Guild Wars 2

LETS GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT!

Haltus Kain.4578:

Hey there!

I played this game from launch to a few months after that – absolutely loved the concept and gameplay of the Engineer, but after hitting the level cap it quickly became apparent that Engineers were seriously lacking compared to other classes – it took flawless performance with an engineer just to get on level playing ground with an ‘average’ player of most other classes.

To be completely honest, when I started playing GW2, I looked at the Engineer and drooled with excitement. The thought of using TURRETS! Oh my…. GAWD!

Not too far into the game, I had realized that the thing I thought of Instantly when I thought of Engineer fell, needless to say, short, from what I planned on expecting from a game that was amazing in its early form.

The Build below could be ridiculously stupid, assuming A-Net finally wanted us to use the Turrets they so “Desperately” want us to use, and gave them a buff. I’m not asking for a class wide morph, nor a huge class wide buff. Just the Turrets. And even then, the Talents regarding the Turrets.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcMzM9Mz0omxLMmmxLM0xx0aVkqcabV

Scratch that. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Turrets need a buff if you want us to seriously use them.

Lets refer to the Rangers Pet vs Necromancer Minions vs Turret Throughput.
Turret Stats:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret#Health

Ranger Pets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet

Necromancer Minions:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Minion

Time to factor things out. Highest HP/Defense First from all 3.

Thumper Turret:

• Power: 30% Character Power
• Precision: 25% Character Precision
• Condition Dmg: 18% Character Cond Dmg
• Toughness: 10% Character Toughness
• HP Value: 11950 Maximum HP
  (Effective Turret HP without Player Healing: Around 12-15k HP)
  (Turrets all loaded this way. Only effective change on them is HP Value per specific Turret. Power, Precision, Condition Damage, and Toughness all stay the same. Only change would be from Talents.)

Juvenile Black Bear:

• Power: 1,374
• Precision: 1,374
• Toughness: 1,374
• Vitality: 4,122
  (Effective HP of the Bear w/o Player Healing: Around 40-50k HP)

Shadow Fiend:

• Power: 1,374
• Precision: 1,374
• Toughness: 2,748
• Vitality: 2,748
  (Effective HP of Shadow Fiend w/o Player Healing: Around 20-35k HP)

Time to grind this glory into the horrid talents that A-Net thinks we should use.
Turret Talents (Re-Vamped)
Inventions:
III – Metal Plating – Reduces Damage dealt to Turrets by 50% and reduces AoE Damage dealt to turrets by 30%. (50% Stacks onto the 30% AoE giving 80% AoE Damage Reduction)
X – Autotool Installation – Turrets are self-repairing. (Turrets will have a passive effect that heals 30% of their health every 10 seconds.)
XII – Rifled Turret Barrels – Turrets deal 30% more damage and have a longer attack range. (Attack Range increased by 30% instead of 10%)

Through those main changes, the “Turrets” would be more viable than they are now. Not making the Turrets completely overpowered, yet giving them an edge compared to other equal talents in corresponding Profession Trees.

Turrets (Re-Vamped)
Flame Turret - Deploy a turret that burns foes.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 25 s
• Damage: 187
• Burning: 3 s (984 damage)
• Turret attack range: 500

Healing Turret - Deploys a turret that heals you briefly, then regenerates you and your allies.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 20 s
• Healing: 2,850 (?)?
• Regeneration: 3 s (390 health)
• Radius: 500

Net Turret - Build a net turret that immobilizes nearby foes.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 30 s
• Immobilized: 3 s
• Net range: 600
• Rate of fire: 8 s

Rifle Turret - Build a rifle turret that shoots at foes.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 20 s
• Damage: 378
• Rate of fire: 2 s
• Maximum range: 1,000

Harpoon Turret - Build a harpoon turret that shoots at foes.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 20 s
• Damage: 600
• Rate of fire: 2 s
• Maximum range: 1,000

Rocket Turret - Build a turret that fires rockets.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 40 s
• Damage: 854
• Burning: 3 s (984 damage)
• Rocket range: 1,200
• Rate of fire: 3 s
• Radius: 220

Thumper Turret - Build a high-health thumper turret that damages nearby foes.

• Cast Time: ½ s
• Recharge Time: 40 s
• Damage: 346
• Crippled: 3 s
• Rate of fire: 2 s
• Radius: 220

The modifications listed above seem fair with previous Talents that were listed for changes. Not overpowered on spreadsheets. Not tested in practice.

The comparison of turrets to companions (bears, etc.) is good. I see no reason why, with out an increase in damage output, turret’s health can’t be buffed considerably.

The purpose of turrets (in WvW) is not necessarily to do damage,, but rather “control” segments of the battlefield, such as bridges, door ways, etc. Enemy players should need to account for them. Now they just giggle and shake their heads at those funny but strange engineers and their funny but strange toys….

They also need to make healing turret work in the water. Its insane that such a primary skill of build type expected to be used is lost simply because I am under water. Rangers dont lose pets under water(tiger at 500 feet. wtf!?). Necros dont lose minions under water. Yet we lose several of our turrets including healing.

I have played every profession. Two are 80(eng and war). None of them are as buggy, broken and nerfed into utter uselessness as the engineer.

Since I find the other professions boring and the engineer at this time borderline unplayable in comparison (ie: no one wants engineers in parties, ever) I will never buy another GW2 related software package etc until engineers are fixed. I have actually largely stopped playing because of this and gone back to Everquest 2 and Anarchy Online. At least they work.

Its clear Anet doesnt care about our profession aside from continually weakening it. They should at the very least be good enough to allow us to switch our hard earned levels in an ENG for a new profession free of charge.

Turret need a huge defence buff, thats a given. I cant even honestly say our turret traits are too weak or too strong simply because turrets dont live long enough to have them factored in.

Running the Flame and Frost dungeon (as well as pretty much any other dungeon) your turrets are instantly destroyed by aoe. Speaking of the Molten Factory, when fighting fire storm in his Round 2 mode my turrets take constant damage, its not the fire pools, thos things instant destroy turrets, this is some kind of dot over the entire fighting arena and its weak enough that the turrets can survive maybe 5 ticks or so. I dont know of minions, pets or illusions also suffer from this dot.

I absolute despise turrets. The mere idea of them makes me drowsy. Much rather jump in and out of the combat flow then to run around in circles letting some ai contraption AA an enemy to death. So yeah sadden by them “trying” to force us down that path

Xinterp.5368:

LETS GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT!

Haltus Kain.4578:

Hey there!

I played this game from launch to a few months after that – absolutely loved the concept and gameplay of the Engineer, but after hitting the level cap it quickly became apparent that Engineers were seriously lacking compared to other classes – it took flawless performance with an engineer just to get on level playing ground with an ‘average’ player of most other classes.

To be completely honest, when I started playing GW2, I looked at the Engineer and drooled with excitement. The thought of using TURRETS! Oh my…. GAWD!

Not too far into the game, I had realized that the thing I thought of Instantly when I thought of Engineer fell, needless to say, short, from what I planned on expecting from a game that was amazing in its early form.

The Build below could be ridiculously stupid, assuming A-Net finally wanted us to use the Turrets they so “Desperately” want us to use, and gave them a buff. I’m not asking for a class wide morph, nor a huge class wide buff. Just the Turrets. And even then, the Talents regarding the Turrets.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcMzM9Mz0omxLMmmxLM0xx0aVkqcabV

Scratch that. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Turrets need a buff if you want us to seriously use them.

Lets refer to the Rangers Pet vs Necromancer Minions vs Turret Throughput.
Turret Stats:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret#Health

Ranger Pets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet

Necromancer Minions:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Minion

The draw back to this is that a ranger has it’s damage split between the pet and the ranger where as I do not believe this is the case of the engineer. I would defiantly not want this as an engineer. And as a result the ranger gets less bonus from stats on gear as the stats do not translate to the rangers pet.

im pretty certain that the buffs anet has given us are the buffs that anet wants us to have.

echo.2053:

I absolute despise turrets. The mere idea of them makes me drowsy. Much rather jump in and out of the combat flow then to run around in circles letting some ai contraption AA an enemy to death. So yeah sadden by them “trying” to force us down that path

Yah because running around in circles or standing there facing a mob dropping bombs on the ground is so unbelievable entertaining. 1 boom 1 boom and so on. That is so much more exciting than dropping three turrets and running around using dodge, firing pistols, glue, fire, shield bubbling and tossing an electrical shield around ALL while you can still run. As opposed the abysmal targeting of throwing grenades while you try to run and having them spread out effectively eliminating 30% of your damage (of course then they stack a nerf on this, uber). So then you spec FT and maybe throw in some EG… Yep all great until someone tosses up retal and you end up one dead bbq eng all the while everyone else plinks away with out issue. But hey.. you sure looked cool shooting flames all over that miss a good 20% of the time and many times get stuck firing into the ground on anything but perfectly level surfaces. It does provide a good light source in dark jumping mazes though. FT … naw … torch (of course gamma fixes that too).

Point is its a style of game play they put in and its broken far more than the rest(actually its 100% broken beyond being able to drop turrets at this point). It should be viable and if its not going to be then get rid of it and give us something else that does work and they know how to code for to make it work.

retal isn’t a problem for ft if you stack toughness and power instead of pre and condi, which (incidentally) works better for turrets anyway.

at first i didn’t really mind much of the engineer bugs. what bothered me the most is that i’m using a shotgun with medium armor and not heavy. how would heavy armor make engineer overpowered? kits need to be sent back to the drawing board. who uses anything besides grenades or bombs for damage? i don’t want to use grenades, and i don’t really want to use bombs, but HGH just gets boring

jniel.3581:

echo.2053:

I absolute despise turrets. The mere idea of them makes me drowsy. Much rather jump in and out of the combat flow then to run around in circles letting some ai contraption AA an enemy to death. So yeah sadden by them “trying” to force us down that path

Yah because running around in circles or standing there facing a mob dropping bombs on the ground is so unbelievable entertaining. 1 boom 1 boom and so on. That is so much more exciting than dropping three turrets and running around using dodge, firing pistols, glue, fire, shield bubbling and tossing an electrical shield around ALL while you can still run. As opposed the abysmal targeting of throwing grenades while you try to run and having them spread out effectively eliminating 30% of your damage (of course then they stack a nerf on this, uber). So then you spec FT and maybe throw in some EG… Yep all great until someone tosses up retal and you end up one dead bbq eng all the while everyone else plinks away with out issue. But hey.. you sure looked cool shooting flames all over that miss a good 20% of the time and many times get stuck firing into the ground on anything but perfectly level surfaces. It does provide a good light source in dark jumping mazes though. FT … naw … torch (of course gamma fixes that too).

Point is its a style of game play they put in and its broken far more than the rest(actually its 100% broken beyond being able to drop turrets at this point). It should be viable and if its not going to be then get rid of it and give us something else that does work and they know how to code for to make it work.

Lol almost bro, but I use the tool kit ( yes even though its main use took a 50% hit). Thought my wrench symbol would of been a give away…

Well then its clearly obvious thats engineer prolly isn’t the profession for you since everything is either broken and/or boring.

I agree with this, I really do – I’m glad to see somebody suggesting a possible method of scaling turrets, especially. However…

Anet can’t be reading these forums, or paying half a lick of mind to them if they do – the recent fiasco with Scope brought that much to light. I guess I’ll hope that if they happen to glance in, they see this idea.

Bailey.6892:

Xinterp.5368:

LETS GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT!

Haltus Kain.4578:

Hey there!

I played this game from launch to a few months after that – absolutely loved the concept and gameplay of the Engineer, but after hitting the level cap it quickly became apparent that Engineers were seriously lacking compared to other classes – it took flawless performance with an engineer just to get on level playing ground with an ‘average’ player of most other classes.

To be completely honest, when I started playing GW2, I looked at the Engineer and drooled with excitement. The thought of using TURRETS! Oh my…. GAWD!

Not too far into the game, I had realized that the thing I thought of Instantly when I thought of Engineer fell, needless to say, short, from what I planned on expecting from a game that was amazing in its early form.

The Build below could be ridiculously stupid, assuming A-Net finally wanted us to use the Turrets they so “Desperately” want us to use, and gave them a buff. I’m not asking for a class wide morph, nor a huge class wide buff. Just the Turrets. And even then, the Talents regarding the Turrets.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcMzM9Mz0omxLMmmxLM0xx0aVkqcabV

Scratch that. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Turrets need a buff if you want us to seriously use them.

Lets refer to the Rangers Pet vs Necromancer Minions vs Turret Throughput.
Turret Stats:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret#Health

Ranger Pets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet

Necromancer Minions:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Minion

The draw back to this is that a ranger has it’s damage split between the pet and the ranger where as I do not believe this is the case of the engineer. I would defiantly not want this as an engineer. And as a result the ranger gets less bonus from stats on gear as the stats do not translate to the rangers pet.

have you even used turrets before ? if so you should know turrets do NOT have critical hit chance and their damage is fixed and mediocre highest being rocket turret for around 800ish and 1000+ burn with the long burning if it isnt cleansed turrets are also immobile and have slow rate of fire and the massive cooldowns are just plain stupid oh yes lets look at our Elite turret the Mortar … grenades far outranges outdamages and outperfoms applying conditions rendering it useless

now ranger pets highly agile even a trait boosting 30% speed passively pets can be buffed pets have crit chance and some can hit for u p to 7k damage pets can also be heal remotedly whereas turrets you gotta whack em with your tool kit pets ALWAYS attack your target unless you ask it not to you can swap pets on the go Without sacrificing utility skills with a simpe 15s swap

so lets see total pet Pros:
Boons
Mobility
Short cooldown swap
has 4 attacks
Crits
doesnt take utility slots
does everything you could do with 3 turrets except for Burning (oh nvm theres burning pets )
has an elite thats actually effective for both player and pet : Rampage as One
has a trait buffing 30% damage

as for turrets:
none

specially for the fact the adept and grandmaster turret traits broke and arent doing anything at the moment .

I just finished flame and frost dungeon with a healing turret; yeah pretty much the only use for it in that fight was to drop it and pop it. The only use for the net turret I had was to use the net turret tool belt to keep zerker off of people’s backs or pop enrage off of fire. I’ve often wished there was a force field trait to soak up the aoe. That would give turrets the real boost they need.

It would be nice to see at least one patch where they do nothing but provide some actual substantial buffs for every class’s very weak utilities. Almost every class has at least one subset of util that never gets used in WvW or sPvP. It’d be nice to get some buffs with no nerfs attached for ONCE, and just see how much that adds to the build variety. Turrets and gadgets are obviously engie’s weak points at the moment.

To be fair, the healing turret change was a great step forward, and actually does open up some possibilities, but I think it should be taken a step further with all turrets.

Until recently I had only played pve content. I had no problem running with turrets and getting them to work it just took a bit of work. The moment I started WvW I realized just how broken they are. The only use they have now is drop/2ndary/pop then wait for the cool down. It would be nice if they could use the Gw1 “<skill name> has been changed to pvp version” to help buff turrets in dungeons and WvW.

Thank you all for the support and feedback. This all really helps this case. If we want A-Net to do something about this, we need to refer more Engineers who want to help themselves.

Rezzet.3614:

have you even used turrets before ? if so you should know turrets do NOT have critical hit chance and their damage is fixed and mediocre highest being rocket turret for around 800ish and 1000+ burn with the long burning if it isnt cleansed turrets are also immobile and have slow rate of fire and the massive cooldowns are just plain stupid oh yes lets look at our Elite turret the Mortar … grenades far outranges outdamages and outperfoms applying conditions rendering it useless

I would like to keep this topic on Turrets Exclusively. Not Nade Kit.
Turrets do have a Fixed Precision. That is determined with a bonus on your characters Precision.

Either RNG has blessed me when I tested this, or Precision from the character does affect Turrets.

Factored Precision Spreadsheet:

• Turret Precision = “Turret Precision x (.25 x Player Precision) + Random Variables (Mob Toughness, Turret Power, Turret Critical Damage Modifier)”

I think that recent turret buffs actually put them in a fairly good place as far as damage and utility goes. Of course, I am not even close to be a high-tier player (and my Engi is not max level yet), so I don’t have much credibility ^^ However, turrets just need better defences. In WvW they are absolutely useless because they go down from all the AOE the same moment they are placed. Again, its the same problematic as with pets. I think the best solution is really a passive AOE damage reduction for all minions.

Rezzet.3614:

Bailey.6892:

Xinterp.5368:

LETS GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT!

Haltus Kain.4578:

Hey there!

I played this game from launch to a few months after that – absolutely loved the concept and gameplay of the Engineer, but after hitting the level cap it quickly became apparent that Engineers were seriously lacking compared to other classes – it took flawless performance with an engineer just to get on level playing ground with an ‘average’ player of most other classes.

To be completely honest, when I started playing GW2, I looked at the Engineer and drooled with excitement. The thought of using TURRETS! Oh my…. GAWD!

Not too far into the game, I had realized that the thing I thought of Instantly when I thought of Engineer fell, needless to say, short, from what I planned on expecting from a game that was amazing in its early form.

The Build below could be ridiculously stupid, assuming A-Net finally wanted us to use the Turrets they so “Desperately” want us to use, and gave them a buff. I’m not asking for a class wide morph, nor a huge class wide buff. Just the Turrets. And even then, the Talents regarding the Turrets.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcMzM9Mz0omxLMmmxLM0xx0aVkqcabV

Scratch that. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Turrets need a buff if you want us to seriously use them.

Lets refer to the Rangers Pet vs Necromancer Minions vs Turret Throughput.
Turret Stats:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret#Health

Ranger Pets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet

Necromancer Minions:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Minion

The draw back to this is that a ranger has it’s damage split between the pet and the ranger where as I do not believe this is the case of the engineer. I would defiantly not want this as an engineer. And as a result the ranger gets less bonus from stats on gear as the stats do not translate to the rangers pet.

have you even used turrets before ? if so you should know turrets do NOT have critical hit chance and their damage is fixed and mediocre highest being rocket turret for around 800ish and 1000+ burn with the long burning if it isnt cleansed turrets are also immobile and have slow rate of fire and the massive cooldowns are just plain stupid oh yes lets look at our Elite turret the Mortar … grenades far outranges outdamages and outperfoms applying conditions rendering it useless

now ranger pets highly agile even a trait boosting 30% speed passively pets can be buffed pets have crit chance and some can hit for u p to 7k damage pets can also be heal remotedly whereas turrets you gotta whack em with your tool kit pets ALWAYS attack your target unless you ask it not to you can swap pets on the go Without sacrificing utility skills with a simpe 15s swap

so lets see total pet Pros:
Boons
Mobility
Short cooldown swap
has 4 attacks
Crits
doesnt take utility slots
does everything you could do with 3 turrets except for Burning (oh nvm theres burning pets )
has an elite thats actually effective for both player and pet : Rampage as One
has a trait buffing 30% damage

as for turrets:
none

specially for the fact the adept and grandmaster turret traits broke and arent doing anything at the moment .

No I have not, and don’t get me wrong I am in no way saying that turrets are great, or good or anything. How ever what I am saying is their are builds out their where you do not have to use a turret and your damage is %100 you unlike a ranger who has to use a pet and has their damage reduced because they have to have the pet. Wish for many things how ever do not wish for it to be like the ranger and their pet.

May update notes:

-Steel-Packed Powder now has a 5 second cooldown.

-Static discharge now has a 10 second cooldown.

-Reduced Shrapnel Grenade damage by 30%

-Reduced Bomb damage by 50%

-Increased Elixir-Infused Bombs heal by 20%

-HGH no longer works with tool belt.

-Increased Mortar health by 20%

- Replaced Elixir B with a NEW!!! skill “Smiter’s Boon”

-Increased Turret damage by 10%

Pro-balancing!

Bailey.6892:

Rezzet.3614:

Bailey.6892:

Xinterp.5368:

LETS GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT!

Haltus Kain.4578:

Hey there!

I played this game from launch to a few months after that – absolutely loved the concept and gameplay of the Engineer, but after hitting the level cap it quickly became apparent that Engineers were seriously lacking compared to other classes – it took flawless performance with an engineer just to get on level playing ground with an ‘average’ player of most other classes.

To be completely honest, when I started playing GW2, I looked at the Engineer and drooled with excitement. The thought of using TURRETS! Oh my…. GAWD!

Not too far into the game, I had realized that the thing I thought of Instantly when I thought of Engineer fell, needless to say, short, from what I planned on expecting from a game that was amazing in its early form.

The Build below could be ridiculously stupid, assuming A-Net finally wanted us to use the Turrets they so “Desperately” want us to use, and gave them a buff. I’m not asking for a class wide morph, nor a huge class wide buff. Just the Turrets. And even then, the Talents regarding the Turrets.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcMzM9Mz0omxLMmmxLM0xx0aVkqcabV

Scratch that. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Turrets need a buff if you want us to seriously use them.

Lets refer to the Rangers Pet vs Necromancer Minions vs Turret Throughput.
Turret Stats:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret#Health

Ranger Pets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet

Necromancer Minions:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Minion

The draw back to this is that a ranger has it’s damage split between the pet and the ranger where as I do not believe this is the case of the engineer. I would defiantly not want this as an engineer. And as a result the ranger gets less bonus from stats on gear as the stats do not translate to the rangers pet.

have you even used turrets before ? if so you should know turrets do NOT have critical hit chance and their damage is fixed and mediocre highest being rocket turret for around 800ish and 1000+ burn with the long burning if it isnt cleansed turrets are also immobile and have slow rate of fire and the massive cooldowns are just plain stupid oh yes lets look at our Elite turret the Mortar … grenades far outranges outdamages and outperfoms applying conditions rendering it useless

now ranger pets highly agile even a trait boosting 30% speed passively pets can be buffed pets have crit chance and some can hit for u p to 7k damage pets can also be heal remotedly whereas turrets you gotta whack em with your tool kit pets ALWAYS attack your target unless you ask it not to you can swap pets on the go Without sacrificing utility skills with a simpe 15s swap

so lets see total pet Pros:
Boons
Mobility
Short cooldown swap
has 4 attacks
Crits
doesnt take utility slots
does everything you could do with 3 turrets except for Burning (oh nvm theres burning pets )
has an elite thats actually effective for both player and pet : Rampage as One
has a trait buffing 30% damage

as for turrets:
none

specially for the fact the adept and grandmaster turret traits broke and arent doing anything at the moment .

No I have not, and don’t get me wrong I am in no way saying that turrets are great, or good or anything. How ever what I am saying is their are builds out their where you do not have to use a turret and your damage is %100 you unlike a ranger who has to use a pet and has their damage reduced because they have to have the pet. Wish for many things how ever do not wish for it to be like the ranger and their pet.

Pretty sure our main damage is the suck because of the so called “versatility tax” so we’ve already traded our damage for the ability to swap in kits without a 10 second weapon swap. Of course if you use turrets that’s kind of a lose-lose unless you want to use a kit (sucky damage/sucky pet).
I thought Anet wants us to think of turrets as defensive signets as opposed to pets however… It might be cool if they had a passive when not deployed, or more cool effects on death or deployed (if I wanted knock back I’d have brought a mine) Tonnes of ways to enhance them, maybe just not the need/budget/goodwill/time to develop and test them.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
-Static discharge now has a 10 second cooldown.

This will be the end of the last direct (non-condition) damage build. The hip shot recharges every seconds and releases a discharge making this build usable.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
-Reduced Bomb damage by 50%

Bombs are very weak and petitions are being made to en power them. They are very difficult to use and the player practically has to run constantly near monsters.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
Increased Turret damage by 10%

Turrets would still be weak. My spit has higher damage.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
Increased Mortar health by 20%

Even if they increase it 100% the mortar is unusable in a real situation.

Conclusion? The engineer traits and skills need reworking not small variable tweaking. For months we were just running in circles doing nothing. Just sand in the eyes.

Rangers have 1 pet out at a time. We can have 4 turrets (with three being offensive). You cannot make a turret equivalent with a ranger pet.

In addition, as mentioned in a previous post, the Ranger DPS is not the same as other professions because it’s expected that the pet contribute to the total DPS of the Ranger.

You don’t want to invalidate Engineer builds that do not use turrets. Therefore you cannot make a turret something “awesome” because you’d be 4x awesome with max turret skills slotted.

Think of turrets as another utility skill (like an elixir or gadget). From that standpoint, you can feel better about the turrets not being “pets”, but some adjunct to your own weapon actions.

juno.1840:

Rangers have 1 pet out at a time. We can have 4 turrets (with three being offensive). You cannot make a turret equivalent with a ranger pet.

In addition, as mentioned in a previous post, the Ranger DPS is not the same as other professions because it’s expected that the pet contribute to the total DPS of the Ranger.

You don’t want to invalidate Engineer builds that do not use turrets. Therefore you cannot make a turret something “awesome” because you’d be 4x awesome with max turret skills slotted.

Think of turrets as another utility skill (like an elixir or gadget). From that standpoint, you can feel better about the turrets not being “pets”, but some adjunct to your own weapon actions.

1) You assume every single turret is the same.
2) They’re not, Rifle Turret is the lamest thing you can imagine. It prioritizes environmental objects over actual enemies
3) Thumper Turret requires people to be around melee range to be affected
4) Flamer Turret? Same thing
5) Net Turret’s rate is about one attack every 10 seconds, and they may not survive after the first shot
6) You CANNOT choose which target to attack. Even Dwayna cannot help you if your Net Turret decided to net the slow Guardian and not the incredibly speedy thief currently killing you.
7) Rocket turret MAY be awesome, I’ve never gotten it.

Think of them as utilities, and not pets.

wrt the net turret, think of equivalent skills in other professions. The guardian has an immobilize signet-active. You get 2s of immobilize and that’s it. The net turret does an immobilize and then hangs around to suck up some damage, or possibly immobilize again.

Agreed there are issues where the turrets die easy, pick a target that you wouldn’t have picked, etc. Some of those issues will be fixed over time, others maybe not.

Compared to other “non-turret” utility skills from other professions, turrets are not bad.

They will never be some uber-tanking-DPS-dealing-super-pets. If that’s what it’ll take to make you happy, then you’ll will be perpetually sad.

JubeiTM.5763:

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
-Static discharge now has a 10 second cooldown.

This will be the end of the last direct (non-condition) damage build. The hip shot recharges every seconds and releases a discharge making this build usable.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
-Reduced Bomb damage by 50%

Bombs are very weak and petitions are being made to en power them. They are very difficult to use and the player practically has to run constantly near monsters.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
Increased Turret damage by 10%

Turrets would still be weak. My spit has higher damage.

Kain Francois.4328:

May update notes:
Increased Mortar health by 20%

Even if they increase it 100% the mortar is unusable in a real situation.

Conclusion? The engineer traits and skills need reworking not small variable tweaking. For months we were just running in circles doing nothing. Just sand in the eyes.

Actually, this update would increase “variety” for Engineer builds!

juno.1840:

Think of them as utilities, and not pets.

wrt the net turret, think of equivalent skills in other professions. The guardian has an immobilize signet-active. You get 2s of immobilize and that’s it. The net turret does an immobilize and then hangs around to suck up some damage, or possibly immobilize again.

Agreed there are issues where the turrets die easy, pick a target that you wouldn’t have picked, etc. Some of those issues will be fixed over time, others maybe not.

Compared to other “non-turret” utility skills from other professions, turrets are not bad.

They will never be some uber-tanking-DPS-dealing-super-pets. If that’s what it’ll take to make you happy, then you’ll will be perpetually sad.

If they can be moved, then yes they are good utilities. Imagine yourself putting up a Rifle Turret hoping to damage Champion Troll, and suddenly the thing shoots a Glowing Grub, which proceeds to attack you. At that point, the thing ceases to be a utility and becomes a burden.

You cannot move them, you cannot direct them, you cannot do anything but pray to the Six Gods and Abaddon that they’ll actually do something useful if there’s more than one viable targets around. There is literally no way to justify them. Zhaitan frolics in any justification to Turrets

And you can direct pets to attack your target. Imagine that.

I agree with Raestloz; the inability to control the turrets, move them, or otherwise use them in a way that doesn’t go “this is my island, I really hope I don’t get moved away from here” or “I’m petrified that I won’t be able to rely on my turrets due to mobile combat; I’ll just stand here and hope not to get pulled or pushed. And that nobody has an area of effect attack. Or stealth when there’s furniture nearby.” is a pretty big mark against them.

III – Metal Plating – Reduces Damage dealt to Turrets by 50% and reduces AoE Damage dealt to turrets by 30%. (50% Stacks onto the 30% AoE giving 80% AoE Damage Reduction)

Why not just say 80% damage reduction then?

Raestloz.7134:

juno.1840:

Think of them as utilities, and not pets.

wrt the net turret, think of equivalent skills in other professions. The guardian has an immobilize signet-active. You get 2s of immobilize and that’s it. The net turret does an immobilize and then hangs around to suck up some damage, or possibly immobilize again.

Agreed there are issues where the turrets die easy, pick a target that you wouldn’t have picked, etc. Some of those issues will be fixed over time, others maybe not.

Compared to other “non-turret” utility skills from other professions, turrets are not bad.

They will never be some uber-tanking-DPS-dealing-super-pets. If that’s what it’ll take to make you happy, then you’ll will be perpetually sad.

If they can be moved, then yes they are good utilities. Imagine yourself putting up a Rifle Turret hoping to damage Champion Troll, and suddenly the thing shoots a Glowing Grub, which proceeds to attack you. At that point, the thing ceases to be a utility and becomes a burden.

You cannot move them, you cannot direct them, you cannot do anything but pray to the Six Gods and Abaddon that they’ll actually do something useful if there’s more than one viable targets around. There is literally no way to justify them. Zhaitan frolics in any justification to Turrets

And you can direct pets to attack your target. Imagine that.

This is no different than Spirits for the Ritualist in GW1.

Although you can’t move them, you can certainly pick them up and place them down again (with a reduced c/d because you picked them up instead of letting them die).

It’s not as hapless as you make it sound. Yeah you have to work it a bit because it’s not completely easy-mode — but it’s not horrific either.

My original point was these will never be pets — they are utilities.

people want walking aoe healing condi cleansing turrets that spit out condi burst bubbles and a preressurection device that auto reses you when you go down.

people want to push one button to get results. like that stupid fruit game.

…sparkles!

Net turret would be kinda OP if it immobilized nearby foes for 3s every 8s :P

The first step to fixing turrets, should be fixing their hit boxes. it seems that the reason they are so susceptible to AoE is their gigantic hit box 2-3 times larger than the character model

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-s-The-hitbox-needs-to-be-fixed/first#post1982949

The reason they’re so susceptible to AoE is because they have piddly health.

You can insist that the hitbox is the biggest problem for them all you want, but in the end, it’s just one of many, and it’s not even the one that’ll keep people from using turrets to begin with.

juno.1840:

Raestloz.7134:

juno.1840:

Think of them as utilities, and not pets.

wrt the net turret, think of equivalent skills in other professions. The guardian has an immobilize signet-active. You get 2s of immobilize and that’s it. The net turret does an immobilize and then hangs around to suck up some damage, or possibly immobilize again.

Agreed there are issues where the turrets die easy, pick a target that you wouldn’t have picked, etc. Some of those issues will be fixed over time, others maybe not.

Compared to other “non-turret” utility skills from other professions, turrets are not bad.

They will never be some uber-tanking-DPS-dealing-super-pets. If that’s what it’ll take to make you happy, then you’ll will be perpetually sad.

If they can be moved, then yes they are good utilities. Imagine yourself putting up a Rifle Turret hoping to damage Champion Troll, and suddenly the thing shoots a Glowing Grub, which proceeds to attack you. At that point, the thing ceases to be a utility and becomes a burden.

You cannot move them, you cannot direct them, you cannot do anything but pray to the Six Gods and Abaddon that they’ll actually do something useful if there’s more than one viable targets around. There is literally no way to justify them. Zhaitan frolics in any justification to Turrets

And you can direct pets to attack your target. Imagine that.

This is no different than Spirits for the Ritualist in GW1.
And what relevance does that skill have in our discussion? This is not iOS discussion

Although you can’t move them, you can certainly pick them up and place them down again (with a reduced c/d because you picked them up instead of letting them die).

It’s not as hapless as you make it sound. Yeah you have to work it a bit because it’s not completely easy-mode — but it’s not horrific either.
I like the way ELITISTS think: “if you want something to work well instead of honing your skill and pray to Random Target God that they will attack the intended target, you want easy mode”. How is it that asking that we can tell the Six-Gods-Forsaken Rifle Turret which target to attack easy mode? Is there even a single argument in favor of the auto-targeting system they currently have? Because the only argument I’ve seen so far is “Oh, you have to THINK when to put it down, sonny boy.” Well, suck my foot son, you also have to think if using weapon skill 1 has a 50% chance to instantly kill you, doesn’t mean the concept is horrifyingly useless. If your argument is “But.. but…. if you can TELL which target to attack, they’d be… like…. so OverPowered, sonny boy!” Then tweak the Six-Gods-Forsaken numbers: the damage, cooldown, duration, that sort of thing. Don’t introduce a completely Six-Gods-Forsaken auto-targeting system. Engineers don’t have jetpack, they don’t have computers to build AI with.

My original point was these will never be pets — they are utilities.
And there is not a single counter-argument to our little Luminescent Grub scenario! What a discussion worthy of wasting my time over! I’m SOOO elated!

You cant directly compare engi utility skills to that of a guardian or other class. the focus of power is different for each class. Classes like the warrior and thief main power come from their weapon skills. But classes like the necro and mesmer power comes from there utility skills. with the engineer probably being the most utility focus class of them all.
Heck we only have rifle, pistols and a shield to pick from. We make up for it with powerful utilities. Or at least thats the idea. The toolbelt mechanic further reinforces that we are utility skill focused.

So keep that in mind when trying to figure out just how powerful turrets should be.

Anymras.5729:

The reason they’re so susceptible to AoE is because they have piddly health.

You can insist that the hitbox is the biggest problem for them all you want, but in the end, it’s just one of many, and it’s not even the one that’ll keep people from using turrets to begin with.

Is more health/toughness really going to make a diffidence when turrets are sucking up every AoE with such big hit boxes? even when they are not in the AoE ring

juno.1840:

Rangers have 1 pet out at a time. We can have 4 turrets (with three being offensive). You cannot make a turret equivalent with a ranger pet.

Hahaha how did you even compare these? If we are to have 4 turrets at a time we wouldn’t have any other skill to fight with. Ranger sends a tanky pet and still uses skills on you. Dude… forget it.

The only 2 real turret buffs would be:

1) No AOE damage to turrets. A character has to target a turret and hit it directly in order to destroy it. (unlike now, applying a field of whatever cracks all turrets in 2-3 seconds).

2) No recharge time for picked-up turrets. Only skill recharge if turret is destroyed. I wasted many hours in PVE – after clearing all the monsters i would have to wait a lot so I can move to the next mob.

why does everything think that qqing to make things OP is how you “suggest balance”?

i’ve had turrets last entire skirmishes, it is all about placement.

are you just dropping them in the middle of a point cap and expecting them to survive? the only point in the game too big for all your turrets to reach across it is Graveyard on Foefire.

even in pve, it is your job to drop the turret and then lure your foe away from it so that your turret pummels them for a short time while you continue to do so as well.

once again:
turrets != pets, they require more maintenance and forethought than pets.

why would you want to make turrets even less useful than they are now?

nakoda have you ever in your entire gw2 life played a single fractal?

How do you place at boss fights there?
Please tell me, cause i would like to use them, but i can’t find a single place where i could put them without being eliminated after 10 seconds or if they aren’t destroyed… they won’t do a ******** thing

If you can’t tell me, you get another try! Tell me where i should put them at dwayna…

Still not?

Well how about a nice balthasar? No?

So, please anet, more healt and better hit-boxes. Not to much but maybe something like we can use them in these events….

google.3709:

Anymras.5729:

The reason they’re so susceptible to AoE is because they have piddly health.

You can insist that the hitbox is the biggest problem for them all you want, but in the end, it’s just one of many, and it’s not even the one that’ll keep people from using turrets to begin with.

Is more health/toughness really going to make a diffidence when turrets are sucking up every AoE with such big hit boxes? even when they are not in the AoE ring

If they can take more than one AoE, it’s an improvement over what we have now, regardless of hitbox. Aside from that, this suggestion involves introduction of overall scaling, including non-condition damage, something turrets are sorely lacking in at 80+, when every other skillset benefits from gear.

Of course, you also made the argument that the hitbox was the biggest problem in the thread about almost every single turret trait being nonfunctional.

XelNigma.6315:

You cant directly compare engi utility skills to that of a guardian or other class. the focus of power is different for each class.
So keep that in mind when trying to figure out just how powerful turrets should be.

Of course I can’t. Every single utility skills other classes have are either AoE sprouting from them, targetable AoE, or single target skills. tl;dr they do what you expect them to do, while turrets are none of it. You can’t choose which target to attack, their cooldown is high, and if engagement moves to somewhere else, you have to wait for cooldown to put your stuff again. Pets? Elementals? They attack the same target you’re engaging.

Heck, cooldown can be tolerable if the targeting isn’t so crappy.

I think a lot of you turret users are missing the point of turrets. They are stationary auto-attack pods that do sustained damage to nearby enemies over time. In WvW, PvP and Dungeons, if you don’t keep moving, you will die. Same thing happens to turrets. So if those scenarios make normal use of turrets impossible, what are some of the other benefits?

Well for one, the toolbelt and secondary skills.
If you have a healing turret, the toolbelt skill and secondary skill both create a water field. If you had all your skill slots full of turrets, you could deploy them all, activate the water field and do about 4 blast combo finishers for area heals with the deployed turrets and a shield 4-skill double-tap. That’s a LOT of healing for your squad. I also feel like the area heals take off decent chunks of damage on enemies, but it could just be the blast finishes so I gotta practice more to compare. Anyway I’m training myself to make good use of the healing turret for just that.

With the thumper turret, you’ve got a blast finisher toolbelt skill and basically a knockdown proximity mine if you time the secondary skill for an incoming mob (really long active window on this btw). This also aggros dumb monsters pretty well in dungeons and PvE, giving you time to retreat while cooldown for your other skills goes away.

Same with Flame turret. it’s secondary skilll has a bigger active area and longer active time than bombkit’s smoke bomb, so a melee monster without AoE or blind immunity will miss all his attacks while u kite him in that field.

Gun turret is a lottt more useful than it used to be with it’s shortened cooldown cycles. It’s toolbelt skill is the secret to a lot of dps if you have static discharge trait and crit damage-centric armor and trinkets.

And let me say just one thing about net turret. It is awesome in WvW for small skirmishes and in PvP if you face someone with high mobility. I changed my setup for WvW to rifle, net turret, and the supply crate elite skill. That’s about 5 standing immobilizations in rapid succession: rifle 2, net turret toolbelt skill, deploy net turret, net turret secondary skill, elite supply crate skill, and by that time your rifle 2 skill has recharged. Perfect if you are teamed up with a warrior or an ele.

I should mention that you can use most of these turrets’ toolbelt skills while blocking and while knocked down. You can also detonate them in such states or activate their secondary abilities.

And yeah turrets get destroyed. But if you are deploying them versus someone with a lot of long range attacks and AoE, then that’s your problem. If you want to compare turrets to pets and minions, then it may be just better to be a ranger, ele or a necro. These aren’t smart units so you just have to use them wisely.

I wouldn’t mind a shield turret or golem units being added to the engi repertoire eventually though.

JubeiTM.5763:

The only 2 real turret buffs would be:

1) No AOE damage to turrets. A character has to target a turret and hit it directly in order to destroy it. (unlike now, applying a field of whatever cracks all turrets in 2-3 seconds).

2) No recharge time for picked-up turrets. Only skill recharge if turret is destroyed. I wasted many hours in PVE – after clearing all the monsters i would have to wait a lot so I can move to the next mob.

I think your point 1 would be nice but everyone and their mother (that isn’t an engi) would be screaming to nerf it. It’d be fun to have a necro scared of an engi though

Your second point is awesome, but I think that’s only feasible if the turret hasn’t actually used a skill. Otherwise you’d have people constantly healing themselves or just mashing turret then pickup to get infinite chain attacks or benefits (like we used to be able to do with kit refinement). So yeah if I drop a flame turret by accident and it isn’t even close enough to an enemy to activate, then I think there should be no cooldown if I pick it up.