Guild Wars 2

As many people know turrets are not even close to on par with that of other utilities and the biggest reason people do not run them is because of “regret”.

Regret?
-The feeling you are having when you have 3-5 conditions on you because you went turrets
-That feeling you have when the zerg destroys your turrets in a split second
-That feeling you have when you drop your turrets only for the enemy to move way out of range
-That feeling you have when the tool belt skills have such a long cd (except rifle)
-That feeling you have when your turrets attack a random target or invincible target.
-That feeling you have when you see a Mesmer’s illusions doing what you wish you had.

These are all some of the “regrets” that Engineers have with turrets. Sure turrets in PvP are more effective than in PvE and WvW or the Boon Spiking Engineer that detonates 3 turrets/big ol bomb and thumper tool belt, but ask why? Because “regret” is not as high. PvP turrets aren’t going to be insta-killed or kited around. The Boon Spiking Engineer also has a lot lower regret because he has absolutely no intent on using turrets other than for a blast finisher.

So here are my solutions:

1. Turrets need to be in a kit. Why? To minimize “regret”. The Engineer can now drop turrets and flip back to other kits/weapons and the turrets will supplement damage/control without having a sense of regret if they are killed or the long cool down. Why is this regret minimized? Because you now have 2 slots free for whatever you want. Skills would include: #1-#5 would be Rifle, Flame, Thumper, Rocket, & Net turrets. If ANET feels that having the secondary effects are too much take them out or maybe make the secondaries all blast finishers? Lol. Personally I’d like to see them there. Also if the Engineer want’s any sort of healing on the turrets they still need have to roll with Wrench Kit.
2. Half the cool down of all turrets if picked up. Many professions have their cool downs on deploy so this is a reasonable request.
3. Turrets need to focus on the target that the Engineer is firing on at all times. If the turret(s) are out of range it needs to focus fire the closest player until it is dead or out of range.
4. Also as much as I hate RNG, ANET loves it. Make the kit’s tool belt skill an assortment of all the turret tool belts skills and give them a standard range of 1000.
5. Give all turrets reduced damage to AoE attacks, this would greatly improve their survivability.
6. If people in PvP feel that turret’s are a little too strong just adjust the damage multiplier down.

Yes the path to making turrets viable is really that simple and if we address “regret” or which economists call “opportunity cost” we can really see some interesting gameplay.

Here’s how some of the gameplay would turn out like:
1st Scenario: Big zerg on zerg fight
So what do you do?
Find a great choke point/high ground and start dropping turrets like a mad man. Then you switch out for your rifle for more control/damage or your Pistol/Shield to tank that pesky enemy that is trying to hurt you. You could also switch to wrench kit for a block and repair turrets.

2nd Scenario: 1 vs. 1
Alright so you see that enemy running right at you so what do you do? Well most people would instinctively say start dropping all your turrets. No, you are going to start kiting in a circle and then start dropping turrets. You’re than going to fight the enemy in the middle of all those turrets. Before he figures out that you drop turrets all around him and the turrets are hitting him supply drop him. If he thinks he’s getting away after all that, it’s time for Magnet from the Wrench kit to pull him back into the circle of death.

So people don’t think that this is overly OP. This play style would require a lot of work with keeping the player around your turrets and as many people know, once turrets are viable the enemy player will be very careful to stay or kite the Engineer out of his defensive. So if you’re facing this type of engineer you need to pull them out of range of their turrets as well. Mesmers have their Focus pull, Thieves and Necro’s also have a pull. If you do this you are going to still fair pretty well against the Engineer that is traited heavy into Inventions and not elsewhere. I think that would create a great dynamic.

3rd Scenario: Taking or defending a supply camp
If you’re defending I would suggest starting dropping turrets just inside (basically right on the line) of the capping circle. This would really make Engineers shine in point defense. Yes PvPer’s will already say that this might be a bit OP, but like all things with PvP, things can be disabled/reduced.

If you’re taking a supply camp again you’re going to want to pick the high-ground to have your turret’s rain down hell on the people in the circle. If the Engineer has great turret placement they can go running into the circle because they either have shield or Gear Shield from Wrench Kit and can start Prybaring some faces.

4th Scenario: Defending or Attacking a Tower/Keep
If you’re defending you will be able to drop your turrets on the edge of the wall and with the new mechanic that reduces AoE damage to turret’s this will actually allow turrets to survive if they are constantly healed.

If you’re attacking the tower/keep you can place your turrets where they won’t get totally nuked and when you switch to your Wrench Kit to Magnet somebody off, your turrets since you’re now attacking that target will focus fire and if you have net turret down will immobilize the enemy so they can’t get back to the portal.

I know people think these are radical changes, but many of these requests such as #2, 3, and 5 should already be in the game at this point. Changes #1, 4, and 6, especially #1 would make the Engineer so much fun.

Anyways that’s my vision. Please comment and I’m sure some people will think this would be OP, but at the current bleeding of Engineers in game developers have to do something reasonable.

I think it would be great to have turrets reworked into a ‘Turret Kit’. Never understood why Engineers had to kitten themselves by loading up all of their utility slots with turrets when it is clear that Kits are the Engineer’s specialty mechanic and their traits reflect that.

We even have 5 turrets next to the Healing Turret on our #6, so it would be perfect to assign them to the 1-5 ability slots if they were part of a kit.

Often you see people using 2 kits and a stunbreaker. As such I think it would be awesome if you could have a Turret Kit, Tool Kit and a stunbreaker.

I don’t want turrets as a kit. Sorry.

And why is that chaba?

You should at least explain yourself if you don’t agree Chaba!

I think it’s at least one of the ways we can make turrents work Goloith, but the damage and some of he duration/attacking speeds, would need to be lowered quite the amount for this to be balanced out! and even then I think it would be to OP, 1 on 1 we would be beasts since we still had all our other tools. It could work tho, and be quite fun.

But on a personal note I would prefer they just beefed up the Turrents a lot more then they are at this moment, fixed the targeting problems and gave them more utility, and then kept them as a utility skill for themself, because I know many Engineers want something beside Kits (I’m a huge kit fan myself tho)

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a fan of dramatic changes in class mechanics and that I typically run and enjoy most the hybrid builds that do not rely on all kits or all gadgets or all elixirs or all turrets.

Every kit has only 1 toolbelt skill. We’d lose the toolbelt skills associated with turrets by making them a kit. Nor do I believe that turning them into a kit is going to suddenly make turrets viable. Regret? I’m really not sure what that is supposed to mean. It sounds more like an opinion about a play style than an objective statement about turret viability. Turrets do need better survivability and need better targetting AI. That’ll make them more viable.

Chaba.5410:

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a fan of dramatic changes in class mechanics and that I typically run and enjoy most the hybrid builds that do not rely on all kits or all gadgets or all elixirs or all turrets.

Every kit has only 1 toolbelt skill. We’d lose the toolbelt skills associated with turrets by making them a kit. Nor do I believe that turning them into a kit is going to suddenly make turrets viable. Regret? I’m really not sure what that is supposed to mean. It sounds more like an opinion about a play style than an objective statement about turret viability. Turrets do need better survivability and need better targeting AI. That’ll make them more viable.

the only toolbelt worth anything is rifle turret’s, (maybe net turrent) but others just lack any purpose due to being so weak / useless

the kit idea is the best option atm, allow 5 turrets to become a kit.. once you plant a turret, you get their secondary skill and tool belt skill could simply be “detonate all turrets”.. naturally devs would remove the blast finishers but that’s okay

individually turrets are not even worth an utility slot, rifle turret is the only one people kinda use, and its because its tool belt skill goes so well with static discharge. other than that they are not really worth it

this idea is simple, and extremely easy to implement from a coding point of view, the only draw back is that we reduce the numbers of utility skills BUT I’m sure most engineers would rather quality over quantity! either have 4 close to useless skills or 1 good one that would allow for much versatile and fun play style

More play style opinions… Oh well.

Think objectively. Your personal opinions about what is useless or not worth a slot or that versatile and fun play is achieved by having one good skill really don’t qualify as reasons to change class mechanics.

Chaba.5410:

More play style opinions… Oh well.

Think objectively. Your personal opinions about what is useless or not worth a slot or that versatile and fun play is achieved by having one good skill really don’t qualify as reasons to change class mechanics.

are you saying turrets are class mechanic ? also, i’ve been trying turrets unlike many people speaking in order to give accurate facts, if you take some time to read the skills, and try them out you will see where I’m coming from when i use the word useless.

the current tool-belt skills are comparable with the low end racial skills at the most with the exception of surprise shot ( net attack is not bad but.. 60s cool down kills is as a viable option )

Yes, they are a class mechanic. Each class has specialized skill types and traits that affect by type. On engineer it is elixirs, kits, turrets, and gadgets. Maybe the types are not different to the underlying code, or maybe they are since there’s been patches to “bundle skills” like kits that have affected other classes across the game. Hard to say definitively.

Also, I’m not sure what gave you the impression that I haven’t tried turrets out. Ironically, it was the opinions on this forum about turrets not being viable that led me to try them again.

I have broke down a much simpler solution to making turrets funner in another thread that doesnt require reworking them or bundling them into a kit. You can acheive what people want by a few small number tweaks. And further make people happy by allowing a permanent pet elite turret like the necromancer flesh golem to solve the rest of peoples issues.

More thoughts…

How to think objectively, or rather rationally about this. First let’s figure out what the goal is. As far as I know, the goal is class balance. What does this mean and how is it achieved? It sounds like there should be a wide variety of viable builds available to all classes. What does it mean to be viable?

Once we understand or agree on what those things mean we’ll have a foundation for discussing tweaks to skills that achieve the goal of class balance.

Thinking more about turrets being changed into a bundle skill. How would it work if all minion-type skills were changed into bundle skills? What would happen if a necro’s minions were a bundle? Would class balance be maintained if a necro could lay down a bunch of wells and have all their minions out? I don’t think it is a mistake that it takes an elite skill to have all turrets out.

There is no way anyone would call an engineer who can drop down a bunch of stationary one-hit-kill turrets and still have the ability to smack you with a battering ram ‘overpowered’.