Guild Wars 2

Anymras.5729:

ellesee.8297:

the trait doesn’t encourage you to blow them up. the shield only lasts as long as the turret is active. and if you detonate it the recharge time goes to its full duration. ideally you’d place it, overcharge and let it shoot for 4 seconds, then pick it up. an underwhelming utility? you bet!

if you want anet to encourage turrets to be left out indefinitely like ranger spirits, let them know that turrets are useless and they need to do more damage. atm they’re like a worse version of spirit weapons, and spirit weapons are godawful.

How would one go about proving that Turrets should deal more damage, is the question. They won’t listen without numbers – “I don’t think my Turrets deal enough damage!” just sounds like whining.

First thing that comes to mind is possibly comparing #1 skills on Pistol, Rifle, and Kits to the non-Overcharged attacks of all damage-dealing Turrets, as well as listed cast time vs listed fire rate to figure out DPS totals. Sound like it might work?

Other things that would be listed alongside to help figure out relative effectiveness: Cooldowns and cumulative multiturret damage.

I got bored, went ahead and attempted the math. I probably screwed something up.

Autoattacks: All numbers in parentheses are to be multiplied by the user’s Power and Weapon Strength; Armor has been disregarded, as it varies depending on target.

Aftercast has not been accounted for, as precise measurements are unknown; all fire rates and cast times are according to wiki, and assuming that each attack’s cast time begins as soon as the previous ends.

I’ve attempted to account for condition damage, but I may have the math somewhat off; I’m going by the wiki, and it doesn’t appear to have a slot for ‘base’ damage of a skill’s condition effects. Damage calculations are in [brackets].

I would like to rerun these numbers with aftercast accounted for, as I’m somewhat concerned about number skewing due to not accounting for it – given that Toolkit #1 takes roughly 3 seconds, rather than the 2 the cast times add up to, in particular – so I may or may not be running stopwatch tests to determine aftercast sometime in the next couple of days.

Reasons for the ‘buildless’ character used in tests: Makes the math easier.

http://pastebin.com/68aYK4RH

Well the numbers are pretty much what I got with a self test so to speak a few months ago. Toolkit is the only one that jumps out at me as being whaaaat; but as you said its mainly after cast on that one. I may do some digging tomorrow with the terrible forum search but I though there was a turret thread that complained about how the turrets all dealt the same DPS pretty much around last year or so. It was either turrets or the kits, dang wish I could remember….

Toolkit might be getting about a 150% DPS boost from not accounting for the aftercast; combined with counting all three attacks in the chain as the autoattack, it’s the one I’m least comfortable with the numbers on.

It’s also the one I almost ignored because it has an autoattack chain.

If you’re looking for numbers and aftercasts, here they are:
Casia’s skill coefficient list
Sentinel Ark’s coefficient list

Without accounting for aftercast, many of the theoretical DPS calculations are extremely inflated. Pistol and Rifle in particular – these numbers and condition applications are seriously out of whack. Pistol’s aftercasts take total cast time to closer to 0.8 whilst Rifle is 0.9. You can tell where the math doesn’t line up with the numbers where you calculate 4 theoretical Bleed stacks on Pistol where it should be closer to 2-3 (0.8 cast leaves 2 and a bit Bleed max stacks).

In terms of Turrets, the numbers look sound, but that’s because they have no Power scaling. The correct firing rates for some turrets may be found on the wiki; 2.73 for Rifle Turret, for example. Again, the theoretical DPS calculation is out.

Hopefully the April 15th patch will bring turret firing rates closer to stated values and we can re-evaluate damage output from there. If the turret fixes incorporate fixes to firing rate bugs, we may well see Turret DPS get a small but significant buff across the board. Until then, the only Turret I will ever run will be Healing Turret.

Wonderful, I’ll try rerunning the numbers with aftercast accounted for.
I’ll also run them with the current real fire rate; I would have done so to begin with, but without knowing the aftercast, it would’ve skewed things particularly unfairly.

I pretty much don’t expect things to look good for Turrets even if the tooltip fire rates were up against the aftercast AAs – due to the lack of Power scaling, especially.

Okay, numbers rerun using both aftercast and current fire rate.

Pistol: 5256 [438×12] + 3460 [(346×2)x5]
Rifle: 9306 [846×11]
Speargun: 4506 [751×6]
Bomb: 13740 [1145×12]
Grenade: 4908 [409×12; possibly x3]
Tranquilizer Dart: 5456 [496×11] + 10320 [(1032×4)x2.5]
Flame Jet: 7083 [1864×3.8] + 2655 [(557+328)x3]; proccing 10% damage boost not accounted for.
Smack-Whack-Thwack: 12468 [(992×2 + 2172)x3]; haven’t accounted for 4+ stacks of Vulnerability.

Rifle Turret: 549 [183×3]
Harpoon Turret: 621 [207×3]
Flame Turret: 98 [49×2]+ 2426 [1213×2]
Rocket Turret: 1096 [548×2]
Thumper Turret: 488 [244×2]

if they resolve the fire rate issue, Turrets may be dealing something like the following, presented here (again) for comparison’s sake:
Rifle Turret: 915 [183×5]
Harpoon Turret: 1035 [207×5]
Flame Turret: 147 [49×3]+3639 [1213×3]
Rocket Turret: 1096 [548×2]
Thumper Turret: 732 [244×3]

Think this would make a good enough case for increasing Turret damage? If so, I’ll clean it up a bit and pop it onto the Profession Balance board.

Lupanic.6502:

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

I use turrets but not usually more than one. Thumper/net/rifle are good stuff. Can’t wait to try out this trait.