Guild Wars 2

So Engineer is one of my main professions. Though not my main. I enjoy them but haven’t had the breadth of experience that many of you have had. I was talking to my Guild leader who is an engineer main and we were talking about the issue with Turrets in how their gameplay wasn’t fun. And we got to talking about counter play so that their balance could be a bit higher while also giving other people a good out to deal with them.

And it hit me. Why not have turrets effected by knock backs and launches? He thought it was a good idea, but like I said, I can’t claim to be an expert on engineer, i’m experiences but nothing beyond that. What are your guys’s thoughts?

In their current state any nerf to them would just be another nail in the coffin.

I may be mistaken on this, but the general consent around here seems to be to get rid of them entirely in exchange for something new, like “aoe-pylons” (think wow shaman totems)

On the other hand, healing turret is one of the best healing skills in the game, and a cornerstone to most engi builds, and s/d builds certainly would miss the low cooldown of rifle turrets’ tb.

Beyond that, extreme squishiness, and high cd’s make most of them a completely wasted slot. thumper turrets only merit f.e. is its stunbreak on the tb, but when compared to other stunbreaks of engi (elixir S / utility-goggles / elixier-gun), it is almost always a waste to pick it.

But i think there is a way to make turrets viable without making them OP.

1. their dmg really needs to scale with our stats.
2. decrease their maximum uptime to 10 seconds.
3. decrease their individual cd’s drastically (15sec should be max, exception being heal-turret for obvious reasons)
4. flame-turret should fire more frequently or apply 2 stacks of burn
5. picking them up should halve their cd
6. turrets should profit from boons

then they could keep being squishy, so enemies get rewarded for focusing them down, and we can replace them far more often. Ofc turreteer builds would still feel like sitting ducks in a pile of junk, but with these changes they actually could pack a decent punch, while still allowing reasonable counterplay from enemies.

I always thought they should be like Ritualist spirits from GW1. Up turret damage and attack speed for a start.

Make the traits more impactful too. Like one that buffs turret damage against targets you hit (again like Ritualist). A Grandmaster trait or new skill to teleport to your location would be awesome.

Turrets have gone through so many iterations to still be useless. Must be really difficult for Anet to figure out how they want them to function and be viable. Even healing turret, while being a great heal skill works nothing like a turret should.

I agree with this I feel turrets should be useful as a power/condi burst cds. I feel the duration should be very low around 10 sec but increase the health by a lot so they arent bursted so quickly. The idea I had was tied into the scaling stats, but in addition allowing turrets to crit as well.

Rocket turret: Drops an overcharged rocket turret that launches missiles at target location ( you actually target the area it will attack before its dropped then it launches its burst of missiles) Remove the knockdown increase the blast radius.

Rocket turret toolbelt: Missile volley single target launches 10 micro missiles at your target (Smaller packets of damage, but decent overall damage if all land or multiple crits) Give this toolbelt skill a medium cd id say around 20-25 sec and allowing the last missile the ability to daze for around 1/2 a sec this ability would be easy to dodge with the multiple stream of missiles giving it away for counterplay

Thumper turret: Drops and overcharges to launch foes into the air (Launch 0)

Thumper turret toolbelt: stomp to pull enemies into you activate it again to launch players backwards (make it a flip skill if at all possible) This turret would be the go too area denial stomp denial turret.

Rifle Turret: Drop an overcharged Rifle turret that sprays targets in the area with a stream of rounds dealing powerdamage/bleed per hit
Rifle Turret Toolbelt: No change other than possibly an ammo system for 2 rounds on it

Flame Turret: Drop an overcharged Flame turret that Sprays enemies in a cone of fire applying burning per hit (very low duration base average amount of burn stacks)
Flame Turret Toolbelt: I would think maybe something like a short duration walking fire field or dropping a phosphorus type charge at the ground for some burst and a large fire field.

Net Turret: Drop an overcharged Net Turret that fires a large net wall ( short Immob duration) Applies cripple and immob to up to 5 targets enemies running into it will also be hit by the effects.

Net Turret Toolbelt: Make this a targeted trap style skill that you set on the ground and immobs an enemy with a net when they step on it

Healing Turret: Honestly doesn’t need anything new other than the toolbelt maybe clearing 1 condi in a small area or converting one condition to a boon or just making it a very small healing blast in addition to the regen idk.

I think if the turrets did scale with stats, could crit, but had very low duration they could be used in condi/power/tank builds across the board with the increase in damage the duration would be used to balance them out so you actually have to use them at least a somewhat planned out manner because they wont be out that long.

As for the traits
Grandmaster: Deus ex machina? idk Allows your turrets to now have 1 extra charge or allows turrets to overcharge twice before self detonation.
Middleground trait: Mechanical Mayhem Applies a buff to you and your allies that increase your outgoing damage condi/power by 2% per sec/half second stacking up to 8 times when your turret is deployed. Numbers can be tinkered with
Minor Trait: Overclocked Turrets. Turrets have reduced cd if picked up detonating a turret or a turret self detonating will apply boons depending on the turret.

sorry for the wall of text, but could be cool huh?

I feel like maybe the best way to fix turrets is to adjust their traits, and adjust the tool kit 1 skill. If the toolkit skill 1 improved the effectiveness of a turret as well as repaired it, and there were traits for turrets that weren’t total trash, I think it could work. I also think that if an engi decides to go with a build that’s basically all-in on turrets, then they should at least be a viable build option…

how about turrets trigger their overcharge as soon as they can, and tk1 reduces their cd by 10% for every swing on them?

Arantheal.7396:

how about turrets trigger their overcharge as soon as they can, and tk1 reduces their cd by 10% for every swing on them?

I’d be okay with that also. Really anything to make turrets viable as a build option and to make TK1 actually have some purpose.

Turrets lasting 10 seconds sounds awful.

Rework their overcharge effects, have them automatically re-overcharge after x seconds so that there is benefit to leaving them out and give them better defence.

Dunno how long you’ve been playing this game, but we had this state of turrets already.
They weren’t viable enough to be played in high rank pvp, but extremely punishing against lower skill-ranks, resulting in months on months of salt in the forums, which has lead a-net to nerf them into oblivion.

In open world pve / wvw, their long cd’s coupled with their immobility made them obsolete, in dungeons their (compared to other builds options we have) low dps made them obsolete as well.

Turrets never had a satisfactory state of balancing, simply because they have a single checkmark, that – if filled – makes any build on any class in this game impossible to balance: A.I.

Either it is OP, nor complete trash. We’ve never seen anything A.I.-related in between.

Arantheal.7396:

Dunno how long you’ve been playing this game, but we had this state of turrets already.
They weren’t viable enough to be played in high rank pvp, but extremely punishing against lower skill-ranks, resulting in months on months of salt in the forums, which has lead a-net to nerf them into oblivion.

In open world pve / wvw, their long cd’s coupled with their immobility made them obsolete, in dungeons their (compared to other builds options we have) low dps made them obsolete as well.

Turrets never had a satisfactory state of balancing, simply because they have a single checkmark, that – if filled – makes any build on any class in this game impossible to balance: A.I.

Either it is OP, nor complete trash. We’ve never seen anything A.I.-related in between.

The point of the post is to bring up a possible means of counter play against the turrets to allow space for the devs to improve them. If there is no counter play to them than no matter what they do it wont make for engaging fights. There are always going to be the person complaining about something. But if we can increase the possible ways to come at the issue than we can make the stronger without too much concern.

My concern is to look at it not how weak they are now, but to understand why they ended up that way. And the reason why is the counter play. Turrets currently don’t have a direct means of counter play aside from “DPS it really hard” which ‘hit it harder’ shouldn’t be the only means of addressing a problem. Knockbacks, launch, pulls, floats and other such CCs give players another means to combat the issue so that they can afford to be a bit more powerful without suddenly overwhelming players who just don’t have the DPS.

I agree that they need some buffs, I’m not arguing that they’re too strong. However you need to understand that in order to get those buffs you’re going to have to accept some weaknesses along with it.

FairyNuff.3452:

Turrets lasting 10 seconds sounds awful.

Rework their overcharge effects, have them automatically re-overcharge after x seconds so that there is benefit to leaving them out and give them better defence.

Turret-permanence is actually one of the biggest issues preventing better balance.

If turrets were only around for a set period, so much more could be done to better balance them.

lorddarkflare.9186:

FairyNuff.3452:

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this.
+1

while their long uptime and focus fire (coupled with their condi & crit-immunity) made them extremely OP, and outright frustrating to play against in pvp conquest mode, their comparable low dps made them obsolete in pve content, and their immobility, coupled with high cd’s made them obsolete in wvw.

they really exceeded in one thing only, and that was heavy area denial, which was only important in spvp. Outside of it, they never had a real purpose so far (welp, maybe for afk mob-farming or event-tagging, but anything goes for open world map, so nobody cares)

and now, with them being squishy as kitten, their last semi-viable purpose is gone as well. Now we only pick them for their toolbelts, or their overcharges. Beyond that, they have no purpose in any build.

so, how can we fix this?
Either keeping them fringe-content, so some niche-builds can exploit them (low cd toolbelt on rifle turret for s/d builds f.e.), or we throw their concept out of the window entirely and replace them with something worthwhile.

Alternatively, rework them from the ground up.
either give them awesome group utility (like the bubble / boon pulsing trait, which was actually heading in the right direction, but still didn’t address the core-issues with turrets) OR up their dmg drastically (scaling with our stats would already be a good start) OR limit their uptime, make them invulnerable entirely, and reduce their cd’s, so they see a more mobile and situational play instead of permanent “I sit here – kitten off” gameplay.

At this point I think a complete redesign is in order to make turret a selling point for engineers. They would have to cut one of the following aspects of turrets tho:

• Long lasting
• Stationary
• AI driven

Personally I’d like to see the AI aspect go. Turrets lasting long is one of those things that fits thematically and makes them stand out from other abilities. It reenforces the engineers theme as a base builder. So does their stationary nature, it helps them stand out from other classes with minions.

funfact: their A.I. is gone.
they will always fire at your target, if it is in range.
this is why they got so imbalanced in the first place, and got nerfed into oblivion.

now they are squishy as kitten and have long cd’s, which makes the long-lasting aspect of them nothing but a joke.

if you want to keep their identity as they are now, you have exactly 2 options to balance them:

1. limit their uptime (because it’s short already) and drastically increase their usefulness: more dmg, more utility, more anything OR
2. tone down their dmg slightly, but make them invulnerable, and allow their overcharges to go off more than once.

Everything else ends up in a complete overhaul

They still have some AI, if you are not there or don’t attack anything then they will take action into their own hands and shoot stuff.

I don’t see the problem with this behavior, I mean, you want to deny an area with them…

And if you leave an area in a controlled manner, they should be on cd so you can replace them at the place you’re going to…

as far as I know (didn’t try since 2 years) their dmg won’t destealth you, nor trigger retaliation on you, so I don’t see a downside with them firing at targets.

also, they fire at the last target in range that got dmg, meaning that a rifle turret will focus the longer fire intervals of rocket and fire turret on the target that the rifle turret has fired last upon…

so yea, rifle turrets picks the first target that gets in his range, and then makes sure that all turrets in the area pick the same target and focus on it.

FairyNuff.3452:

Rework their overcharge effects, have them automatically re-overcharge after x seconds so that there is benefit to leaving them out and give them better defence.

This.

Furthermore I’d suggest to improve the smack, whack, thwack mechanic to be able to repair turrets while hitting mobs instead of having to hit the turrets. I always wondered why this mechanic even is in the game, because I highly doubt there are lot’s of engis who actually have the time to or even care about repairing their turrets during a fight. Increase healing % and distribute 33% to every active turret (Turret, Turret, Turret, Tool Kit, Elite). If one uses only one turret, the 66% are lost.

Lily, if I’m understanding correctly, your idea is great, but you need to elaborate it more.

How I would implement it:

1- Turrets use player stats.
2- Turrets get decent dps and attack speed.
2- Turret range is never higher than 900.
3- Turrets can’t be placed closer than 600 of each other.
4- Turrets become invulnerable to damage.
5- Turrets gain a breakbar affected by CC skills only. Break the bar and the turret is disabled for half its normal CD.
6- Turret specific traits and the Tool Kit helps to recover the breakbar.

Using this, the balance team should be able to get much better results than by mere nerfing the DPS, punishing the uptime or enforcing instant detonation playstyle.

This will make a multi turret build viable again, but force the user to have a very active playstyle, instead of just waiting there, and positioning is very relevant again. Individual turrets wouldn’t be OP, but they wouldn’t be insta dying anymore either, unless the enemy comes specially CC ready for this: Counterplay requires some brain without being overly difficult.

I like this idea Ardid.
I’m not sure about them getting breakbars AND invulnerability, tho.
breakbars prevent cc’s from applying their effects, and I’d certainly prefer turrets being able to be blinded, slowed and chilled, but are able to receive boons in turn.

if they get a breakbar, it should be rather small, but with high regeneration, making sure that two dazes are enough to disable a turret, but blind / immob / cripple and chill can’t just wiggle it down, because these condis tend to stack for quite some high durations, if you don’t leave the fields pulsing them. Counterplay should be there, but it should involve more than just “let me put a smokefield here and laugh manically while your dmg stays on cd”.

I’d like to see them try out the new ammo function on turrets before another overhaul. Each would get 2 ammos, and you could balance around the cds.

Arantheal.7396:

I like this idea Ardid.
I’m not sure about them getting breakbars AND invulnerability, tho.
breakbars prevent cc’s from applying their effects, and I’d certainly prefer turrets being able to be blinded, slowed and chilled, but are able to receive boons in turn.

if they get a breakbar, it should be rather small, but with high regeneration, making sure that two dazes are enough to disable a turret, but blind / immob / cripple and chill can’t just wiggle it down, because these condis tend to stack for quite some high durations, if you don’t leave the fields pulsing them. Counterplay should be there, but it should involve more than just “let me put a smokefield here and laugh manically while your dmg stays on cd”.

I’m not giving the idea as something finished, obviously there must be a lot of balancing before something like that could be implemented.

The invulnerability, however, I think is a must.

If the turrets are dmg-able, DPS will be the prime counterplay AGAIN. They will insta melt because everyone will use their favorite zerker combo AS ALWAYS. The breakbar is a chance to change the play-field exactly because it would need the opponent to use CC instead of damage, something that is not common today.

There are lots of alternatives, of course. Maybe you can damage them once you break the bar, or they can have a lot more health than today…

IMO the simpler and sharper the mechanic, the better: turrets being counterplayed by CC would be a great addition to the game, IMO.