The Engineer's Guide to Turrets

The Engineer's Guide to Turrets

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378

Hello, and welcome to my guide for using turrets.

Let us venture into our mechanical wonderland!

Note: Most basic information can be found on the wiki. Please check that out before coming here.


Chapter 1: Overcharge
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Automatic Fire (Rifle Turret): Use immediately as soon as you place it down. Do not ever use it again until a new rifle turret is placed. This overcharge lasts roughly 10 seconds on activation.

-If used after it fires once, you may (probably will never) get the attack speed bonus for the turret until it is replaced.
-If used as it fires it’s first shot, it will retain the attack speed bonus permanently, however, every 10 or 11 seconds it will have a delay as if it didn’t have the speed bonus, then resume firing.
-If used as it fires it’s first shot, it will causing up to at least 3-4 stacks of bleeding at most.
-A side note that many people don’t know: Rifle Turret has a 20% chance to be a projectile finisher regardless of overcharge. Overcharge will cause it to have a firing rate of 1 per second, which can be great for many things.
-Causes projectiles during the overcharge to become piercing, though this is common knowledge, many people miss this.
-If used for and it doesn’t fire for 5 seconds, then starts firing for 5 seconds, it will only have bleeding shots or whatever it will do in the future for the remaining 5 seconds of overcharge.

Explosive Rockets (Rocket Turret): Keep note of the distance between your turret’s target and the space between it. Give it at least a 400-500 range maximum when in a small tunnel as the projectile will fly in a huge arc above it. When using on high ground, it will still travel in a ridiculous arc, same as low ground. This is great for reaching over small ledges when your target is above you.

-If used when not firing, the overcharge lasts almost 4 seconds, enough so it won’t fire 2 in a row. If it doesn’t fire at all during that time, you waste the overcharge.
-Don’t be discouraged at it’s weird arc of firing. When it fires at a moving target, it will look like the rocket will totally miss, but if the target doesn’t move too far of a distance (up to about 400, from my experience, which is quite far) and they don’t dodge during that time, it will still hit the target.
-(unconfirmed)This can actually critically hit? I remember some instances where I was dueling a friend of mine and sometimes this would hit him for 6,000+ yet it wouldn’t appear in my combat log.

Electric Net (Net Turret): Should be used immediately. It does not benefit from a attack speed bonus regardless of description. If used between shots, you better hope it fires in the next 4 seconds or you waste the overcharge.

-Deals minor damage, which is nice I guess.

Thump (Thumper Turret): Can be used long before it has a target, as it’s overcharge duration is close to 10 seconds. If it fires during that time, it will use its overcharge ability.

-A trick to using this is to hear or see the thumper turret’s handle, located on the top of the turret. When it starts to spin, it means it is ready to fire again very soon. You can also listen for the ticking sound it makes.

Smoke Screen (Flame Turret): Should be used immediately when placed within attack range. The overcharge duration is also a short 4 second duration.

-Do not pick up your turret during its smoke screen. It will disappear with the flame turret.
-Your flame turret will not attack since it is using Smoke Screen instead.

Cleansing Burst: Most people will use it as soon as the turret is deployed and then detonate it. I will address how to keep your healing turret out while keeping the blast finisher and all your other turrets ALIVE in a later chapter.

-Again, just like the thumper turret, you can look for a visual cue on your healing turret to time the overcharge, but a bit different. Look for the handle to slow to a stop instead of starting up.
-Cleansing Burst will leave a water field for 3 seconds, period. If you pick it up during that time the water field will stay for others to use.

(edited by WEXXES.2378)

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378


Chapter 2: Toolbelt
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When using a turret build, you will definitely have at least 5 points in TOOLS for the minor trait “Adrenaline Pump”. If not, close this browser now and think about what you have been doing all this time.

Contrary to what people believe, the engineer toolbelt is VITAL to its success as a class and that those who don’t abuse it enough will not make the most of the engineer class, at least as a turret engineer.

Due to this minor trait alone, which again only requires 5 points in TOOLS, you will restore 10% of your endurance when you use a toolbelt skill. I will explain why this is so awesome for the turret engineer in the later chapter.

Surprise Shot (Rifle Turret): A personal favorite of mine and my most highly abused skill. It deals really nice damage with a critical damage build, up to 2,000+. It is a 100% chance projectile finisher.

-It is instant cast, can be used while stunned, launched, pretty much in almost any state except when jumping, death, downed, disconnected, transformed into a moa by pesky mesmers, etc. You get the idea. It really is the a surprise shot. Due to its nature you can apply some damage while doing anything.
-It is non-reliant on facing direction. Not only can you do it during almost anything, but it not matter where you are facing either. You can be on the run while applying damage. This actually applies to all turret toolbelt skills. I’m not sure if it works for other toolbelt skills, but I definitely know it doesn’t for many.

Rocket (Rocket Turret): Unlike its rifle counterpart, this one is quite lacking in its use. Great long ranged damage dealer.

-It deals damage to ONE target only, which seems like a bug to me but it never says it does damage to multiple enemies and such.
-Despite that, it has a radius of 260. This is great for hitting things behind thin walls or edges.
-Due to its radius of 260, you can actually fire the rocket from 1460 units away (theoretically, maybe a little closer) and still hit the enemy.
-Just like Surprise Shot, you can use this while facing any direction.
-Can deal stupid amounts of damage. I’ve hit 3-4k’s with it when it crits.

Net Attack (Net Turret): Contrary to what it says on the description, the range is longer than 600. Its more like 800 if your target and yourself is standing still. For moving targets stick to its current range.

-This isn’t really related to the Net Turret alone, but did you know that underneath each skill it will show a red bar if you are out of range for the target. So yea, you can use that if you don’t know if it will reach or not.
-Due to its slow projectile speed, if used when someone evades it can still hit.
-For a clean shot, jump as soon as you use it. This will also help you hit enemies on higher ground. This actually applies to anything, really.

Rumble (Thumper Turret): The turret engineer’s stun break (not that I ever needed one, actually). Its a combo finisher. It grants one second of stability, even longer with boon duration. It deals minor damage and is a blast finisher.

-Stun break works immediately, as well as cooldown. If you get stopped as soon as you use it, you won’t get the stability, but the window is so small that it shouldn’t be a problem.
-Blast finisher applies immediately on use.
-Can be used while on the move

Throw Napalm (Flame Turret): Kind of useless to post its use here since it is going to be changed to a fire field, which is super mega awesome, and you’ll get to see why. But for now:

-Deals AoE damage and applies burning to all targets it hits. Max of 5 I believe.
-Can be thrown in any direction, while on the run.
-If using static discharge, this will fire where you are aiming at the moment.

Regenerating Mist (Healing Turret): Great for quick deployment of water fields for whatever you need. You must, however, pretty much spam any combo finishers to make use of it.

-Water field lasts for one second, animation also lasts almost as long, which is terrible. It should be instant cast with no animation but whatever I guess.
-Can be canceled midway to make yourself spew out mist for fun. Repeat every 3 seconds. Amaze your friends.

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378


Chapter 3: Turret Traits and Detonation
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As a turret engineer, there are several traits you can pick up to improve your use of turrets:

Accelerant-Packed Turrets (Explosives IX) Recommended: Superbly awesome for turret engineers. if you run full turrets, you now have 4 area crowd control abilities attached to each turret, with a radius close to 80 or 100. This means people using the maximum range of their melee attacks will be able to destroy turrets and not get knocked back.

Metal Plating (Inventions III): Greatly increases turret survival ability. Simply that.

Autotool Installation (Inventions X ): If you are not using toolkit with the power wrench trait, this trait is utterly useless, and even then, still bad.

Rifled Turret Barrels (Inventions XII): Great for engineers that nest up. If you have this trait, you probably have Metal Plating as well. Turret damage, however, is already good enough without this. As for range, its nice but not really needed.

Deployable Turrets (Tools V) Recommended

This is by far the most important trait for turret engineers. It is one of the reasons why in PvE playing a turret engineer works well for me. In my opinion, this is a must for any turret engineer and without this, you lose way to much.

By having this trait, you gain the following:
-Turret placement range is increased to 900. This means your effective range is 900 + whatever the turret’s range is.
-Able to place turrets on higher grounds you normally can’t access. A blessing in WvW.
-1 extra blast finisher and tool belt use per turret except the healing turret.

When you throw a turret, you gain the detonate turret skill for the thrown turret. If used before it lands, it will use it and revert back to normal. Once the turret lands, you will gain the skill again.

This means a full turret engineer will have a minimum of 7 blast finishers guaranteed if used right.

So you see how I can have water blast finishers without destroying my turret? Note that this requires some serious timing if you place turrets close to you. If you use it too early, you will use your tool belt skill instead, which is not cool. If you do it too late, you will end up detonating your turret. If you focus on doing this only, you are basically doing nothing.

If you have this trait, you also have Tools minor trait Adrenaline Pump. This means you also get 10% endurance back each time you use deploy your turret. Sweet!

As far as where to place and how to place turrets, which really are the most important parts to all of this, I will address that later if wanted in a future chapter.

If this matters at all to you, when throwing a turret, it will face the same direction you are facing when it lands. If you need an overcharged ability to fire ASAP, our character should be facing your target by the time the turret lands.

Detonate Turret

This, by the way, works:

-On turret position for knock backs due to Accelerant-Packed Turrets.

-On engineer’s position for blast finishers. I can put all my turrets somewhere at base and have 4 blast finishers ready at any time, instantly.

-Does not destroy turret until about 3 seconds later. This is good for the Flame Turret in which if destroyed during Smoke Screen, it will still provide the smoke field.

-Will end turret firing queue. Or at least it should. Sometimes they still fire after ‘death’. This also means if a turret fires at an enemy, and you detonate it, it will still hit. To effectively nullify the attack, you must pick it up.

-Infinite range, and works whenever you are stunned and such much like Surprise Shot.

The Engineer's Guide to Turrets

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378


End … for now.
___________________________________________________________________

I hope this guide helped someone out there…

This is me spending weeks on playing a full, non-kit turret engineer in PvE, sPvP, and WvW.

Issues with PvE:

-In PvE, in most fights I am able to keep my turrets up full time, depending on the fight. No matter what kind of engineer I build, I rely heavily on the use of my main hand weapon and my tool belt for the main source of damage and not my turrets. For such fights where turrets will undoubtedly be destroyed within 5 seconds of deployment, you should at least have Accelerant-Packed Turrets for delicious CC.
Not to mention, you have 2 blast finishers (minimum minus Healing Turret) per turret on your utility slots. If you carry a bomb kit with you or something, it makes it even better. Sometimes I do roll bomb kit in groups for a nice 18 might stack done if done perfectly (with the Throw Napalm change, it will be 21). Works great with stealth too, easy 12s stealth even without throwing turrets. Don’t forget you get a lot of your endurance back too when running full turrets.

-Static Discharge is awesome, period. It is not required to be effective for anything, but that doesn’t negate the fact it is awesome. Its obviously useless for condition damage builds.

-Always place healing turrets in places where they would be impossible to reach. The AoE is actually placed as a sphere around the healing turret. Sometimes I would place the turret in the ceiling and it would live throughout the entire fight.

-For damaging turrets, never place them before the fight. You’d want to blow your tool belt skills first anyway if you want. Fight for a good 10-15 seconds and then throw down turrets far away, because you obviously have the Deployable Turrets trait like I said you should, maybe on ledges and such. Because you or someone else has built aggro, turrets will not get the ‘invulnerability’ problem some people get.

-Concerning ledges, steep slopes, and wall placement: Don’t try it, most of the time it will end up obstructing itself in the wall anyway. Using the turning trick described at the end of chapter 3 doesn’t help.

-Despite being a turret build, try not to rely on turrets themselves to do most of the job for you. This will make you sad in the end.

-Try to pick up turrets if blowing them up does no good for you. Just because its good for you. If you are going to blow them up for nothing, I’d be doing it as I’m dodging to regain some endurance.

Welp thats it for now. Comment, etc, yea.

Hezzerz – Isle of Janthir [XIII]

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Posted by: Llanowar.1603

Llanowar.1603

I’m glad to see someone putting some time into turret testing. I’m still hopeful that the coming patch will make these more viable than they already are.

I have 2 questions:

1. What weapon do you use? I’ve seen some recommend rifle for the CC but pistol shield has more versatility. So what do you use?

2. What does your gear look like? I haven’t tested yet whether turrets benefit from increased power or if it’s better to just do a condi build.

Anyway, thanks for the guide.

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Posted by: Dirame.8521

Dirame.8521

I’m glad to see someone putting some time into turret testing. I’m still hopeful that the coming patch will make these more viable than they already are.

I have 2 questions:

1. What weapon do you use? I’ve seen some recommend rifle for the CC but pistol shield has more versatility. So what do you use?

2. What does your gear look like? I haven’t tested yet whether turrets benefit from increased power or if it’s better to just do a condi build.

Anyway, thanks for the guide.

Power doesn’t boost turret damage but you can always go vuln stacking which would boost their overall damage. I think that is what Anet is going for when they decided to change Rifle turret from bleeding to Vuln.

I make guides to builds you may not have heard of;
http://www.youtube.com/user/ceimash
http://www.twitch.tv/ceimash

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Posted by: Adamantium.3682

Adamantium.3682

Cool guide, never seen such work put into turrets. I even learned a few things that I plan on putting to use after the big balance update.

[TNO] Gizmo Gigawatt (Engineer)
Jade Quarry

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Posted by: ArmageddonAsh.6430

ArmageddonAsh.6430

nice guide. Though in my opinion its useless until the issues with turrets are fixed turret builds will continue to be weaker.:

Mobility
Cool down times

These 2 being the main ones, the cool downs are a bit to high in my opinion, then you get the fact you use access to the toolbelt is another weakness and then you have the fact that once placed that’s it. Unlike necro Minions, Mesmer clones and illusions and even Ranger Spirits.

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Posted by: Tharomir.6985

Tharomir.6985

I seriously thought it was going to say:

The Engineer’s Guide to Turrets

Don’t use them
/thread

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Posted by: Zorgog.3908

Zorgog.3908

Good post! I just went back to playing my turret build (in pvp no less) and it still definitely needs some buff love, but it’s getting there.

PvP only
Team GASM

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Posted by: Anymras.5729

Anymras.5729

I’m glad to see someone putting some time into turret testing. I’m still hopeful that the coming patch will make these more viable than they already are.

I have 2 questions:

1. What weapon do you use? I’ve seen some recommend rifle for the CC but pistol shield has more versatility. So what do you use?

2. What does your gear look like? I haven’t tested yet whether turrets benefit from increased power or if it’s better to just do a condi build.

Anyway, thanks for the guide.

Power doesn’t boost turret damage but you can always go vuln stacking which would boost their overall damage. I think that is what Anet is going for when they decided to change Rifle turret from bleeding to Vuln.

They used to benefit from Explosives ranks, but no longer do, making Condition, Boon and Healing the only stats they scale with at all, because for some reason that seemed like a good idea.

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Posted by: Obscure One.4357

Obscure One.4357

Nice guide!

I’ve only really used Rifle and Thumper, as with deployable turrets, both are nice. Dropping Thumper and immediately overcharging it on someone at range is good for obvious reasons, especially with a Supply Drop follow up, and an Overcharged shot once in range.

With the new patch going in on the 18th that’ll make turrets attack your target, I may be knocking the dust off of Net Turret.

Circumventing profanity filters one kitten at a time.

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378

nice guide. Though in my opinion its useless until the issues with turrets are fixed turret builds will continue to be weaker.:

Mobility
Cool down times

These 2 being the main ones, the cool downs are a bit to high in my opinion, then you get the fact you use access to the toolbelt is another weakness and then you have the fact that once placed that’s it. Unlike necro Minions, Mesmer clones and illusions and even Ranger Spirits.

This, no.

Turret balance comes from it having no mobility. You cannot kite turrets without out ranging them. You can’t place condition damage on them and let them wither away since they are immune to them. If you are having problems with turret mobility, you are most likely playing it wrong. guaranteed. Ranger spirits and necro minions are easy to deal with because they will most likely be clumped together for AoE. But engineer turrets? You can have them on the roof of things. They can be scattered all over the place to be a pain for the enemy. You can actually choose where the turret will be, and even have them in places where melee classes will be unable to reach them so they are also immune to melee damage.

As for the tool belt skills you get from turrets, think of them as a burst extension of the turret itself. Would you rather have a burst of 5k damage with an average cooldown time of 20s or 15k damage over a 10 second period, unaffected by blind and will fire regardless of your character status and continues to do damage? The tool belt from turrets act like a mobile turret on your own body, so to speak.

As for the other question, I use a rifle with mostly knight’s gear.

As far as power vs Condi damage goes, that’s up to you. The play styles are definitely not the same though, and I have favored power over it, but condi works just as well, if not better in some cases.

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Posted by: ArmageddonAsh.6430

ArmageddonAsh.6430

Turrets are EASILY killed. I used auto for like 5-10seconds and killed the turrets while not even targeting them but the Engineer in front of them (Coated Bullets ROCK!)

So what exactly do they offer that Mesmer Clones and Illusions dont offer? They do less damage, they dont move, they have MUCH longer cool downs. The only bonus they have is that they are killed quite easily by AoE but you can get around that quite easily

Necro minions can siphon health. remove conditions. They can move, deal damage and have other functions without needed to be traited for (turrets stunning when explode)

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Posted by: Ambrecombe.4398

Ambrecombe.4398

Hi,

A couple of things :
- You should mention Turret Blast Finishers are centered around the Engineer and not the turrets themselve.

- Rocket Turret does AoE damage with its basic attack (up to 5 targets), the radius is good. The overcharge on the other hand only affects a single target (but has smaller explosion radius).

- Flame turret does attack during the smoke screen, but only 2sec (+ rotation time) after the initial smoke pulse. And can be self detonated when you stand in the Smoke Screen for team stealth (stacks in duration if you blow other turrets).

- Accelerant Packed Turrets are only recommended if you play an offensive Engineer. Any Engineer investing in Toughness doesn’t need that trait because doing so will allow him take aggro away from the turrets making it more intersting to leave them into relative safespots.

- Autotool Installation is the only real sustain tool for our turrets, the Wrench is better at healing turrets but is counter productive sinds it force your ennemies close to your turrets leaving them vulnerable to cleave.

- It is not recommended to overcharge Net Turret at its initial attack because right now there is a bug causing it to cease fire whenever your turret initial attack is overcharged.

- Recommending to use bugs like Rifle Turret firerate on initial attack and quick detonation finishers should never be shown in any guide, it’s called an exploit and it’s against the chart of the forum to share those openly between players on these same forums.

Thats about all.

(edited by Ambrecombe.4398)

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Posted by: Dirame.8521

Dirame.8521

So what exactly do they offer that Mesmer Clones and Illusions dont offer? They do less damage, they dont move, they have MUCH longer cool downs. The only bonus they have is that they are killed quite easily by AoE but you can get around that quite easily

Mesmer clones don’t repeatedly immobilize targets every few seconds, they don’t burn targets every few seconds, they can’t create smoke fields and they can’t be used as combo finishers.

Also the highest burst damage I’ve seen for the Engi has come from the use of turrets.

I make guides to builds you may not have heard of;
http://www.youtube.com/user/ceimash
http://www.twitch.tv/ceimash

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Posted by: Ambrecombe.4398

Ambrecombe.4398

So what exactly do they offer that Mesmer Clones and Illusions dont offer? They do less damage, they dont move, they have MUCH longer cool downs. The only bonus they have is that they are killed quite easily by AoE but you can get around that quite easily

Mesmer clones don’t repeatedly immobilize targets every few seconds, they don’t burn targets every few seconds, they can’t create smoke fields and they can’t be used as combo finishers.

Also the highest burst damage I’ve seen for the Engi has come from the use of turrets.

Just to compliment your words, but Turrets are also immune to condition damage.

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Posted by: Knote.2904

Knote.2904

So what exactly do they offer that Mesmer Clones and Illusions dont offer? They do less damage, they dont move, they have MUCH longer cool downs. The only bonus they have is that they are killed quite easily by AoE but you can get around that quite easily

Mesmer clones don’t repeatedly immobilize targets every few seconds, they don’t burn targets every few seconds, they can’t create smoke fields and they can’t be used as combo finishers.

Also the highest burst damage I’ve seen for the Engi has come from the use of turrets.

Not to defend him or anything.. but.

Mesmer Phantasms do WAY more dmg and scale with all of your stats besides Vit.

All phantasms can be traited to provide constant aoe regen.

Duelist can be traited to have a 100% x8 projectile finisher every salvo (8 stack confusions on chaos fields).

Zerker can maintain high uptime cripple, and whirl finisher.

Warden is a whirl finisher and projectile eater/reflecter.

Also to the other poster above, Rocket Turrets normal attack has a massive radius, that turret is nice.

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378

Hi,

A couple of things :
- You should mention Turret Blast Finishers are centered around the Engineer and not the turrets themselve.

- Rocket Turret does AoE damage with its basic attack (up to 5 targets), the radius is just small. The overcharge on the other hand only affects a single target (but has larger explosion radius).

- Flame turret does attack during the smoke screen, but only 2sec (+ rotation time) after the initial smoke pulse. And can be self detonated when you stand in the Smoke Screen for team stealth (stacks in duration if you blow other turrets).

- Accelerant Packed Turrets are only recommended if you play an offensive Engineer. Any Engineer investing in Toughness doesn’t need that trait because doing so will allow him take aggro away from the turrets making it more intersting to leave them into relative safespots.

- Autotool Installation is the only real sustain tool for our turrets, the Wrench is better at healing turrets but is counter productive sinds it force your ennemies close to your turrets leaving them vulnerable to cleave.

- It is not recommended to overcharge Net Turret at its initial attack because right now there is a bug causing it to cease fire whenever your turret initial attack is overcharged.

- Recommending to use bugs like Rifle Turret firerate on initial attack and quick detonation finishers should never be shown in any guide, it’s called an exploit and it’s against the chart of the forum to share those openly between players on these same forums.

Thats about all.

1st one: Look under Detonate Turret, it’s already there.

2nd: The first part of it doesn’t work for me if I don’t use it as soon as the turret is placed. Any other use and it just stands there doing nothing but spewing smoke. But really, at that point, I wouldn’t care for anything but the smoke field. The 2nd part of that is also listed under Detonate Turret.

3rd: Accelerant-Packed Turrets are recommended because they give your turrets much more functionality. If theres a mob that keeps doing high damage constantly, you can just CC it with all your turrets by drop n pop. For turret aggro, at the very end I did mention to at least wait about 10-15 seconds (on boss fights at least, definitely less time on regular mobs).

4th: I still don’t like it. My turrets shouldn’t take that much damage and sometimes I’d like my toolbelt skills to use in a final burst of insane damage. As for running around with toolkit, there are ways around that.

5th: That happens when I overcharge too early during deployment. I usually use it right as the turret lands, and never really had a problem.

6th: Rifle Turret Firerate is not an exploit. It clearly says Rate of Fire increase: 50%. Duration is 10s. There’s a lot of things the tool tips don’t say. So if you want to get all technical, it can’t be considered an exploit if its doing what it says. And by the way, if you don’t use it as I ‘recommoneded’, you will lose the attack speed bonus altogether, forever, until the turret is redeployed, so I’d rather have it working as intended, yea?

As for the extra detonate finishers I’d say that should be the benefit of turret engineer and reward for skillful play. It’s not easy keeping track of turret land times and timing things in the middle of a fight. What do the devs think? Does the devs want to take away from something that everyone says isn’t “viable”, and “fix” it, or leave something cool that has been there the entire time and no one has complained about it for a full year…? That may sound a bit biased, and also, there are other ways of accomplishing the same effect within the same class as well, so its obviously not broken or overpowered.

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Posted by: Anymras.5729

Anymras.5729

“- It is not recommended to overcharge Net Turret at its initial attack because right now there is a bug causing it to cease fire whenever your turret initial attack is overcharged.”
“5th: That happens when I overcharge too early during deployment. I usually use it right as the turret lands, and never really had a problem.”

I’ve tested/discovered/confirmed that issue a while back, when I was testing bugs for my list (man, it’d be nice if I got paid, since I’m doing their godkitten jobs, but that’s a side-note). I wasn’t using Deployable Turrets, so there’s no way it was part of that when I ran into it.

Details on the issue, as far as I am aware:
A ) Net Turret, and Rifle Turret, do not get their attack speed bonus unless overcharged immediately upon placement, instead firing at the normal rate.
B ) When overcharged immediately upon placement, they may glitch in a way that causes their firing speed to be changed permanently instead of temporarily, as intended. As this is the only way by which A can presently be worked around, any user of Turrets should know of it. Whether it’s an exploit or not, it’s the only way to get the Overcharge to operate as intended, though the subsequent malfunction is most definitely also a bug. One cannot resolve one without causing the other.
C ) Net Turret has a tertiary bug which can cause it to sometimes simply not fire after the initial shot, even when Overcharged. It has been difficult to reproduce this tertiary bug, but it has been corroborated independently; I consider this tentatively confirmed, alongside having seen it myself.

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Posted by: Ambrecombe.4398

Ambrecombe.4398

1st one: Look under Detonate Turret, it’s already there.

Sorry didn’t understood clearly what you were saying, my bad.

2nd: The first part of it doesn’t work for me if I don’t use it as soon as the turret is placed…

Well my Flame Turret is attacking during the smoke screen, it looses a single attack from its cycle because it uses the smokescreen instead but 2sec later it is still attacking.

3rd: Accelerant-Packed Turrets are recommended because they give your turrets much more functionality…

It has nothing to do with the fact you have to wait 10sec or not. But again taking this trait is counter productive in some way, i’m not saying it is useless, because you have to put your turrets in dangerous places first to have its potential effect. You can’t put turrets next to an ennemy and safespots together, if you put your turret far away to let it survive a battle you will have better use of Autotool Installation and builds relying on Toughness while if you use them as bumps there is neither a reason to pick Metal Plating or Autotool Installation sinds it is going to die anyways and you are better to run, in this case, with anything but toughness.

We are talking about two specific gamestyles that are counter productive for each other.

4th: I still don’t like it. My turrets shouldn’t take that much damage and sometimes I’d like my toolbelt skills to use in a final burst of insane damage. As for running around with toolkit, there are ways around that.

Please, do not mix Practice and Feelings, both traits have their fonctionality in different scenarios, the fact you like it or not is out of place.

If your build is centered around power and you use the turrets and toolbelt skill as a compliment to your Burst and Control output, well yeah you are better not to take Autotool Installation sinds it won’t work out for your build.

If you center your build around keeping your turrets alive and making them stronger with condition damage, to compliment your DPS, and use them strategicaly for combo fields instead, you are certainly better to keep Autotool Installation and give up Accelerated Packed Turrets. Because a dead turret is a lost blast finisher.

5th: That happens when I overcharge too early during deployment. I usually use it right as the turret lands, and never really had a problem.

If you overcharge to early before your turret is even droped, your overcharge goes on cooldown and you turret will shoot a simple net. If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.

6th: Rifle Turret Firerate is not an exploit. It clearly says Rate of Fire increase: 50%. Duration is 10s. There’s a lot of things the tool tips don’t say. So if you want to get all technical, it can’t be considered an exploit if its doing what it says. And by the way, if you don’t use it as I ‘recommoneded’, you will lose the attack speed bonus altogether, forever, until the turret is redeployed, so I’d rather have it working as intended, yea?

And that same tooltip says the duration of the overcharge is 10sec. So you should never be able to keep an increased firing rate longer than the initial value in the tooltip, if you think otherwise you are wrong. The fact it doesn’t work after its initial shot shows how bad turrets are in their current state and we can only blame A-net and hope they give us a fix.

As for the extra detonate finishers I’d say that should be the benefit of turret engineer and reward for skillful play. It’s not easy keeping track of turret land times and timing things in the middle of a fight…

While it isn’t the easiest bug to replicate, a bug stays a bug no matter what you think and anyone taking advantage of it to get extra benefits for themselve are indeed exploiting a mechanic of the game. Is it overpowered? No! Is it a bug and should be fixed by the devs? Yes! Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.

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Posted by: tattoohead.3217

tattoohead.3217

Great post, glad to see someone giving turrets some love. I have a bunker build based on water fields and blast finishers that I use turrets with. I learned a few things here… Time to test some new builds I guess.

Anyone have a video of a pvp turret build they want to share.

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Posted by: Sabull.5670

Sabull.5670

“My utilities work just like they say in the tooltip” said no engineer ever.

This post inspired me to do some fooling around with turrets againg, Accelerant-Packed Turrets the only thing that makes em viable for pvp purposed.
On a side note I noticed that Rifles Jump Shot is bugging atm so that it gives 3, in a way, AoE vulnerability per each dmg tick. Vulnerability attacks so often bugged like this, like guardian blind vulne was.

In other words if you jump and land on 5 guys with Jump Shot, they all get 25 vulnerability instantly, 3 per each hit. So 4 gives 24.

[TA]

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378

If you overcharge to early before your turret is even droped, your overcharge goes on cooldown and you turret will shoot a simple net. If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.

While it isn’t the easiest bug to replicate, a bug stays a bug no matter what you think and anyone taking advantage of it to get extra benefits for themselve are indeed exploiting a mechanic of the game. Is it overpowered? No! Is it a bug and should be fixed by the devs? Yes! Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.

If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.

You should switch to Krytan-Made Net Turrets, guaranteed to work or your money back. That or I’m definitely doing something wrong.

“Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.”,
is not a good enough reason.

K-Style in gunz is an exploit. Skiing in Tribes, Wave Dashing in Super Smash Bros, Orb Walking in most ARTS/MOBA games, Rocket Jumping in TF2: these are all exploits that are now embraced by the developers and the community.

Your reasoning to fix this exploit is obviously wrong. Now if it the detonate turret exploit allowed you to spam it in one turrets lifetime, then hell, of course it should be fixed. If it caused the knockback on use without the turret being there, then yes, it should be fixed. But no, it does nothing but act as a blast finisher.

I can understand where Anymras is coming from. There are so many bugs with turrets that HAMPER anyone that uses them. Its been months since they decided to say anything or fix them.

But I really don’t get it. Explain to me, other than the reason its an exploit and how its unintended, why it should be fixed. Otherwise, I’m against you both for this.

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Posted by: Anymras.5729

Anymras.5729

I don’t know what K-style is, or Skiing, or Orb Walking, but Wave Dashing and Rocket Jumping are exploits, not simply the result of bugs, as far as I’m aware, and I figure the rest probably follow the same pattern of “I can do this thing that’s not expected, but not the result of something malfunctioning, and it actually adds something to the game.” The developers had no reason to remove those, so they didn’t.

They have, by contrast, at least two reasons to remove this: It’s a bug, and it’s an exploit that allows a quad-Turret Engineer to access up to eight, if I’m counting this properly, Blast Finishers. I’m not sure whether this bug would trigger Accelerant-Packed Turrets or deal damage if the turret weren’t detonated upon landing, but it’s still an exploitable bug.

This doesn’t add anything, it’s simply an unintended consequence of mistimed Toolbelt skill changes and a lack of persistence between midair actions and actions after landing. The result is a nonsensical exploit and yet another bug on the already massive list, except for some reason this one’s supposed to be intentionally overlooked based on the idea that it will be embraced as a facet of Turret play.
Are we supposed to embrace the unavoidable exploit resulting from the workaround involving the Rifle Turret Overcharge’s faulty fire rate, too?

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Posted by: Electro.4173

Electro.4173

Hmm. Some interesting stuff here. Makes me want to run Deployable Turrets, but I don’t know what else to ditch in the process… need Accelerant-Packed Turrets, want Rifled Turret Barrels, and would prefer to keep 20 in Firearms for mainhand weapon buffs… ugh. Curse you Deployable Turrets, why aren’t you in Inventions.

Turret blast finishers center on the Engineer and not the turret? Wow. That makes all of no sense at all, WTF. I guess its my explosive personality causing the blast finisher and not the turret >.>. I imagine that’ll be fixed at some point, since most of the other similar cases (like Dragon’s Tooth) have been adjusted to work at the impact point and not the characters’ location.

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Posted by: WEXXES.2378

WEXXES.2378

I don’t know what K-style is, or Skiing, or Orb Walking, but Wave Dashing and Rocket Jumping are exploits, not simply the result of bugs, as far as I’m aware, and I figure the rest probably follow the same pattern of “I can do this thing that’s not expected, but not the result of something malfunctioning, and it actually adds something to the game.” The developers had no reason to remove those, so they didn’t.

They have, by contrast, at least two reasons to remove this: It’s a bug, and it’s an exploit that allows a quad-Turret Engineer to access up to eight, if I’m counting this properly, Blast Finishers. I’m not sure whether this bug would trigger Accelerant-Packed Turrets or deal damage if the turret weren’t detonated upon landing, but it’s still an exploitable bug.

This doesn’t add anything, it’s simply an unintended consequence of mistimed Toolbelt skill changes and a lack of persistence between midair actions and actions after landing. The result is a nonsensical exploit and yet another bug on the already massive list, except for some reason this one’s supposed to be intentionally overlooked based on the idea that it will be embraced as a facet of Turret play.
Are we supposed to embrace the unavoidable exploit resulting from the workaround involving the Rifle Turret Overcharge’s faulty fire rate, too?

It does not activate Accelerant-Packed Turrets or deal damage. It is ONLY a blast finisher. That is it. It also procs confusion stacks if they are on you, if you are wondering.

Up to seven, without thumper turret, on a normal basis with turrets alone. 4 normal in which you lose your turrets, 3 without losing turrets.

Whoever said having such a thing is OP is definitely wrong. This exploit, despite how optimistic that sounds for the user, is quite balanced. Use it to know it, but just to lay it down:

1) If you want to make use of this, you cannot have a single turret out other than healing turret.

2) To make full use of the 3 extras, meaning you have all 3 utility skills as turrets, you will be doing NOTHING for 3 seconds other than placing turrets. During all this, especially in an important time like in combat, you’d better watch what buttons you are pressing to not use up other skills by accident. Remember, you don’t get to use the detonate skill until the turret is THROWN: that means after 1 second, you gotta press the corresponding toolbelt skill. And if you want to time it even better, you’d have to throw it early. Now you have to keep track of a turret flying in the air while focusing on throwing out your other turrets and keeping track of those 2 so when the combo field pops up, you press the correct keys in order and timed accordingly. So simple, yea?

3) To use the extra detonation, you cannot do anything for 1 second to throw the turret out. If you want them out early and ready whenever, even when stunned, they would have to be out already but then you would not have the extra blast finishers.

4) Despite this bug, you can reach the max stealth time with stealth bomb, so perma stealth engie with 3 others using full turrets and a bomb kit is still possible. In fact nothing really changes, except you have a chance of messing up if you try the bugged finishers.

5) Your turret placement is delayed. If you place it too close, you have no time to use the bugged finisher anyway. So to even use this properly, you will probably have to increase your own turret deployment time anyway.

And, just a prediction:

1) By fixing this, you are probably going to introduce a new bug. Thrown turrets cannot be detonated? Or you lose the detonate skill permanently after thrown, making it so you have to pick it up or get it destroyed by someone else to make use of it? You get the idea.

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Posted by: Ambrecombe.4398

Ambrecombe.4398

If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.

Well this is a very interesting video, I just have a problem, I did some testing October 1st and it was still not working like it did on your video. So i’m going to do some testing around (again, after work) and I will make my own video. And I shall tak every possible steps to understand why your Net Turret does work and not mine. And don’t tell me nonesensical things like “you are doing something wrong”, or I might not stay as polite as I was before.

“Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.”,
is not a good enough reason.

It is more than enough, if you think otherwise you are simply deluded or beeing dishonest. If something doesn’t work, or if nothing about that effect is mentioned in a tooltip or any patch note that same effect is clearly not intended and should be quickfixed. Because a Bug is a Bug, and taking advantage of a Bug is called an exploit even if it is pretty minor Bug.

Your reasoning to fix this exploit is obviously wrong. Now if it the detonate turret exploit allowed you to spam it in one turrets lifetime, then hell, of course it should be fixed. If it caused the knockback on use without the turret being there, then yes, it should be fixed. But no, it does nothing but act as a blast finisher.

But I really don’t get it. Explain to me, other than the reason its an exploit and how its unintended, why it should be fixed. Otherwise, I’m against you both for this.

My reasoning and the one of many people consist to take down every possible bugs including the positive one and negative one. There is no good or evil there, we are asking for a fix and we want our turrets to work exactly like they should in theory, we don’t need extra gimmicks, we want instead something accurate and loyal to its tooltip and everything that was previously said before on official patchnotes.

That’s how it works, and should always work.

(edited by Ambrecombe.4398)

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Posted by: Ambrecombe.4398

Ambrecombe.4398

If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.

Well this is a very interesting video, I just have a problem, I did some testing October 1st and it was still not working like it did on your video. So i’m going to do some testing around (again, after work) and I will make my own video. And I shall take use every possible steps to understand why your Net Turret does work and not mine. And don’t tell me nonesensical things like “you are doing something wrong”, or I might not stay as polite as I was before.

“Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.”,
is not a good enough reason.

It is more than enough, if you think otherwise you are simply deluded or beeing dishonest. If something doesn’t work, or if nothing about that effect is mentioned in a tooltip or any patch note that same effect is clearly not intended and should be quickfixed. Because a Bug is a Bug, and taking advantage of a Bug is called an exploit even if it is pretty minor Bug.

Your reasoning to fix this exploit is obviously wrong. Now if it the detonate turret exploit allowed you to spam it in one turrets lifetime, then hell, of course it should be fixed. If it caused the knockback on use without the turret being there, then yes, it should be fixed. But no, it does nothing but act as a blast finisher.

But I really don’t get it. Explain to me, other than the reason its an exploit and how its unintended, why it should be fixed. Otherwise, I’m against you both for this.

My reasoning and the one of many people consist to take down every possible bugs including the positive one and negative one. There is no good or evil there, we are asking for a fix and we want our turrets to work exactly like they should in theory, we don’t need extra gimmicks, we want instead something accurate and loyal to its tooltip and everything that was previously said before on official patchnotes.

That’s how it works, and should always work.

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Posted by: ThiBash.5634

ThiBash.5634

It’s good to see posts like this that try and work out the things most people look down on.

If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.

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Posted by: Ambrecombe.4398

Ambrecombe.4398

If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.

I found the real culprit and I’m right now, check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arrGyoGtAYs&feature=youtu.be

(edited by Ambrecombe.4398)

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Posted by: Anymras.5729

Anymras.5729

1) By fixing this, you are probably going to introduce a new bug. Thrown turrets cannot be detonated? Or you lose the detonate skill permanently after thrown, making it so you have to pick it up or get it destroyed by someone else to make use of it? You get the idea.

I’ve snipped out most of this post, as it’s fairly obvious that you will continue to defend the bug. Instead of further trying to dissuade you, I’ll simply point out how they could fix it with a minimum of potential breakage:

Healing Turret’s Toolbelt skill is only replaced by Detonate when it lands, which is why it can’t be used to activate this bug.
Have every other Turret operate exactly like that: Don’t change anything but when Detonate replaces Toolbelt.