use it on the run and in my case it sucks for normal play.

EXAMPLE: Fighting in arrow cart range. Previously I would get a 7k heal… now I get a 2.7k heal as H turret is destroyed. Also, in PvE fighting in AEs because you know bombs have short range…

I completely agree. I was using a similar build for high level fractals. Now, I can’t even figure out how to properly apply the water field. Maybe you can help.

I drop turret, immediately press the heal skill again. A few things can happen:

1. Some random mist appears.
2. The turret starts to spray water in a circle.
3. The turret does nothing for a few seconds, then starts to spray water in a circle.

I have no idea what is the “water” field, and no idea when to detonate the turret, and no idea why there seems to be a delay in spraying water sometimes but not others. There seems to be no consistency, no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes the water spray never comes. Sometimes I’m looking for the water spray, never find it, detonate the turret anyway and it randomly does the area heal.

No idea what is going on.

for it to immediately drop the water field you have to immediately overcharge it, if there is a delay between dropping the turret and overcharging it the water field will be queued for the next pulse. the best time to detonate the turret is when you see a gold ring around the turret.

And a healing turret in concept is meant for group aoe healing, so this was a buff. it is now suited for support rather than a self burst heal. And after practicing with it for a bit, you can still get the full heal+ blast heal even under fire of an ac.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Valar Morghulis.7049:

I disagree and believe there to be a significant trade off, depending on your spec. For instance… I ran a bunker-like bomb build. I used H turret by summoning then instantly destroying netting me a 5,700 & 1,320 heal within 1 sec. Now it is split between 3 heals with a forced pause of 2-3 seconds. This means you can no longer use it on the run and in my case it sucks for normal play.

EXAMPLE: Fighting in arrow cart range. Previously I would get a 7k heal… now I get a 2.7k heal as H turret is destroyed. Also, in PvE fighting in AEs because you know bombs have short range…

I completely agree. I was using a similar build for high level fractals. Now, I can’t even figure out how to properly apply the water field. Maybe you can help.

I drop turret, immediately press the heal skill again. A few things can happen:

1. Some random mist appears.
2. The turret starts to spray water in a circle.
3. The turret does nothing for a few seconds, then starts to spray water in a circle.

I have no idea what is the “water” field, and no idea when to detonate the turret, and no idea why there seems to be a delay in spraying water sometimes but not others. There seems to be no consistency, no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes the water spray never comes. Sometimes I’m looking for the water spray, never find it, detonate the turret anyway and it randomly does the area heal.

No idea what is going on.

I’m not sure how to tell you what exactly you’re doing wrong, but you should see an area of effect for the water field now, even if the turret gets destroyed. It will have the little heart/puzzle piece animation around the edge of the circle while the field is active.

With practice (I don’t even really notice it anymore) you can still get the same healing on yourself, and more for the group. In fact I commonly get 2-3+ blast finishers in if I time my BOB right, getting me easily 3k more healing than I could with the old turret. It was possible with the old turret, sure, but not at all likely unless by dumb luck. This field is more forgiving and allows for even more healing. It is an extra button press which I can see being annoying, but with practice it is better than before.

Monadproxy has good specific tips on how to get it to work if you’re having trouble.

Its much better for what it was supposed to be used for, the increased range on everything is just so nice.

If you want a self heal go for the elixir h or something

H Turret is better hands down. If you cannot at this point get the overcharge to happen on the first pulse then you need more practice. The only thing that is different about the self heal is that it comes in 3 smaller parts instead of one huge chunk and then a smaller heal.( I guess that amy be considered a slight nerf but it happens so fast i personally dont think it matters) The overall effect though is massive because you can potentially get 2+ more heals without even trying. (Rifle 5, B.oB., Eg acid, Magnet shield, rifle turret, etc)

Arenanet said they didn’t like that people weren’t using the turret and instantly picking it up, so nerfing the instant effect makes sense.

emikochan.8504:

Arenanet said they didn’t like that people weren’t using the turret and instantly picking it up, so nerfing the instant effect makes sense.

but the new Healing Turret is actually better if detonated immediately.
So they sort of missed their goal there.

And let’s be frank about it: we did NOT pick up our turret before, as the dev said… we detonated it!
This proves they been theorycrafting instead of experiencing first hand.

Kimbald.2697:

emikochan.8504:

Arenanet said they didn’t like that people weren’t using the turret and instantly picking it up, so nerfing the instant effect makes sense.

but the new Healing Turret is actually better if detonated immediately.
So they sort of missed their goal there.

And let’s be frank about it: we did NOT pick up our turret before, as the dev said… we detonated it!
This proves they been theorycrafting instead of experiencing first hand.

The reason why it’s best to immediately detonate isn’t because of the changes that they made, it’s because of the changes they DIDN’T make. The changes that they made to HT actually reward you for keeping it out longer (Constant regen, and additional heal + removal of conditions + water field for all allies in range of the overcharge).

The problem is that it’s impossible to keep alive in any kind of fight. The damage it takes is too much, some of the turret traits are supposedly not working, and the speed that you can heal your turrets isn’t worth the effort that you have to put into it. It is much better to cut your losses by immediately overcharging and detonating and reap its benefits than to let it stay out, die to anything else, and get nothing.

Nilix.2170:

Kimbald.2697:

emikochan.8504:

Arenanet said they didn’t like that people weren’t using the turret and instantly picking it up, so nerfing the instant effect makes sense.

but the new Healing Turret is actually better if detonated immediately.
So they sort of missed their goal there.

And let’s be frank about it: we did NOT pick up our turret before, as the dev said… we detonated it!
This proves they been theorycrafting instead of experiencing first hand.

The reason why it’s best to immediately detonate isn’t because of the changes that they made, it’s because of the changes they DIDN’T make. The changes that they made to HT actually reward you for keeping it out longer (Constant regen, and additional heal + removal of conditions + water field for all allies in range of the overcharge).

The problem is that it’s impossible to keep alive in any kind of fight. The damage it takes is too much, some of the turret traits are supposedly not working, and the speed that you can heal your turrets isn’t worth the effort that you have to put into it. It is much better to cut your losses by immediately overcharging and detonating and reap its benefits than to let it stay out, die to anything else, and get nothing.

+1: The turret’s lack of survivability is a the most important strike against using it as intended.

The cleansing burst also has a 15 second cooldown, and that is 15 seconds when your healing skill isn’t recharging to heal you when you need it.

Actually Nillix and Vereen, even if the turret would live longer, it would still be better to detonate.
I think you are both wrong and a bit quick to put my comment down.

I made a full comparison of detonating versus leaving it out in another thread.
It’s more than you account for:

you have to calculate the fact you are not using the toolbelt skill when it’s left out. on a 20 second timer that’s a big loss.
No aoe heal from the detonate in the water field. So you have to use another blast finisher that might be needed for another thing.
And very important: NO self heal from deploying the turret each time, that’s half the heal lost each 20 seconds!
Of course it’s more than the heals: when leaving the turret out you can not move!
Detonating = mobile. Leaving the turret = stationary.

Conclusion is: for self heal detonating is always better, but if you have a group with lots of blast finishers in a STATIONARY fight than leaving it out can be better.

I agree that the turret weakness is an extremely BIG issue.
But don’t think that’s the only reason to detonate it immediately.

Even when comparing heal per heal, cooldown against cooldown… it’s still better to detonate. And this is very odd, since it’s the opposite of what the devs wanted to achieve.
Even when you ignore the incredibly poor survival of the turret.

Turret weaknes could well be the worst of these issues, but you’re wrong claiming that we shouldn’t detonate if this was fixed.

Keeping the turret alive:

Initial burst: 5040 + 1.0 * healing
Permanent regen: 130 + 0.125 * healing
Cleansing Burst on cooldown: 2520 + 0.5 * healing

Ignoring the placement heal, it works out to 298 + 0.158 * healing power per second; as the placement heal can’t be replicated if we’re keeping the turret down permanently, it’s hard to say the value for this calculation.

Instantly detonating and using the toolbelt skill on cooldown as well:

Burst heal:
Placement: 2520 + heal * 0.5
Cleansing Burst: 2520 + heal * 0.5
Blast finisher: 1320 + heal * 0.2
Regen: around 11 seconds without boon duration, so total 1430 + heal * 1.375

Total healing: 7490 + heal * 2.575
Per second: 374.5 + heal * 0.129

Conclusion: If the max possible heal is necessary, it’s still more mathematically sound to detonate the turret within the water field as soon as possible

Keeping the turret alive also falls further behind if you assume that other characters may be providing regeneration as well, but it DOES have slightly more uptime on water fields for combo finishers (and 25% faster on cleansing conditions). This isn’t even considering the difficulty of the whole “not letting the turret die” part.

Suggestion: Just put the full heal in cleansing burst; this increases the heals/second by about 128 + heal * 0.033 when keeping the turret alive permanently, without negatively affecting the burst heal from detonating it, as long as the turret can be kept alive until the first Cleansing Burst. End result: Keeping the turret alive is better overall healing, detonating heal isn’t massively affected.

Kimbald.2697:

Actually Nillix and Vereen, even if the turret would live longer, it would still be better to detonate.
I think you are both wrong and a bit quick to put my comment down.

I made a full comparison of detonating versus leaving it out in another thread.
It’s more than you account for:

you have to calculate the fact you are not using the toolbelt skill when it’s left out. on a 20 second timer that’s a big loss.
No aoe heal from the detonate in the water field. So you have to use another blast finisher that might be needed for another thing.
And very important: NO self heal from deploying the turret each time, that’s half the heal lost each 20 seconds!
Of course it’s more than the heals: when leaving the turret out you can not move!
Detonating = mobile. Leaving the turret = stationary.

Conclusion is: for self heal detonating is always better, but if you have a group with lots of blast finishers in a STATIONARY fight than leaving it out can be better.

I agree that the turret weakness is an extremely BIG issue.
But don’t think that’s the only reason to detonate it immediately.

Even when comparing heal per heal, cooldown against cooldown… it’s still better to detonate. And this is very odd, since it’s the opposite of what the devs wanted to achieve.
Even when you ignore the incredibly poor survival of the turret.

Turret weaknes could well be the worst of these issues, but you’re wrong claiming that we shouldn’t detonate if this was fixed.

Oh but I’m all for detonating, completely on your side for this one.

Thing is, unless you are about to make a stand somewhere with your party and you are all synergistic and go for combos, there is no real reason to use heal turret anymore.

So yes, I am also considering all of the cooldowns and toolbelt skills disablings. I just switched to medkit for the time being on pve roaming (still pondering for spvp and wvw) and my engineer just doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Maybe Anet wants us to switch skills a lot? the current combat mode system doesn’t allow this kind of versatility.

Actually Anet did make it so insta-detonating isn’t the best method of healing with healing turret anymore, but instead they made picking the turret up after firing cleansing burst more effective over time.

Instant detonating:
Placement: 2520
Cleansing Burst: 2520 + 650 regen
Detonate: 1320
Total: 7010 over 20 seconds
HP per second: 350.5

Instant pickup
Placement: 2520
Cleansing Burst: 2520 + 650 regen
Total: 5690 over 15 seconds (pickup reduces recharge time for placement by 25%)
HP per second: 379.33

Of course, insta-detonating still has uses for more burst healing at a single point, and for more group healing over time (detonating is 224.5 group healing per second while pickup is 211.33 group healing per second), but for better personal healing over time its better to pickup your turret after bursting.

Problem with picking it up is that it destroys the waterfield and slows you down, whereas with blasting the field remains for you to leap with jumpshot or projectile finishers to apply regen to allies near target. And then theres that small chance of pickup getting rupted and turret being destroyed at the same time midfight.

Also just because the cd says 15/20 doesn’t mean it is, its closer to 17/21 for pickup/blast.

Oh boy, is it math time?
Just having the numbers is one thing but since healing is more about states rather than HP/s, this actually requires a graph. Give me a bit, and I’ll have some interesting work done.

And yes, I understand that detonating the turret out has its purpose. In fact, that is when it is the most useful. The moment the patch came up, I dedicated 10 minutes of time to practicing the new timing for immediate overcharge and detonation. However, the change was supposed to facilitate the use of the turret as more of a constant group asset. The overcharge heal going to the team makes it well useful for groups, however, it’s inability to stand up keeps it from being something that remains on the field. Even if they did up the HP/Armor on it, I’m certain that the majority of players would OC/DT immediately, but it would make at least become more like a viable option rather than an unnecessary gamble with survival. Currently, the only reason I’d leave it out is to stack on extra seconds of regen before a fight begins and set to overcharge when it starts.

Nice contributions, and it’s very weird what this all leads to:

1. leaving out the turret is not only the worst healing method, it is also impossible because of turret being destroyed

2. detonating is always better than leaving it out

3. Picking up the turret, the very things the devs gave as reason for the change… ends up being the BEST use of the turret

Anyone else slightly baffled?

edit: and the odd thing is that the turret got a LOT better, but somehow it’s not working as intended just yet.

I am also baffled. The result being the opposite of what they wanted doesn’t really make sense. I try not to get all cynical about Engineer development but between this and the Scope thing it’s hard to imagine they really have anyone over there playing one full time.

I personally would leave the healing turret out if it healed 300ish every pulse instead of the regen, I even wouldn’t mind the turret being made out of paper if it worked like this.

Monadproxy.3489:

I personally would leave the healing turret out if it healed 300ish every pulse instead of the regen, I even wouldn’t mind the turret being made out of paper if it worked like this.

Don’t encourage them! I also like the idea of a real heal tick to encourage us to leave it out, but it is not okay to remain made out of paper because you will never get use out of it. It could remove all conditions and pulse a 10k heal, it doesn’t matter if it’s dead instantly.

proper placement and cc can keep a turret alive. the only thing i have problems with keeping a turret alive is aoe, but in those situations I’m constantly moving so at that point i don’t care since it will be more beneficial to just detonate it.

emikochan.8504:

Arenanet said they didn’t like that people weren’t using the turret and instantly picking it up, so nerfing the instant effect makes sense.

Except it melts in aoe damage instantly. Make people have to keep it out longer, but dont substantially increase its survivability. Smart no?

SmoothHussler.6387:

emikochan.8504:

Arenanet said they didn’t like that people weren’t using the turret and instantly picking it up, so nerfing the instant effect makes sense.

Except it melts in aoe damage instantly. Make people have to keep it out longer, but dont substantially increase its survivability. Smart no?

Exactly, they didn’t think through the situations where this would be useful. If you are anywhere NEAR AoE damage, especially if you are a bunker/support build, you might as well hit F1 and pop a few blast finishers for all the use you will get out of the turret.

It is very depressing that the F1 skill on the med kit heals for substantially more than the Heal Turret does now without the overcharge, and is only 100 points away from HT WITH the Cleansing burst. In any situation where you and your allies are taking enough fire to warrant the AoE heals cleanse, that turret isn’t going to last the proscribed 3 seconds for overcharge… and the dropped med packs are not big enough heals nor a short enough cooldown to be useful to anyone other than the person dropping them and running though them.

Now if you SPAM the Heal Turret, then you might get the 2500 heal, you and your allies MIGHT get the overcharge and the water field MIGHT be there for 2 seconds or so… but is this something we can count on when in situations where it is needed?

Not for me. If I run HT, I stick it behind walls and behind gaps that don’t get as much AoE damage. But is seems they probably should have thought of that.

I would love for all turrets to be viable options in an aoe heavy environment. Make me WANT to make a turret build. Make enemies have to stop and think about taking on an engi with turrets. Don’t make them op, but make them at the very least viable and us players will react. Sure some people might not give up their kits or elixirs for turrets, but a great deal of us would love to have the choice of whether to or not.

Ditto for gadgets. Finding the balance where they can be viable alternatives to elixirs and kits can be tough, but I hope anet are working towards this. I understand people joke about warrior banner buffs and engi turret buffs, but I’m all for buffing them if they can become actually useful in pvp/wvw.

The healing turret change isnt necassarily a bad thing. But until their survivability is increased, its really only a half measure.

Monadproxy.3489:

I personally would leave the healing turret out if it healed 300ish every pulse instead of the regen, I even wouldn’t mind the turret being made out of paper if it worked like this.

Yeah, I kind of had the same thinking. If it provided it’s own unique buff, similar to the ele’s soothing mist, instead of just throwing on regen buffs, it would be more valuable. I imagine that’s why they made it so the ele’s soothing mist does not simply apply a 3 second regeneration boon every 3 seconds, and I think the same logic should be applied to healing turret.

Or maybe the turret could heal for the deployment amount every 15 seconds or something once it’s on the ground. That way, you have an incentive to keep it out for the shorter 15 second cooldown and not have to suffer by not getting the deployment heal… although that also means you don’t really have direct control over when the heal gets activated…

They could also make it so that it has no deployment heal and simply has all the heal put into cleansing burst. That way, you’d want to keep it deployed so you use cleansing burst more frequently instead of having the turret go on cooldown (I imagine a lot of people might not like this though).

I don’t think they’ll truly be able to obtain their goal with healing turret until a lot of the other aspects of turrets are addressed, such as their incredible fragility, self-punishing cooldowns, and loss of toolbelt skills upon deployment. Once those are out of the way, maybe healing turret can actually start to be a real turret instead of… whatever the puppy it is now.

Dingle.2743:

Keeping the turret alive:

Initial burst: 5040 + 1.0 * healing
Permanent regen: 130 + 0.125 * healing
Cleansing Burst on cooldown: 2520 + 0.5 * healing

Ignoring the placement heal, it works out to 298 + 0.158 * healing power per second; as the placement heal can’t be replicated if we’re keeping the turret down permanently, it’s hard to say the value for this calculation.

Instantly detonating and using the toolbelt skill on cooldown as well:

Burst heal:
Placement: 2520 + heal * 0.5
Cleansing Burst: 2520 + heal * 0.5
Blast finisher: 1320 + heal * 0.2
Regen: around 11 seconds without boon duration, so total 1430 + heal * 1.375

Total healing: 7490 + heal * 2.575
Per second: 374.5 + heal * 0.129

Potentially, it could be worth while to keep the HT alive for a couple of seconds. If you’re in an organized group, you can have them use their blast finishers as you overcharge the HT. Sadly, as soon as this is done, it’s better to detonate the turret before the water field goes away; otherwise the wind will tip the HT over. Let me mention that nobody is saying to protect the HT, as the devs claimed would happen. But this last patch boosted our support builds exponentially.

The water field does persist for the full 3 (or 5, whatever it is) seconds even after the turret detonates, so even if you drop + overcharge + detonate all as soon as possible you and your allies can still throw blast finishers for healing.

Just to clear up the “it’s supposed to be group heal…” comments that were addressed to me…

I used HT in my bomb elixir build that, most of the time, was used in support/healing roles in WvW and dungeons. Because my bombs have 0 range (since you place them on the ground) I am very much in the middle of the battle getting hit. I go here on purpose so as to heal other players with bombs and HT, damage and control mobs/invaders. This change makes that impossible in most “big fight” situations that I am in.

Can I go out of AC/mob AE range and use HT? Sure, but then the ppl I’m healing have to follow me… ACs insta gobble HTs…. unless I have the unfortunate luck of always getting AC’ed by those with the +dmg AC wxp perk then I’m not sure what anyone could be doing differently (other than the +30% turret health trait that I stated I don’t have and might not work anyway) to have their HT survive in the AC ring long enough to get the full heal. With all that said, it’s rarely only one AC that is targeting me, the ram and the ram operator that I’m trying to keep alive….

I usually have to switch to elixir heal so that I can survive to dmg/heal with bombs, but elixir is really bad for healing others…

The problem, as many have stated, is the armor/hps of turrets… it is severely lacking to laughable degrees. I’m not sure what Anet is afraid of when it comes to correcting this.

My short solution for Anet:
1. Increase hps/armor on turrets (duh)
2. Make healing turret invulnerable and work identical to ranger heal (ae spring).