Guild Wars 2

Let me preface by saying: Yes, Turrets need more work. No, they are not in an ideal state yet. The change to Heal Turret was a nerf. But it was a small price to pay to fix a major problem with turrets in gameplay. People here are overreacting, and I disagree with a lot of the complaints about turret changes.

Until now, PvE Engineers only took turrets for their toolbelt. Sometimes we took skills like Thumper Turret for their blast finisher, but the CD made it prohibitive.

For the first time ever, we can put down a turret on the field, and keep the turret on the field for the duration of a battle, without the toolbelt and important skills in our rotation.

For both Power and Condi builds, this was effectively a buff to overall dps. The power bomb build was buffed by maybe 0.5k while simplified condi dps was buffed by 1k dps. Maybe my math are a little off, but the point is that they increased damage of our existing builds.

Most importantly, for the first time ever, I can actually deploy my turret for the sake of having a turret.

If they revert these changes, I’d be kinda mad. Turrets needed a bigger rework, but don’t pretend this wasn’t more healthy for the game.

I kind of aggree with you; I like the fact that ArenaNet is trying, it gives me hope that they will push turrets in a better direction.
However from the other side I don’t see the positive effects from this change. You can’t activate turrets again. Other builds like Static Discharge also suffer (no more double SD with detonate + Surprise shot)

Ask to “stop complaining” while complaining PvE Engineers were forced to get some utility skills just for their toolbelt…
YAY
#0.5kprogression
#PvEthuglife
#WvW0.5kburstHype

The problem here is that the changes they made are nothing but annoying. They won’t magically make turrets viable. I’m still taking Rifle turret because of the toolbelt and nothing else. Noone cares about those 300 dps from rifle turret or 500 from rocket and those are the strongest ones on power builds.

Turrets need major changes / reworks and instead of changing such minor things like they just did, they should invest their resources in that one day rework for turrets. The patch changed how turrets work yes, but they are still basicly useless and they’ve lost the tactical part / utility they’ve had, wich is very very sad. Also HT to blast might sux now :<

For the people who were already only using turrets for toolbelt skills, yeah. This is a buff. Albeit a very small one.

For the people who actually used turrets for the turrets themselves… yeah, no. Not so much. Multiple overcharges per turret life has now been reduced to one overcharge on drop That’s a pretty substancial nerf for people who actually want to keep the turret active. In fact, there’s now very, very little reason TO keep the turret active, the ideal way to use them now is quite obviously to put them down, let them fire their overcharge shot, and blow them up. Nearly every aspect of turrets is now aimed at that sort of playstyle. The shield on drop trait, the overcharge on drop, lower cooldowns, damage and blast finisher on detonation.

So no. As someone who wants to use turrets as turrets, I think I’ll keep complaining that the devs continue pushing me to not do that.

Yikes! What is wrong with you guys, how many threads about the turrets to you think we need? Actually we do not need a new thread anyway, write your comments directly in there. You wanted those changes. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Thanks-Wooden-Potatoes/first#post6532897

I like the new patch, it improved most of my builds. I even plan to use the healing turret finally on a build and I am absolutely not a fan of it. In my opinion, the patch makes it even easier for new players to get into turrets as there is now less confusin with the overcharging.

Recently I have been running a few situations with the supply crate and used the toolbelt a lot to heal in distances. The cleansing effect is welcomed. Will use the crate more often now.

“Skills and traits that previously granted pulsing stability now grant a block of stability up front in order better allow for counterplay through boon removal.” For some weird reason they did not touch the Juggernaut trait o.O – yet. Maybe the FT is still not strong enough to be considered as a real threat. Fine for me ^^.

Stop complaining? It’s broken! It does not work in combat half the time.

I need my heal to overcharge correctly and go off in the correct sequence. I will continue complaining until they fix it.

I’m not the biggest fan of the change, but it’s actually broken right now and that’s the problem.

clearly you never used turrets if you approve of this change…
as someone who DID use turrets i could care less about the toolbelt skills,

i’ve lost my instant access to stealth from flame turret,
what did i get in return? a damage skill on a long CD…

i’ve lost the long range knockdown from rocket turret
what did i get in return? a damage skill on a long CD…

i’ve lost the double AoE knockbacks from thumper turret
what did i get in return? a damage skill on a long CD…

so what do turrets do once deployed now?
rocket turret does nothing but weak damage.
flame turret does nothing but weak damage.
rifle turret does nothing but weak damage.
thumper does nothing but weak damage.

they have absolutely DESTROYED turrets and you’re like “cool, stop complaining guys!”
it is against the forum rules to call you an idiot, so i certainly wont.

Liewec.2896:

clearly you never used turrets if you approve of this change…
as someone who DID use turrets i could care less about the toolbelt skills,

i’ve lost my instant access to stealth from flame turret,
what did i get in return? a damage skill on a long CD…

i’ve lost the long range knockdown from rocket turret
what did i get in return? a damage skill on a long CD…

i’ve lost the double AoE knockbacks from thumper turret
what did i get in return? a damage skill on a long CD…

so what do turrets do once deployed now?
rocket turret does nothing but weak damage.
flame turret does nothing but weak damage.
rifle turret does nothing but weak damage.
thumper does nothing but weak damage.

they have absolutely DESTROYED turrets and you’re like “cool, stop complaining guys!”
it is against the forum rules to call you an idiot, so i certainly wont.

You seem to have missed the fact that turrets overcharge immediately upon drop now. Whilst it only overcharges once per turret drop, they still overcharge. This was a buff to Static Discharge builds because we can actually USE our turrets instead of only using the toolbelt skills.

#kitteninfilthycasualengineer

You had no idea what muscle memory is like after playing 5 years of engineer. kitten the turret change.

Llethander.3972:

You seem to have missed the fact that turrets overcharge immediately upon drop now.

no i didn’t miss it, its just useless to anyone who actually plans on using turrets as turrets.
I.E you place them with the intent of having them there for longer than 5 darn seconds.

to use the overcharge now you need to carry your turrets around and waiting for the moment that you want to use the overcharge skill, until then you are TURRETLESS.
and since without overcharge turrets are nothing but slow, pathetically weak damage you’ll invariably pick the turret right back up once its done the one and only overcharge it can…again becoming turretless…

they aren’t turrets if you’re using them like this,
they’re just another cooldown, drop it, pick it up.
that isn’t turret engi.

Exactly. The current version prevents tactical usage of the turrets overcharges.

Some examples: You can’t cleanse the fear from sloth anymore, you can’t use the healing turret for might or stealth stacks anymore (unless you precast it somewhere else), you can’t delay the smoke or water field in mid combat to blast them anymore, you can’t use thumper or rocket turret’s cc for time gated break bars anymore.

Those are the things turrets where great for, and they need that potential back! This means we require the overcharge on demand.

I serious have never once thought about using the tool belt skill on turrets as they are small unnoticable abilites with the only one being any form of useful (and again not by much) is the rifle and thumpers as you can use those while stunned

redwing.9580:

I serious have never once thought about using the tool belt skill on turrets as they are small unnoticable abilites with the only one being any form of useful (and again not by much) is the rifle and thumpers as you can use those while stunned

And Rocket from the rocket turret. And Surprise shot from the rifle turret, moreso on a Static Discharge power build. Both of which a power bomb build will likely use, though they may still sub out the Rocket Turret for use of Grenade Kit’s barrage toolbelt skill. Surprise shot is still a must-have for non-scrapper power builds.

I actually appreciate the change because it means that I can actually use the turrets instead of just having them there but never dropping them because the toolbelt skills offer more DPS than if I were to place them.

Llethander.3972:

redwing.9580:

I serious have never once thought about using the tool belt skill on turrets as they are small unnoticable abilites with the only one being any form of useful (and again not by much) is the rifle and thumpers as you can use those while stunned

And Rocket from the rocket turret. And Surprise shot from the rifle turret, moreso on a Static Discharge power build. Both of which a power bomb build will likely use, though they may still sub out the Rocket Turret for use of Grenade Kit’s barrage toolbelt skill. Surprise shot is still a must-have for non-scrapper power builds.

I actually appreciate the change because it means that I can actually use the turrets instead of just having them there but never dropping them because the toolbelt skills offer more DPS than if I were to place them.

the rocket fro the rocket turret is near useless, the only way you could use it in pvp or wvw is to fire it at the start of the fight and hope that the fight last long enough for the kitten thing to land

this may be a slight improvement for pve, but for pvp/wvw this is a major nerf to turrets

in wvw it’s all about unsuspecting foes, of which there are many. there aren’t any in pvp. they’re easy targets that prolly don’t know what rocket even is. it’s not useless, just niche.

Thumper turret. :/

PART of me is thinking that Anet is moving toward making turrets such that the primary use of the turret is the initial cast (overcharge), and the left over turret is a secondary benefit that is disposable. This would play more towards a style of play that actively moves about, placing turrets primary to make use of, say, thumper turret’s overcharge for AoE CC or Net Turret’s stun right away. Basically using them one at a time and leaving the turrets as annoying residue that annoy the enemy as you move about and gun them down yourself. As opposed to the type of playstyle that sets up a nest with all the turrets at once on one point and tries to survive as long as possible. I think Anet may have realized that the type of turret engi playstyle that sets up a nest of turrets is not fun to fight against…though it is quite funny to play.

The problem with this is that:

1) Rifle is not good enough as a stand-alone weapon to facilitate this type of play-style.
2) A full turret skill-bar means death via conditions, even with the Supply Crate F5 change.

Nevertheless, if the queue times weren’t insane in PvP, I’d like to try out a build that used:

- Demolisher or Paladin’s Amulet with Strength/Hoelbrak/Pack runes
- Rifle with the sigils that remove 2 boons and removes a condition on weapon swap
- Healing turret, Elixir Gun, Net Turret, Thumper Turret, Supply Crate as utilities
- These traits: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUh2tYdVwyKw6FL5FF4BGAVlYAlD1QYM1PXGA-TpQOABAs/A3lBAA

Has condi removal through healing turret, elixir gun, supply crate F5 and alchemy line. Also has single target CC with net turret and rifle and AoE CC with thumper turret and supply crate, as well as two stun breaks. Only problem is that it does not have as much passive damage reduction like in the meta Scrapper build and it uses rifle (-_-; rifle needs love). It does have a nice combo: supply crate most of enemy team → jump shot onto stunned enemies → thumper turret, which will basically force 1-2 stun breaks for the rest of your team to abuse while dealing a lot of damage. Plus when you get stunned, you can stun-break with Thumper Turret’s tool-belt and use the stability to quickly over-charge shot a dangerous enemy without self-stunning yourself. Against a full team of condi cheese, being able to clear condis from your entire team with F5 really helps.

Very high risk, but I think if we see more nerfs to projectile hate, and more small buffs to rifle, we can see this type of build work.

When I think of turrets, I see several attributes that Anet has tried to balance:

1. Turrets are fixed in location, so it’s possible for your opponent to counter-play by running away from them. Turrets (currently) deploy at the engineer’s location.

2. Turrets have a certain toughness that lets them survive, and can be traited to negatively affect those that (melee) destroy them. They can also be healed (repaired) by the engineer, and they can be cleansed (destroyed) by opponents.

3. Turrets are fire-and-forget allowing the engineer to totally focus on their opponents. In fact, turrets can continue to function indefinitely with the engineer at a fair distance, out of LOS, etc.

4. Turrets also provide activatable effects including overloads (no longer), detonations, and tool belt skills.

5. Turrets provide group support through the healing turret, turret fields, and traits that can cause them to dispense buffs.

6. Turrets can be deployed and picked up and can provide on-deployment effects. For example, they can be traited to have shields at deployment.

Not saying that any of these aspects are super-powerful. Just saying that this is the mixture of things that Anet has available for defining turrets in general. (Of course, a specific turret is also defined by its main function: healing, flames, etc.)

And it’s may impression that Anet has tried to balance these attributes in a way that’s resulted in a fairly bland outcome. People have complained forever about turrets being weak, turrets being fixed in place while PvP and WvW are dynamic and PvE encounters are becoming more dynamic over time. And so on. I think there have been a couple of periods of time when turrets were “overpowered”, but for most of their history I think the general consensus has been that people — including myself — are intrigued by turrets but feel that they’re underpowered.

So I agree with the OP that the current changes are not sufficient, but at least they seem to show Anet trying to move turrets away from the unstable and yet bland middle-of-the-attributes and towards a goal. Hopefully, once they see how a more dynamic style plays out, they can then tweak other attributes to match.

The new change does seem to do several things at once. First, it acknowledges and simplifies the drop-overcharge-detonate-then-use-toolbelt tactics that I think are fairly popular. Second, it indirectly increases the DPS of turrets by allowing simultaneous use of tool belt skills and the turret. Third, it positions leave-them-out turrets as something like semi-permanent buffs/conditions while providing counter-play via movement.

Hopefully, once the new approach takes root, Anet will be able to tweak other aspects of play. This could include buffs or could involve traits so you can trait to double-down on the on-deployment strengths or to bend them towards leave-them-out play. (Currently you can trait to have projectile reflection on deployment or to have them dispense buffs. They could strengthen either side of the equation, or force you to choose one or the other.)