Guild Wars 2

The Turret Rework

Why a turret rework & about me

Hello fellow engineers. Let’s talk about a broken ingame mechanic, sadly totally useless in PvE, until last patch totally op for PvP (AI = noob basher) and now kitten ed to be in the wastelands of engi skills, together with some gatges and elixiers …

When I started the engi a looooong time ago, I wanted to use turrets. There is nothing more “engi-like”, except for explosions (everyone loves explosions! ^.^), than turrets. This desire was an illusion though and I realized fast, they are weak and not viable in PvE at all, not even for open world, especially not exploring.
But turrets can become fun! Turrets could be skill capped and turrets could become viable in PvE too. Maybe not for every sitation in a dungeon, probably neither for speedruns, but for fotm or open world or guild missions. Dungeons are just a bit too easy for the uses for turrets so the engi stays safe. But the main reason for the balancing and rework will still be the PvP.

I wanted to make this post of a turret rework a looong time ago and even though I know almost every single tiny bitsy about the engineer, I first … yes … I had to play turret engi myself to get an idea about how it really is … my poor mother got insulted so many times Q_Q … for science!

The main changes about turrets – New skills, aim, ammunation and salvage

So let’s start with the actual rework, shall we? There are serval problems we encounter with the current turrets:

• they are AI depended, you have to do nothing but put them down in a good position and evade and cc the enemy for eternity
• they are immobile, you cannot use them in pve content where you walk and fight and skip and fight, neither can you use them in wvw and in pvp they are just bunker mechanic
• turrets have skills who are semi controllable. you activate them and some of them go off immediately (rifle turret f.ex.), some of them wait for their rotation (healing turret f.ex.) and other turrets do nothing untily somone hugs them (flame turret f.ex.).
• turrets became squishy and vulnerably to aoe’s and dots. once they’re gone, so are you

And what can we do about those major points? How do we get turrets to “work”?

New skills, aim and ammunation

Currently we have 6 different turrets: healing turret, rifle turret, flame turret, net turret, rocket turret and thumper turret. They all have an F? toolbelt skill, if they are set up they can be blown up, they have their overcharge and they have their basic attack. I want to get rid of the basic attack the AI does and so the overcharge will be gone too. This allows me to buff the not AI attacks (old aa).

For my rework I intend to make the toolbelt skills more defensive, so you have a change to get your turrets back up or you have a chance to get away without them. For pve there might be 1-2 turrets who have strong offensive toolbelts for a decent dps holder.

Healing Turret
The new medkit awaits us and maybe it will replace the HT in pve. The HT has always been a short to go heal, set up, overcharge and then blow up or pick up immediately. I always thought this is a fail design tbh. The medkit is for the spike heals, the HT is for the good heal over time!

• the new HT will have no passive animation or effect
• HT active will create a 1 sec water field that heals for 1500 HP, grants 3 sec regeneration and cures 1 condition from up to 5 allies (ø 360) (1 sec CD)
• HT can store up to 2 charges of this skill (one charge has 5 sec CD)
• toolbelt skill will be the same, yet the cast time removed and will grant 2 sec of protection for yourself

Rifle Turret
The new rifle turret shall become much more active and less passive run away and let the AI do your job thing

• the new RiT will have no passive attack
• RiT active will shot a single bullet at the selected target and deals the same damage as it deals now but always applies 1 stack of vuln for 8 sec (0.5 sec CD)
• RiT can store up to 5 charges of this skill (one charge has 2 sec CD)
• for each chage the turret currently has, the bullet gets a 20% projectile finisher. this means while the turret has 5 charges, the first shot has a 100% projectile finisher. If you spam now you get more damage but less finishers. So it’s wise to try to keep the stacks at 4-5 until you want to finish your enemy!
• toolbelt skill stays the same, but cribbles <450 range for 2 sec

Flame Turret
The new flame turret shall become a mighty “don’t get too close to it” thing. I was inspired by the flame legion flame thrower guys :> It’s there to zone enemies, rather than just blind them. And yea I know with this rework you are unable to get stealth via turret. But I honestly think this was too strong with the whole turret setup. Just go on an read and judge in the end over all turrets together.

• the new FT will have no passive attack
• FT can be toggled between on and off. It has no CD to toggle the turret and the turret deals the same amount of dmg a flamethrower AA would do. maybe a bit less yet with more burn (1.5 sec burn per 1 sec). the turret has a 450 range and will FIRE at the selected target, rotating into the direction and BURNNNNN it.
• Permanently firing FT would be op obv. The FT gets a charge of fuel every 2 sec. One charge is consumed every second while active. The FT can store up to 5 charges.
• the new toolbelt will completly remove the old one and be totally different. you throw an gasoline grenade that breaks on impact, creating a corrosive smoke field (ø180) for 6 seconds that blinds enemies inside of it. Reactivating the skill will ignite the field, let it become a fire field instead for the remainer of the duration, buring enemies for 2 sec per sec inside.

NetTurret
The new net turret works pretty much the same as the new rifle turret -> much more active and less passive run away and let the AI do your job thing

• the new NT will have no passive attack
• NT active will shot a magnetic net at the selected target immobilizing the target for 2 sec and marking it with the “magnetic net” debuff for 2.5 sec (4 sec CD)
• NT can store up to 2 charges of this skill (one charge has 8 sec CD)
• When activated while having at least 1 charge left and an enemy is affected by the “magnetic net” debuff, activating the turret during this time will consume the other charge and instead of shoting another net it will pull the target for 150 range into the turrets direction, causing knockdown and applying 3 stacks of vulnerability for 6 seconds.
• the new toolbelt will shot an magnetic net, immobilizing for 3 sec. if the condition gets cleansed withing those 3 sec (to prevent it to work on longer roots (root stacks)) the target will be dazed for 1 sec.

Rocket Turret
The new rocket turret will be completly different. It will be much much MUCH harder to aim with this thing but it will have much more impact on the battle than right now. And it will be fun

• the new RoT will have no passive attack
• RoT active will launch a rocket at the location (like a grenade throw) flying pretty fast (easy to aim, but dodgable, like a ranger arrow or something, about 1 sec fly time) exploding, dealing a huge amount of damage and creating a fire field for 2 sec that burns enemies inside for 2 sec per second (ø240) (2 sec CD)
• RoT can store up to 3 charges of this skill (one charge has 4 sec CD)
• new toolbelt will be a rocket tha won’t fly 1000 km in the air before it turns around and comes back again like it is now xD it will be a rocket like the turret itself has, yet with only 50% dmg, but blast finisher and no fire field, instead a glue field wich cripples enemies withing for 2 sec per sec (ø240)

Thumper Turret
The new thumper turret will be like a time bomb. The longer you won’t use it, the mighties it gets!

• the new TT will have no passive attack
• TT active will consume all stored charges and deal damage and have additional effects according to the amount of charges consumed.
• 1 stack: deals current damage around the turret and crippling enemies for 3 sec (ø240)
• 2 stacks deals 100% bonus damage and also dazes targets for 2 sec and cripples for 4.5 sec (ø300)
• 3 stacks deals 200% bonus damage and also stuns targets for 1 sec, dazes for 2 sec and cripples for 6 sec (ø360)
• one stack is gained every 4 sec to a maximum of 3 stacks. So the cd of the normal attack is 4 sec even without actual icd.

All turrets spawn with max stacks.

Salvage

Another problem the turret engi has is that he’s immobile. The CD’s are huge and even when you pick the turrets up, you can’t really set up new ones. Also once a turret gets destroyed, you are pretty much screwed in pvp. How to fix this?

I agree there has to be a change for turrets you want to replace or pickup. But the new toolbelts should already be the solution for destroyed turrets in pvp. So about that pick up …

Currently picking turrets up reduces the redeployment recharge by 25% while detonation will cause damage around the turret’s location and create a blast finisher combo effect at your location. The pick up CDR will be removed. In fact, the possibility to pick up a turret in first place will be removed! gasp I suggest the following rework:

Detonating a turret will refund 75% of it’s CD per 100% of its remaining HP. This means:

• I blow up my turret while it has 100% HP -> 75% CD refund (25% CD left)
• I blow up my turret while it has 50% HP -> 37.5% CD refund (62.5% CD left)
• I blow up my turret while it has 10% HP -> 7.5% CD refund (92.5% CD left)

This will buff turret pick up for good! You can reposition your turrets more often, yet not abuse them to be set up, blown, blastfinisher, repeat! (Yea I thought about that nasty pve might stack kittenez) Yet the effect will be minimal if you want to blow up turrets who are about to die.

So everyone – if you made it until here I’m very very happy and proud. I really hope you enjoyed and support my idea about the whole turret rework. I’m just a regular player, but even if the chances are minimal, maybe if everyone likes them, they’re gonna make it ingame one day. I’d enjoy it and I’d be very happy about it.

What do you guys think about this rework? Please don’t just skip the reading for some semi good comment, It really took me hours to think about anything and I’d like to hear your hones opinions!

Thank you for reading! Your engi fellow:

- Ziggs (Ziggy) Ironeye

So noone cares about turrets anymore? Or is it just a too big wall’o’text?

Didn’t like your suggestions enough to comment. Not to be rude but you removed the auto attacks completely, these are constructs designed to shoot, that would no longer do so without micro management.

Text wall.

But overall I like the main concept. It basically makes the turrets into manually triggered extra weapons skills with a different point of origin than the Engineer itself. It’d take some getting used to, but it’s a step AWAY from turrets being minions which makes them more unique than the skills other classes have. If you threw on a trait like “Turrets do extra damage when hitting from behind” that could become interesting. Maybe even have an attack animation where the Engie hits a button on a remote or something to telegraph it, and also flavorwise show that the turrets are manually controlled.

It’d shut up the whining about how turrets are a braindead AI build, only to soon be replaced by whining about about how they’re dying even faster to turret engies since we’d be able to actually force all our turrets on a single target now and time their shots around blocks and such. But that would take a little bit more manual target juggling like placing Mesmer phantasms.

The one thing though is the blowing up turrets at full health with a 75% cooldown refund is way too OP with Acelerant-packed turrets, which is now baseline. You’d have 1000-1500 damage knockback bombs constantly, even with the cd. I’d say keep the turret pick-up mechanic, but implement the redeployment cooldown being based on turret health idea. And blowing up the turret is an extra attack/blast finish that puts the turret on full cd.

Xyonon.3987:

So noone cares about turrets anymore? Or is it just a too big wall’o’text?

There’s a lot going on right now with these changes, and even before all the dust has settled it is very clear that something drastic needs to be done with the build. I’m personally fine with them not having auto-attacks anymore. I would love to be able to run these in dungeons and actually have them be useful, and it would be great to have them in PvP without anybody being able to complain about it being a “brain dead” build.

I offered suggested changes too, recently, and we’re not the only ones. My hope is that Anet sees any of these posts and makes considerations based on them, and maybe even incorporates some of the ideas.

Good ideas but it need TL:DR version:-D
I hope thats what they did to turrets now is more like test how it will work and we can expect rework sooner or later.
I hope they also fix other classes builds “what arent fun to play against” like illusion spammers or perma port teefs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Engineer-Balance-Turrets/first#content

My proposed changes.

Can’t do detailed response since I’m on my phone, but one glaring issue I saw with your Salvage suggestions is how it interacts with Healing Turret. Drop healing turret, overcharge, immediately detonate getting cleanse and max heal, then since chances are it was around 100% hp when you instantly detonated it, you now have around a 15 second cd reduction on one of the best heals in the game, giving you a 5 second cd.

Read all of it and liked a few ideas, such as the Flame Turret firing like a flamethrower. QoL changes would have been fine, too.

Probably just me, but I’d be down for simpler changes like lowering the cooldowns on Thumper and Rocket Turret to 40 seconds, scaling additionally with power and precision, and being allowed to critically hit targets.

Some parts of the suggestion aren’t bad, but the whole “starts with max charges & cooldown reduced by hp percentage” would only further exacerbate their disposable use (deploy, use the skill, destroy).

I should also add that, while they do need some more active play, having a whole bar of utility skills with cooldowns ranging from 2 to 6 seconds (8 if you use a net turret) would kinda overdo it, especially since the effects can’t even be that significant with such low cooldowns (you removed most of the CC in this redesign, and those who still have it even have to work in a different way from the other turrets (thumper uses all the charges up when attacking, net puts that debuff to do that knockdown on a second attack).