Guild Wars 2

Turrets have a number of issues with them currently that make them an unpopular choice. Ignoring bugs, they have a number of other drawbacks. While I’m sure that other people could think of some that I missed, here are what I feel the important ones are.

1) They do not scale with player stats other than condition damage in any way, shape, or form.
2) They are entirely immobile.
3) They are extremely easily destroyed.
4) They have significant cooldowns.

Here are some of my ideas on these drawbacks, how they could be addressed, and why some of them shouldn’t be addressed.

Drawback #1: They do not scale with player stats other than condition damage in any way, shape, or form.
Turrets should vary with all player stats, not just condition damage. However, this raises some issues. For example, Net Turret has frequent and reliable access to a 2 second stun, while rocket turret has frequent and reliable access to a knockdown. In their current state, they can be used alongside other abilities to lock down a single target. This is balanced out by their relative fragility. If these two turrets inherited player stats, then an engineer wearing PVT would be a force to be reckoned with.
My Idea:
Each turret could inherit a specific stat, with other stats being set to a baseline. Rifle Turret could inherit precision, Flame Turret could inherit condition damage, net turret could inherit condition duration, rocket turret could inherit power, and thumper turret could inherit toughness or vitality.

Drawback #2: They are entirely immobile.
Some people have suggested that they become mobile, and act like a necromancer’s minions. I dislike this idea, as I feel it detracts from the “feel” of the turrets.
My Idea:
Make a trait to replace all “Detonate Turret” toolbelt skills with “Relocate Turret” skills. Many people have suggested merging the reduced damage taken trait with the regenerate health trait; if that happened, then this trait could fill the new slot. Alternately, this could be a secondary effect of the deployable turrets trait in tools.

Drawback #3: They are extremely easily destroyed.
A number of people have suggested merging the reduced damage taken trait with the regenerate health trait. I support this fully. In addition, I think that turrets could use some flat buffs to their survival stats. I do not feel that this suggestion requires significant explanation.

Drawback #4: They have significant cooldowns.
This is most painful when seen in conjunction with drawback #2. I feel that the changes in #2 would help somewhat, but there are other changes I feel would be useful.
My Idea:
Give all turrets their current CD when destroyed, but give them all a CD of 10s + 1s per 5% of missing health. That way, a near-death turret would have roughly a 30s CD, which seems reasonable to me, while an engineer that creates a turret nest in a dungeon can keep up with the party.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the topic?

Sounds reasonable. They definitely need more survival.

Lessee. #1: I agree that this is a problem, as I’ve said many times – though, minor point, they do scale with Trait stats. Again, minor point. Moving on: Your solution is probably better than simply having all turrets scale to all stats. I like it.

#2: I agree that this is an issue, but I don’t think I really support the suggested solution. My own would probably be best summarized as ‘Treat them a bit like Warrior Banners, where they can be picked up and moved, as well as used to fight if necessary.’

#3: I definitely support merging Autotool Installation and Metal Plating, as well as buffing basic survival stats. Trait consolidation in general would be a massive boon to Turrets – it costs 60 Trait Points to get all Turret traits, which severely limits the amount of flexibility the Turret Engineer can be considered to exhibit.

#4: I agree that the cooldowns are somewhat exorbitant, and would like that type of cooldown method to in effect; it would also be quite nice to have a 20% cooldown reduction trait, but I doubt we’ll ever see that (partially due to the aforementioned massive point cost).

Some nice suggestions here. A shame no one at Arena Net will ever see it.

I just want to point out theres already a mechanic that lets you change the location of a turret without having to destroy it and wait on the unnecessarily long cooldown.

Walk over to it and Press F (or whatever your interact button is).

But sadly I think they goofed up when coding this, It only shaves off 25% of the cooldown. I think it was meant to reduce it TO 25% of the cooldown.
Of course I don’t really think that. That would be giving anet too much credit.

Infact, if they did exactly this, people would probably stop suggesting ways to increase mobility of turrets. Between all the “put wheels on them” and “teleport them” and “pick them up as bundles” its getting repetitive up in here.
Just improve the mechanic thats already in place to do this job.

If the rally gets their attention, they might realize that they need to pay attention to their playerbase – even the little parts. So they might look. Maybe. Well, no, probably not.

Improving the mechanic would just about solve the situation, but first they’d have to pay enough attention to us to realize that 100%/75% killed/picked up is not enough of a difference to really matter – even as a Turret specialist, I generally just Detonate my turrets because the difference is so minor (even the Thumper and Rocket, where the difference might actually matter a bit).

@Arkham Creed, Anymras regarding devs not paying attention
Just because devs don’t post here, don’t assume they don’t read here. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Being spiteful towards them just gives us a whiny and mopey appearance, which actually makes us less likely to get positive attention. I understand where you’re coming from, but you don’t need to be as cynical as you are.

@Anymras regarding #2
I don’t like the idea of another pick-up-able bundle being clustered around. To be honest, if my change to #4 was implemented, that would likely also solve #2 on its own. However, I feel the idea was at least worth posting.

@XelNigma
I somewhat agree, but I feel that like ranger spirits, all turrets should have the same CD. Yes, some are more valuable than others, but it’s the same with spirits. Additionally, if the CD was reduced to 25%, then some skilled engineers would abuse that by picking turrets up immediately before they died, thus having an absurdly low cooldown. That’s why I suggested scaling the cooldown on remaining health.

Sylentir.8913:

@Arkham Creed, Anymras regarding devs not paying attention
Just because devs don’t post here, don’t assume they don’t read here. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Being spiteful towards them just gives us a whiny and mopey appearance, which actually makes us less likely to get positive attention. I understand where you’re coming from, but you don’t need to be as cynical as you are.

You’re new here aren’t you? The developers ignoring us is a known fact. Heck they’ve even admitted, in so many words, that they don’t care about us. Colin, I believe it was, said that they were focusing on larger player demographics and engineers, along with charrs, are too small of a percentage to worry about. Add to that the fact that our threads can get tens of thousands of views and thumbs up and yet never see a dev response, or the fact that Arena Net insisted that our Scope trait was working as intended until someone posted about it in the PvP forums to force them to pay attention and it is pretty clear that Arena Net isn’t paying attention.

Arkham’s about hit the nail on the head – if they read here, then they certainly don’t show it. I’d remind about the Scope debacle to demonstrate…but he already did, so I don’t have to.
It’s worth noting, in addition, that there’d been probably at least one “Scope’s Broke” thread per month before somebody posted about it on the sPvP boards, where it proceeded to get a response within hours, though. Think this was 285 days into release, as that was the kittene, and it’d been broken since Beta.
In short: I’d apologize for seeming cynical, but I view it as being realistic, in light of prior experience. They’re always welcome to prove us wrong.

Arkham Creed.7358:

Sylentir.8913:

@Arkham Creed, Anymras regarding devs not paying attention
Just because devs don’t post here, don’t assume they don’t read here. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Being spiteful towards them just gives us a whiny and mopey appearance, which actually makes us less likely to get positive attention. I understand where you’re coming from, but you don’t need to be as cynical as you are.

You’re new here aren’t you? The developers ignoring us is a known fact. Heck they’ve even admitted, in so many words, that they don’t care about us. Colin, I believe it was, said that they were focusing on larger player demographics and engineers, along with charrs, are too small of a percentage to worry about. Add to that the fact that our threads can get tens of thousands of views and thumbs up and yet never see a dev response, or the fact that Arena Net insisted that our Scope trait was working as intended until someone posted about it in the PvP forums to force them to pay attention and it is pretty clear that Arena Net isn’t paying attention.

I’ve actually been here a while, thank you. I am aware of the comment regarding charrs, but if I recall correctly that was only with respect to aesthetics, not balance. Other professions don’t get dev comments either; we aren’t the only ones by far. I see your point on Scope.

The point I was trying to make is that being all spiteful and pessimistic does nothing. Whining about how the devs ignore us doesn’t make them more likely to notice us, and complaining about how we have issues doesn’t actually fix them.

Sylentir.8913:

The point I was trying to make is that being all spiteful and pessimistic does nothing. Whining about how the devs ignore us doesn’t make them more likely to notice us, and complaining about how we have issues doesn’t actually fix them.

Such is the reason for this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-first-annual-Hobo-sack-protest-rally/first

Just posting threads and hoping for the best also does nothing. I’m sorry to be the one to steal your rose tinted glasses, but if we want Arena Net to pay attention and address our issues then we’re going to have to make them pay attention. If this protest fails then we already have ideas to attempt to crash a server. If they keep ignoring us after that…well, we can always flood into and ruin every developer live stream.

Drawback #5 they are as stupid as all of the other AI pets in the game and often either miss their intended target entirely or aggro anything nearby.

tigirius.9014:

Drawback #5 they are as stupid as all of the other AI pets in the game and often either miss their intended target entirely or aggro anything nearby.

The upcoming balance patch will allegedly have them targeting the user’s target, which should be handy. Some of them will still miss often if they don’t improve projectile speeds (particularly Rocket and Net), but they’ll at least be more controlled.

Anymras.5729:

The upcoming balance patch will allegedly have them targeting the user’s target, which should be handy. Some of them will still miss often if they don’t improve projectile speeds (particularly Rocket and Net), but they’ll at least be more controlled.

Where did you get this info? I for one would be blown away if such a thing was true.

XelNigma.6315:

Anymras.5729:

The upcoming balance patch will allegedly have them targeting the user’s target, which should be handy. Some of them will still miss often if they don’t improve projectile speeds (particularly Rocket and Net), but they’ll at least be more controlled.

Where did you get this info? I for one would be blown away if such a thing was true.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1m1mut/upcoming_balance_patch_will_make_turrets_attack/

There’s a screenshot of Jon Peters outright saying it will happen.

Now you got my hopes up, not only for this but the potential that other parts of the turrets will be looked at. Dang you! I’m going to be so disappointed when this falls through.

1. Rifle Turret needs to pierce targets
Even when it will attack your target, it will just hit something un-intended if you are in a big fight.

2. Turrets need to be invuln for the first 5 seconds they spawn
In group fight scenarios (pvp,zergs) your turrests can explode the second you spawn them because of the amount of aoes being popped. Giving them a short invuln will allow them to dish out some damage before they get destroyed. (more base health needed as well ofc)
3. If you aren’t going to buff the dmg, condense them into a turret kit
The amount of damage they put out doesn’t justify them taking my whole utility bar when I could be using skills that actually allow me to survive.

In my view, Arenanet needs to take a good hard look at Turrets and fully commit to one design objective over another.

There are 2 ways that Turrets can be designed:

1. As Low cooldown, high DPS/CC entities with low uptime and that are highly disposable (Mesmer Phantasms, Necro Bone Minion)
2. As High cooldown, medium DPS/CC entities with high uptime (Thumper Turret, Necromancer minions that aren’t Bone Minion)

Right now Turrets are in this unhappy compromise between both of these conflicting design goals, and harmonising Turrets one way or another will finally bring closure to this problem. I believe that the rumoured change to Turrets targeting what the Engineer is targeting will force Arenanet’s hand one way or another; and this conversation will be important in deciding the fate of Turrets as we know them.

(Full disclosure: I personally believe that Turrets should be low CD, High DPS/CC, low uptime, fully disposable because this encourages active play, retains good mobility, and actual thought rather than setting up a Turret nest and camping away. I don’t want yet another MM Necro or Spirit Ranger build to see the light of day)

In my next few posts I’ll outline a possible design of turrets that could align with either of these design goals.

1. High cooldown, medium DPS/CC entities with high uptime
2. This design of Turrets would see cooldowns of Turrets raised significantly; i.e. we could probably see Rifle Turret CD being 40 or so seconds to justify their tanking capability and potential for good DPS over time.
3. This design goal could justify Turrets scaling with Player stats to reflect their damage and survivability; although we all know that if this were to be implemented, that tanky builds would emerge that rely on Turrets for CC and pressure.
4. This kind of design goal is especially sensitive to balance and can lead to overtuning. Leave durability too low and Turrets become useless, high CD utilities. But leave them too tanky and complaints about yet another “passive noskill build” will surface.

1. Low cooldown, high DPS/CC entitieis with low uptime
2. This design of Turrets would see cooldowns of Turrets be lowered significantly; i.e. we could probably see Rifle Turret CD being 15-20 or so seconds with high DPS potential
3. This design goal would likely implement turrets without player stat scaling, but flat health values that are relatively low so that something with such high DPS or CC pressure can be easily eliminated for counterplay. It is likely that something like this would have Turrets self-destructing after overcharge.
4. This kind of design goal is still sensitive to balance, however, balance is more easily granular because the flat HP values can be easily tweaked without regard to player scaling; as can DPS and CC. The most difficult aspect of balance for this design is getting the damage values and CC just right. Too low and Turrets become just another Phantasmal mage, but too high, and we get complaints, just like Phantasmal Duelist.

Anymras.5729:

tigirius.9014:

Drawback #5 they are as stupid as all of the other AI pets in the game and often either miss their intended target entirely or aggro anything nearby.

The upcoming balance patch will allegedly have them targeting the user’s target, which should be handy. Some of them will still miss often if they don’t improve projectile speeds (particularly Rocket and Net), but they’ll at least be more controlled.

I have a bad feeling they will completely remove the auto attack to closest target and almost certain our turrets won’t do anything anymore if you leave them out of your reach or if your target is simply out of range.

I realy hope I’m wrong on that one!

Ambrecombe.4398:

Anymras.5729:

tigirius.9014:

Drawback #5 they are as stupid as all of the other AI pets in the game and often either miss their intended target entirely or aggro anything nearby.

The upcoming balance patch will allegedly have them targeting the user’s target, which should be handy. Some of them will still miss often if they don’t improve projectile speeds (particularly Rocket and Net), but they’ll at least be more controlled.

I have a bad feeling they will completely remove the auto attack to closest target and almost certain our turrets won’t do anything anymore if you leave them out of your reach or if your target is simply out of range.

I realy hope I’m wrong on that one!

They’d probably need to remove the autoattack closest target thing, unless they managed to get a target priority list working, in which case we can look forward to this probably not working at all and the turrets trying to shoot us, somehow.

As for the range: Depending on how the turret designates your target, they might attack anything you so much as have highlighted (like, say, you click on it, or somebody marks it as a target and you press the ‘target marked’ button), regardless of range. You’d still have to pay attention to the turrets in order to know if an enemy was in range of them, but that could prove to be a very useful feature (particularly for ambushes and Turreteers who prefer to hang back).

The first characteristic is actually a strength not weakness. You can go full condi while your turrets also deal decent dmg. The point for turrets are for you to go condi and have them as support direct dmg. If you change that mechanic then full condi engi’s dmg will be kitten (supposed that you use condi/turrets build — which I’m using and it works amazingly fine).

Personally I would remove the +HP trait (merge it baseline), and let the +regen trait scale with Compassion.

Sylentir.8913:

Drawback #1: They do not scale with player stats other than condition damage in any way, shape, or form.
Turrets should vary with all player stats, not just condition damage. However, this raises some issues. For example, Net Turret has frequent and reliable access to a 2 second stun, while rocket turret has frequent and reliable access to a knockdown. In their current state, they can be used alongside other abilities to lock down a single target. This is balanced out by their relative fragility. If these two turrets inherited player stats, then an engineer wearing PVT would be a force to be reckoned with.

Well you could try to technicaly make all turrets scale with every single stats you are using, take for instance how Phantasm works for the mesmer. You can either choose to make them take some blows before they die with high Vitality or Toughness or make them pure glasscanons with High condition damage or Power/crit build. Only issue comes from the fact Turrets are Structures and not NPCs, and I believe they only share the basic Health/Armor and nothing else. You would say but they share condi and healing power. Yes and no, those are based on condition wich your turret apply but wich you are the source from. Wich is why I think they can scale from those stats.

Sylentir.8913:

Drawback #2: They are entirely immobile.
Some people have suggested that they become mobile, and act like a necromancer’s minions. I dislike this idea, as I feel it detracts from the “feel” of the turrets.
My Idea:
Make a trait to replace all “Detonate Turret” toolbelt skills with “Relocate Turret” skills. Many people have suggested merging the reduced damage taken trait with the regenerate health trait; if that happened, then this trait could fill the new slot. Alternately, this could be a secondary effect of the deployable turrets trait in tools.

I think removing all our combo explosion isn’t a solution, they should reward us instead for keeping our turrets alive and blowing them up after an extended period of time. Just remove the “F” fonction and reduce the cooldown of your turrets by 100% of the time they remained deployed when you use Self-Destruct. This way you reward people for keeping their turrets alive and you finaly make Healing Turret more than just a healing grenade. And you also punish people for bad turret manadgement wich give an inscitive to learn to play more effectively.

Sylentir.8913:

Drawback #3: They are extremely easily destroyed.
A number of people have suggested merging the reduced damage taken trait with the regenerate health trait. I support this fully. In addition, I think that turrets could use some flat buffs to their survival stats. I do not feel that this suggestion requires significant explanation.

I wouldn’t say easely destroyed, it will always take some time to get them down unless you fight champions, but again a hit taken by one of your turrets is a hit my allies won’t have to take. The real trouble are AoEs and cleaves (and the hitbox doesn’t help either), I feel turrets should at least have some more pro-active defenses against AoEs when you trait for them.

I had an idea to help Turrets against AoEs, by giving metal plating an pro-active ability that makes your turret pre-invulnerable for a short amount of time (3-5sec) whenever those get strucked by an AoE (with a 20-25sec CD, for each single turrets). With the buff beeing pre-active it could be used as a safe shield against direct damage AoE and give you time to self destruct them against lingering AoE effects, allowing you with my idea above to recover a good chunk of your cooldowns and deploy them shortly after in combat.

I also feel Autotool Installation could use a tweak, but instead of merging it with Metal plating I would merge it with Powerwrench (keep it in invention), increase its base effect to 4% health every 3sec, and increase that amount by 50%-100% when your Wrench is equiped. Making you a repair specialist and giving a real synergy between Turrets + Wrench and not a clunky design that force you to go melee with your turrets whenever you watch your ennemies cleaving them down while you desperatly try to keep them alive. The current wrench is just counter productive…

Sylentir.8913:

Drawback #4: They have significant cooldowns.
This is most painful when seen in conjunction with drawback #2. I feel that the changes in #2 would help somewhat, but there are other changes I feel would be useful.
My Idea:
Give all turrets their current CD when destroyed, but give them all a CD of 10s + 1s per 5% of missing health. That way, a near-death turret would have roughly a 30s CD, which seems reasonable to me, while an engineer that creates a turret nest in a dungeon can keep up with the party.

I don’t understand this part of your sugestion, what are you trying to explain?

DavyMcB.1603:

The first characteristic is actually a strength not weakness. You can go full condi while your turrets also deal decent dmg. The point for turrets are for you to go condi and have them as support direct dmg. If you change that mechanic then full condi engi’s dmg will be kitten (supposed that you use condi/turrets build — which I’m using and it works amazingly fine).

As a Turret-user from 5-80 and onward, I…have to disagree. I’ll go ahead and explain my reasoning on that.

• The first characteristic prevents, in particular, the Thumper Turret and non-Overcharged Rifle Turret from being able to deal as much damage as many of the other choices available. As these are the only two damaging Turrets which deal no Condition Damage, I’ll leave it at that.

• If the point of Turrets is for the user to go full condition, then why are the turret traits in lines that give: Power/Condition Duration, Toughness/Healing Power, and TBRR/Critical Damage? Lore? Turrets actually benefit from Trait points, so if the purpose of them is to be direct damage to supplement the user’s condition damage…it seems awful strange for a dedicated, full Turret build to include (without spending the last ten points) only one Condition-related stat. Even the Minor Grandmaster trait, which would be picked up on the way to Rifled Turret Barrels, is a Power increase.

• ‘If turrets are allowed to scale to all stats, full condition engineers’ damage will be kittened.’
  Right, because allowing Turrets to scale to Power and Precision would reduce the Condition Damage and Duration of the Rifle Turret’s Overcharge, Flame and Rocket Turrets’ Burning. Even if they reduce the base numbers to accommodate for a greater range of scaling stats, there wouldn’t be a problem, because the condition damage would continue to scale. Maybe you’d end up wearing Carrion to really pump as much Power and CDa into your Turrets instead of Dire or whatever you’re wearing now; I’m sure the damage output would do nothing but improve.

• Currently, no other build that I am aware of requires such a counterintuitive combination of traits and gear to be effective as a full 60-Point Turret build. As I note above, the Turret traits are placed in such a way as to suggest Toughness, Healing Power, and Power as primary stats, in that order, using the stat bonuses accrued in the process as a guide (+300 Toughness, +300 Healing Power, +230 Power, +20% Condition Duration, +10% TBRR, +10% Critical Damage). To get the most out of the Condition Damage effects of Turrets, you need Condition Damage gear – because gearing in a way that matches the traits does nothing for any Turret but the Healing Turret.

In short: Scaling to stats could be what makes Turrets capable of being just as effective as Kits in the hands of a skilled user (as much as I’d like to say they are, they just aren’t, due to lack of scaling), and encourage both actually building to use them and using them at all, if the prospective user would prefer to gear up in a way that dovetails sensibly with the massive trait investment…you know, like just about any other build I’ve ever heard about does.

(Because I had nothing better to do and I was curious, I decided to see what a full Cleric Turret Build would look like, as Cleric is the only HP/To/Po gearset. Unfortunately, you’ll have to imagine the Turrets scaling, but here’s what that would look like – gets eaten alive by Conditions, but hits hard and brushes off direct damage:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqyUnsSbF17IxoCMO0jEb4F/RBbpLA-jwCB4hChZRFRjtIEouBp6BqACr6Ct8CUNjIqWZDzeuIa1A-e )

Ambre: With Drawback #4, he’s suggesting…hm. Lessee. I’ll try to explain by example: Let’s say you’re using a Rifle Turret. If it gets destroyed, regular 20-second cooldown, but if you use Pick Up, it would change the cooldown according to how much health it had – from 10 seconds with 100% to 29 seconds with <5%.
I imagine there’s some ironing-out that would need to occur, given that, in the example I just gave, the Rifle Turret would be better detonated than retrieved after 55% of its HP was lost.

Anymras.5729:

Ambre: With Drawback #4, he’s suggesting…hm. Lessee. I’ll try to explain by example: Let’s say you’re using a Rifle Turret. If it gets destroyed, regular 20-second cooldown, but if you use Pick Up, it would change the cooldown according to how much health it had – from 10 seconds with 100% to 29 seconds with <5%.
I imagine there’s some ironing-out that would need to occur, given that, in the example I just gave, the Rifle Turret would be better detonated than retrieved after 55% of its HP was lost.

Oh, ok I understand now! But I prefere my own idea! XD

Sylentir.8913:

Drawback #4: They have significant cooldowns.
This is most painful when seen in conjunction with drawback #2. I feel that the changes in #2 would help somewhat, but there are other changes I feel would be useful.
My Idea:
Give all turrets their current CD when destroyed, but give them all a CD of 10s + 1s per 5% of missing health. That way, a near-death turret would have roughly a 30s CD, which seems reasonable to me, while an engineer that creates a turret nest in a dungeon can keep up with the party.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the topic?

I think that this mechanic is too intransparent; although mathematically sound. One must take into account that we cannot see the actual number for HP of turrets; never mind other players. To implement such a mechanic would introduce a lot of confusion and you can bet there’ll be more than a few threads created in response if such a change was to be implemented asking how it actually works.

In addition, given the hitboxes of turrets at current, it is highly likely that turrets will be taking a lot of incidental damage due to the overabundance of AoE in this game. The mechanic of increasing CD to %missing health on pickup will punish Engineers for deploying turrets where they are needed most – in the thick of combat. Indeed, picking up a turret in a “clutch” manner is actually punishing as the CD is increased. Past a certain point (50 % HP) the CD increases; so you may as well let it die or just detonate it. That doesn’t encourage clutch turret saves at all.

Anyway, the easiest way to make picking up turrets rewarding is to simply further decrease the CD of turrets when they are picked up from 25% to more than that; perhaps 50%.

Alternatively, a trait can be introduced that rewards pickup of turrets to grant an extra utility to the Toolbelt ability; like adding 1 second of Daze to Surprise Shot after picking up Rifle Turret, for example; or adding a Fire Field to Throw Napalm after picking up the Flame Turret; or making Regenerating Mist cleanse a condition after picking up the Healing Turret.

My point is that whilst %health or %missing health triggers are mathematically sound, understanding them requires mathematical analysis and thought that adds needless complexity to the game while not adding any depth.

I don’t see a problem with turrets being mobile like the spirits of the ranger. In fact I think it’s stupid to have the utility ones be stationary without the option to make them mobile! It would be a huge improvement especially to the lore to make them mobile and when I say lore, I mean how nowhere in the actual game do our skills as an engineer actually come in handy. We can’t repair walls or WvW machinery, we can’t heal the large seige engine stuff etc etc.

I’ll enumerate what should be done to turrets to make them high damage, low cooldown, low uptime % .

The goal here is to make them fully disposable gadgets, like Mesmer Phantasms: highly fragile, but with high damage potential if left unchecked.

At the same time, they can be put down and left to die if necessary. However, mechanics should also be in place to encourage players to save their turret, if only to ensure that the turret damage or CC gets through. The sort of play this encourages should be relatively mobile, and require tactical thinking on the fly as to where to place these immobile utility machines to get the most out of them. I’ll start with the skills themselves and how they can be rebalanced to fit the goal.

Rifle Turret

• Damage: 476
• Rate of Fire: 2 seconds
• Range: 1000
• 20% projectile finisher
• Cooldown: 20 seconds
• HP @ level 80: 7470

Overcharge: Automatic Fire

• Rate of fire increase: 50%
• Bleeding: 3 seconds
• Duration: 10 seconds
• Adds piercing to shots

In a way, the Rifle Turret’s patches have made it disposable already. I like to think of it as a Projectile finisher per 10 seconds, and a Blast finisher per 20 seconds. The key is to make me want to keep it on the field, and the key is utility ; whilst keeping enough disposability that losing it is no skin off my nose.

Changes I’d make:

• Damage: the same, 476
• Rate of Fire: 1.5 seconds
• Range: the same, 1000
• 100% projectile finisher
• Inflicts 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 8 seconds (potential for 10.6 stacks of Vulnerability)
• Cooldown: 20 seconds (still)
• Self destructs after 12 seconds
• Pickup recharge: 10 seconds
• HP @level 80: 5000

I think that the Engineer has already too much RNG, from Projectile finishers to Elixirs to Traits. Turret builds also suffer from a massive overabundance of Blast Finishers, while having too few of any others, and a dearth of combo fields. The Vulnerability, although relatively low, peaks at 10-11 stacks at full duration, and sticks for 8 seconds before starting to fall off again if not cleansed. The HP is lowered to compensate for the increase in DPS potential thanks to Vulnerability, and self destruct at 12 seconds to ensure less than 100% uptime even if picked up; although picking it up grants a big reward of 50% CDR.

Overcharge: Automatic Fire

• Increases fire rate to 1 shot per 0.75 seconds (50% increase)
• Inflicts Cripple for 2 seconds with each shot
• Shots bounce between 3 targets (instead of piercing)
• 25% more damage per shot (total 75% increase in DPS on overcharge factoring in firing rate)
• Overcharge duration: 4 seconds
• Turret is invulnerable during Overcharge
• Turret self-destructs after overcharge

Here, the intention of Overcharge is to give a little counterplay to Turrets being cleaved down; whilst ensuring their destruction after giving an enhanced performance. Making shots bounce between 3 targets turns Rifle Turret into something with mini AoE potential; and its 100% combo finisher status ensures the application of useful effects when used in concert with Combo Fields. The power of Overcharge is balanced out by forcing the turret’s self-destruct, which means full 20 second cooldown. At the same time, picking up the turret gives 50% CDR which allows picking up the turret to give a better reward for time invested. To really minmax things, you can Overcharge just before the turret times out and get even more Vulnerability stacks.

Since the Turret now has less than 100% uptime, the Toolbelt ability must now also be more compelling because you will be caught at times without your CDs.

Surprise Shot
Fire a bullet out of your belt.
Damage: 122
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1,000
Cooldown: 10 seconds

is now:
Surprise Shot
Damage: 122
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1000
Cooldown: 10 seconds
Daze: 1 second

People underestimate the power of Daze for interrupting channels or long animations. Having a 10 second CD Daze off the GCD essentially gives you a mini stunbreaker that can interrupt 100b or Earthshaker, for example; or prevent that stomp. It’s also Surprising. Hence the name.

i’d like turrets to target what i’m targeting.
i’d also like if i could move the turrets like ritualist spirits.

On #2 i earlier came up with this:

When we pick up a turret, have it show as a “charge” on the boon line, allowing us to redeploy it somewhere else. Also, while we have said charge the toolbelt skill remains in its detonate form. If so used, the explosion will be centered on the engineer.

Hrm, would I be the only one who’d hate “short term turrets”?

I want a firebase. That’d be the unique thing about them after all. Plus enough have played Team Fortress 2, it’d be intuitive.

Carighan.6758:

Hrm, would I be the only one who’d hate “short term turrets”?

I want a firebase. That’d be the unique thing about them after all. Plus enough have played Team Fortress 2, it’d be intuitive.

Sure, works fine for SPVP and WVW defense. But in PVE you have to keep picking them up or blowing them up (if they survive that long) because the fights move around so much.

digiowl.9620:

Carighan.6758:

Hrm, would I be the only one who’d hate “short term turrets”?

I want a firebase. That’d be the unique thing about them after all. Plus enough have played Team Fortress 2, it’d be intuitive.

Sure, works fine for SPVP and WVW defense. But in PVE you have to keep picking them up or blowing them up (if they survive that long) because the fights move around so much.

That’s why I wanted the ability to easily relocate them, or for them to have the 10s cooldown if at full health. That way, you can set up a firebase, but when the party moves on, you can keep up.