Guild Wars 2

The majority of engineers out there, myself included, believe that the turrets are simply too fragile, too weak, and on such a long cool down that there’s really no point in using turrets. After some consideration, I already do plenty of damage as an engineer and I really don’t care for turrets that output damage, especially with how fragile they are.

The reasoning behind my rework theory is to bring the engineer up to par with Guardians’ boons, making Engineers a viable substitute to the so called ‘God-tier’ class, and hopefully rid the stigma of engineers being a negative impact to a party.

Without further adieu:

General Rework
All Turrets

• Turrets have increased health. Turrets scale with Engineer’s toughness.
• Turrets take 50% less damage from all damaging Area of Effect abilities.
• Turrets’ Tool belt Skills now mimic their respective overcharge skills.
• All Turrets produce a combo field for 1.5s on each burst.
• Picking up a turret reduces it’s cool down by half.
• Tool belt skills are all on a 25 second cool down.
• Overcharged skills are all on a 10 second cool down

UI

• Turrets now deploy using the Function Keys (F1-F4).
• Turrets still detonate using the Function Keys (F1-F4).
• Turrets’ tool belt skills now use their respective utility slots (6-0).
• Turrets’ Overcharged skills replace their respective utility slots (6-0)

Turrets
Healing Turret

• Deployed: Heals you briefly, and grants 8s of Regeneration. Regeneration every burst.
• Burst cool-down: 12s.
• Overcharged Ability: Supplies a burst of healing and clears all conditions.
• Toolbelt Ability: Grants regeneration and clears 1 condition from nearby allies close to the engineer
• Combo Field: Water
• Blast Combo: Area Healing

Might Turret

• Replaces the Flame Turret
• Deployed: Grants 2 stacks of Might every burst
• Burst Cooldown: 4s
• Overcharged Ability: A ring of fire ignites from the turret’s location, burning targets for 2s (1468 damage)
• Toolbelt Ability: Ignites a single target, burning target for 2s in range of the engineer (1950 damage)
• Combo Field: Fire
• Blast Combo: Area Might

Stability Turret

• Replaces the Rifle Turret
• Deployed: Provides 3s of Stability every burst
• Burst Cooldown: 6s
• Overcharged Ability: knocks down (3s duration) all targets around the turret, interrupting attacks.
• Toolbelt Ability: Knocks down current target in range of the engineer (2s duration)
• Combo Field: Electricity
• Blast Combo: Area Swiftness

Protection Turret

• Replaces the Thumper Turret
• Higher Health Turret
• Deployed: Provides 5s of Protection every burst
• Burst Cooldown: 10s
• Overcharged Ability: Knocks back and creates a reflection dome around the turret for 4s.
• Toolbelt Ability: Creates a small wall of reflection in front of the engineer.
• Combo Field: Light
• Blast Combo: Area Retaliation

Fury Turret

• Replaces the Rocket Turret
• Deployed: Provides 4s of Fury every burst
• Burst Cooldown: 8s
• Overcharged Ability: Converts 3 random boons on enemies into conditions.
• Toolbelt Ability: Converts 1 random boon on an enemy into a condition.
• Combo Field: Ethereal
• Blast Combo: Area Chaos Armor

Frost Turret

• Replaces the Net Turret
• Deployed: provides 3s of Chilled every burst
• Burst Cooldown: 5s
• Overcharged Ability: Immobilizes enemies around the turret for 3s.
• Toolbelt Ability: Immobilizes a single target for 2s
• Combo Field: Ice
• Blast Combo: Area Frost Armor

Elite Skills
Quickness Turret

• Fragile Turret
• Deployed: Provides 2s of quickness to surrounding allies every burst
• Burst Cooldown: 4s
• Overcharged Ability: Detonates Quickness Turret to provide 2s of additional Quickness.
• Toolbelt Ability: None
• Combo Field: None
• Blast Combo: None

Supply Drop

• Supply drop does not drop a Protection Turret as a part of it’s random drop.
• Supply drop does not drop a Quickness Turret as a part of it’s random drop.

Traits
Inventions

• Replaced Rifled Turret Barrels [Trait XII] with Turret Refinement. Turret Refinement automatically uses a turret’s overcharged ability when it is deployed. Overcharged Ability goes on immediate cool down. This works in conjunction with Supply Drop

Alchemy

• Replaced Cleaning Formula (409) [Trait X] with Mechanical Optimization. Mechanical Optimization Reduces the Burst cool down of turrets by .25s for every turret that is currently deployed. This works in conjunction with Supply Drop
• Traitline reworked to support turrets using Boon Duration.

I’m looking for comments, concerns, critiques. This theory isn’t perfectly developed, so there will be some flaws and issues. If there’s anything you want me to explain my reasoning behind, ask away.

If there’s anything you feel is WAY out of balance and over or under powered, please make your suggestions here.

Thanks.

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

If they suck, it’s because they don’t scale well enough, are too fragile, buggy in terms of AI and traits, and immobile with long cooldowns.

You guys and Anet can do what you like with turrets. But I better still have some way of casting Surprise Shot!

Personally I think they really need turrets to attack the target the engineer is attacking. Also reducing damage from AoE needs to be done. Personally the boon spiking engineer build I just posted fills the role.

I thought of the idea of giving turrets boons when the last patch came out, albeit less eloquently than what AuRiley has written. It was more along the lines of well, since our turrets’ boons benefit from our stats, why don’t any of our turrets (except for healing) give any boons? The patch note should have said “fixed healing turret bug” because that’s all it did.

I think that the turret selection in the OP is quite nice, it would make me want to actually take those terrible toasters. If the weaker boons (might and regen) get constant stacks (like for great justice does with might) I can very well see a use for engineers in top notch dungeon runs.

Anymras.5729:

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

The OP suggestion for turrets includes having them as secondary methods of attacks (look at the overcharges he included). In fact, what the OP suggests would involve the engineers activating our turrets’ attacks, which would finally give us more control over the bloody toasters.

Since the overcharges turn the turrets’ only attack into an aoe, it will make it easier to use the turrets to attack a specific target. No longer will we need to watch as our rifle turret tries to attack broken wall traps as we get stomped by champs. Maybe we’ll even get some use out of the things when we attack dragons.

I can also see that by giving the turrets combo fields we would actually be torn between keeping area boons going, or blowing turrets up for the quick combos.

All in all this has been the best turret suggestion I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s a shame the it’ll take too much work to implement and that if it didn’t the devs would still ignore it because of how they deal with the community’s suggestions on class issues

I wouldn’t mind if they added boon turrets apart from what we already have. I mean, we are in definite need of stability.
But what I would like to see first is another direct damage turret, like the rifle turret and rocket turret. For the way I play, no thanks for flame and thumper, even if they have their uses..

JohnDied.3476:

Anymras.5729:

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

The OP suggestion for turrets includes having them as secondary methods of attacks (look at the overcharges he included). In fact, what the OP suggests would involve the engineers activating our turrets’ attacks, which would finally give us more control over the bloody toasters.

And then we either lose our turret toolbelt skills or our ability to detonate turrets, in exchange for being able to apply boons with them. I think turrets need work, yes, but I don’t think they need to be replaced.

So… do I want control over my turret, or do I want a glorified throw mine. With the kitten AI (how can a turret placed directly below claw or jormag not attack), they may as well be visible/killable mines.

Who needs a re-work when turrets can provide you with a helmet as epic as this?

Anymras.5729:

JohnDied.3476:

Anymras.5729:

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

The OP suggestion for turrets includes having them as secondary methods of attacks (look at the overcharges he included). In fact, what the OP suggests would involve the engineers activating our turrets’ attacks, which would finally give us more control over the bloody toasters.

And then we either lose our turret toolbelt skills or our ability to detonate turrets, in exchange for being able to apply boons with them. I think turrets need work, yes, but I don’t think they need to be replaced.

I would definitely take near constant protection/fury/swiftness for an entire group without traiting for it, over a toaster’s measly damage (with buggy AI).

Also, the OP never took the detonate function out. The suggestion in fact made it more appealing to detonate any turret by adding combo fields to them.

Anymras.5729:

And then we either lose our turret toolbelt skills or our ability to detonate turrets, in exchange for being able to apply boons with them. I think turrets need work, yes, but I don’t think they need to be replaced.

Actually you lose neither. You still maintain the ability to detonate all turrets, and use toolbelt skills associated with the turrets. The difference is, each turret has their own combo field, so doing the detonation combo with the healing turret could apply to all turrets under this proposition. The turrets then have an expansive use making it worth occupying a utility slot for, even if you only use one turret in a utility slot.

However, I do hear that some of you would like to maintain a more offensive side of the turrets. I could possibly do this by adding damage to the turrets’ tool belt abilities. However, the tool kit/overcharge abilities currently provide a large degree of utility, which I believe engineers to be the masters of (or should be the masters of) enemy control and area denial. Turrets could provide an amazing synergy between almost all kits when you think about it. Especially with Deployable Turrets and my new Turret Refinement trait, you can seriously mess a good fight for the enemy with a turret engineer under these changes.

AuRiley.5287:

Anymras.5729:

And then we either lose our turret toolbelt skills or our ability to detonate turrets, in exchange for being able to apply boons with them. I think turrets need work, yes, but I don’t think they need to be replaced.

Actually you lose neither. You still maintain the ability to detonate all turrets, and use toolbelt skills associated with the turrets. The difference is, each turret has their own combo field, so doing the detonation combo with the healing turret could apply to all turrets under this proposition. The turrets then have an expansive use making it worth occupying a utility slot for, even if you only use one turret in a utility slot.

However, I do hear that some of you would like to maintain a more offensive side of the turrets. I could possibly do this by adding damage to the turrets’ tool belt abilities. However, the tool kit/overcharge abilities currently provide a large degree of utility, which I believe engineers to be the masters of (or should be the masters of) enemy control and area denial. Turrets could provide an amazing synergy between almost all kits when you think about it. Especially with Deployable Turrets and my new Turret Refinement trait, you can seriously mess a good fight for the enemy with a turret engineer under these changes.

How, precisely? If the toolbelt skills – abort sentence, went back, reread first post. Now I understand part of how this is supposed to work. My bad on that.

I still prefer the way turrets work, instead of turning them into boon dispensers, though they do need improvement. Maybe if there was some sort of low-level incorporation of boons into current turrets (alongside other improvements), I’d like that better, but as it is, I’d just rather my turrets do things directly.

I LOVE the changes that you posted here. Turrets need a buff badly, they need to scale with us and the AI needs to not target them immediately so that i can have the turrets for more than 4 seconds during a fight. i love the idea of being able to cast the turrets with f1-f4.

Anymras.5729:

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

If they suck, it’s because they don’t scale well enough, are too fragile, buggy in terms of AI and traits, and immobile with long cooldowns.

This sums up my thoughts pretty well. I don’t want mobile boon dispensers, I want turrets. I like turrets as they are. They could certainly use improvement, but I want them to continue to function like they do now. Not become something else entirely like boon dispensers (or kits, as many people seem to keep suggesting).

Now, they could ADD stationary boon dispensers as brand new Engineer utilities. I’m sure they will eventually add more utilities into the game. That’d be pretty nice, though it might step on Ranger Spirits a bit, since thats pretty much exactly what those are and boon dispensers as you outline would be much, much better than current Ranger spirits.

But removing turrets as they are and replacing them with something completely different would be bad.

My biggest issue is that in order for turrets to be effective, they either have to be extremely fragile (like they are now) or extremely weak DPS-wise. They’re currently both right now, but if you raise the damage, they’ll still go down in a matter of two hits. You’ll never be able to use the over-charge ability because they simply won’t last that long.
Raise the health, and then you have to have a drop off in damage, which make turrets amount to a little more than immobile cannon fodder, forcing engineers to rather use abilities that deal damage. It’s just the nature of balancing the potential of an engineer who can drop four, plus the three or so turrets from supply drop.

I’m curious, though. Would changing the overcharged/toolbelt abilities to pure offensive abilities be more appealing to those who wouldn’t want to see turrets be complete boon turrets?

Anymras.5729:

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

If they suck, it’s because they don’t scale well enough, are too fragile, buggy in terms of AI and traits, and immobile with long cooldowns.

So if they suck it’s because of everything about them. Got it.

Grackleflint.4956:

Anymras.5729:

I happen to like turrets as they are – secondary methods of attack. Replacing all turrets with boon dispensers would leave people like me, who use turrets because they like turrets, going “Well, great, I guess I’m Boony McBoon, the Boon Booner.”

If they suck, it’s because they don’t scale well enough, are too fragile, buggy in terms of AI and traits, and immobile with long cooldowns.

So if they suck it’s because of everything about them. Got it.

It’s because they’re badly-balanced, probably as a result of being able to have up to four persistent turrets per engineer, with up to four more for about a minute every time Supply Crate is cast.

If you actually consider it, it’s not really all that surprising that they’re one of the worst-balanced aspects of the Engineer, or on the underpowered side – having a class with the ability to summon up to four durable, mobile pets simultaneously, with varying effects ranging from a constant regen effect to nets, flames, rockets, bullets or shockwaves, scaling dynamically with their gear, would be a trifle ridiculous, especially if they could be resummoned at the drop of a hat.

That said: Again, I prefer my turrets to attack things, instead of be boon dispensers. I’d only be perfectly fine with them being boon dispensers if LoreChief’s customizable turret pet idea were adopted.

As far as the idea of changing the overcharge/toolbelt abilities to pure offensive abilities goes: I’d still rather have a turret that just hurts things consistently during its time on the field instead of having a turret that only hurts things when it’s either not on the field at all (toolbelt skills), not on cooldown (overcharge) or detonating.

If they rebalance turrets entirely, including a rework of the AI, and they simply can’t bring them up to par with the rest of the class at all, then I will like this idea, simply because at that point it will be obvious that they can’t be balanced properly and need to be replaced. Until then, I’d rather just have my Rifle, Flame, Thumper, Rocket, Net and Healing Turrets.

This is an interesting idea, but I personally would like to keep the current turrets, but increase their survivability, resuability, and damage. They especially need to crit/scale with your attributes. I think if they do all these things turrets can be a force to reckon with.