Guild Wars 2

This might seem somewhat contentious, changing something that is fine from a balance perspective, and not everyone might agree.

But I believe that the healing turret is currently not working as intended by design.

Currently the healing turret works like this:
Heals you when you spawn it, and gives you the option to overcharge it upon its first application of regeneration after overcharging, removing conditions.
When deployed, the F1 skill is changed to ‘detonate healing turret’, giving you a blast finisher and some damage.
When not deployed, the F1 skill is changed to ‘Regenerating mist’, a combo field that gives regeneration.

The trouble with this set up is, that the only way to get a self heal, is to place the turret down. Any healing gained from regeneration and the overcharge are completely insignificant to the self burst heal. Which leads to a problem with how it is best deployed:

Right now, the longer you keep the turret deployed, the worse it is for you. This is counter intuitive on many levels. As a turret, it ought to be most useful, when out, but right now, the turret is most efficient when cooling down, as it means that you have access to a self heal every 15 or 20s, depending on use. And so, the person who manages to stay within the limited range, who manages to keep his turret alive is not rewarded, but rather punished for doing so, and the person who simple puts it down and up like clockwork, gets the most reward. This ought to be fixed.

I propose changing how you gain the self heal.
I suggest changing it so that the healing turret works like this:
Base cooldown- 40s
When Picked up- 30s
Overcharge- 20s
Regenerating Mist- 60s

And it would be changed, so that the overcharge, provides the self heal, as long as you are within an appropriate radius, 480* radius could work as it does now, or slightly longer.

A further change, would be changing it so that whenever the turret is spawned, it overcharges automatically and instantly, providing the self heal and putting it on a 20s cooldown.
The overcharge when used with the turret spawned, would happen instantly after a short cast time, rather than when first giving regeneration.

This does something very important: It means that if you keep it up and alive, then you get a self heal every 20s and regeneration. If you put it down and up, then you get a self heal every 30s, as even if the overcharge recharges its cooldown, you need to put it down to access it. And if it gets destroyed, or blown up, then it gives you a 40s cooldown. This segregation of effect correlates to skill I believe, with the most skill giving the most reward. Keeping a turret alive, and staying within its radius would give the most reward, as it should.

Now, since the overcharge is changing, I would also change the regenerating mist somewhat. I would make it remove 3 conditions, to give the same functionality as the old overcharge, it is the same cooldown as well, but can be traited to be lower so removing all conditions may be too much.

Opinions on this change? Flaws? Suggestions?

Personally, I am all for this. Right now, the assumption that my mind goes through when placing the turret is, providing healing and regeneration for myself and the allies around me. But in reality, it works so infrequently that when I really do need a heal, it is better to not have it out at all.

Please don’t, I love the amount of burst heal I can get by throwing down a turret then casting mist with an explosion combo for another heal, it’s great. Why would you want to nerf that? It has saved my kitten more times that I can count.

40 second cooldown? That is a horrible idea, why would you want the turret to have one of the longest healing cooldowns in the game? No, no , no and no.

I understand wanting to reward a player for keeping it up, why not just have the regen scale, so the longer it is out the higher the tick, up to some value of course. Or maybe look at reducing the cooldown of cleansing burst so that it can be applied more often.

I believe the changes you propose would hurt more than help, turrents explode in PvP quit quickly, having a 40 second cooldown on your heal would put engineers at a disadvantage, and we don’t need any more of those.

Its a 40s cooldown if you are bad.

Its a 30s cooldown if you are mobile.

Its a 20s cooldown if used as intended.

Its not a nerf, its changing design, I never said anything about heal numbers or anything along those lines.

And remember, regen is a boon that is not exlcusive to engineer. So no… you can’t just make regeneration different.

And no, you can’t reduce cooldown of cleansing burst as it would be OP and it would never replicate a self heal.

Love the direction of OP thoughts but have to agree also about 40s being too long. Should forget about ‘keep alive’, it really almost won’t happen in spvp. I say forget 40s and make it 30s as if you take it up.

bromi.7809:

Love the direction of OP thoughts but have to agree also about 40s being too long. Should forget about ‘keep alive’, it really almost won’t happen in spvp. I say forget 40s and make it 30s as if you take it up.

Ok, how about this.

15s overcharge, same value heal as now.
30s natural cooldown
Thus, 25% reduction=22.5s when used mobile

It can be just a matter of adjusting numbers.

But what I aim to achieve is so that:

Leaving it on>Picking it up>Destroying/Getting it destroyed

As opposed to how it is now:

Picking it up> Destroying/getting it destroyed>Leaving it on

Healing turret is really more of a group healing turret thing than a self-healing turret though. The advantage is that the regen hits everyone in range, not just yourself.

@Psaakyrn
Are you honestly saying that some insignificant AoE regeneration is better than not having a self heal?

Regeneration is very weak for heals, even if you go maximum healing power.

“But what I aim to achieve is so that:
Leaving it on>Picking it up>Destroying/Getting it destroyed
As opposed to how it is now:
Picking it up> Destroying/getting it destroyed>Leaving it on”

Couldn’t agree more. It just feels natural for a player to be rewarded for keeping the turret up and punished for not picking it up before it is destroyed. I would love to see changes in this direction.

Lyuben.2613:

@Psaakyrn
Are you honestly saying that some insignificant AoE regeneration is better than not having a self heal?

Regeneration is very weak for heals, even if you go maximum healing power.

Self heal is not needed when you’re not taking damage, which you shouldn’t be much when you’re playing support (not to mention when playing support you also have a lot of other heals to throw on to add to the healing). Admittedly the regeneration could use a little boost, but other than that, it’s working more or less as intended.

Psaakyrn.5794:

Lyuben.2613:

@Psaakyrn
Are you honestly saying that some insignificant AoE regeneration is better than not having a self heal?

Regeneration is very weak for heals, even if you go maximum healing power.

Self heal is not needed when you’re not taking damage, which you shouldn’t be much when you’re playing support (not to mention when playing support you also have a lot of other heals to throw on to add to the healing). Admittedly the regeneration could use a little boost, but other than that, it’s working more or less as intended.

That’s not good enough I’m sorry.

The trouble is, you are assuming that you are not taking any damage. That is fine, I’m not taking any damage atm ok.

But can you honestly say that you won’t take any damage in 15 seconds? Because that is the minimum time that you have. So, you could not be taking any damage right now, but how will you know exactly what will happen in 15 seconds? You don’t have the time to react. If you are taking no damage, and suddenly you are attacked by a mob, a boss, a zerg of players that somehow got access to you, what is your only option? Picking it up, which gives you a 15s cooldown before you can self heal.

Simply put: You cannot know 15 seconds ahead into the future. If you could, your scenario would indeed work.

That’s the risk you take. There are very few healing slot skills which allows you to heal others as well as yourself, and is partially balanced that you do have a separate (admittedly very minor) AoE heal outside of turret cooldown too. Personal opinion is still that the AoE healing could use some work, but is otherwise as intended (I’d in fact not mind a weaker self heal in exchange for a stronger regeneration)

Psaakyrn.5794:

That’s the risk you take. There are very few healing slot skills which allows you to heal others as well as yourself, and is partially balanced that you do have a separate (admittedly very minor) AoE heal outside of turret cooldown too. Personal opinion is still that the AoE healing could use some work, but is otherwise as intended (I’d in fact not mind a weaker self heal in exchange for a stronger regeneration)

It is risk, but what is the reward?

You are going, potentially 15-20s without ANY self heal, and when you react to it for what? Regeneration?

I’m sorry if you want regeneration then go for the elixir gun.

If you want regeneration go for healing rain from an elementalist, or better… take a ranger.

He can provide a 15s water field, which provides 18s of regeneration.

The difference is…. he can use it AND get a self heal.

Your equation that no self heal= worthwhile risk for regeneration is simply off.

If regeneration was powerful and rare, then MAYBE. But it is neither. Getting regeneration is very easy, and it is often completely negligible.

It takes several minutes of regeneration to equal one self heal, and it is spread over time, a burst of healing is vital for all forms of the game. PvP and PvE.

I don’t see any case where not having any self heal is equal to regeneration, I’m sorry.

If you are using the healing turret, that isn’t in any way: drop it and pick it up, then you are bad.

Or you can use BOTH healing turret and elixir gun. The ranger healing AoE is indeed better admittedly. I just want our healing AoE to be comparably similar to the ranger, and that’s it.

Psaakyrn.5794:

Or you can use BOTH healing turret and elixir gun.

Its like… its like you didn’t even read the point of my post, just chose a small section of it, replied to it and pretended that you did reply.

The point was: if you want regeneration go for the elixir gun.

If you want regeneration, don’t go healing turret. A self heal>>>>>>>Regeneration.

That was the point.

Saying that you can use elixir gun and healing turret adds nothing to any discussion.

What do you mean ‘use both’?

Just put down and pick up the healing turret while gaining regen from the elixir gun? That was my point originally.

Put down the healing turret, leave it down and use the regen from the elixir gun? An exercise in futility. The duration from the healing turret is so great, that adding more duration from elixir gun is just… wasting cooldowns and time.

So, in both cases you have added nothing.

Please, just admit that regeneration is not worth losing a self heal.