Guild Wars 2

I am fed up of people comparing turrets and pets for the health issue. I don’t think I am the only one.
I would just like to put this out there. If you want to be fair about turrets and pets you need to really give the turret nearly 3 times the hp. and 5 times traited of course not suggesting a base line boost to that high.

Now before we get the militant NO! turrets wont be killed. Think of it this way.

Eng throws down turrets. You realise you can’t handle it. You throw down aoe. Stay out of range and wait for the aoe to take them out. Pop in dump more move out again.
Easy kills
Eng has to respond by either picking up the turrets and following you whilst they are on CD. Or leave them up and heal them through. So no mobility.

Now with pets, they follow you. They can move out of aoe, they can keep hitting you and unless you control they they follow you with all bonuses and an angry ranger.

So what was the point?
Turret need a lot more HP to become viable. They should survive at least one bout of pve aoe, no matter how hard it hits. We need to stop having them compared to pets.

I totally agree with you that turrets are still undesirable for many reasons. The main roadblock to turrets being made viable is the elite (Supply Crate). Anet can’t buff turrets without making them OP as long as engis can have up to 4 extra turrets from the elite, for a total of 8 turrets. Until the elite gets reworked, we won’t be seeing many turret improvements — it has been a year since launch and all they’ve done is bugfix turret traits so far.

Also, each turret takes up a utility slot for us, while a ranger’s pet is inherent to the class, always there no matter the build. And they get 2. So even if you kill a ranger’s pet, they’ve got a 2nd to swap to. To drop a 2nd turret if our first gets destroyed requires bringing another utility. Plus, each turret is very specialized (unlike pets) so dropping a rocket turret is not the same as replacing your destroyed net turret. But even swapping from your dying jaguar to your carrion devourer (melee → range) still gets you a damaging pet.

…so what you’re saying is “They shouldn’t have the health bonus every other minion type has gotten, they should get a much bigger one because they can’t move.”
I understand the idea, but this seems…overpowered. Mobility be kitten ed, you could put them around a choke point with Autotool Installation (which, of course, would be a much more potent trait with this change) and leave.

There are many issues keeping Turrets from being viable, but a disproportionate (in comparison to similar skilltypes of other classes) increase to their health isn’t the solution. It would just get everything else about them nerfed.

Anymras.5729:

…so what you’re saying is “They shouldn’t have the health bonus every other minion type has gotten, they should get a much bigger one because they can’t move.”

That’s almost exactly what I meant. If you can run from a turret it’s an easy kill. I have been in some situations where my HT has been dead before It’s even out and done the first Overcharge.

So why should something that you can’t move be the same hp as something that can follow you, and get heals?
Also if you look at the range of a turret, if you have max range on it it can’t hit you. The only one with a chance is Rocket turret and if you can’t dodge it you shouldn’t be taken seriously when you complain about it.

They fire at predictable rates of fire, can’t move, have limited range and can only hit one target at a time. This sounds like in a 1v1 fight having a lot of health on them would be OP but when you have 2 people in the mix it’s going to be bye bye turrets

My biggest problem with turret engineer is not that turrets cannot move, nor that AoE melts turrets. Turrets were designed to not move and they are unique in that aspect. Your turrets can gain more survivability by spreading out the turrets. Therefore, enemies will have to spread out.

My biggest problem as a turret engineer is the loss of utility. MM necros have 10 weapon skills to use from even if the utility bar is all minions. Turret engineers are forced to use 5 weapon skills. If engineers are going to be forced to use 5 skills, then turret engineers need the help of passive to reinforce turret engineer.

runeblade.7514:

My biggest problem as a turret engineer is the loss of utility. MM necros have 10 weapon skills to use from even if the utility bar is all minions. Turret engineers are forced to use 5 weapon skills.

I feel that you are undermining the strength and utility of turrets in this situation. It is a bit unfair to imply turrets are dead weight by forcing the engineer into a single weapon set because turrets generally have very reasonable and potentially powerful overcharge effects. Pairing a rifle with Rocket Turret, Thumper Turret & Rifle Turret will result in a combination that will easily stack vulnerability to synch with reasonable spikes during the use of your now 3 available CC effects. Thumper Turret alone has more combo blasts than any other skill via overcharge, detonation and Rumble; paired with any combo field this is an immensely powerful party skill. In short, I do not feel the limitation of weapon skills gimps a turret engineer to the extent of being underpowered if the turrets are being used for more than faux pets.

runeblade.7514:

If engineers are going to be forced to use 5 skills, then turret engineers need the help of passive to reinforce turret engineer.

This however I have been discussing with others recently and the response varies from person to person. I am of the mindset that one’s attributes should play a bigger role in the utilization of turrets. That is to say the life expectancy and DPS of turrets should have a more direct correlation to our gear. I personally feel this would broaden a wide range of new turret builds and more effectively promote their use. There are others I have spoken to who seem to think this might elevate them too high. Personally I am an advocate of something to this effect.

Turrets should be like banners undestroyable and they only appear for 10 sec. with a cooldown of 20-30 sec. They need to scale with the stats and need to crit.

1. Rifle Turret fires like the Messmer Duelist Phantasma. Fires every 3 seconds. Toolbelt like it is now. Cooldown 20 Sec.

1. Rocket turret fires a rocket but with AOE Damge Radius 240. Fires every 5 seconds. Toolbelt Skill shoots a rocket like now but faster. Cooldown 25 sec.

1. Fire Turret now pulses a ring of fire Radius 180 which cause 2 sec. burn every 3 sec. Cooldown 20 Sec.
   Toolbelt is now a Torment Field which stacks Torment every sec. and the field last 3 seconds. Radius 180

1. Thumper turret on cast grant stability for you and Allies for 4 sec, AOE cripple and knockdown Radius 240 every 5 seconds no damage. Cooldown 30 sec.
   Toolbelt AOE like it is now but damage increased and causes weakness for 3sec.

1. Net Turret like it is now roots targets every 5 sec. Cooldown 25 sec.
   Toolbelt as it is now with more range.

1. Healturret heals you like it do now grants regeneration for 10 seconds on cast for you and allies and after 5 second it gives 3 sec. Aegis for you and allies after 10 sec it heals like now the overcharge. Cooldown 20sec.
   Toolbelt now is a 3 sec. Waterfield Radius 240 which heals like the EG gun field needs a higher cooldown.

Toolbelts are useable when turret is deployed and turrets can not be destroyed by the engineer

some traits must be changed but this whould make turret more mobile i think.

The problem about your suggestion is that things get balanced around spvp here, which is a game mode where people actually have to stand around in circles to win. So turrets will never get the amount of health you want the to get.

Debugging them would be enough anyways.

Mnemesis.8257:

runeblade.7514:

My biggest problem as a turret engineer is the loss of utility. MM necros have 10 weapon skills to use from even if the utility bar is all minions. Turret engineers are forced to use 5 weapon skills.

I feel that you are undermining the strength and utility of turrets in this situation. It is a bit unfair to imply turrets are dead weight by forcing the engineer into a single weapon set because turrets generally have very reasonable and potentially powerful overcharge effects. Pairing a rifle with Rocket Turret, Thumper Turret & Rifle Turret will result in a combination that will easily stack vulnerability to synch with reasonable spikes during the use of your now 3 available CC effects. Thumper Turret alone has more combo blasts than any other skill via overcharge, detonation and Rumble; paired with any combo field this is an immensely powerful party skill. In short, I do not feel the limitation of weapon skills gimps a turret engineer to the extent of being underpowered if the turrets are being used for more than faux pets.

The strength and utility of turrets alone is the same as Minions from necromancers. Yet turret engineers are weaker because they lack 5 weapon skills and turrets cannot move at all.

• Bone minions can explode for spike damage.
• Bone fiend can immobilize.
• Flesh golem can aoe knockdown
• Flesh wurm can teleport
• Shadow fiend can blind.

So no, it turns out that you overestimate the turret engineer’s utility. Engineer using a pistol/shield will only have 2 defensive skills max to save himself. MM necros have more. Fear, Lifesteal, and AoE immobilize from deathshroud, 4 AoE spells from staff, additional utilities from the second weaponset and utilities from minions as well.

runeblade.7514:

The strength and utility of turrets alone is the same as Minions from necromancers. Yet turret engineers are weaker because they lack 5 weapon skills and turrets cannot move at all.

• Bone minions can explode for spike damage.
• Bone fiend can immobilize.
• Flesh golem can aoe knockdown
• Flesh wurm can teleport
• Shadow fiend can blind.

So no, it turns out that you overestimate the turret engineer’s utility. Engineer using a pistol/shield will only have 2 defensive skills max to save himself. MM necros have more. Fear, Lifesteal, and AoE immobilize from deathshroud, 4 AoE spells from staff, additional utilities from the second weaponset and utilities from minions as well.

They are not remotely the same; apples and oranges. Assuming the Engineer is using Rifle or Shield and using Rocket & Thumper Turrets, you have a minimum of 3 CC effects WITHOUT additional weapon combinations. Looking at Necro shows the KD from golem and CC effects from fear is on a higher cd than Overcharged Shot and Overcharged Rockets combined. I would say having more readily available control effects is defensive enough to compensate for the lack of an additional weapon set. If that should prove to not be enough, then perhaps the fact that Engineer has more combo blasts than any profession with turrets should open this discussion further. When you take Thumper Turret with any combination of the remainders you have an impressive 6 combo blasts to exploit during water fields, 8 if you include weapon set and Supply Crate.

Simplified. Would it be nice if turrets received some sort of buff? Absolutely. However, doing so would take a great deal of care because it would easily push turrets well over the edge and make them too powerful without killing off some of their most potent qualities. It is impossible to improve upon them as they are now without some form of equal compensation to balance it out. In this regard I have been calling for a reduction in their base attributes with an integration between those of the character for larger build diversity.

This i just an idea for improving turrets, try comparing them to traps, give them shorter cooldowns and and ammo that will run out after something like 20 sec and somewhat faster fire rate.
That will make the more versitile in all sorts of situations and not to powerful.

Mnemesis.8257:

runeblade.7514:

The strength and utility of turrets alone is the same as Minions from necromancers. Yet turret engineers are weaker because they lack 5 weapon skills and turrets cannot move at all.

• Bone minions can explode for spike damage.
• Bone fiend can immobilize.
• Flesh golem can aoe knockdown
• Flesh wurm can teleport
• Shadow fiend can blind.

So no, it turns out that you overestimate the turret engineer’s utility. Engineer using a pistol/shield will only have 2 defensive skills max to save himself. MM necros have more. Fear, Lifesteal, and AoE immobilize from deathshroud, 4 AoE spells from staff, additional utilities from the second weaponset and utilities from minions as well.

They are not remotely the same; apples and oranges. Assuming the Engineer is using Rifle or Shield and using Rocket & Thumper Turrets, you have a minimum of 3 CC effects WITHOUT additional weapon combinations. Looking at Necro shows the KD from golem and CC effects from fear is on a higher cd than Overcharged Shot and Overcharged Rockets combined. I would say having more readily available control effects is defensive enough to compensate for the lack of an additional weapon set. If that should prove to not be enough, then perhaps the fact that Engineer has more combo blasts than any profession with turrets should open this discussion further. When you take Thumper Turret with any combination of the remainders you have an impressive 6 combo blasts to exploit during water fields, 8 if you include weapon set and Supply Crate.

Simplified. Would it be nice if turrets received some sort of buff? Absolutely. However, doing so would take a great deal of care because it would easily push turrets well over the edge and make them too powerful without killing off some of their most potent qualities. It is impossible to improve upon them as they are now without some form of equal compensation to balance it out. In this regard I have been calling for a reduction in their base attributes with an integration between those of the character for larger build diversity.

Yes I agree, it is like comparing a shiny delicious apple to a rotten orange.

Different taste, but different quality.