Guild Wars 2

As an Engineer, I love my turrets!

However, I have a few concerns which keep me from enjoying my Engineer…

1 – In dungeons turrets tend to fire away at environmental targets (Catapults, wall traps etc) even after they have been destroyed, I find myself asking “Why are my turrets so fascinated with that wall?”

2 – Turrets like to target foes that are out of LoS, resulting in a wasted CD.

3 – There is no way to “Focus Fire” a turret, so in dungeons you can’t guarantee they’ll aim for the priority target.

4 – Turrets seem to be like catnip, or a very tasty steak, as soon as you throw them down mobs just like to target them, and being as fragile as they are, rarely live long.

Simply put I’d like their AI to be revised so they quit firing at environmental targets and at mobs that are out of sight, and I’d like a basic control bar, similar to ranger pets, enabling a simple “Attack selected target/Stop Fire” functionality.

I have no idea if anyone has these issues, or if it’s been brought up before, but after running Ascalonian Catacombs and watching my turrets fire at the destroyed gargoyles in the wall for the 50th time, I figured I’d bring it up.

Meh, i agree their AI should be better and you should have the option to call targets for turrets. Still… theres a lot of more important bugs to fix before that.

Turrets aren’t tanks (besides thumper). Generally you should tank(block) for your turrets (or kite circles around them) and not group them too close together.

What i want is an Elite Turret

This isn’t an engineer problem.

It’s a minion AI problem.

Necros and Rangers have been complaining about this since beta as well. It needs fixing, and I’m sure ANet is working on it. There’s no telling how long it’ll take for it to be addressed, but since it effects multiple classes then I’d hope it’s a rather high priority.

Turrets shooting non-existant objects is the worst. Place your turrets far away from environmental objects or they’ll be completely useless, fantastic. And makes no darn sense, nothing else in the game gets stuck targetting destroyed things like that. Why is the turret AI so crappy even compared to the other mediocre AI.

LoS thing is also an issue and I’d like to see it fixed, though its not as much of an issue as the “dead object targetting” problem.

Other than that I’m fine with the way turrets work.

I’m very much of the opinion that controlling pets or in this case turrets is and should remain Ranger’s niche, not be distributed to other professions. That is Ranger’s profession mechanic after all, would be lame for Rangers to have pet control make up the entirety of their profession mechanic keys while others get it for free. MAYBE they could have a “Focus Fire” skill as a utility ability, since at least then you’d have to sacrifice a utility slot (which you could instead use for another turret or a kit), but even then I’m not sure its a good idea.

As for turrets drawing aggro… I haven’t really had that problem. Turrets don’t really seem to draw any more aggro than anything else does. Sometimes I wish they’d draw less aggro, sure, but other times I actually wish they’d draw more, I’ll be getting chased by a couple enemies and wishing my turrets would draw some of the heat away from me. The only change I might make to turret aggro is to make the Thumper turret draw more aggro than it currently does, so that you could use the Thumper turret to draw aggro away from other turrets if needed and away from yourself a bit more.