Guild Wars 2

Background info:

People in the sPvP part of these forums seem to be complaining on variants of this engineer build as of late and most seem to have a very poor understanding of the traits involved in the builds and how they function. Generally, there are two main variants:

Rifled Turret Barrels GM – Focuses support and added DPS on a point with Experimental Turrets GM. Tries to keep turrets alive

Fortified Turrets GM- Always brings the accelerated packaged turrets and rotates skill usage of turrets ASAP for knock backs and reflects.

The Point of this Discussion:

Do you guys think that people complaining about these builds are warranted? I think most people complain about the CC produced on the Fortified Turrets centred build more than the other build although there are come complaints about the added DPS produced by the other build as well. Personally, I’ve seen people on Soloq ignore the turrets a lot of the time and scramble around when turrets with the Fortified Turrets trait pop out.

Since a lot of guys here on these parts of the forum understand the class more than others, what do you guys think about this issue in sPvP? More of a l2p issue or tweaks to lower DPS on turrets or place an internal cool down on Accelerated Packaged Turrets?

Tbh, since Anet does not wanna seperate the game modes, I pray to god this stupid fad goes away so I can not have turrets nerfed EVERYWHERE else cause some noob walks into turrets.

Turret nerfs?

Sorry, excuse me while I go back to my bed and wake up.

This is a learn-to-play issue, compounded by a particularly limited game mode wherein holding a point is a major objective.
Looking at the sPvP’s wiki page, I notice that holding a point for ten seconds is worth as much as getting a kill; thus, if it takes longer than ten seconds to find, and kill, an enemy, it’s time that would have been better spent holding a point.

Learn-to-play aspect: Why are they ignoring the Turrets, and why should Turrets be nerfed because they don’t bother to destroy them? They aren’t that tough, even traited, and a full complement of them can raise the Engineer’s DPS by a fair amount, as well as providing boons and CC, depending on traits. The cooldowns are also substantial, and if the Turrets are destroyed, they won’t be reduced by 25% like they would if they were picked up. AoE erases them.

Game mode aspect:
When a combat is immobile, and based on survival, Turrets will naturally be well-suited, due to their own immobile natures and the fact that Turret grandmasters are exclusively found in survivability-boosting traitlines. Turrets are designed to hold a point, to create area-denial. Of course that’s what they’re going to be good at. Fighting a Turret Engineer in a box is not supposed to work out well.

If the fight is mobile, as most in every other game type are, a Turret Engineer with all their turrets deployed is essentially half a character outside of Turret range, which maxes at 1500 with RTB. Can an sPvP fight be mobile? Sure, but if it takes more than ten seconds to secure a kill, that is, again, time that could have been spent holding point instead.

In short:

• People need to learn to destroy the Turrets.
• The game-mode rewards holding points more than killing foes.
• Turrets are designed to be good at holding points, and their users tend to be tanks.

Nerfing Turrets because they’re good at what they’re designed to do, in a gamemode designed to disproportionately reward exactly what Turrets are designed to do, is absurd, and would pretty much kill the skillset in every other game-mode.

Thanks for the replies. Honestly guys, the amount of qqing and misinformation being spread about turret engies (and engineers in general) in the sPvP portion of of these forums has gotten absurd.

It’s a very real possibility that turrets may be toned down much like how spirit rangers were nerfed, which is incredibly annoying for me since it’s only now that turrets have gotten viable in a single game mode after waiting for almost 2 years.

Having just looked over the sPvP boards to see all the whining about Turrets, including a post or two about 75% of a build’s damage coming from Minions/Adds/Turrets/Etc:

These people have no idea how little damage Turrets actually deal. I ran the numbers, a while back, and the three most damaging turrets, combined, deal about 80% of Speargun autoattack-only damage, when everything’s set in favor of making Turrets look good.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-turrets-sigh/first#post3867013

No, really. I set the numbers to figure out what it’d be like for a naked, traitless level 80 with a 1-weapon-power Weapon, and then gave Turrets Rifled Turret Barrels, and calculated the damage for a period of ten seconds. Turrets don’t scale, weapons do, and the worst of our autoattacks was more damaging alone than all three of our most-damaging Turrets.
About the only thing I didn’t do to make Turrets look good was account for overcharges.

If they reduce the damage, that’s going to just be stupid.

@Anymras

*Edit

I think there’s something off with the numbers. Checking on the PvP area, it’s
Rifle Turret: 476
Flame Turret: 127
Rocket Turret: 1429
Thumper Turret: 635

base damage without RTB on Heavy armored golems.

I think pets in this game are weaksauce even with the traits to help them. I think that even in PVP pets and summons should never be the target. I think that we need some serious overhauling to pet classes and that people need to stop stigmatizing them just because they have little helpers.

In exactly 0 of the mmos I’ve ever played, no pet class was so op with resistance on their pets enough to last in a fight or remove the advantage of AOE attacks by adding resistance to AOE or splash damage on them high enough to make a difference that PVPers didn’t learn to take them out or work around them eventually (which their developers DID complain about initially when even they noticed it took pets out too quickly especially in WvW and they wanted to nerf AOEs). The entire mmo community has had it out for pet classes in every game.

I think it’s high time that they get over it and allow true diversity in this game.

Yujin.1785:

@Anymras

*Edit

I think there’s something off with the numbers. Checking on the PvP area, it’s
Rifle Turret: 476
Flame Turret: 127
Rocket Turret: 1429
Thumper Turret: 635

base damage without RTB on Heavy armored golems.

I think I pretty much just used the numbers in the wiki to run the math, rather than actually testing per-shot damage on the golems (due to then having to qualify what armor level the damage is calculated against, or calculate against all three armor types), so some inaccuracy wouldn’t be terribly unexpected. What is kind of unexpected is Rocket Turret dealing more damage, given most of these numbers being lower; which armor type were these showing up against?

Here’s my opinion. I’ve been playing Turret Engineer on sPvP from about the month and it’s beast.

How to tweak Damage:
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Idea-to-tweak-bunker-tank-summonners

How to tweak Accelerated Packaged Turrets:
- Add 6 seconds of cooldown to the trait
- Reduce the pushback effect (300 -> 250)

How to tweak Rifled Turret Barrels:
- Remove range increase from trait
- Increase damage buff (15% -> 25%)
- Now reduces cooldown of overcharges by 20%

Fortified Turrets are in good place.

Anymras.5729:

Yujin.1785:

@Anymras

*Edit

I think there’s something off with the numbers. Checking on the PvP area, it’s
Rifle Turret: 476
Flame Turret: 127
Rocket Turret: 1429
Thumper Turret: 635

base damage without RTB on Heavy armored golems.

I think I pretty much just used the numbers in the wiki to run the math, rather than actually testing per-shot damage on the golems (due to then having to qualify what armor level the damage is calculated against, or calculate against all three armor types), so some inaccuracy wouldn’t be terribly unexpected. What is kind of unexpected is Rocket Turret dealing more damage, given most of these numbers being lower; which armor type were these showing up against?

These numbers were appearing on Heavy armor golems per shot. The wiki is terribly off in terms of base damage for some of the turrets.

260% increase from the wiki for the rifle, rocket, and thumper turret.

The damage per shot of the auto attack for the Rifle’s Hip shot is an average of 460, while the Pistol’s auto attack is 220ish without bleeding damage. These numbers were taken on heavy armor, traited into the vitality and toughness line and using celestial gear.

I hate to say it but the numbers are really way off on your post.

If the numbers are off, the numbers are off – working on outdated information because I didn’t feel like going to the trouble of testing every single autoattack’s cumulative damage over ten seconds will do that.

Anymras.5729:

This is a learn-to-play issue, compounded by a particularly limited game mode wherein holding a point is a major objective.
Looking at the sPvP’s wiki page, I notice that holding a point for ten seconds is worth as much as getting a kill; thus, if it takes longer than ten seconds to find, and kill, an enemy, it’s time that would have been better spent holding a point.

Learn-to-play aspect: Why are they ignoring the Turrets, and why should Turrets be nerfed because they don’t bother to destroy them? They aren’t that tough, even traited, and a full complement of them can raise the Engineer’s DPS by a fair amount, as well as providing boons and CC, depending on traits. The cooldowns are also substantial, and if the Turrets are destroyed, they won’t be reduced by 25% like they would if they were picked up. AoE erases them.

Game mode aspect:
When a combat is immobile, and based on survival, Turrets will naturally be well-suited, due to their own immobile natures and the fact that Turret grandmasters are exclusively found in survivability-boosting traitlines. Turrets are designed to hold a point, to create area-denial. Of course that’s what they’re going to be good at. Fighting a Turret Engineer in a box is not supposed to work out well.

If the fight is mobile, as most in every other game type are, a Turret Engineer with all their turrets deployed is essentially half a character outside of Turret range, which maxes at 1500 with RTB. Can an sPvP fight be mobile? Sure, but if it takes more than ten seconds to secure a kill, that is, again, time that could have been spent holding point instead.

In short:

• People need to learn to destroy the Turrets.
• The game-mode rewards holding points more than killing foes.
• Turrets are designed to be good at holding points, and their users tend to be tanks.

Nerfing Turrets because they’re good at what they’re designed to do, in a gamemode designed to disproportionately reward exactly what Turrets are designed to do, is absurd, and would pretty much kill the skillset in every other game-mode.

I agree, I have played turret engineer since the game came out (finally good enough to play in TPvP). Kill the turrets kill the engineer. I play Turret Engineer every night and every night people run straight at me basically standing on my flame turret or thumper turret trying to smash me down. However I don’t stand around long and tracking me down is tough because you have decided to run in on my turrets and try to spam some sort of control on me. There are several strategies to killing the turret engineer, running straight in is not one of them!

Yujin.1785:

Anymras.5729:

Yujin.1785:

@Anymras

*Edit

I think there’s something off with the numbers. Checking on the PvP area, it’s
Rifle Turret: 476
Flame Turret: 127
Rocket Turret: 1429
Thumper Turret: 635

base damage without RTB on Heavy armored golems.

I think I pretty much just used the numbers in the wiki to run the math, rather than actually testing per-shot damage on the golems (due to then having to qualify what armor level the damage is calculated against, or calculate against all three armor types), so some inaccuracy wouldn’t be terribly unexpected. What is kind of unexpected is Rocket Turret dealing more damage, given most of these numbers being lower; which armor type were these showing up against?

These numbers were appearing on Heavy armor golems per shot. The wiki is terribly off in terms of base damage for some of the turrets.

260% increase from the wiki for the rifle, rocket, and thumper turret.

The damage per shot of the auto attack for the Rifle’s Hip shot is an average of 460, while the Pistol’s auto attack is 220ish without bleeding damage. These numbers were taken on heavy armor, traited into the vitality and toughness line and using celestial gear.

I hate to say it but the numbers are really way off on your post.

Just looking at these numbers isn’t going to give you an accurate count. You are forgetting several factors.

1. Cast time
2. turrets fire rate/ Cast time. Each turret has slower or faster casting time
3. if destroyed each turret has a slow reset time

Rocket turret fires at a slower rate then rife turret for example. Nothing wrong with the damage, Each turret is different from casting time to duration. Turrets are really not that strong.

The issues with turrets in sPvP are the same as the rest of AI builds in PvP – their strengths largely stem from messing with the game’s mechanics. Namely the AOE Target cap and shoddy targeting system. The inherent defense that comes from those two aspects of the build is largely what is carrying people and exacerbated with each additional player using a similar AI build on the same point.

For the record though, Rocket Turret does a kittened amount of damage with zero investment, let alone when traited. I grab that turret just for the lolz sometimes.

jupp, tough its squishy and has a slow attack pattern.
An aware observer could dodge the intervals, even tho the projectile itself is too fast to be dodged on reflex. The only indicator is that the turret will turn to his target before he fires.

to be even more annoying, pick deployable turrets and park your rifle/rocket-turret in walls or on high spots. Most people prefer to scroll out and look from above onto the battlefield so they often are completely oblivious about the turrets being above their camera angle and even if they spot them, so far only eles seem to be able to clear them effectively. even rangers are easy prey for them.

Drafigo.4690:

Yujin.1785:

Anymras.5729:

Yujin.1785:

@Anymras

*Edit

I think there’s something off with the numbers. Checking on the PvP area, it’s
Rifle Turret: 476
Flame Turret: 127
Rocket Turret: 1429
Thumper Turret: 635

base damage without RTB on Heavy armored golems.

I think I pretty much just used the numbers in the wiki to run the math, rather than actually testing per-shot damage on the golems (due to then having to qualify what armor level the damage is calculated against, or calculate against all three armor types), so some inaccuracy wouldn’t be terribly unexpected. What is kind of unexpected is Rocket Turret dealing more damage, given most of these numbers being lower; which armor type were these showing up against?

These numbers were appearing on Heavy armor golems per shot. The wiki is terribly off in terms of base damage for some of the turrets.

260% increase from the wiki for the rifle, rocket, and thumper turret.

The damage per shot of the auto attack for the Rifle’s Hip shot is an average of 460, while the Pistol’s auto attack is 220ish without bleeding damage. These numbers were taken on heavy armor, traited into the vitality and toughness line and using celestial gear.

I hate to say it but the numbers are really way off on your post.

Just looking at these numbers isn’t going to give you an accurate count. You are forgetting several factors.

1. Cast time
2. turrets fire rate/ Cast time. Each turret has slower or faster casting time
3. if destroyed each turret has a slow reset time

Rocket turret fires at a slower rate then rife turret for example. Nothing wrong with the damage, Each turret is different from casting time to duration. Turrets are really not that strong.

That wasn’t the point of the post. Anymras’ base numbers are way off (Turrets and pistol/rifle auto attack since he said that he was completely naked) and he already calculated their rate of fire. Cast time is negligible. I agree with point 3, which a lot of people whining about the build forget to realize.

Turret Engineers at the moment aren’t strong enough, but they should never be too strong as all builds that work with AI should be weaker due to less skill required. So I guess in fairness, they are fine atm. Make them require more skill and buff them.

Another problem is, unless you bunch the turrets to the same place, which is disaterous vs good aoe, nothing prevents a ranged foe from taking them out one by one through positioning himself just outside the range of your other turrets. You need to get over there to stop him, and he can hit and run you as he pleases. And if you get over there, you may come outside your turret range, making you a lot weaker.

Which is why a good turreteer places his turrets where:
- they can cover your point
- they can not be attacked unobstructed from far away (next to a pillar is in most cases completely enough)
- they can not be cleared without requiring the attacker to leaving the point

even without deployable turrets almost every point on every map has these spots, you just have to find suitable spots for yourself, and at best switch the position of your turrets to complete different spots between each push. Doing so yields the best results.

Arantheal.7396:

Which is why a good turreteer places his turrets where:
- they can cover your point
- they can not be attacked unobstructed from far away (next to a pillar is in most cases completely enough)
- they can not be cleared without requiring the attacker to leaving the point

even without deployable turrets almost every point on every map has these spots, you just have to find suitable spots for yourself, and at best switch the position of your turrets to complete different spots between each push. Doing so yields the best results.

But if they are placed to block ranged los, it works against you too.

whatever they have on that range, I can eat it up all day long^^

to channel effectively even an ele has to come close, else he won’t be able to get actual burst down… and if he’s dumb enough to kitten up his precious timing, I just drop thumper (as a interim point holder) and go after him. It’s pretty amazing how people complete ignore your turrets when you’re not around them, and suddenly get downed by them. happened so with a thief that tried to sneak my point while I was playing catch with a ranger^^

Arantheal.7396:

whatever they have on that range, I can eat it up all day long^^

to channel effectively even an ele has to come close, else he won’t be able to get actual burst down… and if he’s dumb enough to kitten up his precious timing, I just drop thumper (as a interim point holder) and go after him. It’s pretty amazing how people complete ignore your turrets when you’re not around them, and suddenly get downed by them. happened so with a thief that tried to sneak my point while I was playing catch with a ranger^^

Unless they are, oh, idk any class that can burst outside turret range?

1500? hadly any class can burst at that range.
meteor shower alone? gets eaten
ranger longbow? gets eaten
warri sniper? gets dodged^^

Arantheal.7396:

1500? hadly any class can burst at that range.
meteor shower alone? gets eaten
ranger longbow? gets eaten
warri sniper? gets dodged^^

Turrets got nothing that can eat a high damage end meteor shower unless you time it perfectly.

Rangers have the range and can have the damage to do it.¨

Turrets can’t dodge crap.

Just that you say you come over and chase him down sets you up for hit and run.

Heck, even another Engineer could do it.

They have something: its called pickup.
A meteor shower to clear my turrets is simply wasted on me since I don’t keep my turrets out between encounters. And once the ele wasted his completely absorbed burst chain, I heal up, drop turrets and down this zerker in seconds.

One player-kill equals holding a point for 10 seconds, so, together with decap and recap, thats 15 seconds I can take my time for to kill an annoying target, which is why I rather not care about my point if an easy prey shows up. and people who burst on range are per default easy prey and i hardly ever misjudge that, tough downstate can happen to me as well, especially with a thief in the other team.^^

Arantheal.7396:

They have something: its called pickup.
A meteor shower to clear my turrets is simply wasted on me since I don’t keep my turrets out between encounters. And once the ele wasted his completely absorbed burst chain, I heal up, drop turrets and down this zerker in seconds.

One player-kill equals holding a point for 10 seconds, so, together with decap and recap, thats 15 seconds I can take my time for to kill an annoying target, which is why I rather not care about my point if an easy prey shows up. and people who burst on range are per default easy prey and i hardly ever misjudge that, tough downstate can happen to me as well, especially with a thief in the other team.^^

Good luck picking them all up in a meteor shower, at least if the ele in question is about damage, as most staff wielders are – especially if they are spread out. Not to mention that you subject yourself to 15 seconds where you DON’T have access to your turrets. In fact, that meteor shower could not have been used better – it forced you to nerf yourself for 15 whole seconds. Aka, he used ONE skill to waste SEVERAL of yours. It’s an encounter you drew the short end of.

Btw, 10 seconds of holding a point equals a kill in team worth so you might be bogging your team down. Up to you if you wanna risk being useless.

In sPVP, I have seen more movement to ranged attacks. Especially from individuals who like to focus on engineers, though I don’t play a turret engineer (I like mobility). I would say (and don’t bomb me because I’m no expert) that a good mesmer would eat a turret engi. In pvp and wvw, mesmers have given me the most trouble and I have yet to find a good way to counter them.

I’m going to rephrase the current trend about AI and say this. The strategy around pets in PVP that people are upset about is that it allows the player to provide sustained area damage on point while remaining mobile and free to cast. A guardian/warrior on point must stay on point or range to sustain damage on point. A turret engi, shatter mesmer, necro MM can move off point and threaten the opposing player while keeping a sustained damage on point.

Downsides? Well a turret engi is not going to have a lot of cleansing/healing off point or other kits so it is a all or nothing build. Range is going to be the hard counter or a shatter mesmer/necro doing area damage. However that’s the rock/paper/scissors aspect of GW2.

@arantheal

Oxstar is right about not picking up the turrets. You’re better off trying to win a point in a team battle than trying to pick up your turrets if they are placed out of the way.

Another thing that should be mentioned as well is that turrets aren’t usually placed too far from a battle as much as possible. the range of experimental turrets is 600 range so if a pure turret engineer decides to make the full use of RTB rifle turret and RTB rocket turrets, the team doesn’t get the buffs.

@Thiefz

Aside from the combat weaknesses of CC and conditions on the build, another downside is that it’s also hard to rotate with a turret engineer. Don’t expect your turret engineer teammate to decap the far point and leave.

Late answer since I was on a short vacation:
obviously I don’t pick them up IN the meteor shower, but after the last bugger got stomped and I have some chilled seconds on my point.

And about mesmers:
They are no threat, regardless what build they’re running. If you use the rifle (and don’t fail to spot the real mesmer) you can assign him as target for the turret-AI all day long. Condi mesmers can’t clear my turrets nor burst me effectively, zerker mesmers get outranged by turrets and die too fast. Going on full cd with their rota is not enough to disable me, as well. And clone shatterer do zero dmg to m turrets and are the easiest target for them.
The only things I have problems with are backstabbing and perma-evading thieves (depends on his rota, one nicely placed cc and he goes into downstate), zerker eles that clear my turrets without me seeing them coming (or without getting warned by teammates), and other engineers that use turret builds AND have a dps-build (class does not matter) with them.

@Arantheal

We never generally pick them up in battle since they have the ability to heal themselves to full health with auto tool installation. Sure, if I have to move to another point and if they’re along the way I’ll pick them up.. Just not in battle as the benefit for picking them up is severely lacking.

Yeah, the build is strong against Mesmers and Thieves. In fact, they can only stand toe to toe in Khylo on the Treb and some portions of the CT due to blinks and shadow stepping but good placement of the turrets makes their life hell.

In the beginning I left them out as well.
Results:
people died once, came back together and ranged down the rocket turret first, and then focused on the thumper / rifle turret. Could not leave the point to get out the ranged guys since their meleeing partner contested the point.
My reaction to this issue:
Pick them up, replace them in different positions, not obviously visible and/ or drop them in combat when they’re meant to be dropped. A thumper makes no sense when a hambow has stability up. To achieve max annoyance, I’ve dropped explosive turrets for deployable turrets.
Results:
Better performance of this build in mid/late-fight since pre-clearing them is not an option anymore.