Guild Wars 2

It seems to me that a lot of engineers like the idea of having turrets, me too! But my question is, why do they do little to no damage?
When deployed they should shake the very soul of any intruder! Okay well maybe not too crazy but you get the point, I can understand arena net’s goal to make them somewhat underpowered so you rely more on other skills and such, but what about those engi’s that ONLY want to have turrets for their skills (that’s me)?

How bout this arena net, keep the turrets how they are now, but remove these ridiculous cooldowns! The turret engi should be all about quick set up and let the turrets just do there thang, oh wait they already do that, BUT the problem is that anyone can easily run away.

So how bout this, drop the cooldowns to about 15 seconds for the heavy turrets, and a mere 5 second cooldown for the rifle and flame turret. Then make them last only 10-15 seconds with the active abilities already on. Engi’s already have too many skills to manage so just make turrets already have their actives like, that’s simple!

Instead of our toolbelt skills being useless when turrets are deployed, just move the destroy turret feature where the old active abilities were. Now we can ALWAYS use our tool belt skills like were supposed to.

Now hold on there buddy, you just made the engineers sound OP as crap, well yes it seems that way, but now arena net can easily balance the damage and keep the dps the same as it used to be when turrets lasted 5 minutes, but here’s the best part, now we are a mobile class again and turret builds can be viable with such low cooldowns!

Please let me know your thoughts

The problem with some of what your saying is it wont appeal to everyone (but hey what will?")

Tbh, i’d be fine with them being deployed with the over power effect going and just be short duration pets like gaurdian spirit weapons.

With that said, you’ll never get their CD’s that low…. Though i think gaurdian cd’s and durations etc are a good example to go by if you were to attempt what your talking about.

All in all, i like what your trying to accomplish, but i think theres some core issues your not addressing.

Balancing would be key, but my main goal of lowering the cooldowns is to keep the engi mobile with a turret build because mobility is sorta a key factor. Overall, turrets can keep their dps as they are now, so basically make their damage much less but the ability to always have your turrets attacking is what would make our damage as turret engi’s consistent.

As is, both flame and rifle turret is severly useless compared to all the other turrets, so a damage boost and speed boost for those would be very nice, especially due to the fact most people cut right through them.

As for the abilities always being active, that would be impossible, because never before has a class been more fearful than a rifled engineer with net turret, thumper turret and rocket turret. That’s three immobilizes, one stun and potenitally 3 knockdowns(rocket fires off 2 when overcharged). If deployed tactically, that’s going to be the closest you get to infinte CC.

Also, with the exploding turret trait, both flame turret and healing turret can create and instantly use combofields when overcharged, giving stealth and healing respectively. Those also cause knockdowns, as well.

IMO, cooldowns should start the moment you throw down a turret, meaning if your opponent takes too long destroying it, you could instantly throw it down again after their initial cooldown.

EDIT: I forgot to add the Overcharged shot to my list of potential CC’s. So make that 3 immobilizes, 1 stun and 4 knockdowns.

True, turrets just need to be more effective than they are now, and this last patch was a a start, but we need more arena net!

I agree that turrets, and other minions, need to be affected by the players crit chance and possibly, crit damage.

They probably shouldn’t be affected by fury as that’s a boon. Summon’s need alot of help though, they’re usually too squishy and don’t do enough damage to counteract that

I do enjoy setting up turrets from time to time. Having all 3 turrets properly placed can be fun to watch, but it has its drawbacks. I personally believe that the 5 minute limit anet imposed on the turrets was unwarranted and in doing so, they should have given us deployable turrets for free since turrets are now truly disposable items. I think that would have been a fare trade off. All the other boosts they gave turrets are moot in comparison. That’s how I feel anyway.

The CD is kind of ridiculous too after you pick up your turrets. Turrets don’t have wheels so you’re required to run over there to pick them up. And for what? A mere 25% CD reduction? Might as well be lazy and detonate them and wait the full CD. Meanwhile a necro enjoys summoning his pets once and they all run around freely.

I don’t agree that the CD should be counted at the time of placement because that would honestly be OP, but I do feel anet needs to work on their CD numbers, especially if you take the time to pickup a turret.

Of course, before making any more game changing adjustments, I’d rather anet fix what’s there. Update the tooltips with the correct dmg and ranges with rifled turret barrels. Right now rifled turret barrels do not give 15% dmg boost because I see the same numbers whether it’s on or off. The range does increase a little bit though, but how much I don’t know. Improve the UI to show actual time left on the turret, and show us a report of their health somewhere on the HUD so we have an idea where we stand.

The mortar is another turret I would love to see get some attention too. One of the reasons I went engineer was for the mortar, but I was let down when I actually saw it in action. In fact, to this day I still laugh that my fully spec’d arms are strong enough to throw grenades as far as a fully spec’d mortar shell at like 2 to 3 times the speed and damage. The logic just isn’t there.

Turrets need to be nearly indestructible and hit like a truck. They are point defense tools, and should actually be a considerable threat. We loose out on Weapon Swapping, Boons, Stun-Breakers, and Condition Removers when we go full Turrets. They need to matter.

Give them the ability to critically hit for god’s sake!

I think long cooldowns and a lack of mobility are kind of key features of point defense skills like turrets. Sadly, this is a huge draw back in a game with such swift combat, but I think it should stay. Turrets aren’t meant to be mobile. What I think they should do is do their job better. Defend an area.

All summons are currently squishy and mediocre at damage, but to be frank necromancer minions have better traits, more damage than turrets, are mobile and people still find them lackluster. At least Anet sees the issues, they have been slowly buffing summons for a while. Its better that they do it slowly and iteratively than do one big patch and then overpower or ruin them completely.

Why not just give us more than one turret to deploy at a time?

I’d be okay with traits that made turrets more powerful, but I definitely can’t get behind the notion that they should be the most powerful abilities by default. It takes away from the engineer, as a character, if all his damage is done by deployable devices. Where’s the combat ‘skill’ and prowess in that?

I mean, we’re not trying to be those other guys that wear heavy armor and get by on just auto-attack, right? Not that spamming 1-5 for a living doesn’t have its fun moments…

I can’t get behind this suggestion. I got the game BECAUSE OF Engineer Turrets, thinking they would be long-term point-defense abilities, and hoped they could be boosted up to be real monsters with enough time investment (like TF2’s Engineer). They’re already a huge disappointment, being so incapable and now having a 5 minute time limit. What you’re suggesting would obliterate the last of what makes them Turrets, changing them instead into the same kinds of run-of-the-mill abilities that every other class has. Click button, get immediate effect, wait for cooldown to expire. With the way things are going, I’m sure Arena Net has no intention to make them what turrets should be (and are, in most other games that implement turrets)… But a change like this would dash all remaining hope.

I agree that turret traits need a revision. They buff their utility, but not their damage. When i think of a turret engineer i think of this static wall that is impenetrable. Well I was suggesting that we lower the cooldowns to make us more mobile with our static defense and they would still be pet-like, but unlike Tf2, we cant move our turrets around (when they are already built). The only way to move our turrets is to destroy them and wait the long cooldown.
The problem with this approach is that when our turrets are on cooldown we are vulnerable because we just lost our defense/offense from our turrets. I do not know the solution to this problem, but something needs to change when we cant deploy our turrets because it makes us rather weak.

TF2 Engineers didn’t used to be able to move their turret, and yet they were still able to hold down an area and be considered a valuable member of the team.

Delving further into the TF2 Engineer versus GW2 Engineer comparison, even TF2’s highly-spammable Minisentry is far more capable than all of GW2’s turrets combined. I know that TF2 is far faster-paced than GW2, but at least in TF2, you can’t just outright ignore the Sentry Gun. In GW2, feel free to stand in the crosshairs of any turret you like; they won’t do anything meaningful.

I like the TF2 comparison because i believe that’s a turret made right.

I suggested some time ago that our turrets should be made into a single kit to give us access to condi removal and stunbreaks and people thought that would be too much.

But here we are and turrets are not yet viable in TPvp because of the same things. No ammount of number tweaking will make them strong. They need a change in playstyle.

I won’t suggest the kit again(because i don’t think it will ever happen) but our turret traits need work. Here’s some suggestions:

1) Switch Autotool Installation with Rifled Turret Barrels and make it give turrets one stack of a specific boon every 3 seconds(max 25) instead of healing, ex:
Riffle Turret – Increase the fire rate by 2% per stack.
Healing Turret – At 10 stacks every attack gives 3 secs of vigor, at 20 sec removes one condition, at 25 stacks gives 3 secs of protection.
Thumper Turret – At 10 stacks every attack removes a boon, at 25 stacks gives a Knockdown every 10 secs.
Flame Turret – Gives a 2% chance to blind on every attack per stack.
Rocket Turret – Increase rate of fire by 1% per stack.
Net Turret – At 10 Stacks every attack criples foes for 5 secs, at 25 stacks every attack chills foes for 3 secs.
The stacks reset when the turret dies.
This trait would need 75 seconds to take full effect so it should not be OP and pretty counterable. This would give us incentives to keep our turrets alive.

2) Combine Accelerant-Packed Turrets and Deployable Turrets and leave it on the Tools line. This way our turret traits won’t be so scattered,and it gives more interaction with Tool-Kit.

One reason why they shouldn’t be spammable is the trait that makes them knock down on explode. If turrets are changed, then that trait should also be adjusted.

GuilguiS.2738:

1) Switch Autotool Installation with Rifled Turret Barrels and make it give turrets one stack of a specific boon every 3 seconds(max 25) instead of healing, ex:
Riffle Turret – Increase the fire rate by 2% per stack.
Healing Turret – At 10 stacks every attack gives 3 secs of vigor, at 20 sec removes one condition, at 25 stacks gives 3 secs of protection.
Thumper Turret – At 10 stacks every attack removes a boon, at 25 stacks gives a Knockdown every 10 secs.
Flame Turret – Gives a 2% chance to blind on every attack per stack.
Rocket Turret – Increase rate of fire by 1% per stack.
Net Turret – At 10 Stacks every attack criples foes for 5 secs, at 25 stacks every attack chills foes for 3 secs.
The stacks reset when the turret dies.
This trait would need 75 seconds to take full effect so it should not be OP and pretty counterable. This would give us incentives to keep our turrets alive.

YES

Though Net Turret’s specific boosts seem a bit odd, given they’re already immobilized for the same amount of time. Chill only sorta adds something, while Cripple is mostly pointless unless they have something to remove only the Immobilization (or otherwise remove just one condition at a time).

Anyway, the basic premise of gradually-upgrading turrets is one I’ve pushed MANY times. It seems to me that it would be one of the absolute best available approaches to making turrets worthwhile.

Granted, with the new five-minute time limit, it also seems that such a change could get really frustrating. I suppose it somewhat adds a new level of awareness and prediction needed to be able to get the most out of turrets, but 75 seconds is a considerable length of time to have to think ahead, and I’m fairly sure most of us Engineer players aren’t psychic. Note that I am not against 75 seconds; I think that’s a perfectly acceptable length of time for the full buff to take effect, and wouldn’t mind something even longer. It’s the time limit that I’m speaking against, if anything.