Guild Wars 2

The problem with turrets, well, ok there are many, but the root problem is they are just not fun. There is no play in turrets. And as long as there is no play, they will wither because the devs just don’t know what to do about them.
Let’s look at some of the issues:
They are low health
They are immobile
They are dumb
Overcharge is not on-demand
Traits are spread out and are not particularly helpful
And currently they (most) are broken

Why are they this way?
Low health: Honestly, if they were high health their damage would have to be reduced.
Immobile: Dev’s want to keep this unique (and I do too).
Dumb: LOS issues, and too much AOE to screw up the new mechanics.
Broken: C’mon, can we get these fixed already??

What I propose:

Remove overcharges and replace with defensive bubbles.
Bubbles cover the turret
Bubbles are on demand by turret
Bubbles are available every 15 seconds
Bubbles last ~3 seconds
Bubbles prevent offensive turret behavior
Bubbles would reduce incoming damage by x% (i’m thinking 80%)

This alleviates the immobile and low health issue. Also adds to reactive play and removes some of the passive.

In order to compensate for the loss of overcharge I would recommend increasing the turrets’ performance.
Things I would suggest would be:
Increase ROF
Increase damage
Remove some of the condition
Increase the base hp
Allow them to pierce
Increase AOE
*(not suggesting all of them at the same time)

For example:
Rifle Turret: Increase ROF to every second and reduce the damage.

Traiting:
We have:
Blow them up for some damage and a push (ok, but we already have mines)
Turrets regenerate
Turrets are tougher
Turrets do more damage (slightly)
Turrets can be remotely placed (although this is pretty handy)
Turrets can be repaired if you flail your wrench like a madman
And who stays in wrench to repair turrets??

How about:
Deployable Turrets: How come I can place them on a ledge but have to blow them up because I can’t reach them?
Add to this trait the ability to AOE pick up.

Combine metal plating and auto tool installation (to the adept level)
Move Riffled Turrets to master
New trait: When turrets drop below 25% health, they double ROF for 10 seconds (90 cd) grandmaster. And can I get a ‘ker-chucking’ sound when they go crazy??
What this does encourage taking the adept trait (tougher/regen) to allow the full o/c behavior)

Or, new gm: Turret recharge is halved.
New trait- when bubbles are active, they reflect ( I would replace the heal in the wrench) This would allow us some defense to ‘hide’ behind them.

One final thought.
They need to be more damage neutral. They shouldn’t offer more performance to a condi spec than to a power spec.

I think there are simpler solutions. Having tried to make a viable turret build recently, I decided that the main problem was the damage and the cooldown. In my opinion the cooldown should not exist if we pick up the turret (and be maybe 15 seconds per turret if we blast it, not 50 seconds). This cooldown could also be incurred if the turret dies. Running with Deployable Turrets means your turrets are unlikely to die very easily if you’re careful about where you place them. The main problem as of now is that you have to stay in that place or wait a whole minute until you can do anything at all in combat. Following a fight you should be able to pick up your turrets and carry on your way with no downtime until you can set them again. The damage is also fairly weak, I honestly feel that a 50% increase in damage would put them on about the right level (look at the damage a mesmer illusion can do whilst being mobile, on a lower cooldown, and taking up a single weapon slot rather than a utility slot).

EDIT: And I still feel that turrets should belong in one compact kit instead, so that we can get some actual utility skills alongside them. We have no weapon swap, running a 3 turret build (which is fairly necessary for a turret build given the amount of traits that have to be invested just to make them remotely viable) leaves in with all of 5 buttons to use ourselves to try and stay alive and deal damage. Not a great situation. Tool Kit is designed to synergise with turrets, yet you’ll only have two turrets up doing anything if you’re running Tool Kit.

I find that people should be made to think twice about killing the turret. Right now they think oh I’ll just take them all out with some aoe they’ll only explode if the engi has traited into it. I believe they should make it so that if you destroy all of the turrets at once you’ll probably get killed if you don’t get away fast enough. If metal plating and autotool installation are fused like we’ve been asking for there could be a trait called unstable inventions which causes a turret to go haywire and invulnerable at 1% health until the turrets haywire attack has finished casting and animating.

Rocket turret – sends out a charrzooka #5 like barrage of rockets at your target or the enemy that hit it with the attack that took it to 1%.

Net turret – fires a big net that roots all enemies around its target for 5 seconds.

Rifle turret – does a bleeding unload like attack.

Thumper turret – churns the earth in a wider than average area for 4 seconds and then launches all enemies within range.

Flame turret – Launches a giant arching ball of fire which does a big ol’ bomb like explosion when it reaches its target.

Healing turret – Drills into the ground and makes a big healing geyser.

These are very rough drafts but it sort of gives turrets a niche because instead of increasing their survivability it could make people think twice before destroying your turrets. The trait could also decrease turret recharge by 30% because if they’re unstable they must be easy to build.

yall are cra cra lol I love turrets and to me they’re totally fun… like when your being chased and you slap down a bumper turret instantly use its skill and then a machine gun turret run back some more add your healing and rocket turets in the back… and in a spvp situation just throw them all down at once including the “supply package” as fast as possible then with your rifle control your opponents body. Your all going into this thinking the wrong way. You have to use turrets like they’re part of a castle defense game and your the castle…

evilove.6804:

yall are cra cra lol I love turrets and to me they’re totally fun… like when your being chased and you slap down a bumper turret instantly use its skill and then a machine gun turret run back some more add your healing and rocket turets in the back… and in a spvp situation just throw them all down at once including the “supply package” as fast as possible then with your rifle control your opponents body. Your all going into this thinking the wrong way. You have to use turrets like they’re part of a castle defense game and your the castle…

In large, I agree with you here. I do not feel turrets are as grossly underwhelming as everyone makes them out to be. If you lay down every turret in a single area and they get wiped in 1 shot, then the fault is on the player and not the mechanics. I do feel that it would not hurt to expand upon the attributes of turrets in some manner or other. It would be nice and improve build diversity, if that is indeed what the Devs strive towards, to have turrets somewhat linked to our equipment’s stats. Zerking turrets would be just as intriguing as condition sustaining ones or even Juggernaut-esque Thumpers.

well i dont want to change my current (10th dec balance) turrets trait
i just hope to change deployable turret (tools trait VI) who give now ground targetting in a sort of turret can follow u for 1 min and after detonate or reduce the turrets cooldown of 30%/50% when u pick them up

Holy crap, all of these posts are walls of text. I don’t usually mind reading a few but I’m not going to read all of these.

All I have to say is that I use my Thumper Turret often and get great use out of it. I’m not sure about the other turrets because I do fully believe they die too fast and don’t provide much use. But the Thumper Turret is great, especially in 1v1 battles. So although most turrets suck, Thumper is great.

I wish turrets were awesome. The whole point of me picking engineer when the game came out was for turrets. Why can’t turrets be good? That’s all I want.