Guild Wars 2

Something I notice is that gadgets and turrets lack a lot of things like utility and damage. I was thinking about ways to add these and such and found that simply just increasing/adding effects makes them kind of bland/non unique.

What are some themes that you think could revolve around these skills that you think would be cool?

I mean it would be easy to say oh X skill also gives you Y boon or increases its damage by Z%.

Exampe:

Gadgets effects/damage change depending on your position to enemies/allies. Rocket boots go farther if you’re not within 1200 range of an ally. Slicks shoes last longer if you are closer to people, but shorter if you are further away. PBR does a knock back in a cone infront of you and it kicks them back further the less people it hits. Mines radius increase as you move further away and their damage increases depending on how many people are near it when someone triggers it. Things like that. It could create some interesting scenarios for players considering the CC things that we have.

Turrets could get stronger the longer they stay up, making repairing them with toolkit actually useful. They could also give you and other turrets special bonsues depending what other turrets are near them. Flame turret could give a flame aura every 20 seconds to you if you’re within a certain radius and they will also allow other turrets to inflict X seconds of burning when they attack. Thumper turret could give you swiftness every 10 seconds and make it so that when other turrets attack they do an AoE physical attack around them at a radius. You get what im shooting at here.

So in this example the themes would be Gadgets- change depending on player positioning, Turrets- change depending on other turrets/time up.

I don’t get where your coming from when you say they lack utility. Damage, sure, but utility? Thumper turret and net turret are very much utility. And gadgets, they are pure utility.

Turrets are talked to death in every other thread, so I got little mor to add about them here………..

Personally I would love to see utility goggles changes altogether. Gadgets have no condition removal. It all seems focused on elixirs and their traits(heck even kits only have 2, one through EG#5 and one through MK#4, 2 condition removal spread out on 2 kits is not much at all, and a lot of work to remove two conditions). I would love to see these become something like “Gas Mask” on the tool belt skill. Change the utility skill version of it to the 10 vulnerability and the 10s of fury, removing the blind immunity all together, it seems so situation at its very best. While changing “Analyze” to " Gas Mask" and simply have it remove 3 conditions with say a 30s cool down.

coglin.1867:

I don’t get where your coming from when you say they lack utility. Damage, sure, but utility? Thumper turret and net turret are very much utility. And gadgets, they are pure utility.

Turrets are talked to death in every other thread, so I got little mor to add about them here………..

Personally I would love to see utility goggles changes altogether. Gadgets have no condition removal. It all seems focused on elixirs and their traits(heck even kits only have 2, one through EG#5 and one through MK#4, 2 condition removal spread out on 2 kits is not much at all, and a lot of work to remove two conditions). I would love to see these become something like “Gas Mask” on the tool belt skill. Change the utility skill version of it to the 10 vulnerability and the 10s of fury, removing the blind immunity all together, it seems so situation at its very best. While changing “Analyze” to " Gas Mask" and simply have it remove 3 conditions with say a 30s cool down.

Well the reason they lack utility is because we lack a secondary weapon. That means that these skills must take up the slack in both offensive and defensive power. Currently they dont. Just as you said they lack condi removal. PBR is one of the worst skills for combat because it lacks damage and useful anything for team fights. Thumper turret has little to no defensive utility on top of its damage being meh. It has AoE cripple which is nice in sPvP, but is very underpowered outside of it. Sure the toolbelt is a blast finisher with a small stability. However, its cooldown makes it less than viable.

When I see these lack utility I’m comparing it to what other classes can do and how our class is made (toolbelt+no secondary).

I have trouble agreeing with your comment on PBR. Frankly I do not get it at all. It actually has solid damage. It is solid utility, its a low CD on the toolbelt skill that meld really well with SD. It is great to use to focus on ranged damage.

Thumper turret may have issues, but you listed its strengths as problems. I don’t understand where your going. Generally i think all turrets suck, but thumper turret is the most defensive turret. It offers stability s a stun breaker, and has an AoE launch.

Which classes have you leveled to 80 that your using as your comparison?

coglin.1867:

I have trouble agreeing with your comment on PBR. Frankly I do not get it at all. It actually has solid damage. It is solid utility, its a low CD on the toolbelt skill that meld really well with SD. It is great to use to focus on ranged damage.

Thumper turret may have issues, but you listed its strengths as problems. I don’t understand where your going. Generally i think all turrets suck, but thumper turret is the most defensive turret. It offers stability s a stun breaker, and has an AoE launch.

Which classes have you leveled to 80 that your using as your comparison?

Necromancer, guardian, ranger, and mesmer are my main comparisons.

Let me make it clear that on turrets they are decent in spvp. However, to a player who is actually pay attention a turret can be downed in a couple of seconds and its hard for the engineer to counter this, especially if it is AoE (which classes have a lot of in this game). You could pick it up but it is still on a pretty long CD. The biggest thing with that is that when you pick it up you are now without a utility and a seconday weapon (how most classes when they use a utility ability they have a secondary weapon still at their disposal). So now it rest on the toolbelt skill to pick up the slack of the secondary weapon. The meh damage of the toolbelt skill on most turrets (perhaps rocket and SD rifle are exceptions) and the lack of useful utility on them (stab that last barely a second and is on a 40 second CD in a game where every class has CC on much lower CDs) does not pick up the slack that we have from not having a secondary weapon. PBR is a horrific skill. Stability is an easy accessible counter to most classes. We don’t have a lot of good boon strips either. Secondary mine requires the person to be on you and elixirs you need to be traited for. Thats the reason why the meta will be and always will be primary kit dominated. Kits are our only utilities that properly make up for our lack of a secondary weapon, and to no surprise on account of them being secondary weapons. I would glady run gadgets with elixirs or turrets if I had a secondary weapon option. We don’t though. Our builds that use turrets are gadgets are easily countered and often don’t output enough DPS to properly counter builds, especially in WvW. Try to 1 on 1 classes with a turret or gadget build. Don’t just do a few battles. Try to do multiple battles with many people (people may suck).

Level up a necromancer. They’re basically the same class as us in terms of what their role is (Condi damage with CC). The easy to use CC (fear), amazing condi application on an AoE level (scepter, dagger OH, staff, epidemic), really good surviveability options compared to us (DS does have its weaknesses, but can be very good when combined with spectral armor/mid battle). Some may say the main difference is they lack mobility. This is true, we do have rocket boots. Though their DS #2 is a teleport and they get some easy access swiftness with WH, and traits. When I play necromancer I’m just amazing on how much easier and effective it is at pulling off things that engineer pulls off. Thats why I made this thread on turrets and gadgets. These are the two things that can set engineer apart from necromancer and they are ridiculously underpowered on account of our lack of a secondary weapon.