Guild Wars 2

So, while talking to a guild mate about engineers turrets I came up with a brilliant idea to make them useful for every build. Make them scale off of different stats. What I mean by this is simple, make the turrets scale off of stats that seem right for it. I’ll show what I thought would be nice here:

Rifle turret- Scale on Precision
Rocket Turret- Scale on Power
Thumper Turret- Scale on Toughness and/or Vitality
Flame Turret- Scale on Condition damage
Net Turret- Scale on Vitality or on Power
Healing Turret- Scale on Healing.

I think that with these new types of scaling for turrets they would be useful for once and would work with many different types of builds. I loved the idea of placing 3-4 turrets in a fight and just having them there with me attacking but right now they don’t do enough damage to be useful.

My next idea I came up with was an Elite skill Kit. Currently engineers have plenty of cool factors about them, but why don’t they have an Elite kit if they already have a kit for every other slot? I thought that since no class in the game currently has sniper like range and accuracy, with the exception of a Warrior’s Rifle Adrenaline skill, it would be a nice idea to make the Engineer’s Elite Kit skill a Sniper Kit. They could have superior range, high damage but slow firing, maybe make the skills do more damage to moving targets like some sniper enemies in the game.
You might think the kit would be too powerful because of that, but my idea would be to make it’s 5 skill something strange. The skill would have a long charge time, would be Undodge-able, do a high amount of damage at an extremely long range, and would set the ENTIRE kit on cool-down for some time before it can be used again. The other skills could be other types of attacks, let’s say Crippling shots, Knockdown shots, and even a Torment shot. I just would like to see a new Kit Elite Skill as there currently isn’t one even though there is a potion elite and a turret elite.

EDIT: There are two topics here, and so far all the comments and replies have been about turrets save for a few, let’s diversify and get some thoughts on every aspect of the post and not just the turrets.

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.

OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.

OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Right. My suggestion is so unbalanced that they implemented it with every other aspect of the game.

If you really don’t think turrets scaling with stats is balanced, you really have not thought it through at all.

VIVorcha.7853:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.

OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Right. My suggestion is so unbalanced that they implemented it with every other aspect of the game.

If you really don’t think turrets scaling with stats is balanced, you really have not thought it through at all.

I’m curious as to what, exactly, makes it unbalanced while the original post is not unbalanced. Not saying the original post is unbalanced, but I’m just curious what makes one unbalanced but not the other.

While I would support adding scaling as detailed in the original post…it would leave some turrets in the cold unless you kept doing the idiotic ‘traits for this, gear for this,’ except now you’d be going ‘This for this turret, this for this turret, this for this turret…’ and in the end, I think that would just make things worse because it would still force a Turret-user to go to irritating lengths of nitpickery in gear that other builds simply don’t have to put up with.
For every Turret to scale to a different stat would make Celestial gear the only set of gear for dedicated Turreteers, as it would be the only set of gear that would prevent them from having to go and change armor every time they wanted to change Turrets but didn’t want to lose effectiveness or have ‘Oh, this is just in case I switch to [Other Turret].’ It takes months to gear up in full Celestial – 10 days for weapons, 30 days for armor, 25 days for trinkets, give or take a couple random Charged Quartz minings – so I just can’t shake the feeling that this would simply make people not bother with a dedicated Turret build, instead just going “Eh, I’m in full ‘zerker, let’s take Rifle and Rocket” because a dedicated Turret build would require just over two months to gear up in a way that swapping Turrets would not put the user at a disadvantage, thereby leading them to just stagnating with a particular set instead of changing to match the battlefield. I’m in a lot of Celestial gear, and I still think that sounds like a pain in the kitten .
Also, going by this scaling scheme, taking all the Turret traits would automatically predispose people toward use of Rocket, Thumper and Healing turrets above any others simply due to what the traitlines give. People would just use full Cleric’s gear to maximize the oomph of those three turrets and use no others because why would they use others, when the stats they can get higher than others due to trait and gear synergy only affect those three?

On a side-note, why scale Net Turret on Vitality or Power, and not Condition Duration?

Therefore, I’d really rather if Turrets just scaled to player stats. Period.
Nerf the base numbers, add scaling so that the end result is better than it was before, if you actually build for it, and keep it nice and simple with across-the-board, ‘Power scales to Power, Vitality scales to Vitality,’ etcetera. Some Turrets would still be left hanging due to builds, but it would be a little less prevalent than “Each Turret scales to one particular stat and nothing else.”
As for worries about it being overpowered, remember, this would be including a nerf to base numbers. Seems only appropriate, especially in light of, say, ’zerker Turreteers, who would be able to pump out a massive amount of damage but would need to be especially wary of placement due to the resulting fragility of their turrets.

VIVorcha.7853:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.
OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Right. My suggestion is so unbalanced that they implemented it with every other aspect of the game.
If you really don’t think turrets scaling with stats is balanced, you really have not thought it through at all.

Actually, you’re right. Your idea isn’t unbalanced, just lazy. Scaling the turrets with whatever J. Random Stat people want to use is incredibly lazy and boring. Since that basically means that every turret will have the same adds to it for a given level of armor (since they all have the same value of stats, regardless of bonus type), then there would again be no need to different types of armor and ANet should just remove all the armor variants from the game in favor of the simplified “X Level Armor with Y Look”. Who cares what your stats are, so long as your armor level matches your character level and it’s name is in Orange or Purple. That’s all that matters.

sigh Talk about dumbing down the game.

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.
OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Right. My suggestion is so unbalanced that they implemented it with every other aspect of the game.
If you really don’t think turrets scaling with stats is balanced, you really have not thought it through at all.

Actually, you’re right. Your idea isn’t unbalanced, just lazy. Scaling the turrets with whatever J. Random Stat people want to use is incredibly lazy and boring. Since that basically means that every turret will have the same adds to it for a given level of armor (since they all have the same value of stats, regardless of bonus type), then there would again be no need to different types of armor and ANet should just remove all the armor variants from the game in favor of the simplified “X Level Armor with Y Look”. Who cares what your stats are, so long as your armor level matches your character level and it’s name is in Orange or Purple. That’s all that matters.

sigh Talk about dumbing down the game.

…wait, where did he say that they should scale to total stats instead of “If you’re wearing high-Toughness gear, it should improve Turret Toughness?”
See, the first is what you seem to be thinking he’s saying, but the second is what I think he’s saying

Anymras.5729:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.
OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Right. My suggestion is so unbalanced that they implemented it with every other aspect of the game.
If you really don’t think turrets scaling with stats is balanced, you really have not thought it through at all.

Actually, you’re right. Your idea isn’t unbalanced, just lazy. Scaling the turrets with whatever J. Random Stat people want to use is incredibly lazy and boring. Since that basically means that every turret will have the same adds to it for a given level of armor (since they all have the same value of stats, regardless of bonus type), then there would again be no need to different types of armor and ANet should just remove all the armor variants from the game in favor of the simplified “X Level Armor with Y Look”. Who cares what your stats are, so long as your armor level matches your character level and it’s name is in Orange or Purple. That’s all that matters.

sigh Talk about dumbing down the game.

…wait, where did he say that they should scale to total stats instead of “If you’re wearing high-Toughness gear, it should improve Turret Toughness?”
See, the first is what you seem to be thinking he’s saying, but the second is what I think he’s saying

What else could I have meant?

I swear these forums make me dumber every time I read a post.

VIVorcha.7853:

Anymras.5729:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

Drakkon.4782:

VIVorcha.7853:

How about no, and Anet just makes them all scale with every stat.

How about yes, and your counter is a horrible idea that is so unbalanced they won’t consider it for more than a millisecond.
OP, I, for one, like the idea of needing to spec gear that buffs the turrets I use, so long as they don’t bury the stat I should be stacking somewhere I can’t find it. Right now, there is no reason not to spec Zerker, so anything that makes other gear more useful and/or gets people to start playing the game in different ways is good. Engineer is just as good a place to start as any, and turrets need some love.

Right. My suggestion is so unbalanced that they implemented it with every other aspect of the game.
If you really don’t think turrets scaling with stats is balanced, you really have not thought it through at all.

Actually, you’re right. Your idea isn’t unbalanced, just lazy. Scaling the turrets with whatever J. Random Stat people want to use is incredibly lazy and boring. Since that basically means that every turret will have the same adds to it for a given level of armor (since they all have the same value of stats, regardless of bonus type), then there would again be no need to different types of armor and ANet should just remove all the armor variants from the game in favor of the simplified “X Level Armor with Y Look”. Who cares what your stats are, so long as your armor level matches your character level and it’s name is in Orange or Purple. That’s all that matters.

sigh Talk about dumbing down the game.

…wait, where did he say that they should scale to total stats instead of “If you’re wearing high-Toughness gear, it should improve Turret Toughness?”
See, the first is what you seem to be thinking he’s saying, but the second is what I think he’s saying

What else could I have meant?

I swear these forums make me dumber every time I read a post.

Alright, look, we’ve got ‘Option A’ and ‘Option B,’ and you just said ‘Yes.’ I don’t know if you were confirming my suspicion that there was a miscommunication or calling me an idiot.
I’m sure I’m not the only one confused, at this point, so I’m going to go ahead and ask you to state which one:

A ) Scale to ‘totaled stats’ or whatever the hell, where any piece of equipment with, say, +342 total stats gives the same bonus to Turrets,
or
B ) Scale to ‘individual stats,’ where the bonuses differ based on what they’re actually in (Power, Toughness, etcetera).

Glad to see I’m not the only one who realized that his idea could be interpreted in a manner other than how he intended. Could be his poor wording, but I think that he just didn’t articulate his thoughts clearly enough.

I don’t like that option, either. It’s still lazy. It leads to the same problem, total stat value or +stat buff, both lead to people just running zerker and we’re at the same place we’re at currently. There will be no differentiation in armor, no inclination to stack anything but power, precision and whatever.

However, by assigning stats to particular turret types, the armor diversity goes up as players use different turrets for different scenarios. It promotes differentiation instead of conformity. Engineers are too cookie cutter as it stands. But, we’re an underplayed class, and the chances they’ll do anything to fix it is slim.

Also, VIVorcha, try to keep the personal attacks out of your comments. Insulting people on the forums won’t win you any friends. Engineers have enough problems without us sniping at one another and acting like forum trolls.

When I say the idea is lazy, I mean from a coding and from a playing perspective. It’s just boring. Yes, it might serve to buff Engineers, but it isn’t fun to play. It might be all we get, but is it going to improve the class? Probably not. Just clearing that up.

I didn’t quite get the whole idea of turrets using different stats only, you kind of lost me on that.

Drakkon.4782:

It leads to the same problem, total stat value or +stat buff, both lead to people just running zerker and we’re at the same place we’re at currently. There will be no differentiation in armor, no inclination to stack anything but power, precision and whatever.

Then I read this and you had me; hook, line, and sinker! I’m all in on this idea.

Adamantium.3682:

I didn’t quite get the whole idea of turrets using different stats only, you kind of lost me on that.

Drakkon.4782:

It leads to the same problem, total stat value or +stat buff, both lead to people just running zerker and we’re at the same place we’re at currently. There will be no differentiation in armor, no inclination to stack anything but power, precision and whatever.

Then I read this and you had me; hook, line, and sinker! I’m all in on this idea.

Diversity is good, mmkay?

i dont want a sinper kit … i want a CANNON KIT !
long range + AOE why not

EvilZombie.6801:

i dont want a sinper kit … i want a CANNON KIT !
long range + AOE why not

Why not, indeed. Oh, wait. We do. The Mortar and it’s broken, too. cry

Drakkon.4782:

I don’t like that option, either. It’s still lazy. It leads to the same problem, total stat value or +stat buff, both lead to people just running zerker and we’re at the same place we’re at currently. There will be no differentiation in armor, no inclination to stack anything but power, precision and whatever.

However, by assigning stats to particular turret types, the armor diversity goes up as players use different turrets for different scenarios. It promotes differentiation instead of conformity. Engineers are too cookie cutter as it stands. But, we’re an underplayed class, and the chances they’ll do anything to fix it is slim.

I trimmed out some of the stuff, to get back on track. I have a couple questions.

• How, exactly, would having each turret be assigned a particular stat that helps it improve diversity?
  I mean, yes, obviously there’s “So now you have to have X gear to get X turret working properly, but then there’s X turret and X turret, and then the Healing Turret,” but if you actually look at the traitlines, then Rocket, Thumper and Healing Turret (as well as, potentially, Net Turret, according to the original post) would benefit disproportionately to begin with, due to having bonuses originating from the traitlines themselves if the user actually builds to pick up Turret traits.
• What is there to keep people from just, say, putting on Cleric’s gear, throwing a couple Vitality trinkets on and calling it a day, particularly at higher levels where you simply don’t want to build Exotics and Ascended items for the sake of having spares ?
• Any solid disadvantages (such as: increased fragility, etcetera) that people would need to be aware of, or would the greatest disadvantage be “That turret doesn’t work as well as the others, because I’m not wearing the right gear?”

As for people just running ‘zerker if the Power-to-Power, Vitality-to-Vitality, Etc-to-Etc scaling were implemented…they’d sure have some glass cannon turrets, wouldn’t they?
Considering the current fragility of Turrets, alongside the long cooldowns, both of which issues seem to inevitably come up any time Turrets are discussed, I find myself doubting that ‘zerker gear would be quite so prevalent in Turret builds if low Vitality and Toughness translated to even more fragile Turrets – after all, they’d have to lower the base numbers to implement scaling. Indirectly, this would lead to the turrets of ’zerkers going on cooldown more often due to increased fragility exacerbated by having lower Vitality and Toughness than others.

In summary: I think having all Turret stats scale to the player’s build (in a power-to-power, vitality-to-vitality way) would promote more varied choices of armor, because there would be obvious, concrete advantages and disadvantages to each build, promoting fine-tuning. Whether this is ‘lazy’ or not, it’s definitely more intuitive than assigning a stat or two to each Turret and ruling that no other stats would affect it, for good or ill.

(This bit is redundant, honestly, but I feel it might be a good idea to put this as bluntly as possible.) My current impression of having specific Turrets scale to specific stats, obviously, is that there is no readily apparent downside to anything besides “Yeah, that Turret doesn’t work as well. Just don’t have the right gear on for it.” Sure, they’d reduce the base numbers to account for scaling – but if each Turret only scales its damage (*) to one or two things, then the end result will just be a sort of ‘Your stats matter, but only for how hard these hit’ situation, which seems doomed to stagnation. (If each Turret were to scale all of its stats to one or two things, that would quickly get out of hand as well, I think, thus my inclination to think the OP’s idea is focused on damage more than anything else.) Add ‘Having to have backup armor to allow optimal effectiveness of Turrets other than primary,’ and it just…doesn’t seem a very good idea to me.
I’m all for diversity of builds and armor, but this particular suggestion just seems an unnecessary headache and barely an improvement over the current ‘trait for this, gear for that’ system required to get the most out of Turrets.

(*) or primary effect, considering that Net Turret is in the original post as potentially Power-based; OP didn’t exactly say a whole lot about the idea except to remark that Turrets weren’t doing enough damage, so I’m having to interpret and extrapolate a little, quite possibly inaccurately. OP is invited to provide more detail.

Anymras.5729:

I trimmed out some of the stuff, to get back on track. I have a couple questions.

Snipped a lot of your stuff because I’m not going to play psychologist for the player base. I’m only reporting what is done right now, and how the proposed change WON’T change that. People run in Zerker because they do. People who don’t are looked down upon because they are. Why? I don’t know. I’ve never been an elitist jackdaw. I won’t speculate on the state of mind of people I don’t even know. Sorry. As for your questions…

• How, exactly, would having each turret be assigned a particular stat that helps it improve diversity?

Running with Healing Turret (and why wouldn’t you?) that is buffed by +healing means that you’ll look for gear with +healing on it to maximize your healing turrets Overcharge, if nothing else. Personally, I like fire and forget turrets, where I just stay inside the AOE and use Overcharge to increase the pulse when I need more healing. Would be nicer if it worked more reliably.

Now, Rifle Turret benefits from Precision (let’s say), and Rocket Turret benefits off Power. Three turrets and a kit. 4 slots, plus the Elite, which won’t be a kit or a turret. So that’s what we have. Turrets benefit from Power, Precision and Healing, so you’ll be looking for Assassin’s, Berserker’s, Cleric’s and Magi’s armor and weapons to stack those stats. If you stack just Assassin’s or Berserker’s, you’re going to be gimping your healing turret. Too much Cleric’s and Magi’s and you’re going to be gimping one of the other ones. But all of the prefixes now have value, as opposed to being total vendor/salvage bait that they are now.

I mean, yes, obviously there’s “So now you have to have X gear to get X turret working properly, but then there’s X turret and X turret, and then the Healing Turret,” but if you actually look at the traitlines, then Rocket, Thumper and Healing Turret (as well as, potentially, Net Turret, according to the original post) would benefit disproportionately to begin with, due to having bonuses originating from the traitlines themselves if the user actually builds to pick up Turret traits.

Fortunately, that’s a non-issue. If you’re making a turret build, you’re going to stack for turrets and if the traits disproportionately favor particular turrets, then you’ll likely use those specific ones. The devs can adjust for that on the back end without affecting the illusion of choice.

• What is there to keep people from just, say, putting on Cleric’s gear, throwing a couple Vitality trinkets on and calling it a day, particularly at higher levels where you simply don’t want to build Exotics and Ascended items for the sake of having spares?

Nothing. Why? Is that a problem? People are throwing on Zerker gear and calling it a day now. How is that different? Look, the basic premise is that they probably won’t be selecting just one type of prefix to wear if they want to have a good selection of turrets. They’re not going to necessarily find the right stats on just one, so they’ll need two or three. It makes things valuable, and allows people to vary their builds. Will there be holdouts? Sure. Just like now, there are Engineers who are trying to make things work, even though the odds are against them. People are stubborn cusses. There will always be people who will buck the conventional wisdom of the day or run in ways that the game doesn’t optimize for, just to see if it can be done. The goal with this overhaul is just to vary the kinds of gear we use as Engineers because we’re trying to shake up the cookie cutters a little.

• Any solid disadvantages (such as: increased fragility, etcetera) that people would need to be aware of, or would the greatest disadvantage be “That turret doesn’t work as well as the others, because I’m not wearing the right gear?”

Just that, pretty much. From my own experience as a raider in other games, stripping out the theorycrafting and elitism, has been stack for the traits in a particular order until you’re satisfied with the results and then stack for the next one. With six armor slots and (at most) 2 weapons slots, a neck, 2 trinks and 2 rings, we’re looking at a total number of slots that can leave a lot of room for play. Now, imagine crafters all trying to make gear to sell or use, and not having the right stuff for X type right now, but they can cover it by making Y and Z types instead of other slots The fluidity of being able to shift one’s stats around from piece to piece without losing effectiveness and efficiency is invaluable to making a viable character. While I’m not saying that the stats are that tight right now that a single wrong piece of gear will get you killed, running in all Zerker with no thought of variation is getting pretty bland.

I think we’re at an impasse – neither of us is going to convince the other of one version or the other being better.

Therefore, to prevent this turning into both of us saying the same things at each other for the next three pages like a Monty Python skit, I’ll suggest that we simply leave it off here, and let our arguments for the different versions stand for potential further review by the people who may or may not actually have to decide at some point.

Is it that hard to understand the idea of turrets having stats in the same way players have stats?

Player toughness should increase turret toughness.
Player power should increase turret power.

Turrets should not scale with stats and i don’t think they ever will. They only scale with healing and condi damage because it would become unbalance if it didn’t(either too weak or too strong).

Turrets are supposed to be something that gives the engineer the possibility of being more tanky and still dishing some damage. If they scale with all stats you’ll simply lose this possibility and there’s absolutely no need to make them scale with toughness. Anet just need to find a sweet spot for it’s health and toughness for the different game types.

The real problems with the turrets are the bugs, the uncontrollable AI and the borked way that overcharges work.
The way to fix the turrets is to split their health and toughness in the different game types, fix their horrendous bugs and give them some quality of life improvements like making the overcharge skills work when you use them(not 6 seconds later) and make them attack your target(thank the six gods, the spirits and the eternal alchemy that they are finally looking into that.).

I really don’t get the OP side of the argument at all. Wouldn’t Anet simply modify the coefficients of each scaling stat on the turrets (as well as the base amounts) to make sure it’s balanced?

I mean, using this same “it would be OP” argument then no skill in the game should really scale with stats right? Because it would make it too powerful? It would just need to be balanced accordingly, as they are.

Anymras.5729:

I think we’re at an impasse – neither of us is going to convince the other of one version or the other being better.

Therefore, to prevent this turning into both of us saying the same things at each other for the next three pages like a Monty Python skit, I’ll suggest that we simply leave it off here, and let our arguments for the different versions stand for potential further review by the people who may or may not actually have to decide at some point.

I just posted a novel there, so if it isn’t clear after all that, I don’t think any amount of discussion will do it. I’m not interested in convincing anyone. I’m using this thread as a place to discuss different ways to solve the problems with turrets, and I like the start of the OP’s ideas. I think I’ve kinda refined them a little, but I know that ANet won’t act on them, so preaching to the choir isn’t going to fix the problem. Until ANet allocates from brainpower to the problem of the Engineer class, we’re just going to be talking to one another about what we’d like to see, and fangasming about it when we manage to hit on an idea that we all like.

GuilguiS.2738:

Turrets should not scale with stats and i don’t think they ever will. They only scale with healing and condi damage because it would become unbalance if it didn’t(either too weak or too strong).

Turrets are supposed to be something that gives the engineer the possibility of being more tanky and still dishing some damage. If they scale with all stats you’ll simply lose this possibility and there’s absolutely no need to make them scale with toughness. Anet just need to find a sweet spot for it’s health and toughness for the different game types.

The real problems with the turrets are the bugs, the uncontrollable AI and the borked way that overcharges work.
The way to fix the turrets is to split their health and toughness in the different game types, fix their horrendous bugs and give them some quality of life improvements like making the overcharge skills work when you use them(not 6 seconds later) and make them attack your target(thank the six gods, the spirits and the eternal alchemy that they are finally looking into that.).

If allowing scaling to gear would make Turrets too weak or too strong, then the scaling is assumed to be badly-executed, I think. Also, if that were going to happen, it would have already happened, when they made Turrets scale to Conditions, or when people realized that Turrets scale to Trait points – any level 80 Engineer’s turrets will deal a relatively range of direct damage, for example, with the low end being ‘no points in Explosives’ and the high end being ‘thirty points in…
…wait, just checked to see if this was still the case.
They’ve removed Turrets scaling to Explosives ranks. What the hell? When did this happen? I know they used to. Was this a bug and nobody bothered to tell us, or is this a bug now?

Moving on, I guess.

It’s not even unimaginable, considering, that they possibly intended Turrets to scale and somehow decided not to have them scale to gear. Hell, maybe it’s the most insidious kittening bug we’ve ever seen, and the Healing Power/Boon/Condition scaling was a fix they called a buff because it looked better than admitting that they simply broke the things way back when and didn’t know how to fix them, and we ate it up because we don’t know what’s broken and what isn’t where Turrets are concerned because holy kitten the whole skill category is barely capable of being used and not collapsing under the weight of its veritable mountain of kittening bugs that nobody bothers to fix.
These ivory-tower kittens can’t even be bothered to talk to us, why would they admit they broke something when they could pretend it was intended design, like Turrets not scaling to gear? :tinfoilhat:

As for the suggested ‘fixes’ to the situation: Nah, while those would be a start, especially the bugfixing, they wouldn’t resolve the core issue of Turrets simply failing to be effective enough. Having all three Turrets attack one target is something, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve had Flame, Rifle and Rocket all beating on one enemy before, and the results weren’t impressive. Keep in mind that I run a pretty much straight Turret build, and certainly had been when I did this test.
It wasn’t even anything big, just a regular Alpine Minotaur who happened to be relatively isolated.
All three Turrets, overcharged when possible, with me shooting alongside (Pistol/Shield), simply didn’t take even that single monster down as fast as the very same build (as far as I can recall; it’s been some time), possibly with a little bit of different trait selection if a traitline I had points in could swing it, using a Flamethrower, on the same monster the next time it respawned…because my Flamethrower actually scaled to my stats, enabling it to keep up with the increasing durability and damage of enemies where Turrets simply get left behind.