Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been looking for a turret engineer build that isn’t WvW or SPvP. In the midst of searching I decided to make my own. I’ve been having trouble trying to pick out the right gear. This is purely for fun when I’m soloing open world or dungeons.
Here is what I have so far
Rifle –
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQFAUlUUp2qVVxPLseNCehMqUheU0TgOSjAA-TxhAABBp+TYK/IUHgN7PAwFAgvHAAbKBJFwiKrA-e

Pistol/Shield -
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQJAqelUUpqq1WxWLseNSdhE6UXbB6AFOIqjA-TxxGABAoEUD9Ays/wtPAAXU/JJlf4eCAIFwiSjA-e

The Rifle build has a focus on bleed, vulnerability, and burning. The Rifle is for bleed and vuln stacking while the bomb kit and flame turret are for burning. I have 2 points in tools for easier deployment of turrets but I’m thinking of 2 points in explosives for Shrapnel. I want to know if I could replace Rabid with Sinister or Rampager since the build calculator didn’t have Sinister gear.
The Pistol/Shield build focuses on condition damage from the flame turret and flamethrower. The flamethrower is the main damage source with the support of the turrets and switching in and out of pistol/shield for extra conditions.

Considering gear options of:
Armor/Trinkets – Rabid, Sinister, Rampager, Dire
Runes – Eagle, Scholar, Flame Legion, Elementalist, Baelfire, Nightmare, Balthazzar
Sigils – Bursting, Malice, Night, Force, Smoldering, Corruption, Bloodlust, Perception

Rifle…
for bleed…
wat?
blunderbus (rifle) is not even traited, so you have 4 stacks of bleed for 65%, and even if you could crit ALL the time with your rifle, you’d get maybe 1 or 2 permanent stacks of bleed from sharpshooter…

vulnerability:
you get up to 3-4 stacks IF you could crit 100% of the time…
again, wat?

buring:
already permanently applied by flame-turret WITHOUT napalm specialist NOR sigil of smoldering…
Why would you pick them?

then you have sigil of night, which does not increase your turret dmg-output, just your own, which is absolute bottom level without any gear or traits towards power.

then you have runes of the eagle, which give precission, literally the only pic that makes sense in that moment, since you profit exactly zero from the 5% dmg-increase, nor from the ferocity…

Sorry, I have no idea where to start to fix this, and can only assume that you try to troll us…

Seriously, I’m a friend of experimental builds, and in some occasions, turrets become hilarious and entertaining in PvE, but I don’t understand the reasoning behind more than 80% of this build, and feel completely lost when trying to imagine what you expect from it other than downstate…

same

dont even try

turrets work in spvp because the build has slightly more damage in the best cases than an enemy has sustain. so you can get kills slowly, and not die with a tanky amulet. because turrets dont really scale with stats much. they have almost static damage stats. so an engi can build a nest and sit in 1 spot and not die, and even 1v2 for longer than should happen. a glass build cannot do that, because someone will use some kind of cc and youll get killed quickly without defense. however, in pve, mobs dont act unpredictably, and more importantly, wont cc you unpredictably. so you can afford to just dodge whatevers important, because you can know whats coming and where to be or not, and then you dont need turrets to hold aggro off of you, because other utilities kill things better and the aggro doesnt matter.

hence, there arent meta turret builds. people do what they want, but in general when they are looking to get better at pve, they discover kits are just so more effective from a damage standpoint that turrets just never pop into their builds.

as for spvp, turrets are effective when someone decides they have nothing better to do w/ their time than try to kill a person whos dedicated everything to defense and sitting in 1 spot. if you just walk the other way and create mismatched team fights elsewhere, the turret engi either hurts his team by not being there or has to deal with long cds and no damage potential for the 1st 1/2 of the fight. and thats why turrets dont exist in high level play, because the hardest counter is to walk the other way and your opponent is smart enough to know that.

I understand the confusion. I’m just as confused as you are. My intentions are not to troll. It’s my first time at trying to even attempt to build something that isn’t already posted from what I can tell. I don’t even know where to begin. If you can or someone can post something that I can look at it would be great.

Arantheal.7396:

Rifle…
for bleed…
wat?
blunderbus (rifle) is not even traited, so you have 4 stacks of bleed for 65%, and even if you could crit ALL the time with your rifle, you’d get maybe 1 or 2 permanent stacks of bleed from sharpshooter…

I wasn’t thinking when I was talking about the bleed. I wasn’t looking for max stacks of bleeds for this build. Obviously Condition Dmg isn’t going to work with what I was failing to attempt to do.

Arantheal.7396:

vulnerability:
you get up to 3-4 stacks IF you could crit 100% of the time…
again, wat?

Again, same with bleeding, I wasn’t looking for max stacks. I guess I should have looked over the build you were looking at with more thought and type out everything I had planned. I was in a rush at the time of the post and wasn’t thinking clearly.

Arantheal.7396:

buring:
already permanently applied by flame-turret WITHOUT napalm specialist NOR sigil of smoldering…
Why would you pick them?

As with the burning problem. Yes flame turret would have permanent burning without napalm. I knew this and I threw that in there. That was my mistake. At the time I was looking at condition duration and trying to make sure that flame turret was permanent. I went overboard with that and I can change it.

Arantheal.7396:

then you have sigil of night, which does not increase your turret dmg-output, just your own, which is absolute bottom level without any gear or traits towards power.

The sigils can be swapped for something else. I honestly wasn’t sure about them when I was making the build. That is why I suggested some that I could potentially use. Even you could have suggested a different sigil, even something I would have never thought of, and instead tried to bash, and rightfully so, my attempt at a build.

Arantheal.7396:

then you have runes of the eagle, which give precission, literally the only pic that makes sense in that moment, since you profit exactly zero from the 5% dmg-increase, nor from the ferocity…

I know I don’t profit from the feroicty or the 5% dmg. Even if I chose Scholar over Eagle, which was a rune I mentioned, I wouldn’t benefit from the Power either. I know you didn’t mention Scholar but I used it as an example. I’ve posted other runes I was thinking of using, but I haven’t heard anything about if they are useful or not.

Arantheal.7396:

Sorry, I have no idea where to start to fix this, and can only assume that you try to troll us…

Like I’ve said, It’s my first time, and failing I might add as you clearly didn’t try and suggest anything. This isn’t a troll post. I have no intention to do so. I guess I failed to explain myself and I clearly needed to put more thought into this.

Arantheal.7396:

Seriously, I’m a friend of experimental builds, and in some occasions, turrets become hilarious and entertaining in PvE, but I don’t understand the reasoning behind more than 80% of this build, and feel completely lost when trying to imagine what you expect from it other than downstate…

Then why haven’t you suggested other options? Anything else with more experience that I have that has already been created? What about the Pistol/Shield build I posted? I haven’t seen any criticism about that. I just looked at it and yeah I guess I could have lowered the burning duration like the Rifle build. But when I look at it, I see a normal condition build, but with turrets and a flamethrower and different traits. Napalm can go, obviously. That build can be trash too, but I don’t know because I haven’t heard feedback about it

Dimes.6024:

same
dont even try

Then suggest something instead of not contributing. Give me something I can work with.

Yes 80% of the build is trash, I realize that now. But I haven’t gotten anything in return that could lead me on the right path.
Arantheal the more I read your post the more I understand what I did wrong and what caused the confusion. If I didn’t post this on the forums I would have made this mistake and went with it because I thought it was good. I posted to get feedback, I got feedback but didn’t get anything that I could change besides Napalm and the burning duration.

insanemaniac.2456:

turrets work in spvp because the build has slightly more damage in the best cases than an enemy has sustain. so you can get kills slowly, and not die with a tanky amulet. because turrets dont really scale with stats much. they have almost static damage stats. so an engi can build a nest and sit in 1 spot and not die, and even 1v2 for longer than should happen. a glass build cannot do that, because someone will use some kind of cc and youll get killed quickly without defense. however, in pve, mobs dont act unpredictably, and more importantly, wont cc you unpredictably. so you can afford to just dodge whatevers important, because you can know whats coming and where to be or not, and then you dont need turrets to hold aggro off of you, because other utilities kill things better and the aggro doesnt matter.

I get this, but spvp and wvw I’m unfamiliar with so this helped a little. I get the functions of turrets, I’m not trying to use them as aggro holders but as damage dealers.

insanemaniac.2456:

hence, there arent meta turret builds. people do what they want, but in general when they are looking to get better at pve, they discover kits are just so more effective from a damage standpoint that turrets just never pop into their builds.

Which explains why I haven’t found any pve turret engineer builds. I’m not looking at the build I failed to create to get better at pve. I’m already running the current meta engineer build. I’m looking to use the build to mess around with an have fun. If I wanted to get better at pve I’d run the meta all day long but I wanted to create some variety in my gameplay that wasn’t so serious.

insanemaniac.2456:

as for spvp, turrets are effective when someone decides they have nothing better to do w/ their time than try to kill a person whos dedicated everything to defense and sitting in 1 spot. if you just walk the other way and create mismatched team fights elsewhere, the turret engi either hurts his team by not being there or has to deal with long cds and no damage potential for the 1st 1/2 of the fight. and thats why turrets dont exist in high level play, because the hardest counter is to walk the other way and your opponent is smart enough to know that.

I know that turret engineers are not in high level of play. You’ve explained it to where I can understand why. That is why there are other meta builds that people use for high level of play. I’m not planning this build to be spvp or wvw efficient because I know it would almost never work if I were to take the time and get up into high level of play. I just don’t have the time for that.

I guess what people need to understand is that I’m using this for solo only. I would never use this in a group unless it was allowed by guildies and friends. This is for fun, not for seriousness. If I wanted to be serious, I’d run meta and stay that way. Like I said, I want variety in what I play when I play by myself.

Kiallendor.1064:

Then why haven’t you suggested other options? Anything else with more experience that I have that has already been created? What about the Pistol/Shield build I posted? I haven’t seen any criticism about that. I just looked at it and yeah I guess I could have lowered the burning duration like the Rifle build. But when I look at it, I see a normal condition build, but with turrets and a flamethrower and different traits. Napalm can go, obviously. That build can be trash too, but I don’t know because I haven’t heard feedback about it

that p/s build limits itself by having almost no access to tons of condis through bombs and nades. bombs provides perma burning on its own, so you wouldnt need flame turret. flamethrower has burning access, power burst, tagging potential, crit proc potential, and utility, only one of which is your goal running dire gear (burning).

neither build uses speedy kits or power shoes, which are almost free traits, and mobility (and eg4 or rocket boots) is really good in open world and for when you arent fighting in instanced content.

insanemaniac.2456:

that p/s build limits itself by having almost no access to tons of condis through bombs and nades. bombs provides perma burning on its own, so you wouldnt need flame turret. flamethrower has burning access, power burst, tagging potential, crit proc potential, and utility, only one of which is your goal running dire gear (burning).

neither build uses speedy kits or power shoes, which are almost free traits, and mobility (and eg4 or rocket boots) is really good in open world and for when you arent fighting in instanced content.

So essentially the dire build I can just make a few retraits and remove the turrets for a normal flamethrower condi build that I’ve seen a few times. Now I know that build is better off as something else that involves more kits and less turrets.

Since the dire build is not what I’m looking for, I did some more searching and found a WvW build on youtube that I based the my new build on. The WvW build focuses on Knights gear, with precision and toughness mix on main stat for trinkets. I chose to keep the Knights precision focus amulet and rings and used assassin’s earrings and beserker’s back piece. The Knights gear was replaced with Assassin’s. The melandru runes for eagle. I have scholar runes sitting in my bank if Eagle isn’t viable. Food wasn’t discussed in the video, or I happened to miss it entirely so I focused precision base foods. I replaced rocket boots for elixir gun. I know EG4 does a lot of dmg and I can have speedy kits with the changes I made. The build originally had speedy kits but used med kit instead of heal turret. The traits of the original build were 04604, Firearms had Rifled Barrels and Hair Trigger, Inventions had Protective Shield, Stabilized Armor, and Rifled Turret Barrels, and Tools had Static Discharge and Speedy Kits.

Here is the build I based the other build off of
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQFAUlUUpmq1WxdLseNSehMyrJDdonlAZgFA-TRSBwA00BoV5hZlgz2fYo6Po0QQWJW+LAAgHAApAGVYE-e

Thoughts?

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, retired #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Just going to say it! Turrets are bad! In all game modes! But if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t care about that kind of stuff then more power to you! Here’s some advice!

• Don’t go into the Inventions tree! It is by far the worst trait line that the Engineer has and in Vee Wee’s opinion one of the worst trait lines in the entire game! For all game modes! Even if you’re running multiple turrets!
• Never run 3 turret utilities! The Engineer’s strength comes from kits! Taking 3 turret utilities just gimps you in ways that would make even Channing Tatum cringe!
• If you really want to do dungeons with turrets, use them as party buffs and not as forms of damage dealing! The damage they deal is too pathetic even with Rifled Turret Barrels! Your own damage may suffer, but stacking might and fury on your entire team, as well as many vulnerability stacks on the bad guys is pretty huge! Something like this! http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpmqVVxELseNSbBNqwI6MOlY/5CEgjC-ThRBABU8AAua/R5He6AEV9HAuAAmpEEA-e

Hope that helped! Wahoo! Bye frands!

what the guy above forgot to mention is that there are fractal instabilities where turrets become your best bet.

Anyways, I can see now that you really want to run a turret build in PvE, and not just try to troll, so I went ahead and slaped a condi and power build together for you.
Power:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQFAUlUUp2q1UxELseNSbBF6cUxeAqT85HEgjC-TxRBABXp8DPdAEt/AAXAg8eAAUq+jZKBJFwo6qA-e
you don’t need auto-tool installation since some bosses will one-hit your turrets anyways, so you rather run faster (makes your life a lot easier) and can optionally blow your turrets up for trashmob-cc.
On projectile-heavy encounters, you want to switch rifle-barreled t. to fortified t. and rocket t. to fire t. tada, suddenly your build can do something unique and awesome: high reflect uptime.

Condi:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQFAUlUUp2qVVxELseNCbBBqUI6OWlZ/5DEgkC-ThRGABAcBAUS5XuPAgEV/ht9HdAVpEkQALWDA-e
this time it involves heavy might-stacking (and your condi-dmg does scale the burn of the flame-turret, one of the few examples where your turrets actually depend on your stats), but rabid gear is kinda meh. I’d recommend to run sinister instead (not supported by the build-editor so far)

So yea, these two builds actually try to incorporate every little aspect to a big picture and should work fine, even tho they still extremely underperform, in comparison to the meta…
One example: the condi build sacrifices output for swiftness, so you will have a hard time to avoid mobs, unless you make the decission to cut your output a little more and take the 2 points from firearms into tools for speedy kits (and invigorating speed instead of protection injection).

edit:
forgot to switch from rifle to p/p on the condi build.
You don’t really need pistol #4 since flameturret already provides perma-burning, but close up it does nice raw dmg (with sinister stats) and #5 is awesome control.
If you rather pack more heals, switch offhand pistol to shield and blast your waterfield with it.

edit 2:
why the kitten did this become a double-post -.-

Yeah, turrets suck. The damage they deal is pitiful, and they’re easily destroyed. Even in PvE. Even if you trait to make them stronger. Thumper turret can offer some utility in that it functions as two blast finishers in one utility slot. But I’d only use it for the blasts, not leave it out. Net turret isn’t bad for “defend the perimeter” type PvE events, but I’d rather just carry a rifle for that.

I totally understand wanting to play around with different builds. As an engineer especially, since the profession offers a ton of diversity. It’s easy to lose your way making a build too, if you’re not 100% on the traits that are available and how they synergize with stats/weapons/kits.

Both of your builds make full use of the Firearms trait line, which is excellent for any engineer. I’d start with that. Grenades work great with precision, since you have two chances to crit per attack, and more if traited into Explosives for Grenadier. They’re also a great way to build up conditions. If you’re hellbent on using a turret just for funsies, net (for cc) or flame turret (for burning) wouldn’t be as terrible as the others. Grenades can take some getting used to, since they’re ground targeted. At longer ranges, you’ll be aiming more for where enemies will be than where they are (I primarily use them at mid to melee range). Some immobilization never hurts when you’re learning, but just opening with the chill grenades helps a lot. I anticipate you’ll tire of using a turret about when you get comfortable with nades. Rifle can immobilize too, so you’re better off just using rifle 2 and switching to grenades in my opinion. And flamethrower (the toolbelt skill) offers easier access to burning than flame turret. As well as a fire field, blind, and blast finisher, all with fairly short cooldowns. Flamethrower’s autoattack throws people off because those large numbers are just accumulated damage. It’s actually pretty weak. But great for tagging, and adding some fire! Who doesn’t love fire!

Personally, I’m a sucker for the BIG NUMBERS and trait fully into Explosives as well as Firearms, and run bomb kit always, toss up between grenades and flamethrower depending on the situation. And rocket boots, to escape immobilization, move faster, gain an extra heal if I need it with the blast finisher, and stack might. All in all a pretty common build, with a few tweaks. If you want something totally different, Tools is a very good trait line. And it’s great with tons of precision.

These are just suggestions, since you asked for some. Even if none of this suits your style, hopefully it gives you some ideas! If I were running a crit build (traited fully into Firearms and Tools), I’d run rifle. Rifle crits like an 18 wheeler, and it offers immobilization, gap opener and closer, a leap, and added vuln stacking. I’d take grenades, flamethrower, and toolkit as well. With 6 points in firearms, your condition damage will be -okay- even if you don’t gear for it. The toolkit’s shield skills are great for survivability and pulling mobs, and you can use it to add bleeds and confusion. Like the flamethrower, I’m not so keen on the autoattack it has, but I know people who are.

I’d take Precise Sights, Rifle Mod, and Modified Ammunition in Firearms. Or switch Rifle Mod for Juggernaut if you use flamethrower more than rifle or want the extra might/toughness over the rifle’s damage increase. In Tools – Speedy Kits, Scope (if you attack from range a lot) or Kit Refinement (if you attack at melee range more often) or Leg Mods (if being cc’d annoys you more than anything) and Adrenal Implant.

Even though a build like the above would focus strongly on crit chance, I’d use power as a primary armor stat. With no points in explosives, you’ll really need it. I’d use Berserker’s gear, but Valkyrie would be a viable option with less squishiness. Sinister or Carrion gear might be a fun option too, if you like the condition damage.

Have you ever tried Golemancer runes? They can be fun, and give a lot of precision and ferocity. The golem from the 6 stat bonus does use a knock back skill though, and can keep you in combat unintentionally. I’d run a rune with decent power, for the reason stated above. Like Elementalist, Ogre, Mad King, or even Divinity. If you gear for condition damage, runes of perplexity would be very strong. You can inflict confusion directly with tool kit. And rifle, flamethrower and tool kit all have skills that interrupt quite often.

Sorry for the novel. I didn’t set out to say so much initially. Let me know if any of this was helpful, or if you use some of it and improve on it. Best of luck!

Please dont take this into dungeons:-)

Ignore most of these people, PvE turrets are wonderful.
I’ll vouch for them, since I’ve run pretty much record-timed fractals with my build.
It’s a very simple Power-based build, though you’ll want to make use of trait changes depending on the encounter.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlUUpEr1Ux2KseNyiBNqZE6HmtA85olwFC-TBCFwAsU/54+DAeAAXVCiUZQSleOuAAp1BAA-e
You might consider changing the Brawler runes for Altruism, depends how much you like helping parties (healing turret loves allies).
The basics: 9 stacks of might most of the time, and a whole lot of vulnerability, most likely 25 stacks if you’re really on top of things.
Aside from that, Static D provides a nice chunk of damage whenever your turrets aren’t out, or if you decide to pop them (as you should do whenever someone’s packing fire fields). Not to mention that using toolkit abilities gives you a hefty endurance pool.
Power Shoes for quality-of-life, Energized armor to benefit from Knight’s stats, these which help survive those big level 50 fotm hits.
Only 30some-odd precision, and no big focus on ferocity because turrets don’t scale off those, but what’s present is decent enough that you should always have Air sigil on CD and your grenades will benefit nicely.
In the end, it’s all about cranking up turret and party damage, while being able to hold your own when turrets aren’t available.

You might want to reconsider flamethrower as your main weapon if your going to be using conditions as your main damage source. Flamethrower only applies about 1 second of burn on the last hit of its damage cycle. If your looking for reliable conditions, consider either grenades or elixir gun. Grenades will application bleed when traited and elixir gun will apply bleed with its auto without any special traits needed. If you want a really nice burn though, you might want to try the pistol offhand skill #4. The burn damage from that skill is no joke. Glue shot might be another nice addition considering youll probably be doing a lot of kiting around your turrets. Turrets are fun to play with, they don’t really work in boss battles since they get early destroyed, but they can come in handy when traited properly.