Guild Wars 2

Everywhere I go I keep seeing people say that turrets are useless and/or underpowered compared to kits or elixirs. Problem is, I started using the engie in the first place BECAUSE of the turrets. I tried the kits and elixirs but to me they just aren’t as much fun. So has anyone found a good turret based build that isn’t immediately scoffed at?

What are you wanting to do with it?

spvp tpvp pve dungeons wvw?

There are a few builds that utilize turrets such as net, rocket, and rifle that work well but they are not full turret builds.

You can do an ok bunker build using net, thumper, and rocket for the CC / control and then go inventions / alchemy / tools. With pistol / shield and condi damage gear or rifle and power gear.

I’ve seen a few engineers do well with them

Well right now I’m doing PvE but I imagine I’ll be doing sPvP and WvW in the future.

I run a straight Turret build. Traits are as follows:

Explosives 20 (Accelerant-Packed Turrets)
Inventions 30 (Metal-Plated, Autotool Installation/Elite Supplies, Rifled Turret Barrels)
Tools 10 (Deployable Turrets)

Which turrets I use depends on the situation, except for Healing and Rocket – as the only two currently Deployable turrets, I use those almost all the time. Autotool Installation is also useful only if you’re trying to hold a point, while Elite Supplies is better if you’re trying to stay more mobile.

Typically, I use pistols, though I intend to switch to rifles – +300 Power isn’t very useful for pistols, after all.

Tbh, I’ve found certain turrets to be extremely useful when used in support of a generally non-turret build. For example: Any grenade build benefits massively from either net turret or rocket turret. Rocket turret, if you ignore the direct damage and burning, knocks targets in an area down twice in 4 seconds. During those knockdowns, your tossed grenades (all 3 of them) will do full damage because they are more-or-less all guaranteed to hit.

In PvE or PvP?
I originally made my engi hoping it would have been a bunkering, king of the hill class with ground set-up and hold through turrets, at least in PvE.

I quickly found out in PvE they get lolstomped by big mobs even fully traited, and will pull all hell on you (and die quickitteno leave your underpowered build to deal with 4 mobs) on trash/world.

In PvP some people make it work.

I’d love to play turret heavy, and I’ve given it more than a chance, but it’s not doing it for me. Not pure turrets at least, there’s just not enough control of your surroundings and they’re just too squishy even after you invest heavily in them and kitten your damage-y traits. I do like the net one for specific situations though, but it only synergises well with a control heavy rifle build.

What little experience I have – I have not seen any turret builds in sPvP except the ones I tried when I first started – which didn’t work too well. They just get ignored / steamrolled. The only exception is the supply crate which is an awesome AoE stun with bonus gifts for everybody!

In sPvP – turrets would have to be four times as durable to be twice as useful, if you see what I mean.

In PvE – I experiment a lot with turrets – they can be fun when used as a purely secondary tactic. The problem is one of mobility… combat in GW2 favors the kite and the backflip – not the tank – so I end up running in circles around my turrets…

The best build I’ve had so far in sPVP was a turret based build. It would be even stronger if turrets recieved buffs from stats, but so far it works fairly well.

Traits:
20 in Explosives (Accelerant packed turrets)
30 in Inventions (Metal Plating, autotool installation, rifled barrle turrets)
20 in Alchemy (Self Regulating Defenses, Protection Injection)

Soldier’s Amulet w/ Soldiers Jewel, Rifle as the primary weapon. No set list of particular turrets used, but I usually go with Healing Turret, Rocket Turret, Rifle Turret, then Flame or Thumper or Net Turret.

The biggest strength of this set up is how tanky it is. The alchemist abilities exist to make the engineer as hard to kill as possible, and over time the turret damage really builds up. The second advantage is the contol effects: with every turret being an AoE Knockback waiting to happen, the turret build can forcibly disable another player for lengthy amounts of time, and can also save the engineer from combos and ambushes. Each turret itself is a blast finisher as well.

From there it depends on what you want to do. Usually I go for rocket, rifle, and flame for damage, but when holding a point I will opt for rocket, thumper, and flame turret. If attacking in a group, I will use the net turret since an immobilized enemy is a dead one in those circumstances (Rifle net + toolbelt net + turret net + overcharged turret net and daze = a very long duration of immobilization).

Accelerant packed turrets is usesless. the radius is too short and the points are wasted. if you want a turret build for spvp then you need Deployable Turrets and as much durability as possible and constant damage
in short:
soldiers jewel & amulet
runes of melandru
30 points in invetions for bonus thoughness and improved turrets
30 points in alchemy for bonus vitality, auto elixir s, protection injection
10 inventions for deployable turrets

place the turrets in spots where they dont get attacked and its fine. just defend the point and you are good, you dont want to move around much anyway because the turrets have high cooldown.

I too picked the engi only for the turrets, If I dont use them I might as well start a rifle warrior or pistol theief, both have better weapon abilitys than the engi imo.

My general pve build that iv used most of the game while leveling had been rifle, Healing Turret, Rifle Turret, Rocket Turret, Land Mine (Think its really called Throw Mine), with supply creates as the elite most of the time. In events and such the mortar is fun to play with seeing.

Basicly you act as a fireing squad with your Rifle turret, Missle turret, using the charged shot and land mine to keep knocking them back and your net once you have them knocked back. The rocket turret also likes to knock them down.

I profer the land mine over the personal battering ram because it has about half the cooldown, an aoe knockback as well as you can use it tactically to knock ranged enemys closer to you or away from cover thats blocking one of your turrets.

Seeing as Iv only really done general pve, you can use pretty much any traits you like and get by. Tho the 30% damage reduction on turrets and turret regeneration really extends the life of turrets.

Accelerant-Packed Turrets has actually saved me a few times, particularly because of the knockback aspect even functioning when detonating the turrets.

On the other hand, I’ve often felt that Deployable Turrets was a waste, since it only works 30% of the way outside of an area or two of PvP.

Turrets currently scale very poorly, and if used in dungeons often get one shotted vey quickly. That leaves your with 3 non usable utility skills for close to a minute. Currently, as far as dungeons are concerned, turrets aren’t a viable option.

However In PVE situations, they can be extremely useful; especially when fighting in the water.

In PvP they also get 1-shotted when used on land, and again become very useful in the water.

I love the thumper turret for PvE – it’s tough enough to stand some punishment, it grabs aggro nearly as well as a ranger pet, and the overcharge knockdown effect can be very handy.

In a defensive DE I typically drop a thumper at a choke point and a rocket turret behind the lines for fire support, and then hit groups with Radiation Field if the thumper manages to get them clustered. Supply Crate makes a great backup for when things get sticky.

I put turrets into my build, i just dont theme around em. I “rarely” bring net turret to spvp because its just free CC and even when the turrets down you get a free net on your toobelt.

In dungeons there are rare situations that you will be able to use each turret, i found the least use for the flame turret despite its AE blind. Thumper tanks trash mobs “even for a little bit”. Rifle turret is good because short cd, free dps AND if you grab the lightning bolt trait in tools you get a very low CD toolbelt skill that always applies a combo finisher and gives a free lightning bolt proc.

Its cross the board though with necro minions and turrets not getting any benefit from stats which is a drag (even though turrets claim they benefit from condition damage in the tooltip) So adding that will make them probably more viable

Also once they get smart and give all pets a 80% reduction from AE attacks…they might be viable in dungeons, but i wouldnt expect it anytime soon. So in the mean time, using them during boss fights is often times a bad idea. (especially long CD ones like rocket turret)

The problem with turrets isn’t really their performance, they can be quite useful for a variety of purposes, but the terrible handling and massive downtime. When you need one of the kitten things, you can bet they’re either on cooldown or just ouf of range and because of the cooldowns you can’t set a new one…

Mobility is king in this game and turrets in their current form just don’t support it.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnope

blurps.2340:

The problem with turrets isn’t really their performance, they can be quite useful for a variety of purposes, but the terrible handling and massive downtime. When you need one of the kitten things, you can bet they’re either on cooldown or just ouf of range and because of the cooldowns you can’t set a new one…

Mobility is king in this game and turrets in their current form just don’t support it.

Those are my general thoughts on the turrets as well.

Useless unless you are going to plant yourself in an area (PvE), try to bunker down in SPvP. For the PvE, why do that since the real gravy XP is from killing mobs while you are moving across the map (to get the spawn bonus XP, which is often multiples higher than the base XP)? For SPvP, there are other far better skills for a bunker build and 1 turret might be used as a side salad.

It doesn’t seem like turret focused builds work at all in any game mode.

The problem with turrets I believe, is that the way they balanced them was spread ‘too thin’, as in, they balanced turrets around the toolbelt, around the detonate, around the overcharge and around the active turret itself.

I do think some people are looking at it a bit wrong though, turrets are not necessarily meant to be replacements for your rifle/damage skills. They are mainly there to complement it. So, in reality, you do use your rifle/pistols and your turrets are there to help you out.

However, the other reality is that gadgets/kits/elixirs are just better at doing damage and more reliable.

They don’t rely on poor AI, low damage, immobility, high cooldowns, aren’t destructible and don’t always need 30 investment into traitlines.