Time to fix turrets dying so fast
This will have to come after they fix the turret’s attack rate bug, damage bug, and break/stall bug.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
Just give them invulnerability for 6 seconds or something after summoning them. At least then we can blow them up for their blast finisher before they get destroyed by something else.
My suggestion, change toolkit so that it’s actually supportive enough of turrets to keep them alive and warrant a slot in a turret build.
1-Smack/whack/thwack: Unchanged
2-Box of Nails> Spare Parts: Because first of all, why would a mechanical engineer carry around freaking nails!? Create a field which cripples enemies who enter it and places protection on turrets within it.
3-Pry Bar: Unchanged
4-Gear Shield: Apply a stack of weakness whenever struck, 4 second character-specific internal cooldown.
5-Magnet: CD slightly increased, now pulls an enemy to you and applies retaliation to nearby turrets and the engineer.
TB-Throw Wrench> Deploy Magnetic Turret, a turret with a slow but long (1200) range attack, able to apply retaliation when overcharged. Cannot be detonated like other turrets.
Additionally, a masterwork trait could be added that allowed the boons applied by Spare Parts, Magnet, and Magnetic turret to affect allies as well.
(edited by Conncept.7638)
A simple fix would be a passive like WoW does for demo locks, where minions (in this case, turrets) take reduced damage from AoE abilities. A counter to a turret engineer would still be single target bursting of it down, but you would no longer waste a utility slot because of AoE spam gameplay.
Pikachoops – Engineer, Fort Aspenwood
A simple fix would be a passive like WoW does for demo locks, where minions (in this case, turrets) take reduced damage from AoE abilities. A counter to a turret engineer would still be single target bursting of it down, but you would no longer waste a utility slot because of AoE spam gameplay.
That wouldn’t fix anything, World of Warcraft didn’t had any AoE target limitation, putting high AoE damage resistance would make those BROKEN in any context. people would just pack them all together to completely avoid AoE damage while staying near of them. Just look at champions online when they added 75% AoE resistance + Health Regen to every pet abilities, people would just stay in the Blast effect of any Cosmic ennemies without even blocking and take 0 dmg because pets would soak everything up because of the 10 targets limitation on the Boss AoEs.
There are other ways around.
A possible solution could be to give your turrets active defenses with some sort of traits. You could give a temporary Protection buff or Aegis Buff, or even Invulnerability whenever they get hit by AoE damage and give it priority before the actual damage is done.
For instance : Blast Shield : Reduce the damage done to your turrets by 30% and whenever one of your turrets get hit by an AoE it reactively becomes Invulnerable for 5sec (Cooldown 25sec).
Another solution that could be included would be to fuse Autotool Instalation with Powerwrench. Increase the frequency to 4% every 3sec and double that amount (8% every 3sec) whenever your Wrench is equiped. Allowing a greater synergy between turrets and the wrench. Because right now, lets be honest going melee to swack down your turret only makes it bad because they take cleaves and AoE damage from ennemies whenever you are the one targeted.
Another and very easy solution would be to reduce their current hitbox. Right now it is enourmous, so big they will sometimes get cleaved in the back of an ennemy or get affected by AoEs even when they stand out of the red notification circles.
There are a lots of ways to improve turrets, but passive damage reduction to AoE is not one of them.
(edited by Ambrecombe.4398)
Fix for instakilled turrets:
Deployable Turrets: Turret skills use ground targeting and recharge instantly when destroyed (20 second cool down)
The real problem with the turret is the AI. When we look at everything in the game that has anything at all to do with game AI we see Arena Net’s clear weakness in design capability. All the AI in the entire game is slightly less intelligent as a pile of dog !#$ because at least the dog !#$ has the good sense to stink to let people know thakittens detestable.
Ranger pets, terribad.
Mesmer clones, terribad.
Necro minions, terribad.
…and Engineer’s turrets are terribad.
Even NPC’s are terribad as literally every time I do a dungeon with a character from this legendary “Destiny’s Edge” group they end up face down on the floor the entire time, and I’m always wondering, “Why the !#$ did we even bring this guy!? Why the !#$ didn’t we bring Talkora?!”
Simply put, ANet needs to contact some companies, get some price quotes, and contract out their AI programming to a crew that can make some really punishing and intelligent AI. And not just for class pet/pseudo-pet AI, but for all of PvE as well. Imagine if the Shatterer actually interacted with our horde instead of the “auto-attack it till it poops a treasure box” system it is now. If X number of people can be in a zone and Y is the main attraction of the zone, then Y should be capable of beating the !@#$ out of X…okay I’m starting to get off topic.
Point is, ANet makes bad AI, and because of this anything that’s considered “strong” just has an arbitrarily large amount of health, toughness, or attack power and in some cases all three. Seeing as they only ever really tweak a damage number here, or a health pool total there, and occasionally fix a stray bug with the AI you can tell that any major reworking of the AI is something they just want to put in a closet and never look at.
Circumventing profanity filters one kitten at a time.
A simple fix would be a passive like WoW does for demo locks, where minions (in this case, turrets) take reduced damage from AoE abilities. A counter to a turret engineer would still be single target bursting of it down, but you would no longer waste a utility slot because of AoE spam gameplay.
That wouldn’t fix anything, World of Warcraft didn’t had any AoE target limitation, putting high AoE damage resistance would make those BROKEN in any context. people would just pack them all together to completely avoid AoE damage while staying near of them. Just look at champions online when they added 75% AoE resistance + Health Regen to every pet abilities, people would just stay in the Blast effect of any Cosmic ennemies without even blocking and take 0 dmg because pets would soak everything up because of the 10 targets limitation on the Boss AoEs.
There are other ways around.
A possible solution could be to give your turrets active defenses with some sort of traits. You could give a temporary Protection buff or Aegis Buff, or even Invulnerability whenever they get hit by AoE damage and give it priority before the actual damage is done.
For instance : Blast Shield : Reduce the damage done to your turrets by 30% and whenever one of your turrets get hit by an AoE it reactively becomes Invulnerable for 5sec (Cooldown 25sec).
Another solution that could be included would be to fuse Autotool Instalation with Powerwrench. Increase the frequency to 4% every 3sec and double that amount (8% every 3sec) whenever your Wrench is equiped. Allowing a greater synergy between turrets and the wrench. Because right now, lets be honest going melee to swack down your turret only makes it bad because they take cleaves and AoE damage from ennemies whenever you are the one targeted.
Another and very easy solution would be to reduce their current hitbox. Right now it is enourmous, so big they will sometimes get cleaved in the back of an ennemy or get affected by AoEs even when they stand out of the red notification circles.
There are a lots of ways to improve turrets, but passive damage reduction to AoE is not one of them.
Eesh, just a suggestion. Settle down, hotshot.
Pikachoops – Engineer, Fort Aspenwood
Eesh, just a suggestion. Settle down, hotshot.
I read my post again to see if I wrote anything wrong, wich I did not happen to see, so I don’t understand your excitement. I just told you exactly why it would be broken and a bad design decision.
The real problem with the turret is the AI. When we look at everything in the game that has anything at all to do with game AI we see Arena Net’s clear weakness in design capability. All the AI in the entire game is slightly less intelligent as a pile of dog !
#$ because at least the dog !#$ has the good sense to stink to let people know thakittens detestable.
The AI of the turrets is over simplified making it bad in many situation. Right now it does exactly the following action : Closest target in range = Shoot!
It indeed needs a couple of critters to become a more appropriated AI.
Something closer to this :
1. Target → Engineer Target always true if
Engineer Target → In line of sight or range is true
Attack!
2. Target → Engineer target is not true if
Engineer Target → In line of sight or range is not true
Switch to closest target.
3) Target → Closest Target is true if
Closest Target → In line of sight or range is true
Attack!
4) Target → Closest Target is not true if
Closest Target → In line of sight or range is not true
Ignore Target.
Now this looks over simplified, at the same time I do not know their coding sequences, but if you take those 4 critters together you already have a tweaked AI that will shoot at the same target whenever those are in range and in line of sight with the Engineer. If they don’t meet the conditions, they get to the alternative operation and shoot the closest ennemies in their line of sight.
Wich seems already like an improvement to me.
(edited by Ambrecombe.4398)
I think this might be bugged (at least in some cases). While screwing about in Orr a few days ago I noticed that my turrets which happened to get hit as they were being placed would die instantly, but weirdly enough I later happened to get the same types of creatures (none of these were >80 btw, just random junk with nobody around but me) attacking the same type of turret which had already been placed, so far as I could tell using the same skills, and the turrets (in both cases traited for health, autorepair, dmg, and knockback on death) were taking significantly less damage.