Guild Wars 2

Alright ANET, I will say I understand completely the need to NERF turrets for PVP, I play PVP,WvWvW/PvE all fairly equally. I enjoy Turret Engi’s, usually main my Mesmer or Warrior for PvP as I like to wander. They were a nuisance to play against, but I usually just left them to their own devices (literally).

The problem is, Turrets do no work anywhere any more. Fully specced into Turrets survivability and they melt in seconds in PvE, they can be positioned well enough in PvP but still not enough survivability and damage output/attack speed to warrant their cool down, and in WvW a single necromancer destroys most turrets in seconds when defending a point.

Turrets taking criticals are great, that’s a good change, it makes sense. But they do not have the sustainability to survive any sort of condition. I know folks want to try and have their builds be effective against all, but that’s simply unreasonable. There will always be counters, that’s the point to creating and testing builds. Turrets countered condition (or should have), high aoe damage/aoe criticals counter turrets (or should have), close range burst counters aoe, etc.

Have anyone else tried using Turret builds since patch? How are their experiences? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

There are some people who would have you believe otherwise, but turret builds are, in fact, not viable at all anymore. I think the most glaring fault with the change is exactly this part:

Fully specced into Turrets survivability and they melt in seconds in PvE

A lot of people only think of the sPvP environment because “lol E-Sports”, but this is not the only game mode. Turrets have always struggled in PvE, but when you have 5-6 traits completely dedicated to them and they die as easily as they do now against PvE mobs? That’s ridiculous.

Edit: And the only time turrets are useful outside of their “place and blast finisher” style of play is if you take at least half of the turret traits, but you really need all of them to even hope for them to be effective. End edit.

There are numerous threads outlining potential changes Anet could make to make turrets not useless anymore, but chances of them actually implementing anything soon is very unlikely.

That’s nothing.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_%28PvP%29

Now THAT was a nerf.

What we saw here was a temporary measure to solve an annoying problem that had no other fast solution.

Engineers have lots of other options, so they can use those in the meantime, while they come up with better solutions for turret abuse.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Engineers have lots of other options, so they can use those in the meantime, while they come up with better solutions for turret abuse.

They do, but bunker is no longer one of them.

I did fine with turret engineer in pvp yesterday.

Turrets are hurting big-time in WvW… even with metal plating, autotool installation, and power wrench swinging constantly, they can’t stay up for very long at all when supporting a zerg or defending a tower. So yes, they are now in-line with spirit weapons, and minions melting so fast. I guess everything is working as intended.

I didn’t even notice this… wtf how do turrets bleed?

Almost no minions or summons last very long in any game mode. I’d say they’re in line with most other summons now.

You seriously couldn’t just put this in one of the many threads already open on this? Like, you don’t even have to search. You just pull up the Engineer or PvP forums and BAM! It’s there.

Anets policy appears to be “no fun allowed”.

As a new player I wasn’t expecting to have entered into a game where time-gating and downgrades to mediocrity were basic MO. Dungeon tokens were nerfed before I got here, drops for cool looking MF stuff, builds gone to satisfy crying PvPers as if PvE doesn’t exist. For competitive games I play actual competitive games. Having PvP-side nerfs seems like the best way to go about this imo.

GW2’s legacy from what I can see is:

1. Fun/ez to get – timegate!! nerf farming!! make it artificially difficult!!

2. Build works quite well in PvE but no meta counter in PvP yet – ruin build!! E-Sport MLG Gosu Gamers play GW2, they do!!!!

3. Dare I say it.. (insert thing) translates to decent gold? – Nerf for the love of gems!

I wasn’t here for the good old days and I’m not certain if any are ahead of this game. The nerf/fun ratio (for PvE) seems in favor of migrating to a different mmo. I’m in beta for HoT I hope it has signs of improvement. I don need instant gratification, but I dont like how time gating makes the version of the game better for everyone before me and I dont like how PvP can’t be separate from the kick back experience I want from PvE ( and I do play both PvP and PvE for the record and engies have never bothered me).

MiniEquine.6014:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Engineers have lots of other options, so they can use those in the meantime, while they come up with better solutions for turret abuse.

They do, but bunker is no longer one of them.

Engineer bunker never relied on Turrets to begin with, at least not at any competitive level. In fact Turrets were almost never used at a competitive level at all.

If anything Engineer will be even better bunkers once the Trait changes come in.

MiniEquine.6014:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Engineers have lots of other options, so they can use those in the meantime, while they come up with better solutions for turret abuse.

They do, but bunker is no longer one of them.

As Ezekel said, popular high-end bunker build wasn’t turrets, it was always either a double kit condi w/bomb kit or a decap build. Preventing damage altogether with knockbacks, blinds and Gear Shield was always seen as more preferable to the support turrets provided.

turrets all they needed was to be affected by condies so condi build users could actually counter them but making them critable destroyed them when you consider crit damage % can easily go up to 300%

Rezzet.3614:

turrets all they needed was to be affected by condies so condi build users could actually counter them but making them critable destroyed them when you consider crit damage % can easily go up to 300%

No, it can’t.

The highest it can go is 200%.

Ezekel.6394:

Rezzet.3614:

turrets all they needed was to be affected by condies so condi build users could actually counter them but making them critable destroyed them when you consider crit damage % can easily go up to 300%

No, it can’t.

The highest it can go is 200%.

200% still means crits will deal 3 times more damage on turrets wich makes them Ridiculously easy to kill.

where does it state the cap is at 200% by the way ?

Rezzet.3614:

Ezekel.6394:

Rezzet.3614:

turrets all they needed was to be affected by condies so condi build users could actually counter them but making them critable destroyed them when you consider crit damage % can easily go up to 300%

No, it can’t.

The highest it can go is 200%.

200% still means crits will deal 3 times more damage on turrets wich makes them Ridiculously easy to kill.

where does it state the cap is at 200% by the way ?

It’s a soft cap, 1045 ferocity is what most people will max out at with full ascended gear and 6 points in the trait line that give Ferocity (though Banner of Discipline and a couple of Axe traits can increase it further) at level 80, it takes 15 points of Ferocity to raise crit damage by 1%, and the base is 150%, so most you can reach entirely with gear and ferocity trait line is about 220%

Also, Crit Damage is the total damage done when you crit, not the extra damage dealt. I.E. if your Crit damage stat is 180%, that means an attack that normally does 1000 damage will do 1800 damage when you crit, not 2800.

I should also mention that 1045 is PvE only, in sPvP the most ferocity you can get is 950, with 650 coming from either an Assassin’s or Cavalier’s amulet (PvP Zerk amulet only gives 451) and 300 coming from 6 points in a Ferocity trait line, that will give you a pre-banner/axe traits cap of about 212%, 200% even with the Zerker amulet.

Anet has lost my respect with this unthought unprofessional nerf simply done to silence the brainless glasscannon build runners , they better do the specialization right l

not even gonna bother with the topic anymore turrets are effectively dead even moreso when specializations come out .

i cant even Spawn turrets at times they just explode before spawning .

I did a talk about this nerf, mainly for my channel subscribers.

The reason Turret Engineer was perceived to be overpowered was due to the skill required to kill them. People have only looked at the Pro side of the argument and really forgotten how this nerf is going to affect the game.

Let me summarise for you what has happened with the nerf.

In every other game type, excluding PvP. Turrets are now 100% useless.
I used to you my Turrets in a WvW support role. It seems that condi clear doesn’t affect turrets, so it is a rather large nerf as actually burning is very very strong.
Experimental Turrets have taken a hit, there is no way the turrets will last beyond the 10 seconds they need to pulse a second time. Also with long cool downs and poor uptime experimental turrets is a very poor grandmaster and I would even suggest it would be a mediocre master tier trait.
The overall damage increase Turrets have taken because of this nerf would be around the 200% mark if not more.

Who has benefited most from this nerf?
Well it’s the hybrid builds that are running rampant at the moment in high end PvP.
Celestial D/D ele, Shoutbow Warriors, and even celestial engis. Now all have a much easier time. Which in itself with hamper build diversity. The explanation will be below.

So why this nerf?
It is because Turrets are an “Easy mode” win for most people, this isn’t due to their abilities, it is due to the way they are played and that certain turrets are stronger than others. It was made at a low-mid end nerf. High end players would only run Turret Engineer if it was specifically to hard counter teams.
An example of this would be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbyk9Z-FUIY
This is the ESL Weekly where shoutbow rampage happened. If there was no turret nerf this could have changed a very cheese mode win into an actual competition.

So why is this a Learn to play issue?
This is where people will get grumpy, nobody likes getting told that a nerf could have been avoided because of a L2p issue and nobody likes when the response to most builds that are strong is L2p but it is just a fact on this nerf.
Engineers have weakness and so do turrets.
Cleave was always an effective was to remove turrets, There are certain specs that will win 1v1 and there are hard counters.
So if you were power based, you would have to remove the turrets that were a threat first before trying to bunker a point. That’s the same with any class, you have to take out the part of the class that is the strong bit before you attack. I would never attack a signet heal warrior without covering them in poison, it just makes my life harder.
Power meant you had to control the engineers turrets.

But condition players didn’t have a chance?! you scream. Well actually this is totally untrue, A Traditional Turret engineer would be able to condition clear about every 20 seconds. and that is only 2 conditions. So the way you dealt with an engineer as condition is to in fact put the full pressure on to an engineer. When he dies that will be him and his turrets gone.

If you were a hybrid brawler character. I am sorry to tell you this, but you were the Turret engineer hard counter, just like the power necro and condi necro was their hard counter. You don’t get to have it all. It’s one of the best things about PvP (or it was) you have to decide and work together to get a good result. If you are losing 1v1 figure out why and come up with a tactic to improve. Maybe that tactic is as simple as, bring a friend. Bunkers, will be controlled by a turret engineer, but a little stability can go a long way.

So you see, It wasn’t a turret nerf that was needed, it was a skill increase that was. Maybe some of the turrets needed looking at but with the current metas showing that sword/warhorn warriors are dominating most aspects of competitive game play at the moment, there is no wonder Engineers are getting upset that a pretty harsh nerf has landed and before it’s even sunk in we see how it’s buffed other classes.

Thanks for reading.

P.s. If you watched the Dragonhunter video….ask how turrets will manage against 4.3k burning and 3k bleeding, when chieftain lasted less than 10 seconds.

cant even use turrets for cc nor as an escape tool thanks to conditions all it takes is a random blind and bam accelerant packed turrets is useless, turrets are useless in every aspect sometimes i cant even use healing turret+ detonate cuz the kitten thing dies before spawning

Anet does a poor job at balancing
Remember when net turret as nerfed because it was too powerful to have two 2s immobilizes and 4s stun on supply crate and net turret combo? wich players could simply cleansed with a stunbreak skill on a 2 minute cooldown ? yep totally broken

meanwhile hammer warriors with longbow are perfectly fine

Rangers with spider and wolf pets spamming several immobilizes 2 knocks and a fear and a 60s cooldown 20s immobilize is ok (playing the no cleanse game anet balances things around )

even without nerf net turret was and is useless as the net is almost as slow as the harpoon’s kitten torpedo wich is evaded simply by swimming with swiftness.

MiniEquine.6014:

There are some people who would have you believe otherwise, but turret builds are, in fact, not viable at all anymore. I think the most glaring fault with the change is exactly this part:

Fully specced into Turrets survivability and they melt in seconds in PvE

A lot of people only think of the sPvP environment because “lol E-Sports”, but this is not the only game mode. Turrets have always struggled in PvE, but when you have 5-6 traits completely dedicated to them and they die as easily as they do now against PvE mobs? That’s ridiculous.

Edit: And the only time turrets are useful outside of their “place and blast finisher” style of play is if you take at least half of the turret traits, but you really need all of them to even hope for them to be effective. End edit.

There are numerous threads outlining potential changes Anet could make to make turrets not useless anymore, but chances of them actually implementing anything soon is very unlikely.

Welcome to the life of all minion classes. Enjoy your stay.

YuiRS.8129:

Welcome to the life of all minion classes. Enjoy your stay.

You can keep saying that, it won’t make it true. Turrets are currently in a much worse state than any minion type.

RabbitUp.8294:

YuiRS.8129:

Welcome to the life of all minion classes. Enjoy your stay.

You can keep saying that, it won’t make it true. Turrets are currently in a much worse state than any minion type.

I’d say they’re about equal now. The easiest minions to compare them to are necromancers due to the fact that both types are designed to either CC or deal damage. Necro minions have mobility, turrets do not. You may think this is a weakness, but seeing as all of the engineers weapons lean towards melee range, much like necro, you are constantly near your opponent and on point. Turrets have a clear advantage when the fight is on point as they will not subject themselves to AoE damage and have far greater range(especially when traited) than necro’s minions. So you trade minion mobility for situational protection and increased range. Since necros minions have always been subject to crits and conditions, like every other summon besides turrets, they’re now on equal footing. Like it or not, AI controlled builds that trade out all their utility slots for minions never did well for long in any game mode and its clear Anet doesn’t want them to.

Necrotize.2974:

RabbitUp.8294:

YuiRS.8129:

Welcome to the life of all minion classes. Enjoy your stay.

You can keep saying that, it won’t make it true. Turrets are currently in a much worse state than any minion type.

I’d say they’re about equal now. The easiest minions to compare them to are necromancers due to the fact that both types are designed to either CC or deal damage. Necro minions have mobility, turrets do not. You may think this is a weakness, but seeing as all of the engineers weapons lean towards melee range, much like necro, you are constantly near your opponent and on point. Turrets have a clear advantage when the fight is on point as they will not subject themselves to AoE damage and have far greater range(especially when traited) than necro’s minions. So you trade minion mobility for situational protection and increased range. Since necros minions have always been subject to crits and conditions, like every other summon besides turrets, they’re now on equal footing. Like it or not, AI controlled builds that trade out all their utility slots for minions never did well for long in any game mode and its clear Anet doesn’t want them to.

Objectively, turrets are, in fact, much worse off than minions. Their movement, or lack thereof, is a major issue. Minions can at least try to follow you out of fields, but turrets are rooted and there isn’t anything to stop the damage.

Also, they can be crit and have conditions applied, but they have no way to clear conditions or receive boons, like a minion could. Take any necromancer minion, root it in place, make it so you can’t cleanse it, make it so it can’t receive boons, and that’s what an engineer turret is. They are not equal.

And the AI issue is why a lot of people, like myself, want them to not be AI anymore, but this would take a full rework and Anet isn’t going to invest that time while HoT is on the horizon.

No movement, significantly longer cooldowns, can’t crit, can’t receive boons.

I think you all are kind of discounting how big a boon it is that Turrets are immobile with long range. Being 1500 units off point makes them way more survivable than necros minions or spirits, especially since to destroy them, most classes have to leave the point. Since turrets aren’t super tanky anymore, it encourages engineers to actually place their turrets in smart locations, not just plop them down in a ring around the point and go afk.

Feel like you just pulled some of those statements out of thin air though

Not sure what you mean by “Significantly longer cooldowns” unless I’m missing something.
Untraited
Average Turret Cooldown=32.5
Average Necro Minion Cooldown= 33.5
Only turrets with particularly long cds are Rocket and Thumper, only minions with particularly long cd are Flesh Golem and Wurm.

Wurm is the only immobile minion and it is probably the only one that sees play since it has a useful ability and doesn’t die immediately as it follows its master into swarms of AoE.

According to the wiki, necros minions can’t get boons either so… yeah.

Not to mention Turrets can be picked up to shorten their cd, something minions do not have. Most turret engineers never picked up their turrets unless moving their camp to another point.

As for critting, it could be fixed by allowing turrets to scale off engineer stats, but it would have to also include power and ferocity as well to prevent the super tanky turret bunkers from just rising up again because turrets didn’t require investments in power or anything.

Necrotize.2974:

because turrets didn’t require investments in power or anything.

The one and only problem

RabbitUp.8294:

Necrotize.2974:

because turrets didn’t require investments in power or anything.

The one and only problem

Which is true of Necro minions (remember the old Minon Master bunker build?), which got nerfed, and Ranger pets (again, the “I tank your attacks with the help of spirits while my pet kills you” bunker build?), which also got nerfed, and Guardian Spirit Weapons, which… well, you get the idea.

I think FreekParker has it right, even though I don’t exactly agree with the tone. The problem wasn’t that it couldn’t be beaten, it was that the effort it took to beat it far exceeded the effort the engineer had to exert to play a turret build for all but a handful of builds (some of which were specifically meant to counter possible turret engineers) It was the same problem (as Anet sees it) of Minon Master, of Spirit Weapons, of Spirit Pet-Tanking… The AI is suppose to fight with you, not for you.

Though I’ll admit, so far they seem able to only hit one extreme or the other for most of the friendly AI we have so far. Hopefully this will change with HoT: I remember hearing good things about the enemy AI from the stress test (actually trying to dodge attacks and avoid AE fields) so maybe pets and minons will benefit from that as well… and they might still improve the turret trait with the new specialization to make them worthwhile again.

Nerfing the turrets because they might be too strong in PvP :

OK

Nerfing them so much that they become completely unusable in every other setting so that every build that uses them becomes deficient at best:

Not OK

How is that even debatable?

Because the nerf only struck one build (or playstyle) in particular.
place&forget.

- deployable turrets suddenly sees use
- former turreteers are forced to smarten up about their placement (use the 1.5k range not to cover a point from a center, but from max range, out of a niche, from a rooftop, a.s.o.)
- drop&pop playstyle (like the healing turret / thumper combo) still works as good as pre-nerf.

So yea, turreteers are mostly eradicated, and the few remaining ones are now really on their toes, most other turret-related builds work as before, and having an engineer in the enemy team finally gives me a smile again.

I apologise if you felt there was a tone (I am assuming negative).
Most of my points would be the case for all AI builds, not just turrets.
The only advantages MM necro has is their condition defence and built in high health pools.
The drop and pop playstyle is something that some turrets need though due to their shorter range.
Most people talk about turrets like rocket turret is the only one. Flame turret is included and at 500 range and a 240 blind. The Nerf has stopped it being effective all together.

I am not saying turrets didn’t need looking at because some did. But that is the point, it was some not all. I just think it was a slightly lazy fix. You wouldn’t nerf all banners because war banner is OP. Just as you wouldn’t nerf all conjured weapons because Ice bow is OP. You would work on them individually.

I think the reason most people are upset is because of the over nerf, rather than a Nerf. We still have a long time to wait til HoT. So I think everything will be better when more resources can be used else where in the game. ATM engineer is going to suffer build diversity issues. But hopefully it will all be better when HoT arrives.

The engineer community has always been one of the smallest and we still survive. It’s not all doom and gloom.

Necrotize.2974:

I think you all are kind of discounting how big a boon it is that Turrets are immobile with long range. Being 1500 units off point makes them way more survivable than necros minions or spirits, especially since to destroy them, most classes have to leave the point. Since turrets aren’t super tanky anymore, it encourages engineers to actually place their turrets in smart locations, not just plop them down in a ring around the point and go afk.

Feel like you just pulled some of those statements out of thin air though

Not sure what you mean by “Significantly longer cooldowns” unless I’m missing something.
Untraited
Average Turret Cooldown=32.5
Average Necro Minion Cooldown= 33.5
Only turrets with particularly long cds are Rocket and Thumper, only minions with particularly long cd are Flesh Golem and Wurm.

Wurm is the only immobile minion and it is probably the only one that sees play since it has a useful ability and doesn’t die immediately as it follows its master into swarms of AoE.

According to the wiki, necros minions can’t get boons either so… yeah.

Not to mention Turrets can be picked up to shorten their cd, something minions do not have. Most turret engineers never picked up their turrets unless moving their camp to another point.

As for critting, it could be fixed by allowing turrets to scale off engineer stats, but it would have to also include power and ferocity as well to prevent the super tanky turret bunkers from just rising up again because turrets didn’t require investments in power or anything.

I’ve played both Minion Master and Turret Engi before and I can tell you turrets are nowhere near equal footing as other minions. First of all, yes, minions can receive boons. Second, they are much easier to keep alive. I have torn apart many Engineers attempting to cling to the turret build. There is no “smart placement” for turrets or “chance to pick them back up” before they die. No, you put a turret down, any turret, wherever you want, I guarantee you I will drop that turret in a few seconds and leave you down another utility for the next 30-50 seconds. The only acceptable method of using turrets now is to place them, overcharge, then immediately pick back up or detonate. Works great for a Static Discharge build or if you are just using the Healing Turret, but let’s not pretend even for a second that turrets are even remotely viable outside of that, unlike MM Necro.

Okay at this point I think it’s a given that Anet isn’t going to change turrets back to the way they used to be. Worse, most of the traits that currently affect turrets aren’t all that useful anymore given their current squishy state. Personally, I feel that new traits that will reduce the recharge time of turrets, or increase their health, or even confer 6 secs of invulnerability to a turret before causing a forced detonation would bring them more in line with similar existing trait skills that already exist for other classes . Also, since turrets can be affected by conditions and crits now they should also be affected by heals and buffs imo, or at the very least make it so that the healing turret can repair existing turrets within it’s area of effect.

Alternatively, changing the skills granted by the tool kit would also go along way towards making turrets viable again. It would make for an interesting mechanic if the wrench could be used to ‘buff’ an existing turret with various effects, or if the gear shield could be used to nullify damage to a turret for a short duration or though an aegis like effect. Box of Nails is just bad all around and I would love to see it replaced with something more useful … say a skill that would allow us to avoid some aoe damage by giving our turrets some short term mobility. Back in the original guild wars I always ran with Summon Spirit on my ritualist because it was the only skill that let me avoid aoe damage and I would love to see something similar here. Lets face it, the tool kit is the most useless kit we have and it could use a serious overhaul.

Sigilscrye.1459:

. Lets face it, the tool kit is the most useless kit we have and it could use a serious overhaul.

You mean useful, right? Figured you’d want to edit that And yeah, I’d take a buff to TK, but then it would be OP and then get the nerf hammer. But I think some more self condi cleanse on EG is what I’d wish for over any overhaul on TK.

This turret damage nerf seems a bit much though. And I’ve never ran a turret build. Just Healing Turret and Crate. But having bleeds and damaging affects on them is just crap. I can understand non damaging conditions like chill, blind, weakness ect. It adds some counter-play w/o going overboard.

Whenever you put yourself in a situation where you are forced to be reactionary, you are bound to mess up the reaction.

Did the nerf need to happen? Totally debatable for me. In one hand I completely agree that it is a L2P issue and that’s that. On the other hand, I understand why the build seems “easy” or requires “low skill levels” to pilot resulting in an unfair imbalance in “skill to play/skill to beat”.

I personally don’t think the build is skill-less, (Which I’m sure is what Hammer Warrior or Power Ranger players scream in their own defense.) but that really isn’t the end point.

The core issue is that it took 2 years for the hate to reach a fever pitch and Anet acted in a way that could rival Roger Goodell for knee-jerk responses to problems that need a solid answer. Not just “Any Answer”.

If your goal as the developer is to ensure balance, then nerfing something thats out of balance and putting it dead last with zero regard for 2 other formats of play is not a good business model. And yes, there were a number of other ways (A lot have been discussed above) that would have allowed for useable play.

With all of that being said, I personally still use a Turret build on my Engi and don’t agree 100% with the reaction of the Engi community. In my own experiences I find that you are still a game changer and require more attention than one player should, allowing your team to positively change game state. Is it the case 100% of the time? No.

But let’s not pretend like that was the case to begin with.

What I want to see is instead of us telling them to L2P….let’s L2P and stomp them with a nerved build.

That form of justice is so much sweeter anyway.

Hope to see some of you in pop, thanks for the discussion.