Guild Wars 2

New blog is up – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

Engineers will be getting additional support and survivability with their new turret trait, Fortified Turrets, which is part of the Inventions line. Each time an engineer with Fortified Turrets equipped spawns a new turret, that turret receives a defensive bubble that reflects projectiles for four seconds. This works with all turrets, including the Supply Crate.

Hope they fix turrets first.

Don’t know how this stacks up against the others, Guardian’s one gives another 3000HP for example.

ohh turrets….. n o b o d y is using turrets. Not in WvW not in sPvP and not in PvE.

Yay turrets

Excited to see what they do for tools and alchemy

Lupanic.6502:

ohh turrets….. n o b o d y is using turrets. Not in WvW not in sPvP and not in PvE.

I’d agree on this, this trait however can make them a bit more useful in some situations however in PvE with free trait reworks since it’s a 4s reflect that can total to 16s when placed in sequence, 20 with SC- this is notably useful for Uncat fractal’s asuran boss but overall it’ll be a highly niche thing

If they fix the other turret problems and scale turrets with power they might be useful. But I play sPvP only and most of the people in sPvP does not like AI. I do not want to see forest of turrets in sPvP while the engi is dodging like a monkey.

i’m more excited about being able to change builds on the fly. who cares about turrets? that projectile bubble won’t change their uselessness and the inventions tree is still sub par. i really want to see the grandmaster traits in the other trees though and i’m praying dear lord jebus i am praying that none of these traits are overpowered as fudge like dhuumfire was when it was first introduced.

Projectile defence for turrets when they die to AoE all the time -.-

If I read this correctly it sounds like the protective bubble will only apply to the newly spawned turret, which to me sounds less useful. If it works like the picture in the patch implies then I think it will be pretty decent.

That is of course assuming that they fix the base issues with turrets so they actually hit hard enough.

Yes because projectile defense is entirely what they need now………

Terrible grandmaster to slot in comparison to RBT (assuming it worked) so that a turret can get it’s 1.5k static damage on a target without dying it the first 5 seconds to arrows. Oh wait its dead in the first 3 from melee/AoE……

So if you’d combine the with Magnetic Shield, you’d basically become impervious to projectile builds? Just place your cheapest turrets every few seconds, and fill the gap with your shield. No longbow/axe ranger will ever beat you.

no longbow/axe ranger will ever beat you anyway.

Yet another lackluster change to the Engi

I haven’t played in a few months, but I just had to come here to voice my opinion on the stupidity of the anet balancing team after reading the latest blog post. Each class is getting new traits, and the engy gets the shaft again. Mesmer is getting a trait that allows an interrupt to cause someone’s heal to go on a 10s cooldown, effectively winning any fight. Engy gets a 4s turret bubble. It’s pretty mind boggling at how much they hate this class, and only solidifies my decision to leave this game.

PS, my Titan gets a free 4s bubble every time I drop one.

I hope this new Grandmaster’s implementation will include RTB moving down to Master, with Autotool (which I still don’t consider worth taking) and Metal Plating merging to be Adept. Otherwise, I just don’t see it being used very much in comparison to RTB; consistent increase of both range and damage, against a short-lived defensive tool.

In theory, this would make Turrets a more tactical playstyle, though – instead of placing them as soon as battle is joined, using them to counteract ranged pressure or cover a melee rush, for example.

Also, as things stand, this trait will only encourage drop-and-pop play with low-cooldown turrets like Healing and Rifle.
It’ll just mean a short delay between dropping and popping.

Dasboba.1652:

I haven’t played in a few months, but I just had to come here to voice my opinion on the stupidity of the anet balancing team after reading the latest blog post. Each class is getting new traits, and the engy gets the shaft again. Mesmer is getting a trait that allows an interrupt to cause someone’s heal to go on a 10s cooldown, effectively winning any fight. Engy gets a 4s turret bubble. It’s pretty mind boggling at how much they hate this class, and only solidifies my decision to leave this game.

PS, my Titan gets a free 4s bubble every time I drop one.

To be fair, more traits that the ones listed are coming, but looking at the compared to others presented in the blog to ours it does make us seem shafted, but turrets always have been especially in regards to other AI in terms of ability and damage

Vergil Huragok.3967:

To be fair, more traits that the ones listed are coming, but looking at the compared to others presented in the blog to ours it does make us seem shafted, but turrets always have been especially in regards to other AI in terms of ability and damage

All of which are grandmaster traits. We are getting 1 new trait for each line and unless those other 4 are going to integrate with turrets(which is very doubtful since 1 WILL go to gadgets) turrets will still be turrets unless they drop an entire rehaul of this skill set on the patch.

Yoshifxe.8346:

Vergil Huragok.3967:

To be fair, more traits that the ones listed are coming, but looking at the compared to others presented in the blog to ours it does make us seem shafted, but turrets always have been especially in regards to other AI in terms of ability and damage

All of which are grandmaster traits. We are getting 1 new trait for each line and unless those other 4 are going to integrate with turrets(which is very doubtful since 1 WILL go to gadgets) turrets will still be turrets unless they drop an entire rehaul of this skill set on the patch.

The comment I had replied to seemed more in line to the presenting of traits, I certainly won’t argue that turrets have been low rung in use and fixes, as I said in my first post in this thread this trait is a really niche trait as are turrets as a whole based on the active ness of gw2 as your opponent can literally walk away.

So here’s the problem. Turrets have never had a problem with projectiles. Never. AOE’s however have been a huge issue for all pets. This is exactly what I was afraid of. Apparently no one at Anet plays the engineer so they haven’t gotten the message yet. Turrets need a certain immunity to AOE damage output. A 4 second shield to prevent projectiles from hitting them is just about as useful as 3 tiny dropplets of glue from a kit switch.

I sincerely hope they are doing more in this tree to improve turrets before reaching the grand master in trait they have just proposed because turrets will remain useless as they always have been until this change is made.

I am however happy they are working on the trait lines and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of these improvements before making final judgement.

So projectiles are ranger and ele? Since when they were our issue? Ive met one ranger in this game who owned me hands down. And he owned alot of ppl. We are alredy rangers antitoxin. We need defense vs melee kitten !!

The trait is basically a version of Feedback

It gives engi more utility in dungeons/fractals/zergs. Unfortunately, the focus is the reflect bubble, not the turrets. This will not help turret survivability much, so turret builds will be in the same place. We’ll be able to reflect for days with this trait, but only if tied to turrets (sadface).

I am probably the only one who have been longing for deployable shields then :P

Think this with healing turret and rifle turret, place em, charge em pick them up. It would be a amazingly good upkeep on projectile reflect.

Ive always envied guardians a bit. But no more!

Im not saying this will be the savior of turrets, but i do really see the potential for fun play with this.

Please can someone list projectile skills. If this trait have any real use..

Honestly i think this was the coolest trait released so far. It will be useful in wvw, PvP, and even Pve now that you can retrait out of combat.

I might even try zerging on engi for some accelerant packed turrets and this (maybe even deploy-able turrets.

Healing turret alone has better upkeep than feedback. It will be fun to use against p/d thieves.

Engineer has always felt sensitive to ranged pew pew pewing so im totally for this.

its the coolest Sounding trait but it is highly impractical to begin with it breaks the whole tactical placement of turrets as you ll dump em ontop of each other to keep shield up

then theres the fact that you ll still be bombarded with aoes that dont really count as projectiles necro marks and well for example ele fire fields then theres the cone attacks wich are not projectiles either same goes for mesmer clones well you mesmers do have 2 projectile attacks tht summon clones so i guess it negates iberserker and iduelist

What happen when i drop and detonate my healing turret instantly? Will i keep my bubble?

Rezzet.3614:

its the coolest Sounding trait but it is highly impractical to begin with it breaks the whole tactical placement of turrets as you ll dump em ontop of each other to keep shield up

then theres the fact that you ll still be bombarded with aoes that dont really count as projectiles necro marks and well for example ele fire fields then theres the cone attacks wich are not projectiles either same goes for mesmer clones well you mesmers do have 2 projectile attacks tht summon clones so i guess it negates iberserker and iduelist

Honestly it is even more about the tactical placement and when you use the turret for shield, detonate or keep it up. Spamming them will be a bad idea unless all you want is the reflect. Yes things will get through but that doesnt change the fact that reflect is really good (it will reflect all of the condi pu projectiles and magic bullet when it comes to mesmer also).

Being forced to choose between the new trait and rifled turret barrels makes me sad. The new trait might be quite useful, but I don’t see how I can give up more damage and range.

And yeah, I’m the one guy running a turret build in WvW. =P People never see it coming.

I’m assuming this trait will have a decent internal cooldown. Otherwise 4 turret slots cycled would give near-endless projectile protection if you run all the low-cooldown turrets.

It sounds like kind of a neat trait to play around with, but at the same time it means you can’t run Rifled Turret Barrels. And it seems like it’ll be more useful for cases where you drop a turret and immediately detonate or pick up less than it would with a normal turret user who will place their turrets all at the start of battle for max DPS and leave them up for as long as they’ll survive. So it seems less geared towards actual turret builds and more geared towards people who want a projectile reflect and are willing to spend a few utility slots and a Grandmaster trait to get it, though I’m not sure how many of those there will be.

It is a neat concept for sure, I’m just not sure if its going to be useful for actual turret builds.

One thing’s for sure…it doesn’t make turrets more survivable at all. If that was Anet’s intention, this wasn’t the way to do it.

For those moments when you’re fighting a Condi war and you want to reflect some bow attacks. Or just to troll decap engies or grenade engies.

We have no idea what other changes are they doing to traits, what turret bugs did they fix or how the trait itself is going to work so chillax. They already said they worked on turret bug fixes, so hopefully they will be more useful. I doubt this trait is the single turret-related feature.

Also I would like to recommend to people that feel engineers got shafted to visit other profession forums and they may be surprised.

The entire game is being turned on its head with the April 15th changes. As a result, I find it very difficult to form an opinion either way regarding this single gm trait and how it may or may not work.

It will be super broken if the 4 second reflect lasts after pick up. You can have 50% reflect up time just by cycling Healing Turret and Rifle Turret pick ups while still having Magnetic Shield with Reinforced Shield and 2 utilities.

20% uptime on projectile reflect from heal skill alone is pretty strong. You wouldn’t really have to run a turrets build for this trait to be useful.

no you’d just have to waste 30 points into the inventions line.

I can see their intentions to buff weak utilities/weapons (Ranger longbow, turrets) and consider it a very bad idea to do it that way – as it obviously will fail if they don´t improve the core-problems of longbow and turrets (and no, fixing the turret-bugs won´t do it).

It will bring even more disbalance against these classes as other traits seem universally usefull, not bound to special weapons or utilities, not very situational or depending on cooldowns.

Ok, we have only seen a small part of the traits but the way they seem to think here makes me shake my head.

Well we are seeing exactly one of 5 GM traits, so I wouldn’t get too upset.
We also are not seeing how turrets will or won’t be improved.
The potential is there. I would love to think that if you hit a turret with a bounce skill you could eat damage again and again.
It does work on supply crate turrets and healing turrets. That isn’t insignificant.
Also, we have no idea if you can stand under the shield of a turret. That could be VERY impactful.

All we really know is that ANET is making real and significant changes. I think we need to wait for more, frankly.

sooooooo…

high level fractals → have guardian or quit
about half the reason for that is guard is the only one with high reflect uptime

i can definitely see 0 guardian parties being successful in high level grawl fractals with on-the-fly trait resets. cuz now engi will be able to take over that niche.

So after doing a bit more reading I’ve learned this will make engis for viable for groups that are fighting bosses that do alot of ranged attacks.

My concerns over how long the turrets last after the 4 seconds up however have not changed.

since it requires 30 inventions, you can take 30% turret damage reduction as your adept… and then your turret should be fine for 4 seconds, especially a thumper which is likely to be the best for the grawl type situation anyways

plus its fairly likely youll be heavy into explosives too with either bombs or nades, and you can grab accelerant packed turrets without skipping a beat…

the more i think about it the more i like it >.>

It sounded alright at first but then I remembered who the heck targets turrets when they spawn anyways? If it doesn’t protect from aoe then it’ll still be lacking for a gm trait since that’s what they die from most.

Given the size of the bubble, it could have some interesting utility. Doesn’t look quite as big as feedback, but bigger than magnetic shield.

However, the ironic thing about this is that this fortified turrets trait actually incentivizes people to NOT leave the turrets deployed. Instead, you’d want to drop, pick up, and redeploy them to get the bubble as frequently as possible.

The only true application I’ve seen for turret-focused builds is sPvP node defense, but even that can be iffy depending on who you have to defend against. I don’t see this change changing that fact, although I guess I shouldn’t really complain about a turret buff.

I wonder what traits they are combining then? OR if this is just like a 13th trait in the line.

Yamsandjams.3267:

However, the ironic thing about this is that this fortified turrets trait actually incentivizes people to NOT leave the turrets deployed. Instead, you’d want to drop, pick up, and redeploy them to get the bubble as frequently as possible.

lol yup. If it does work, all our turret skills have just been replaced with bubble makers

I’m actually quite curious about the trait. If there is a rather short cooldown per Turret this might indeed make for interesting reflect builds for PvE. It might also be interesting for WvW (Deployable reflecting Turrets! Muhahaha!). Not so sure about PvP though.

ellesee.8297:

no you’d just have to waste 30 points into the inventions line.

You could use the trait, combine it with the run speed boost, and then a random other trait. It’s not completely useless.

I probably shouldn’t be, and I’ve been around long enough to know better, but I admit to a certain amount of excitement over this trait. They’ve already said a long list of turret bugs are being looked at. I’m not saying turrets will be a good build, just that I’m willing to see how it shakes out after this update. This trait sounds really fun.

It probably won’t get me away from whatever Explosives and Firearms have coming to them though. A Grandmaster Explosives trait for Bomb Kit? Pretty please?

ThiBash.5634:

ellesee.8297:

no you’d just have to waste 30 points into the inventions line.

You could use the trait, combine it with the run speed boost, and then a random other trait. It’s not completely useless.

going that deep into inventions means you need to be a bunker build. any kind of offensive build with that many points into inventions will just be bad. and you’re outbunkered by guardians and warriors anyway. and you’d have to give up a useful utility like tool kit for a crappy turret and for what? 4 seconds of projectile reflect? maybe a knockback every 20-50 seconds if you trait for it? jokes.

but meh. better a useless grandmaster trait that we can add to the list of traits that nobody ever uses than a stupid overpowered trait like dhuumfire.

ellesee.8297:

ThiBash.5634:

ellesee.8297:

no you’d just have to waste 30 points into the inventions line.

You could use the trait, combine it with the run speed boost, and then a random other trait. It’s not completely useless.

going that deep into inventions means you need to be a bunker build. any kind of offensive build with that many points into inventions will just be bad. and you’re outbunkered by guardians and warriors anyway. and you’d have to give up a useful utility like tool kit for a crappy turret and for what? 4 seconds of projectile reflect? maybe a knockback every 20-50 seconds if you trait for it? jokes.

but meh. better a useless grandmaster trait that we can add to the list of traits that nobody ever uses than a stupid overpowered trait like dhuumfire.

I don’t think you’re being entirely fair. The response to a damage build is right, you can’t make a good one going deep into Inventions, but an Engineer bunker build is surely not a joke. You can have far more than “maybe a knockback every 20-50 seconds”. Healing Turret and Thumper Turret alone gives you TONS of knockback, and with this trait also a lot of reflect. That protects you from both melee and ranged attackers.

I don’t know exactly how it will shake out, but suggesting a 30 pt Inventions bunker build is a joke is… well… a joke.

engi bunkers lack stability. it’s the bunker’s job to stomp downed players. it’s the bunker’s job to res downed allies. it’s the bunker’s job to stay on point. without stability the engi can’t do any of these things reliably. and if you compare engi bunkers to guardians or warriors, the engi is indeed a joke.

it’s situational but since healing turret is our main (and often our only) source of condi clear, you should definitely try to pick it up for the reduced cd and not detonate it. thumper turret is a turret so it’s automatically bad. and it has a really long cooldown so it’s not that great. with that said going bunker engi with knockback turrets and this new trait requires a hefty investment of 40 trait points. that doesn’t leave you very much for alchemy (which is 100x better than inventions as a defensive tree anyway and very necessary for any engi attempting to bunk) or tools for power wrench and mobility and vigor. the whole setup seems bleh to me. if you want to run a knockback build, the decap engi guide is out there somewhere.

ellesee.8297:

ThiBash.5634:

ellesee.8297:

no you’d just have to waste 30 points into the inventions line.

You could use the trait, combine it with the run speed boost, and then a random other trait. It’s not completely useless.

going that deep into inventions means you need to be a bunker build. any kind of offensive build with that many points into inventions will just be bad. and you’re outbunkered by guardians and warriors anyway. and you’d have to give up a useful utility like tool kit for a crappy turret and for what? 4 seconds of projectile reflect? maybe a knockback every 20-50 seconds if you trait for it? jokes.

but meh. better a useless grandmaster trait that we can add to the list of traits that nobody ever uses than a stupid overpowered trait like dhuumfire.

optimal builds in wvw/roaming mix offense and defense…