Guild Wars 2

This is in regards to tool belt skills being locked out by deploying a turret (i.e. inability to use surprise shot after deploying rifle turret).

I hadn’t seen anyone talking about this, so I thought I’d just post here in case they’ve actually made a statement on it, or maybe a dev might read this and grace us with some kind of (likely vague) response.

Just an FYI for those who might be unfamiliar with the situation (skip paragraph if you know I’m talking about): All engineer utilities have an associated tool belt skill that is a separate activated skill on a separate cooldown (they’re positioned in the F1-F4 slots). For instance, “Rifle Turret” is a utility skill that drops the rifle turret, and it’s associated tool belt skill is called “Surprise Shot”, which shoots out a little bullet on a separate cooldown. However, once you deploy a turret (i.e. use the utility skill “Rifle Turret”), the tool belt skill “Surprise Shot” changes to the “Detonate” skill, which will manually blow up the turret, while the “Rifle Turret” utility skill changes to the “Overcharge” ability, which lets the rifle turret become more powerful for awhile. However, “Surprise Shot” becomes totally inaccessible until the rifle turret is either destroyed, detonated, or picked up by the engineer. This makes it so that you lock out one of your own skills by using a different one.

Are there any plans to make it so that turret tool belt skills will be accessible with the turrets deployed in HoT/upcoming feature patch? This has always been one of the sore spots of turrets, albeit more minor than other things. The current functionality poses an inconvenience in which you lock yourself out of a potentially useful skill because you had the audacity to place a turret that really has no use outside of crowding a node or choke point on a PvP map.

In particular, SD burst builds often take rifle turret solely so they have access to surprise shot. That is, the tool belt skill is much more valuable than the utility skill. In those instances, surprise shot might as well just be the entire utility skill, as rifle turret doesn’t need to be there. If an SD engineer deploys the rifle turret, they’re potentially decreasing their own damage output by doing so (i.e. not being able to fire surprise shot, taking time to deploying the turret instead of firing another rifle shot or two).

If we were allowed to use tool belt skills while the turrets are deployed, it would make it so that things like SD burst builds could actually make use of their rifle turret without simultaneously handicapping themselves, and turret engineers would have more to do other than auto attack and activate turret overcharges.

In fact, there’s recently been changes to address the effectiveness of turret builds in PvP. If tool belt skills were usable while the turret is deployed, then it would be quite reasonable to simultaneously decrease the overall damage output/effectiveness of the turrets to compensate. This would help establish this “active playstyle” thing that people keep ranting about (people like buzzwords) instead of having the “low IQ passive” gameplay that people have been complaining about since spirit rangers and day 1 mesmers.

I was just hoping this would maybe be addressed in light of overdue things like hobosacks being addressed as well.

I see a few problems with what you’re suggesting:

1.) Lore-wise (which is minor but, you know…) the toolbelt skill only being available while the turret is not deployed is explainable in that you are using the turret while it is in your belt. As an example, you have access to Surprise Shot because you have a Rifle Turret in your pocket—when you deploy the turret, that extra gun is no longer in your pocket, and retaining the ability to use it doesn’t make sense.

2.) If the toolbelt skill is permanently assigned to the turret not deployed skill, you lose access to detonate turret which comes with the following drawbacks
*You lose a blast finisher
*You lose a knockdown (if you took the trait)
*You lose the ability to “undeploy” your turret when you aren’t in pick up range

3.) The changing skill is supposed to present a trade off between a powerful toolbelt skill (and the only stunbreak full turret engis have access to) and having the turret in play with their respective overcharge abilities.

4.) This will just reward brain-dead turret engi play. I play pvp turret engineer, and there is a way to play it well and a way to play it cheesy. Good turret play requires strategic placement of turret skills and picking-up/detonating your turrets when you need the tool-belt skill (such as the thumper turret tool-belt stun break), not to mention protecting vulnerable turrets with your weapon skills (seriously, is all you do autoattack when your turrets are down?). Cheesy turret play entails just plopping down your turrets and forgetting about them (except for overcharging when cd is up) until they die. Giving access to the turret tool-belt skill just rewards the latter, cheesy play style. Period.

So no, keep the trade-offs in the Turret Engineer, and reward dynamic play over cheesy play.