Guild Wars 2

Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears that our turrets got stripped of one of the most useful traits we could choose – the self repair. Now we will either have to babysit the not-so-tough-anyway immobile pets rather than let them sit somewhere safe while taking care of aggro?

I am glad they remove it. Less passive gameplay is always good.

There are still people trying to run turrets?

I use it as a distraction sometimes or place healing turret behind me in a fights – with autofixing I didn’t have to really pay that much attention to it, but with this new patch… kitten the classes trademark I guess…

You’ve seen the changes to supply-crate, right?
You know that thumper only gets productive if you place, double-proc and blow it up again, right? Especially since you’d need to do that for its stun breaker anyways…
You know that healing turrets is in fact nothing but a healing bomb, right?
You know that picking up, repositioning and overcharging rocket& rifle turret frequently kittens up opponents way faster than giving them obvious blind-spots to chill out in, right? Especially so since their toolbelt skills are hard-hitting and a waste to be covered with “explode turret” 90% of the time.
You know that net-turret only gets effective as surprise-drop and insta-overcharge, just to be blown up for its toolbelt to chain the immob with rifle, bombkit /pistol #5 right?

None of these useful applications for turrets require them to stay out for more than a couple of seconds, most times just split-seconds. Hence they don’t need a trait to heal them up while they’re out.
Getting rid of it opened the spot for a trait that heals US for blasting them (and other blast-finishers). I thought the message about how A-net want’s us to use them was clear, so if anything you didn’t understand the classes INTENDED trademark, and that is mobile, fast paced combat, something that is very much possible with turrets as well..

You see – the glorious trait of engineer is that I can both play it as fastpaced, or I can play it as slowpaced character. I have played my engineer in one of the intended ways – using healing bombs (now gone) with turret autofix (now gone). You know – enjoying the views, seamlessly traversing throught the game’s world while blasting never-ending stream of bombs. I understand that it was a bit easy to play this way – but the class was built to play like that too. So while you rant about the flavour of the month way to be played I will stick to my way of playing – a bit modyfied, yes, but nonetheless fun. And I will be a little sore in the back without my trusty healing turret buzzing from time to time in the distance, like an old chap calling me for a pint of beer.

who cares. you can overcharge supply crate and detonate it for water + 3 blasts. its gonna be baller bby

Arantheal.7396:

I thought the message about how A-net want’s us to use them was clear, so if anything you didn’t understand the classes INTENDED trademark, and that is mobile, fast paced combat, something that is very much possible with turrets as well..

No amount of snark or condescension will change the fact that removing autorepair from turrets makes them less appealing.

Depending on how things work out after Tuesday, it’s likely my turreteers won’t be using turrets anymore because of this.

We’ll see.

Urdhgag.2450:

I use it as a distraction sometimes or place healing turret behind me in a fights – with autofixing I didn’t have to really pay that much attention to it, but with this new patch… kitten the classes trademark I guess…

Kits dude, not turrets, are an Engi’s trademark.

Turrets are pointless. Stop using them.

It really is kind of sad they took everything from the turrets. We got all downsides (can’t move, can’t get healed up by allies but from toolkit engis, don’t get any boons….) and none of the pros we had earlier (can’t get hit critically, can’t get conditions, can autorepair).

I really hope there will be some buffing in the future. Would be really nice if they could get boons too just like every other minion in this game. This way the trait experimental turrets would make them buffing themselves and the healing turrets regeneration would make them heal up again.

Turrets Destroyed

Novuake.2691:

Turrets are pointless. Stop using them.

That’s the problem. A lot of players, including myself and the person who first got me interested in GW2, were attracted to the game by the prospect of using turrets.

Then we found out that that they were utter garbage and stopped using them except as instant use/instant pickup skills that are little more than mundane utility skills with novel animations.

In the current regime, turrets are actually useful for players who want to use them for point defense in PVE, which is a common scenario for high-level dynamic events. Autorepair makes them viable in many situations where they otherwise are not, even though they are still worthless in places with lots of AOE spam, like most boss fights and pretty much everywhere in the Silverwastes.

So what we’re left with is one less way to play, and while that may not bother some people, it does bother those of us who tire of narrowness and orthodoxy.

You still can repair them with toolkit.
And for open world PvE that’s totally viable, especially if you want to hold a specific area for some time anyways…

Plus it’s a way to encourage cooperation.

So long as you can still fix OTHER people’s turrets, you could have multiple engies working together with one of them as a support person fixing turrets and dispensing heals and such.

I do think the wrench should be able to cure conditions off of turrets or apply temporary resistance to them to make it more worthwhile to run around smacking them though.

Mario, Where Are You?

Arantheal.7396:

You still can repair them with toolkit.

And lose both a turret to the kit and a ranged attack to pull and supplement the turret damage, while simultaneously micromanaging turret health.

No thanks.

After the last round of buffs, Turreteer definitely became viable — arguably for the first time — as a skill focus, which was good.

Now that seems to be going away, which is bad.

Imho, developers don’t have a clear idea about what they want turrets to be used for.
The profession page describes them as “immobile devices that help defend and control an area”, and it is even said that the engineer “can take control of an area by placing turrets”.
The healing turret even had a long cooldown for its overcharge, and most of the healing was given by the placement itself. It was changed into its current form because they wanted people to keep it out instead of picking it up or destroying it (it doesn’t need to be said that it backfired tremendously).
They still had a ton of bugs, especially with their faulty hitbox, so they ended up being even more fragile than intended until such bugs were fixed.
And even additional traits were added – one of those, experimental turrets – also one of the few traits for turrets we still have available – gives boons as long as those turrets are deployed.
Despite what Arantheal may say, anet’s message about turrets is rather contradictory. Even after their massive survivability nerf (mostly due of pvp people’s whinings than any factual overpowerness, and completely useless in making them more active) and the specialization overhaul they’re still maintaining a trait like Experimental Turrets, as well as the damage reduction they’ve put into Advanced Turrets – and both of them only make sense if those turrets are supposed to stay out.
It may be that the nerf to their survivability was intended as a bandaid for the whining crowds while they work on some design that permits turrets to have both an active gameplay and still maintain their design of defending and controlling an area.
Still, until the developers clearly talk about how turrets are supposed to be used and any future plan about them, we cannot be certain about their intended use.

They could just cram the autorepair into one of the existing specialization traits – experimental turrets as an example. Or advanced turrets. It’s a pity for me to ditch my beloved healing turret. Any ideas dear community? Where else could you put the auto-fixing module?

What I think they could have done was allow turrets too heal for a percent of how much damage they did of how much damage you do with toolkit. Wouldn’t be so passive as long as you are within the effective area you could keep them alive in combat only if you are doing damage.

Unless I missed it, “deployable turrets” is missing too? One of the best ways to keep a turret alive was to use this trait and throw it somewhere that melee attacks couldn’t reach it. If we’re missing both deployable turrets and autotool installation, turrets will be very, very vulnerable, and should have the cooldown reduced (esp. rocket and thumper turret) or some other fix.

I guess they want turrets to be less passive and us to be more active with them such as by repairing them with tool kit instead. Nothing wrong with that, if only they could survive long enough to be actually healed

The Zen Turreteer

On the bright side, the new Supply Crate turret looks interesting, and it might actually be pretty awesome. An elite turret? Sounds cool — if the implementation doesn’t fall short.

Given the fact that turrets already suffer from oversized hit boxes, drop within seconds to most AOEs, are vulnerable to conditions and conditions now stack to 1500, I expect Tuesday to be a sort of Armageddon for turrets in general.

However, I could be dead wrong and they may be fine. I’m going to give the new turret regime a shot, and if it turns out to be practical, I won’t be shy about singing its praises and dropping turrets left and right.

But based on my experience with turrets over the past few years, I have good reason to expect that unless some sort of autorepair feature is implemented or they gain massive health buffs, they are going to end up being sort of like Mesmer phantasms: short-lived entities that do damage for a while before being quickly destroyed. Except with longer cooldowns.

Here’s hoping the situation isn’t a dire as it looks — for a change.