Guild Wars 2

It seems to me that my turrets die incredibly fast now.

No sooner have I placed them they are almost immediately back on CD where previously they would last for some time.

This could be a by-product of the new targeting system drawing more aggro, has anyone else noticed this?

Turrets were heavily nerfed this patch. Their life is the same as before (apparently turrets don’t count for the 71% increase in minion health, but ranger spirits do).

- Overcharged rifle turret now inflicts ONE stack of vulnerability instead of bleeding the target. If you were a condition build before then this is a definite nerf.

- Rocket turret no longer inflicts burning (40-60% damage nerf, but closer to 80% if you were a condition build).

- Overcharging the rocket turret immediately after it shoots a normal round causes it to lock down and not fire until it cools off.

- The rocket turret tool belt skill was turned into a slow-moving arcing projectile which takes roughly 5 seconds to hit its target at max range. I.e. it’s useless unless your target is stationary. It also hits the roof in dungeons, making it useless in many rooms. It also no longer works underwater AT ALL.

- Hitting multiple targets with AoE will cause the new turret AI to break. Your turret will now spend time slowly turning between targets instead of shooting if you’re hitting more than one foe.

So yes. They are much weaker now. Just when I thought they couldn’t possibly ruin turrets any more, they actually managed to do it (and snuck in a massive rocket turret damage nerf without mentioning it in the patch notes). I’m convinced that some angsty dev has been playing a joke on engineers, as these turrets have actually never been in a usable state since BETA. There has not been even a single build where they worked properly, and instead of fixing bugs they just managed to introduce another one in this patch as well. It’s not even a case of being underpowered. They’re just horribly broken and not a single one works as advertised. I’ve seen better support from private MMO servers…

…Wait, that Overcharge thing. Is that new? I’m pretty sure that’s a bug I haven’t got recorded.

rocket toolbelt is the best thing so far engineers are pretty much living artillery now in wvw

rocket turret lost its burn but got direct damage buff for it
havent had the overcharge problem myself however the missile is aimed towards the spot target last was so it misses easily
rifle is pretty good as well i’d say

Anymras.5729:

…Wait, that Overcharge thing. Is that new? I’m pretty sure that’s a bug I haven’t got recorded.

You might lump it in with the horribly buggy “target my target” AI they added. I noticed it in the Mad King’s Labyrinth today, though I was hitting many enemies at once so it could just have been the AI locking itself up as usual.

The rest of the things I listed I have confirmed.

Apparently the AI is particularly strict about which enemy is last-hit. I haven’t taken enough of a look at the new AI to be able to say one way or another.

A malfunctioning Overcharge, though, I think I have a section for those – but this is a unique one, in that it doesn’t behave like the others, so we’re right back up to 22. I’ll hop on to test it (personal corroboration policy) tomorrow, maybe.

25% of our utility skills not working or bugged and still no response from devs? Seems legit. We are the least played class. I wonder why…

Josh Davis has actually acknowledged my Turret bug thread on the Game Bugs boards, and says they’re off to a great start on fixing them.

That said, if this patch is an indication, I’m not optimistic – only a single bug reported was addressed: Net Turret’s inaccurate fire rate is now accurate…because they changed the tooltip to say what it really is. This may well mean that they’re going to end up setting all the tooltips to the ‘inaccurate’ fire rates as a means by which to resolve the issue, in which case they’re dragging their heels something fierce if they can’t change the tooltips for the rest in time for a patch. I mean, I don’t know what kind of code these tooltips have, but it’s a set value that is currently impossible to change through player action.
How hard is it to tell the tooltip to display the intended number of seconds between firing cycles?

Excellent. These news makes me a happy charr.

Turrets certainly seem to be in some state of flux right now. They only scale with malice, but Anet takes away conditions from them. None of the bugs have really been addressed, but what I would call significant work has been done to them anyways (tooltip adjustments, changing rocket turret toolbelt). A major targetting “fix” was implemented, but it doesn’t look like it’s working out quite as advertised.

It almost feels like turrets are in step 1 of some sort of 5 step plan or something, but we were never told about it. As if Anet is testing the waters for a major overhaul, major meaning none of the current bugs are going to matter much because turrets will change drastically. Just a weird feeling I get. As much as some might want to believe, turrets have certainly not been ignored. They’ve just had attention paid to them in places other than what we think they really need. I feel like they’ve moved horizontally, rather than forward.

I wasn’t attracted to the Engineer because of turrets like many others, so it’s not a huge deal to me, but I am eager to try out turrets properly. I’m very curious what turrets are going to look like 3-4 months from now, the path they seem to be on suggests they could use completely different mechanics by then.

Adamantium.3682:

…

That’s a very optimistic view. Does Anet have a track record for grand sweeping plans of balance and adjustment?

I’m with you though in that I’ve never wanted to play with turrets on my Engineer. If I wanted to play a pet profession, then I’d take a proper one like Ranger or Necro. While elixirs are catching up, it’s still pretty much kits all the way.

Thanks for the replies and information.

I am now only using the flame turret for napalm toolkit and will drop using turrets almost completely.

I personally miss the old rocket toolkit, was set and forget as we have enough targeting to do as it is.

This feels like a big stealth nerf or just a plain screw up as we were missing what I would call important information in the update details regarding this and other changes coupled with what you might call erratic turret behaviour.

I’ve noticed something interesting about Turrets post-patch:
The tooltips indicate Power scaling. Their function remains unchanged. I’d like to know whether this is a bug, or if scaling will be implemented.

It could also help to explain why they’ve been stripping Conditions off – if this is the case, I’m not sure why they’re keeping their mouths shut about it.