Guild Wars 2

I’ve posted this on another thread but it got lost so i’m making a new one.

The turret buffs were good, but not enough. They didn’t have any impact on the playstyle. Simple number tweaks will never be enough to make turrets viable (as i’ve said many other times), we need to think wich role do we want a turret engi to take and what will be their strong and weak points.

Here’s my suggestions:

• Remove the 5 min auto destruct on PvP. I know it’s necessary in PvE but in PvP it just kittens everything because it may cause your turrets to simply blow up on their own in the middle of the fight.

• Make the overcharge instantanious. This is extremely necessary because turret gameplay is extremely reactionary and, since you can’t control when your turrets fire, it becomes really frustrating when you need the thumper overcharge or the cleansing “NOW”, but it only happens 2 or 8 seconds later because the turret just fired.

• The damage and CD buffs were good and balanced, all we need now is an improvement on our turret traits:
  1) Rifled Turret Barrels is not strong enough for a GM trait, specially if you compare it with Illusionary Persona, or Grenadier. So i suggest switching it with Autotool Installation.
  2) Rework Autotool Installation to work as follows: Gives one stack a specific buff for each turret evey 3 seconds(max 25).
  Riffle – Increases the firing rate by 2% for each stack.
  Rocket – Increase firing rate by 1% for each stack.
  Net – At 10 stacks the net attacks daze for 1 sec, at 25 stacks the net will work similarly to the binding roots, reapplying the 3 sec immobilize if not destroyed. Their health should be small enough to be destroyed in 1 or 2 hits.
  Thumper – At 10 stacks every attack remove one boon, at 25 stacks every 3rd attack causes a 1 sec knock down.
  Healing – At 5 stacks every pulse gives 5 sec vigor, at 15 stacks every pulse removes one condition, at 25 stacks every pulse gives 3sec protection.
  Flame – At 15 stacks every attack blinds the target for 2 secs, at 25 stacks the turret will attack in a circle(450 radius) instead of single target.
  The Toolkit auto attaack gives one stack to each turret it hits, this way you switch the power of one turret for the quicker installation.

This rework means that our turrets will be much stronger if kept alive longer. Note that this is a GM trait so it demands specialization. It’s not worth to go 30 into inventions if you will only take one turret. It’s also important to point out that since Autotool Installation will be reworked it will no longer heal your turrets, so you have to pay attention to them and keep them alive for as long as you can. One last important thing is that it gives one stack every 3 secs so it will take 75 secs to get the full effect, wich i believe is pretty much balanced.

Please give me your opinion on this.

I really like these ideas. I’ts balanced and well thought out and would make me enjoy my turrets that much more.

/Signed

I agree with #2 wholeheartedly. It would really make those abilities infinately more useful if you could get them exactly when you want them. Though I would lament the fact that it would probably make my Rocket Turret and Net Turret only fire 1 “overcharged” shot (right now, if you time it right before the turret fires you can get 2 overcharged shots out of them, though always getting 2 might be too much).

Your change for Autotool Installation sounds really cool… in PvP. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’d be reasonable in PvE (except during defense DE’s). Most PvE requires much more fluidity, you’re rarely in one spot for long as you’re mostly on the offensive and not the defensive, so you’d never get any more than a few stacks at most (unless you specifically placed your turrets and then sat and waited a minute before engaging). Bosses are the only encounters that would last long enough, and they would probably kill the turret before any number of stacks were gained.

Splitting between PvP and PvE could work, with stacks being acquired every 1.5 seconds for PvE or something.

Maybe also less “extra effect when you reach X amount of stacks” and more simple effectiveness boosts per stack, as well. With something like your suggestion for Flame Turret, the stacks would be entirely useless until you reached 15 stacks. Rather than do something like that, I’d say to just go with an idea similar to your Rocket / Rifle turret suggestions, and make it so that each stack boosts firing speed or damage. That way any stack you get helps, instead of “get a high stack or no benefit at all”. Maybe you could get a bonus effect at 25 only, in addition to basic effectiveness boosts per every stack.

For example, you could still have Flame Turret gain an AoE burst at 25 stacks, but also have each individual stack increase firing speed (or perhaps condition duration?), so that you still get something on your way up.

I like the idea. #2 Especially. But I think instead of changing Autotool Installation, you should just change the existing GM trait instead. Otherwise it would almost REQUIRE you to take the toolkit, which would kinda suck if you wanted to go pure turrets. Also, the way the stacks work should be tweaked a little as pointed out by Electro so that you don’t have to get a certain number of stacks to get any benefit at all.

Perhaps each stack on the Flame turret could increase its range by 1% and for the Thumper each stack could increase its armor by 1%. Or something like that.

But other than that, YES! If such changes were implemented, I might actually use turrets again.

At the very least, I want overcharges to activate instantly. Too many times I need that overcharge but my turret gets DESTROYED before the effect kicks in. That’s unacceptable. If the overcharge needs to reset the turret’s rate of fire for balance issues, that’s fine, but just make it instant.

Nice ideas, to bad aNet would rather just nerf us instead of help us :P