Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Im reading in the Engi forum section nearly every day.
Im aware of all those whiny and/or offensive posts as it comes to turrets and people who try to point out the issues/problems a player has when he wants to use them ( efficiently).

I dont want this post to be another emotional one and i will give my best to write down some ideas i have about the turrets which may help that you ( as a player) or the devs (if they read this) could catch up. As far as i can imagine, its all about communication and helping hands when it comes to an mmo and its progession of just getting better and dish out the problems. So, first of all, english i not my native language, so you may excuse wrong grammar.

For me, the engi is an awesome class. i really love the huge different set ups and the different playstyle experiences we as a player can enjoy, But when it comes down to using turrets, its a bit frustrating in terms of enjoying it.

We have traits that improve our turrets and i think these traits are fine. Some may not agree but i will detail my sight of view which is not about a pve or pvp. its about basic issues with turrets that reduce the enjoying side using or even equipping them.
The Cooldowns.

All our Turret Cooldowns – apart of healing turret and maybe net turret – are way to high. espacially when it comes to internal cds when overcharging them and of course when deploying them. The Rocket turret and Thumper is a good example for this.

We can deploy it once every 60 sec when it is destroyed, the cd will be lower if we pick it up but it still is way to high in a game where it is all about movement and go to another spot ( in terms of running through a dungeon in pve and terms of pvp while getting to another spot. the range and fire rate of our turrets is great as it is.

For example – it we deploy our rocket turret, fight a mob or player, pick it up and move on – we have one of our main dmg and cc turrets on cd for nearly the next minute. If the turret gets destroyed i am willing to accept that in matter of game balancing. we shouldnt be able to pop out a dmg ability every 15 seconds if our enemy (again – mob or player – doesnt matter) destroyed it.

BUT – if we have picked it up, so, saved it – the cd for deploying again should at least be dropped by 50% secs or to 15sec.. Same for the overcharge cds on the turrets when picked up.

It is for the healing turret. and its not imbalanced in any situation in the game – let it be pve or pvp. So may it be imbalanced if this would be the same on our other turrets. ? i dont think so and if i am missing a point please let me know.
To go on. May it be possible to add Turret recharge time via traitline – maybe expanding the trait that increases the turret health by 30% by recharging the turrets 50% faster when the player picks them up ?

Its so annoying to fight a mob or player , move on and straight into the next battle without ur utility spells for nearly a minute.

To prevent folks that argument in a way like “what about class xy that has a 40 or 50 sec dmg utility skill?” well, your spell cant be destroyed. maybe it can be blocked, dodged or absorbed but this can be done to our turret projectiles ( net / rocket/ thumper also) but these turrets can be destroyed. And thats good. They need to be.
Wouldnt it be fine and better if our turrets had no gobal cooldown when we deploy them ? i mean – if an engi wnats to drop lets say – 3 turrets – he had 3 seconds where he can do nothing. 3 seconds of been attacked, 3 seconds of no dmg done or prevent taken. Our toolbelt skills have no gcd, i think it wouldnt be imbalanced if deploying turrets would also have no cd. missing a point again ?

The life or our turrets is not imbalanced. We even can make them tougher for another 30% via trait. good. missing recharge time decrease ? yes. missing scale with players vitality stat – maybe ?

I appreciate every comment or other opinions. Give me some feedback to my ideas or just set up new ones.

So, wall of text for just a few point that would be great

*turrets recharge time lowered by trait only when picked up

*turrets life scale with players vitality stat by xy amount of %

*remove gcd when deploying turrets.

• invulnerable turrets while they are overcharged ?!

turrets are a loveable and enjoyable designed mechanic and its so dissapointing that we cant use this mechanic in a way we could. Full turret engineer. i would love that idea.

have a nice day
Nok

As somebody who, until recently, almost exclusively used turrets: I’d like for them to scale across the board with player stats. Damage, Health, Defense, Healing Power, Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Precision – Turrets need a boost, at the very least in comparison with kits. The easiest way would be to make them scale, just as kits do – with player stats.

That 30% less damage per attack the turrets take when traited? I’ve had my turrets be disposed of instantly by the Risen Knights in Orr’s spread projectiles, while using that trait. It’s even worse in dungeons, where I’ve had eight turrets at a time be erased by a single AoE attack from one of the hounds in Twilight Arbor.

Cooldown also needs to be worked on; perhaps Autotool Installation should be used to reduce cooldowns (easier to thematically link, as well as generally useless for a mobile character who doesn’t leave turrets down for more than ten or twenty seconds) at a rate consistent with the other cooldown reduction traits: 20%, whether the turret is destroyed or retrieved.

Until they give turrets a boost, I’ll use them for farming…and kits for fighting.

I don’t really use them but wouldn’t it be a good idea to give them like 8 health and all attacks against turrets only do 1 damage max meaning it takes 8 shots to take them out?

30% less damage would make alot if they would scale with players vitality. Appreciate the replies

Then they could change the trait into a cooldown-reduction trait or something. Never said making them scale wouldn’t possibly require a bit of reworking the traits – which need reworked/fixed to begin with, what with the various bugged/inaccurate/ineffective traits. Accelerant-Packed Turrets doesn’t trigger Explosives traits, Deployable Turrets only works 25% of the way in PvE, Elite Supplies says it boosts the range of Mortar (the only manned turret) and doesn’t, etcetera.

Point is, right now they’re made of tissue paper, and do too little damage, as they scale only with level and traits – a completely buck-naked Engineer with Turrets, traited for Power, will see better damage from the Rifle Turret, at least, than the same Engineer, armored in the best gear, with no trait points spent.

They don’t scale with gear, but everything else does – what’s the point?

Certainly explains why switching to kits felt like Easy Mode.

Anymras.5729:

Deployable Turrets only works 25% of the way in PvE.

Can u describe in which way this trait doesnt work ? i´ve testet it right now and i cant figure out why it should not work. Could deploy them wherever i wanted

I wish the toolbelt skills for some of the turrets (rocket and thumper really) were lower on the base, they seem way too high for what they do.

Numot.3965:

I wish the toolbelt skills for some of the turrets (rocket and thumper really) were lower on the base, they seem way too high for what they do.

yep, absolutely. well, a) toolbelt skills cd lowered or b) add an effect, like 1 sec knockdown on Rocket tb skill or maybe just interrupt or 2 sec burning. as the Rocket Turret inflicts both of the effects anyways

I would personally like to see the turrets become either more like shamans totems from WoW or have them buffed to be a possible build contender. They’re in a awkward place lost somewhere in-between.

In PvE, Deployable Turrets functions as follows:
Healing Turret is Deployable, Healing Turret Toolbelt is replaced by non-Deployable Healing Turret.
Rocket Turret is Deployable, Rocket Turret Toolbelt remains Rocket.
No other turret is Deployable at all, and the Toolbelt skills thereof are unaffected.

That’s precisely one turret it actually functions -properly- with (Rocket Turret), one turret that it only functions half-way with (Healing Turret), and four turrets I consider it to not work at all with (as the turret remains unDeployable, regardless of toolbelt status).

In PvP, apparently, it functions better. Far as I’ve heard, the same code is used in both places, so they’re not sure what’s going on with it.

Turrets suffer from a lot of the same problems gadgets do. For one, I’d like to see more traits that affect them. I’d also like to see some traits combined into one trait.

I think my biggest gripe with turrets is that they don’t act like turrets. What is a turret in any other game? It’s supposed to be something that you do not want to walk into. If you do, you’ll likely be gunned down.

In this game, they deal a miniscule amount of damage before being destroyed by a passing breeze.

They are incredibly useless compared to a necromancer’s minions, a mesmer’s illusions or a guardian’s spirit weapons. I understand that they take a very short time to set up and last near-permanently until destroyed, but to me the trade-off just doesn’t make sense. Please, give them long deploy times or make it so they can’t be deployed with 100% uptime in exchange for more survivability and more damage. It wouldn’t make a large difference if they only lasted for a limited time after being deployed, anyways – a turret typically gets destroyed extremely quickly after it deals any damage at all.

Above all, I’d like to see them function more like spirit weapons. Spirit weapons have a limited duration but have incredibly powerful base mechanics. Their “command” is also a similar mechanic to “overcharge”, but they are destroyed if the player does this, unless the player has spirit weapons traited. However, in exchange, I would say that typically, their command skills are much more useful than our overcharge skills. I would like turrets to be more like this, limited duration and destroyed on overcharge unless traited, if it meant more powerful turrets and better overcharge abilities.

Beyond all this, if the problem is concerns with engineers using turrets to farm in PvE, it doesn’t make sense to me to kitten turrets in the rest of the game just for this. Just make it so minions/turrets cannot deal all the damage to a monster for an engineer to receive any reward. It would also stop AFK farming to give turrets a duration.

If the intent of turrets being so weak in comparison to the Engineer’s kits is to prevent farming, it’s ironically counterproductive, what with farming becoming their only use aside from control; I feel like there’s something else going on, and that they’re not supposed to be this weak, but they’re not likely to get around to fixing the bugs for another few months, some time after they’ve rebalanced the kits some more.

Not sure if I particularly like the idea of having my turrets be eliminated every time I used the Overcharge – as they currently stand, Overcharging is one of the few things they’re really good for. Considering that turrets don’t scale with gear/total player stats, I’d really rather they try making them do so, and -then- figure out if they need to work on them more – the less radical a change, the better, or so it seems to me.

Oh, and fix the freakin’ trait bugs – with a traited Grenade Kit, it’s easy to get 25 stacks of Vulnerability onto an enemy, causing an additional 25% damage from anybody hitting that particular enemy, on top of dealing 10% of extra damage. The Rocket Turret should receive the ability to cause Vulnerability and the 10% damage boost, as it uses explosives, as well as turrets affected by Accelerant-Packed Turrets, but they don’t, just as an example.

Turrets should not be improved by stats. They doing quite good amount of damage. This would be too powerfull. The problem of the turrets are that they are getting destroyed too fast to do some decent damage. Some small chances and turrets would be competitive.

My 3 points:

- Reducing Cooldown on pickup
Dont see the point, why turrets have such a long cooldown. Agree with you. When ANet dont want that enigneers spam turrets, then the turrets can have the same amount of hp they had on pickup as long as you place them again until the current cooldown of turrets isn´t expired.

- Turrets need more hp/toughness
One AE of any class and the turrets are gone if you have placed it a little bit to near of each over (what also makes the supply crate “elite” quite a joke). When i compare this to the spirit weapons of the guardian, wich follow you over the half spvp map and are hardly to destroy, than the state of the turrets is a joke. Give them the 30% less damage trait as base state and it would be fine. At least against AE attacks.

- Turrets (still) dont attack the same target
This is so annoying and the most breaking point of the turrets. Its fun to see when your turrets hit a useless pet instead of the player or you overcharge your rocket turret and the rocket don´t knocksdown the enemy, but knocksdown any useless pet around. Dont know if Anet ever will change this kitten.

hm, 60% less damage taken AND 50% CD Reduce when picked up, combined in same trait, would help a lot and should be easy to fix ?!

I don’t see where the damage turrets take is a problem, with a rifle build it’s pretty easy to kite mobs and still protect your turrets with #2 or #4 while they still do damage.

I do think the CD should be reduced if you pick them up rather than detonate them or have them destroyed.

Fix for Turrets:
Cooldowns only when destroyed. If you pick it up, then you can put it right back down again… HOWEVER… you can control them with cast times. Rifle turret can have a 1.5sec cast time, Rocket turret could have a 5 second cast time. (think mantra for mesmers).

maybe you can support your turrets (shouldnt it be exactly the opposite way ?) with a rifle . but what if you want to play with p/s p/p ?! i think they should be treated and seen and used as a support to our own firepower. i dont drop them and want to find me in the place having no time to do other things then keeping the mobs away and holding them alive. they should help us. should be a serious harm and threat for foes. not something you can ignore. they have a range – foes can leave this range. and thats good. but in terms of being a threat- that should be compensated by higher base damage – or , which would be better in my opinion – by a low cd when picked up and way more damage reduction on them via trait. ONLY A LIVING TURRET IS A HARM. it is a threat. But is has to be able to be that. Dropping an AoE and just kill / counter my COMPLETE class mechanic as a turret engineer is not really the way this should work. Only dropped turrets, which are holding strong – do have the potential to put pressure on my enemy or make him rethink attacking me and my mechanical firepower army. for right now it is just a “meh turrets – arcane blast” blink-of-an-eye army.
Could be fixed by making them vulnarable to AoE attacks. would help in pve and pvp. they could still be destroyed by focus damage. Maybe via trait like metal plating “60% less dmg and immune to AoE” i would prefer just way more base HP

every time when i am not playing the engineer and i meet one on the battlefield of W3 – i dont have the feeling i have to be frightened of the turrets. And that bothers me, too.
_________________________________________________
And for the healing turret – i would highly appreciate it if, if the turret is deployed, it sends its big heal every 40 seconds to the engineer – not the whole party. this way it could be a really good support. right now its either a support for group regen or a self heal. but if deployed for 2 minutes in a boss fight or wvw fight – the engi has no option to get his big heal for himself.

Yeah turret engineer = free kill, how’s that good game design?
I actually know the answer to this though. The turrets are the way they are because of spvp. If they make turrets too strong, then engineers would have the advantage defending points. So engineers in the rest of the game have to suffer, because of spvp.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Yeah turret engineer = free kill, how’s that good game design?
I actually know the answer to this though. The turrets are the way they are because of spvp. If they make turrets too strong, then engineers would have the advantage defending points. So engineers in the rest of the game have to suffer, because of spvp.

confusion works different in pve and pvp. could be the same for turrets health. the problem getting this balanced is something im aware of. but is has been done fine with confusion. i dont really see a problem here

Maybe not have them scale as well to stats as the player’s other skills, considering the potential for various (up to…six or so, with Elite Supplies X, including the player) sources of damage – but a Turret Engineer might as well be naked, for all the good their gear does their skills.

Perhaps, to start with, try having turrets scale to non-damage stats like Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power, and Defense – yes, Defense, from armor, because not everyone is going to end up with Toughness/Vitality gear. By making them harder to kill, it’d increase their overall usefulness, and maybe mitigate the other issues – aside from Cooldown, which only really makes sense to be as high as it is for the high-damage turrets.

Edit: In addition, it’s perhaps worth considering that, with a traited Grenade Kit (with Bomb Kit and Throw Mine as the other two utilities, and Mortar as my Elite), I’ve been able to repeatedly solo the Champion Spider Queen in Metrica Province in under five minutes each time, while trying to do the same with Turrets (various configurations) took maybe about twenty minutes to get her down to half health.

A huge problem with turrets is that their strength does not match the cool down. They should be much stronger for the cool down they are given.

This is why I am suggesting controlling them with cast times. Immediate redeployment with a cast time, at least helps increase their mobility.

If they added a cast time then they could also add a function to the tool kit that if you have the tool kit equipped it reduces turret deployment by a certain %

I agree but one problem that i think should be addressed is that whenever i deploy a turret and mess up on the location of the turret or angle or w.e i want to be able to fix it without worrying of the 60 sec cd. We should be able to physically pick up the turret like an item and the keys would be binded to nothing and then set it down a little closer.

any thoughts on that idea

My preferred turret changes would be :

-Damage turrets target only what you have targetted, and only attack when you are attacking or down/stunned/incapacitated in some form.

-Damage/HP scales with player damage/HP (or condition damage).

- Decrease the time between turret attacks. Right now it feels pretty sad in combat. Perhaps increase the firing time by 25%.

-If you pick the turret up, the time left on the turret should be subtracted from the cooldown time, so if I picked it up immediately after laying it (which happens quite often) I could lay it back down immediately. If I picked it up 1/2 way through it’s life, my cd is 50% left. The current way it works is ridiculous.

- Give us a mobile turret to lug around behind us, or the option in one of our trees to make our turrets mobile (I find the ground target ability option more than useless especially in a heated fight)

The engineer is a very fun class, but compared to others it has it’s problems. A slew of bugs affect us, all of our class defining abilities are rather weak.

On the subject of mobile turrets: I’d kinda like an Elite Turret that’s actually, y’know, a Turret, as opposed to the Mortar. Perhaps that could be the Mobile Turret – some sort of mobile utility platform with variations on the abilities of of the other turrets, perhaps, or a skill that supports turrets by causing all turrets under the control of the Engineer to gain mobility as long as it’s active, and various other minor improvements.

I’d suggest multiple modes for the first version, but that might be a bit much. Of course, the other thing I’m suggesting is basically Super Mode for Turrets…

The lack of mobility is also what offsets them from me using them. But as other said I think making them mobile would be a viable solution.

My proposal is to either create a new utility skill that allows us to “call” our turrets to us. Similar to how Summon Spirits worked in GW1 it allowed, otherwise immobile spirits cough turrets cough, to be teleported to the player and then healed on top of that, mitigating damage and mobilizing them.

Or rather then creating a new utility skill make the Kit Refinement effect for Tool Kit teleport all of your turrets to you. That way it would encourage more users to use it as it was intended for. All of this can be done without even touching the actual turret skills, but would add a whole new layer of build diversity.

Let’s not get carried away here. lol

Turrets dont need that much to be viable imo. Their design is fine, just they need the numbers to help them become viable. Namely being more durable and increase the damage output.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Yeah turret engineer = free kill, how’s that good game design?
I actually know the answer to this though. The turrets are the way they are because of spvp. If they make turrets too strong, then engineers would have the advantage defending points. So engineers in the rest of the game have to suffer, because of spvp.

Spirit weapon guardians and Phantasm mesmers are already pretty much this, you know.

Spirit weapon build with hammer and sword, NPCs that actually follow you around, attack your target without target change delays, and have immensely powerful command skills.

And don’t forget, they can’t be damaged.

Asura College of Dynamics – Turret Design and Utility Report

Overall conclusion
Healing, Net and Rocket turrets – design is consistent with application, although their fragility and long redeploy times, especially for the rocket turret, limiting their use at higher levels to all but a small range of PvE situations.
Rifle turret – some design charateristics are inconsistent with use. Redesign needed.
Thumper turret – design is consistent but its absence at higher levels indicates need to tune the design.
The Supply Crate elite skill is the only turret skill that sees regular use at higher levels.
Some turret bugs (e.g. targeting already destroyed objects and targetting enemies hidden behind walls) and long cooldown before redeployment reduce their use significantly.

Turret utility:
PvE:
Healing turret – useful for fixed location fights where combat and enemy AoE can be kept away from the turret.
Net turret – useful for short term slow down on some bosses and for added survival when leveling Engs at very low levels. Forget otherwise.
Rifle turret – damage and rate of fire is low, made of tissue paper. Only useful if placed permanently out of reach/range of mobs.
Rocket turret (with knockdown) – great when placed out of reach of mobs before a fight, also useful against bosses without decent ranged attacks. Occasionally useful against mobs with no AoE attack if placed after mob has agro’d on other friendlies (and the friendlies know to stay away from the turret).
Supply Crate turrets – Engineer’s only credible Elite skill. Always place after mobs have agro’d on other friendlies and away from potential AoEs (including melee AoEs).
Thumper turret (with knockdown)- useful in choke points at low levels. Forget otherwise.

WvWvW:
Healing turret – If you are close enough to benefit from it, then it will most likely fall to AoE before it can generate a second healing burst. Place immediately behind friendly line if you outnumber the enemy to reduce casualties, otherwise forget it.
Net turret – Forget it.
Rifle turret – Will hurt one target a little then vanish. Can be used as an intruder alarm when guarding a supply depot, otherwise forget it.
Rocket turret – May knock down one target before being destroyed. Can be used for ambush due to knockdown, or as an intruder alarm when guarding supply depots, otherwise forget it.
Supply Crate turrets – Engineer’s only halfway decent Elite skill. Best dropped close behind combat to support friendlies that need to fall back, otherwise the turrets disappear rapidly.
Thumper turret – forget it.
Massed rifle and rocket turrets could be great for ambushes, but this would require multiple engineers to coordinate and there just aren’t enough of us.

PvP:
(Can’t say as I don’t play that. Maybe someone else can fill this in . . .)

Rifle Turret design assessment = Fail
With it’s tissue paper build and low recharge time the riffle turret is designed to be dropped several times a minute. This makes sense for a short range turret that is designed to be dropped into melee (like the flame, net and thumper turrets), but not for a fragile but long range turret like the rifle turret. If it is meant to be a long range turret, then up its damage and redeployment time. If it’s meant to be dropped into melee then make it a machine pistol with higher rate of fire but shorter range.

Thumper turret design assessment = Revise
While designed consistent with its purpose, the almost complete absence of Thumper turrets at higher levels indicates that this turret is either critically underpowered or its design needs tweaking in some way. Although supposedly the toughest turret, as an agro drawer its life at higher levels is too short and has too little impact to justify its long cooldown cost. Either make it more easily deployable (which runs counter its design concept as a heavy point defender) or tweak the design so that it does its job even at high levels.

(Source: after starting with a turret based engineer, I’ve found I’ve ended up slowly but surely cutting back on turrets to the point that the only ones I now use are the Supply Crate in PvE and WvW (and if I could take the Asura Radiation Field as an elite skill I’d take that instead in WvW) and the Rocket Turret in PvE only. If turrets were any good we’d see more of them around. Shame really, as I’m still very keen on running an effective turret based engineer.)

My recipe for fixing Engineer’s turrets:
(This attempts to address the deficiencies in the current turrets though tweaks, rather than simply throwing more power at them. Core assumptions: a) attack turrets are meant to be high damage but fragile, b) defensive turrets, including the Thumper, are meant to last longer while protecting defenders and hindering enemies.)

1. Reduce the redeploy time on turrets to compensate for their fragility at higher levels (this will see them deployed more often at higher levels without unbalancing their power at lower levels).
- Reduce redeploy times to: Net turret 20s, Flame turret 30s , Rocket and Thumper turrets 40s (for Rifle turret see 4. below).
- increase the redeploy time saving for picking up a turret to 40% (make it worth the character going back to get the turret and in the process increase their commitment to their turrets).

2. Increase the damage reduction bonus for the ‘metal plating’ trait to 40%. (Currently this trait rarely increases the life of a turret at higher levels by enough for the turret to execute another tick.)

3. Tweak the Thumper turret to make it more relevant at higher levels:
- Increase its HP (it’s meant to be tough, make it last a bit longer)
- slow its pulse rate to 4s but make each pulse Interrupt (trading lower damage for increased value of Interrupt at higher levels)
- reduce the cooldown on Thump to 20s (recovering most of the lost damage and increasing knockdowns for higher levels and boss fights)
The result is it becomes less of an area killer (which it failed to do anyway) but more of an enemy hinderer especially at higher levels.

4. Do a makeover on the Rifle turret:
- Double its damage and increase its redeployment time to 40s (or higher) making it a true long range turret, but slow its rate of fire to 3s and keep it fragile to keep it balanced.
- Replace it’s ‘overcharge’ with the following selectable programmes: default/#1= shoot nearest enemy, #2= track and shoot current target while in range, #3= track shoot my target while in range. The turret automatically reverts to #1 if a target it is tracking dies or moves out of range.