Guild Wars 2

I’m just curious what anet’s reasoning is behind this. I never roll with turrets when I’m roaming wvw, but sometimes I like to use them for the fun of it when defending a fort. It’s rare, but every now and then I want to do something different. With an invisible 5 minute countdown however, I can’t imagine any engineer now willing to risk putting their life in danger when their turrets explode at the wrong time and you’re stuck with a lengthy CD and no skills to save your butt. Pets don’t disappear after 5 minutes, so why did they decide turrets should? I find this very bizarre especially when you consider:

1. It takes time to plan and position your turrets so they’re not easily accessible by the enemy. More so if (like me) you don’t have or want to waste points for the ground targeting trait.

2. There’s no UI to indicate the amount of time remaining.

I’m hoping anet can shed some light on this and explain the reasoning for it.

Prolly because people used it in PvE to level AFK.

I actually tried it in Orr, and it’s pretty easy to get a constant karma/exp stream while not even being in front of your computer.

If you really wanted to afk grind, you could still do it with a ranger pet, I dont think this was a solution to afking. Or at least make the time limit pve only, I would hate to be fighting and watch my turrets blow up mid battle.
It will happen to someone.

I’ve been running full turrets pretty much since release, and the times that my turrets have been out for five minutes or more…well, those tend to be when I’m reading a book while farming for crafting materials or something. Never when I’m actively playing. Admittedly, my experience is purely PvE, but I still find it difficult to imagine a circumstance in which I am both actively playing and leaving my turrets standing (not even picking them up to arrange them in slightly different ways) for upwards of five minutes at a time barring a fire-and-forget ambush in which they’re essentially warning bells.

I think the change may have something to do with the Engineer’s ability to get contribution to several events simultaneously while not really being in the area of any of them or actually participating at all – no other minion-having profession’s minions can be used in this particular way, as all other minions follow their makers.

Anymras.5729:

I’ve been running full turrets pretty much since release, and the times that my turrets have been out for five minutes or more…well, those tend to be when I’m reading a book while farming for crafting materials or something. Never when I’m actively playing. Admittedly, my experience is purely PvE, but I still find it difficult to imagine a circumstance in which I am both actively playing and leaving my turrets standing (not even picking them up to arrange them in slightly different ways) for upwards of five minutes at a time barring a fire-and-forget ambush in which they’re essentially warning bells.

I think the change may have something to do with the Engineer’s ability to get contribution to several events simultaneously while not really being in the area of any of them or actually participating at all – no other minion-having profession’s minions can be used in this particular way, as all other minions follow their makers.

Too little too late. Had I thought of this, I’d have maximized my Skill Point/Karma gains.

Hsinimod.5784:

Too little too late. Had I thought of this, I’d have maximized my Skill Point/Karma gains.

Ah yes, fun times.

Edit: I mean for people who had though of this before, definitely not me, no sir.

Anymras, I can understand that being a problem, but the solution to that is to enforce an AFK policy on the server, not enforce a time limit on the turrets (imo). Additionally, I would completely understand if there was a game rule that would destroy your turrets if you venture to far away from them. In fact, that’s how I originally interpreted how turrets would function. I was surprised to learn that I could be on the other side of the map and my turrets would still function. IMO that’s a core problem that could be solved, but a 5 min timer would be an odd solution to that problem.

In my particular case, I might setup a rocket turret and rifle turret near the entrance of the fort, or perhaps on the wall. At first, they’re not likely to see any action, but I will patrol the area and/or escort Dolyaks nearby. If I get jumped, then I will need to rely on those turrets to help bail me out. In this particular case, if the turrets are destroyed during combat due to the timeout, that would likely result in me losing the fight. Conversely, deploying turrets during combat gives the enemy a tactical advantage while the engie is busy setting up. More so if you to run around to deploy them first since you don’t want your turrets within AOE distance of each other.

Kardiamond.6952:

Prolly because people used it in PvE to level AFK.

This is the reason exactly.

I was running an alt through Queensdale, and there were two rocket turrets positioned on the water pipes. The absolutely annihilated any of the bandits that ran up there during the various events. I’m not sure where the engineers that laid them had buggered off too, but they were probably sitting afk somewhere getting credit for every event that the turrets farmed for them. Given that the event reward is based on your non-scaled level, it would’ve been a great way for them to get some risk-free farming in.

I can totally understand adding some kind of range limit, where if you go too far away from your turrets they blow up, but a 5 minute timer makes them kind of useless.

I like defending places, it’s one of the main reasons I was enjoying engineer… now I place my turrets in nice strategic places, wait for enemies… 5 min later (if they don’t blow up while things are attacking me and I die), then I have to put them back again. It’s just annoying. Especially considering I can get to some really nice spots with Jump Shot as well. I really enjoyed doing that.

Now there’s also really no point whatsoever in having the 30% turret damage reduction, or the self-repair trait… they’re not going to last anyway, so why even bother?

This is stupid, please change it back… add a range limit, or something else to prevent AFK farming or whatever, but don’t ruin perfectly legit uses of turrets just because some people were abusing it.

Make the 5min self-destruct timer only activate if you’re a certain range away from the turret… like maybe 5000? And then the timer should reset if you come back within range… so you can still move around a bit without worrying about losing turrets too much.

And/or make it so they don’t self-destruct if you’ve used their special ability recently (like, say, in the last 5 minutes).

Or both.

As it is now, turrets are just totally disposable things you throw around as a distraction and a bit of extra damage. There’s just absolutely no point even trying to place them strategically anymore.

SoulRiser.3175:

I can totally understand adding some kind of range limit, where if you go too far away from your turrets they blow up, but a 5 minute timer makes them kind of useless.

I like defending places, it’s one of the main reasons I was enjoying engineer… now I place my turrets in nice strategic places, wait for enemies… 5 min later (if they don’t blow up while things are attacking me and I die), then I have to put them back again. It’s just annoying. Especially considering I can get to some really nice spots with Jump Shot as well. I really enjoyed doing that.

Now there’s also really no point whatsoever in having the 30% turret damage reduction, or the self-repair trait… they’re not going to last anyway, so why even bother?

This is stupid, please change it back… add a range limit, or something else to prevent AFK farming or whatever, but don’t ruin perfectly legit uses of turrets just because some people were abusing it.

Make the 5min self-destruct timer only activate if you’re a certain range away from the turret… like maybe 5000? And then the timer should reset if you come back within range… so you can still move around a bit without worrying about losing turrets too much.

And/or make it so they don’t self-destruct if you’ve used their special ability recently (like, say, in the last 5 minutes).

Or both.

As it is now, turrets are just totally disposable things you throw around as a distraction and a bit of extra damage. There’s just absolutely no point even trying to place them strategically anymore.

A range restriction doesn’t solve afk farming because you can just go afk nearby the turret. Refreshing the timer through some mechanism might be cool, but I doubt that would be easy to implement on their end. Also means you can just go afk for like 4 minutes, come back, refresh, go afk again.

I don’t really think that fights tend to go on for a solid 5 minutes anyways, unless it’s some kind of boss encounter, or perhaps you’re bunkering in sPvP. Even still, they could probably bump it up to 10 minutes and still have an effective solution to the afk farming. Maybe they could make it so that the expiry timer doesn’t apply in sPvP or WvW, but again, probably not something they want to prioritize.

Yeah I just got back on yesterday after taking some time off to see the new changes and I see that my turrets also self destruct, to me this ruined my game play, I don’t even want to play anymore, the Eng was pretty much the only class that was holding me to this game, after this nerf I give up, I don’t care anymore.

having said all the above…i have no idea why Anet cannot implement different skill specifications for PvE and WvW

Yamsandjams.3267:

This is the reason exactly.

I was running an alt through Queensdale, and there were two rocket turrets positioned on the water pipes. The absolutely annihilated any of the bandits that ran up there during the various events. I’m not sure where the engineers that laid them had buggered off too, but they were probably sitting afk somewhere getting credit for every event that the turrets farmed for them. Given that the event reward is based on your non-scaled level, it would’ve been a great way for them to get some risk-free farming in.

Neither XP nor Karma are the valuable commodity in farming. Drops are. I can understand how the above might’ve been a concern at release, but between DR and the war on bots, the “teeth” have long since been pulled on the above point. This is an outdated concern. Worrying about something such as this now that bots are running rampant is like closing the dam after all the water is gone.

@the OP: The change to a 5 minute timer sort of confirms a theory that some of us might’ve suspected but could not know for sure: the devs have been balancing the in-combat efficiency of the turrets at least in part around their persistence in the world. Cutting their life span from permanent to 5 minutes in exchange for buffs must’ve been seen as an even exchange, even though it looks completely arbitrary to us as players.

If you have some time to kill, go cruse the older patch notes and see how many patches that Guard spirit weapons have gotten. Necro minions. Ranger pets. Then, look for turret patches, and notice the relative lack. Gives the impression that turrets are the most complicated of the bunch to balance, doesn’t it?

5 minute is a joke the time out should be 30 mins so i could actually put em in strategic places with my engi buddies and then co-ordinate a strategy.

Yeah this kinda screwed the strategy of placing Turrets at each entrance to Garr so you can get tipped off when attackers come.