Guild Wars 2

Adamantium.3682:

Healing Turret – Healing Mist: Meh. This turret is so good (not in the way it should be) that it doesn’t really matter what this toolbelt is, but if it worked how turrets should work this toolbelt skills is really weak. A few options would be making the water field 3 seconds long, giving it much longer Regeneration, or adding a small heal (few hundred) to it.

I think this one is actually good as it is… maybe they could reduce the cast time on it though.

The water field is the main thing with it. You can use it for blast finishers, or also use 100% projectile finishers in it. For instance, you can pop regenerating mist, then use throw wrench or toss shield to produce additional AoE regen around your targets, which could potentially add another 10 or more seconds of regen to you and allies.

It synergizes really well with rocket boots too since the cooldowns are really close to each other.

If you’re never comboing into it, then it’s perhaps a bit lackluster, but the whole point of it is to combo in the water field. I’d be a bit hesitant of extending the water field because that would provide a lot of zerg utility at low cost… water fields generally require the expending of a healing skill or a longer cooldown skill such as healing rain.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Adamantium.3682:

Healing Turret – Healing Mist: Meh. This turret is so good (not in the way it should be) that it doesn’t really matter what this toolbelt is, but if it worked how turrets should work this toolbelt skills is really weak. A few options would be making the water field 3 seconds long, giving it much longer Regeneration, or adding a small heal (few hundred) to it.

I think this one is actually good as it is… maybe they could reduce the cast time on it though.

The water field is the main thing with it. You can use it for blast finishers, or also use 100% projectile finishers in it. For instance, you can pop regenerating mist, then use throw wrench or toss shield to produce additional AoE regen around your targets, which could potentially add another 10 or more seconds of regen to you and allies.

It synergizes really well with rocket boots too since the cooldowns are really close to each other.

If you’re never comboing into it, then it’s perhaps a bit lackluster, but the whole point of it is to combo in the water field. I’d be a bit hesitant of extending the water field because that would provide a lot of zerg utility at low cost… water fields generally require the expending of a healing skill or a longer cooldown skill such as healing rain.

You must hit your finisher immediately after Healing Mist or it won’t combo. The field is so ridiculously short even a misclick wastes the field. 3 seconds is already the very short (as fields go) so I think increasing it to that amount would help.

I do maintain that if the Healing Turret itself actually worked like a turret was supposed to, you know leaving it out when you need heals and such… when it was gone Healing Mist wouldn’t do much for you at all. I believe we only like Healing Mist because the turret is so good you could put almost anything there and we wouldn’t mind.

Anymras.5729:

The last time I was optimistic was when they first acknowledged the thread.
I figured there might be a month or two before the bugs started being resolved.

While it would be nice for them to actually do something about the myriad non-bug issues of Turrets, I just can’t muster any kind of enthusiasm.

Sadly I’m in the same boat. My enthusiasm for Guild Wars 2 in general has waned largely due to these exact type of situations. I can call out other examples like…rangers (not much more needed to say), or some necro abilities like their poison cloud that is still worse than the radiation field (which is a racial ability). Alot of things been around since basically day one that should have been fixed helping to enforce each individual classes meta.

If every class and spec could have received the same amount of attention as the elementalist, warrior, and guardian it would be nice. I say this as an ele main.

But that hasn’t happened and I really doubt they are going to be able to retain me at this point. The Elder Scrolls Online was fun enough I could prolly enjoy it for a year or so while waiting on Camelot Unchained, peeking at EQ Next, and lesser known City of Titans.

I can’t say anything about The Elder Scrolls Online really except that it has the potential for good PVP while still having quite solid PVE. I’ll have to see how it plays out though. NDA prevents me from saying anything specific of course.

I definitely feel the bugs should be worked out first as many have stated and Josh so kindly posted about After that is worked out I had some personal ideas. People mentioned things such as ways to pickup turrets, but I feel like this would be somewhat difficult as turrets such as the healing or thumper turret wouldn’t really have much functionality to be picked up and would appear to be very heavy too. This is when I got an idea looking at a flame ram. They levitate!!!! Why can’t our turrets do this?! Granted I understand this would not make sense with the thumper turret, but things such as the rifle turret or flame turret could utilize very interesting tactics if they levitate. For example, they could function similar to Messer clones, and kitten minions. You could choose their standard stay in place, a function similar to the Mesmer clones, in which they attack your target, but don’t self destruct. Or they could levitate protectively around you, similar to the necro’s minions, EXCEPT, they function similar to the targeting system of the basic stationary function (closest target). This would be applicable to rifle turret, flame turret, and net turret (any others you think could work?).
My 2cents

oscuro.9720:

I definitely feel the bugs should be worked out first as many have stated and Josh so kindly posted about After that is worked out I had some personal ideas. People mentioned things such as ways to pickup turrets, but I feel like this would be somewhat difficult as turrets such as the healing or thumper turret wouldn’t really have much functionality to be picked up and would appear to be very heavy too. This is when I got an idea looking at a flame ram. They levitate!!!! Why can’t our turrets do this?! Granted I understand this would not make sense with the thumper turret, but things such as the rifle turret or flame turret could utilize very interesting tactics if they levitate. For example, they could function similar to Messer clones, and kitten minions. You could choose their standard stay in place, a function similar to the Mesmer clones, in which they attack your target, but don’t self destruct. Or they could levitate protectively around you, similar to the necro’s minions, EXCEPT, they function similar to the targeting system of the basic stationary function (closest target). This would be applicable to rifle turret, flame turret, and net turret (any others you think could work?).
My 2cents

For the love of god Turret mobility is the absolute last thing that should ever be considered for Engineer. Turrets are extremely strong CC tools and are amongst the very few that have repeatable CC within a short time period. Their weakness is their immobility. Take that away and you have the next MM Necromancer. Fix the bugs, fix their hitboxes and buff their Toolbelts if required, but Turrets should never, ever become mobile. The lessons of MM Necromancer and Spirit Ranger may as well be unlearned.

Josh Davis.6015:

There’s a considerable amount of bugs being worked on for turrets currently. (Special thanks to Anymras for putting the list together.) I know these things don’t happen as quickly as we (and you) would like to see them, but it’s a comin’.

You know, the more I think about this, the less convinced I am that the bugs are really being worked on.

I’ve typed and deleted a few explanations of why, but I’m going to try to keep this one as direct as I can, without deviating into ranting (harder than you might think): It’s been six months since the buglist was acknowledged, and almost none of the issues in even the first wave have been resolved.

I know there’s no hope of getting an ETA or progress update at all, and that really doesn’t help me trust that things are going to improve.
I’m a little tired of ivory towers and half-answers, of ’It’s happening, have patience,’ of beta-testing a product that should have been finished and functional more than a year ago.

They say to vote with your money, and, well…I’ll not be giving ANet or NCSoft a dime more than I did when I bought the game.

I dislike turrets mainly because their toolbelt skills are inaccessible if turret is deployed.
The bug where they all fire even slower than they are supposed to doesn’t help either.
The bug where you can keep rifle turret in permanent overcharge actually makes the turret semi-viable.

The toolbelt thing does suck, but the bugs are why their attempts to balance are baffling.

Turrets are pretty much overcomplicated. They are static and needs to be babied thanks to their overcharge mechanic.

Drop the detonate, drop the overchange, drop the pickup, and reduce the recharge on the utility skill. Make them more like wells, symbols or banners, and less like static pets or minions.

The more I think about it, the more I don’t want them to deal as much damage as phantasms.

I want them to deal more.

Think about the comparisons here. Mesmers can always have phantasms out. We cannot always have turrets out. Mesmers do not have to spend their utility slots on phantasms. We do. Phantasms can move around, following a target that isn’t stationary to always stay in range. Turrets cannot.

I feel like with the fundamental disadvantages that turrets have (that should not be rectified, it’s just the difference in mechanics) they should have a higher ceiling of potential.

Who knows, maybe turrets have finally driven me insane.

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

Recall would cause the Turret to start flying back to the Engineer’s position, stopping and becoming rooted again once within 130 range of the Engineer.
Recall would also have a cooldown consummate to the relative power of area control conferred by that Turret. Recall for Rifle Turret would have a cooldown of 10-15 seconds as it is mostly single target DPS. On the other hand, Net Turret’s Recall could have a cooldown of 20-30 seconds to reflect its CC power.
Recall should interrupt the skill queue of Turrets for instant response. The lessons of Ranger pets should be applied here to avoid the same mistakes.

This has several effects:

• In mobile combat, Turrets left behind can be recalled to the Engineer’s position.
• This would allow Engineers to save their Turrets from AOE – at the cost of concentrating them into 1 position if Recall is spammed to all Turrets – risk vs reward.
• On the other hand, a triple Recall of Turrets would also concentrate firepower into 1 position. Risk vs Reward.
• Retaining the Detonate command allows the Engineer to double-tap to sacrifice a Turret for damage and a Blast finisher. Would pose issues with Static Discharge unless an ICD of 0.5-1 seconds was imposed, but Turrets would benefit so much that SD should not be a limiting factor here.
• Synergy with Deployable Turrets (Finally!). Throw your turrets out with Deployable Turrets, call them back with Recall.
• Pet manipulation across many professions simply involves attack or recall commands (in the case of Ranger) This introduces the same elements to Engineer, but retains a higher skill floor due to the fact the Recall command has a cooldown – a mistake in Recall would mean a forced Detonate or a killed turret; whereas pets and minions will always revert to following their master.

Traits would have to be reworked to support the Recall mechanic.

• Autotool installation could provide spike healing upon recall, for example.
• Accelerant Packed Turrets could introduce increased Recall cooldown to emphasise the Detonate over the Recall command (might be too counterintuitive)
• Missing trait utility includes reduced Recall cooldown, resetting or halving Overcharge cooldown upon recall at the cost of causing Turret self-destruction at end of Overcharge, etc.

Overall, Turrets need to:

• Scale with player Toughness, Power, Condition damage, Vitality. Precision and Crit damage might also be factored in, but the point is to have glassy turrets that deal damage with a glassy Engineer, and tanky turrets that deal little damage with a tanky Engineer. The lessons of Beastmaster Ranger must be heeded.
• Have their DPS or fire rate when emplaced increased markedly; even when not Overcharged. Rifle Turret should be firing at rates similar to, say, Thief Unload or iDuelist when Overcharged; and Thumper Turret should provide PBAOE pulsing damage on the level of 1 Bomb each time, every 0.5-1 second. Turrets should be as credible threats as Mesmer Phantasms at the cost of little mobility and limited range.
• On the other hand, Turret DPS should never get to the point where Turrets supercede Engineer damage. Phantasm Mesmer builds are mindless – as are MM Necromancer builds. For Turret Engineer to be effective, he/she should be on the level of 2-3kit Engineer in terms of APM requirement for chaining and comboing skills.
• Low-input, low-skill floor builds are bad for the game and low-input should result in low efficiency. Turret Engineer should be no different.

An alternative mechanic that has less potential to abuse On Toolbelt Use triggers would instead be to put the Recall function on a Chain skill after the Overcharge skill. Overcharge already implies that the Engineer wishes to keep the Turret on until the Overcharged period is complete – letting the Engineer save the Overcharged Turret with Recall is also an option here, offers more granular balance, and prevents abuse of On Toolbelt use trigger spam.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview/page/16#post3667926
Apparently we got bug fixes to turrets incoming:
We’ve fixed a lot of turret issues that were causing them to behave poorly or inconsistently (many of these issues have been reported via the bug forums, thanks guys!) In the coming patch, you’ll see quite a few improvements in this area. For example:
• Fixed the bug that was causing all turrets to have a lower rate of fire than intended.
• Fixed the bug that was preventing the overcharge for the Rifle Turret from increasing its rate of fire. – Karl McLain

I am curious what other turret bug fixes will be on the list since there are may to choose from to fix. (Big thanks to Anymras for the list)

I personally would love to see the solution for all summons/critters to have 90% AOE immunity and for turrets to not be autotargetable. It would improve them considerably across the board and bring pet heavy builds back up to par with everything else.

MonMalthias.4763:

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

I haven’t read the rest of your post yet, but I had to stop here and say ZOMG SPIRIT RIT!

I’ve said many times in the past that the more we can make a turret Engineer to function like a spirit Ritualist, the better!

Hebee.8460:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview/page/16#post3667926
Apparently we got bug fixes to turrets incoming:
We’ve fixed a lot of turret issues that were causing them to behave poorly or inconsistently (many of these issues have been reported via the bug forums, thanks guys!) In the coming patch, you’ll see quite a few improvements in this area. For example:
• Fixed the bug that was causing all turrets to have a lower rate of fire than intended.
• Fixed the bug that was preventing the overcharge for the Rifle Turret from increasing its rate of fire. – Karl McLain

I am curious what other turret bug fixes will be on the list since there are may to choose from to fix. (Big thanks to Anymras for the list)

Aside from the fire rate issue, and the Rifle Turret having trouble with its fire rate…

There’s also Hitboxes, and overcharges still act oddly with Rifled Turret Barrels; they’ve tried to resolve RTB’s issues before, so maybe they’ve given that another pass, while fixing the hitboxes would be a massive improvement (which has been suggested by the recent leaked patch notes, and usually the patch note leaks haven’t been too far off from the mark; take with grain of salt due to Anet declaring these, in particular, false).

Hopefully they’ll also have resolved the Deployable Turret/RTB interaction that leaves Deployable Turrets stuck with the default range.

I doubt there’ll be resolution of the ‘World Bosses aren’t targeted,’ partially because that’s an issue that’s shared with at least Necromancer Marks – World Bosses just don’t count as enemies to these, and probably others.

Oh, and…no problem. I’m glad they’re finally doing something about that list.

Adamantium.3682:

Net Turret – Net Attack: Cooldown is horrendously long. I understand that professions can’t be compared apples to apples, but think back to when Personal Battering Ram used to be 45 seconds cooldown. We were all annoyed because it’s basically a clone of the Warrior’s “Kick” with over twice the cooldown. Eventually that got reduced to what it is now. Same thing needs to happen with Net Attack. Throw Bolas is a 20 second cooldown. In addition it does damage, has 50% more range, 33% longer duration, and is a projectile finisher. Net Attack is a 45 second cooldown. No damage, no finisher. It needs some combination of reduced cooldown, more range (600 range is not good for the Engineer who at a minimum has 900 range on either weapon they equip), damage, or projectile finisher status.

If you’re going to compare the toolbelt skill to throw bolas you have to also look at how many immob skills we have. We have 5 without traits, Warrior only has 2 without traits, how can you possibly compare the two?
You can make the point that the skill needs to have a longer range and possibly a finisher added to it, but leave comparisons out. The Warrior can’t troll immob like we do without having to specc for it.

Adamantium.3682:

Thumper Turret – Rumble: Not sure where to start with this one. 1s Stability is sort of silly, I know we’re not a Stability heavy profession and I’m okay with that but 1s Stability is sort of pointless. If it prevents any incoming CC it’s more due to sheer luck than actual counterplay on the Engineer’s part. For being a stun breaker (that you can’t access with the turret actually being alive… that’s another discussion entirely) I get the 45 second cooldown, but it’s in terrible combination with a turret that also has an excruciatingly long cooldown. Both of those together is really bad for gameplay, and ends up in that utility being just a dead slot far too often for Turret Engineers who already can only play with their weapon skills most of the time. I don’t feel anything about this skill justifies the long cooldown except that stun break. It has weak damage and range. The stun break idea needs a do over, it’s a fundamental issue that it won’t even work when the turret is alive. You have to blow up a 50s cooldown turret just to get at a stun break. That needs a rework. If that is done, then this toolbelt skill can get a balance pass down to a much much lower cooldown, 20s range. It just doesn’t do enough to warrant the crazy cooldown it has right now. I mean just compare it to Magnetic Shield, which untraited is just 2/3 (!) of the cooldown of Rumble. You get the reflect and knockback along with the blast finisher. This makes Rumble look really weak.

They could change this by making the toolbelt flip situationally (if possible) when the turret is active. So when CCed the toolbelt changes to Rumble from Detonate.

Adamantium.3682:

ROCKET TURRET
When the turret dies you can shoot 1 rocket. That probably won’t hit unless you’re standing on top of your target. Sigh.

You know that thing I said about immobs just above? Yea, that would definitely make this skill land.
I’ll also mention that the turret and the toolbelt are also great for corpse cleave.

Dirame.8521:

Adamantium.3682:

Net Turret – Net Attack: Cooldown is horrendously long. I understand that professions can’t be compared apples to apples, but think back to when Personal Battering Ram used to be 45 seconds cooldown. We were all annoyed because it’s basically a clone of the Warrior’s “Kick” with over twice the cooldown. Eventually that got reduced to what it is now. Same thing needs to happen with Net Attack. Throw Bolas is a 20 second cooldown. In addition it does damage, has 50% more range, 33% longer duration, and is a projectile finisher. Net Attack is a 45 second cooldown. No damage, no finisher. It needs some combination of reduced cooldown, more range (600 range is not good for the Engineer who at a minimum has 900 range on either weapon they equip), damage, or projectile finisher status.

If you’re going to compare the toolbelt skill to throw bolas you have to also look at how many immob skills we have. We have 5 without traits, Warrior only has 2 without traits, how can you possibly compare the two?
You can make the point that the skill needs to have a longer range and possibly a finisher added to it, but leave comparisons out. The Warrior can’t troll immob like we do without having to specc for it.

Adamantium.3682:

Thumper Turret – Rumble: Not sure where to start with this one. 1s Stability is sort of silly, I know we’re not a Stability heavy profession and I’m okay with that but 1s Stability is sort of pointless. If it prevents any incoming CC it’s more due to sheer luck than actual counterplay on the Engineer’s part. For being a stun breaker (that you can’t access with the turret actually being alive… that’s another discussion entirely) I get the 45 second cooldown, but it’s in terrible combination with a turret that also has an excruciatingly long cooldown. Both of those together is really bad for gameplay, and ends up in that utility being just a dead slot far too often for Turret Engineers who already can only play with their weapon skills most of the time. I don’t feel anything about this skill justifies the long cooldown except that stun break. It has weak damage and range. The stun break idea needs a do over, it’s a fundamental issue that it won’t even work when the turret is alive. You have to blow up a 50s cooldown turret just to get at a stun break. That needs a rework. If that is done, then this toolbelt skill can get a balance pass down to a much much lower cooldown, 20s range. It just doesn’t do enough to warrant the crazy cooldown it has right now. I mean just compare it to Magnetic Shield, which untraited is just 2/3 (!) of the cooldown of Rumble. You get the reflect and knockback along with the blast finisher. This makes Rumble look really weak.

They could change this by making the toolbelt flip situationally (if possible) when the turret is active. So when CCed the toolbelt changes to Rumble from Detonate.

Adamantium.3682:

ROCKET TURRET
When the turret dies you can shoot 1 rocket. That probably won’t hit unless you’re standing on top of your target. Sigh.

You know that thing I said about immobs just above? Yea, that would definitely make this skill land.
I’ll also mention that the turret and the toolbelt are also great for corpse cleave.

I’ll give you the immobilize. I still think it’s a pretty weak skill, but I can see your point. The thing for me is that when your turret dies in 2 seconds all you have is the toolbelt skill so I’m judging it as a full skill. Not completely accurate I’ll concede, but that’s how it works out most of the time.

As for the rocket toolbelt I still disagree. Even with an immobilize it’s not likely to hit anywhere near its max range. It takes forever to reach its target, if it doesn’t hit something above you before then. You would literally have to chain all the CC that a single build can muster, and hope your opponent doesn’t break out of any of them just to land the rocket from far away. It’s ridiculous.

Add conditions back the Turrets… that’s all I want… I used to love turrets despite how even with condition everyone said they were bad. Now there is no justification at all to use them as anything more than to try in vain to make a viable build.

Instead of Toolbelt skill exploding the deployed turrets, I’d like instead for it to pack up the turret and reduce the cooldown based on how much HP it has. If it is at 100% HP then cooldown is removed, makes the turrets much more mobile; if at 50% then reduce CD by 50%, ect.

At the end of the day I’d want conditions back more, but I see both suggestions as steps in the right direction for turrets.

Adamantium.3682:

MonMalthias.4763:

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

I haven’t read the rest of your post yet, but I had to stop here and say ZOMG SPIRIT RIT!

I’ve said many times in the past that the more we can make a turret Engineer to function like a spirit Ritualist, the better!

Having Draw Spirit on a chain skill after Overcharge or on the Toolbelt before chaining into Detonate would be all that Turret Engineer needs to be viable after all the bugs are addressed. At that point, the only weakness of the build would be to Conditions – for which there is Automated Medical Response and Healing Turret.

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

MonMalthias.4763:

Adamantium.3682:

MonMalthias.4763:

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

I haven’t read the rest of your post yet, but I had to stop here and say ZOMG SPIRIT RIT!

I’ve said many times in the past that the more we can make a turret Engineer to function like a spirit Ritualist, the better!

Having Draw Spirit on a chain skill after Overcharge or on the Toolbelt before chaining into Detonate would be all that Turret Engineer needs to be viable after all the bugs are addressed. At that point, the only weakness of the build would be to Conditions – for which there is Automated Medical Response and Healing Turret.

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

Agree on both counts. By being similar to Ritualists I don’t only mean the spirit recall, but I feel that Ritualists were just so much more interactive with their spirits. They had skills that enhanced spirit damage on a target. Skills that healed them when spirits attacked. Protection skills based on number of spirits nearby. Skills that only had an effect (or enhanced effect) within range of a spirit. Damage spirits to heal allies. So much of this could be worked into turrets, and most of it could easily work logically as well. Hide elixirs inside the turret means blowing them up heals allies, etc. I mean just go to the GW1 wiki and type in “spirit” then scroll down and look at all those skills that have some sort of interaction with spirits. Most of them scream Engineer and turrets.

There aren’t many things in this game I can say this about, but when it comes to turrets they really missed the boat IMO. There’s just so much untapped potential.

I think turrets should be drop and forget type deals. No overcharges make them strong area denial not fall apart the moment someone coughs on them.

Zaviel.1245:

Add conditions back the Turrets… that’s all I want… I used to love turrets despite how even with condition everyone said they were bad. Now there is no justification at all to use them as anything more than to try in vain to make a viable build.

Instead of Toolbelt skill exploding the deployed turrets, I’d like instead for it to pack up the turret and reduce the cooldown based on how much HP it has. If it is at 100% HP then cooldown is removed, makes the turrets much more mobile; if at 50% then reduce CD by 50%, ect.

At the end of the day I’d want conditions back more, but I see both suggestions as steps in the right direction for turrets.

They seem to be absolutely set on the turrets being super weak damage that you cannot increase any reasonable amount with massive drawbacks lol. It’s comical. I’ll be enjoying The Elder Scrolls Online and it’s PVP.

Hate to say it but even if Guild Wars 2 fixes these issues at this point it may be too little too late. They have an extremely tough direct competitor to it’s WvW coming out in the form of The Elder Scrolls Online, and it feels alot more like Dark Age of Camelot.

I wish Guild Wars 2 luck, it really is going to need it.

MonMalthias.4763:

Adamantium.3682:

MonMalthias.4763:

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

I haven’t read the rest of your post yet, but I had to stop here and say ZOMG SPIRIT RIT!

I’ve said many times in the past that the more we can make a turret Engineer to function like a spirit Ritualist, the better!

Having Draw Spirit on a chain skill after Overcharge or on the Toolbelt before chaining into Detonate would be all that Turret Engineer needs to be viable after all the bugs are addressed. At that point, the only weakness of the build would be to Conditions – for which there is Automated Medical Response and Healing Turret.

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

The turrets are not a significant source of control. Rocket turret has a long cooldown long delay knockdown. Net turret just got lol nerfed, rifle turret has no CC, thumper turrets has a laughably long AOE knockback windup…it won’t even survive to use it due to it being frail, flame turret blind is ok though.

But really, truly, engineers are capable of putting all their trait lines towards turrets. WHY should all our traits lines be worth so little that our damage is still primarily our weapons?

Necros can be minion masters, rangers can be spirit masters, a warrior can revolve around his shouts, even engineers can build static discharge or grenades, etc. Every other class has several different trait specing options that make their character revolve around their build.

Why is that bad only for engineer turrets? I don’t understand that. I could easily use grenades all day long and use weapon skills only for utility. Yet it’d magically be bad if turrets pulled the majority of my DPS.

This is crazy talk lol.

MonMalthias.4763:

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

I don’t agree. Why should engineer weapon skills retain the bulk of the damage output? Why can’t there exist a possibility of an engineer build that has a large part of its offensive or defensive power come from the turrets?

Furthermore, if all turrets should only provide methods of control or support, it reduces the variety they can posses. For instance, rifle turret has pure damage for all of its abilities with no semblance of control. Flame and rocket turret are also largely damage based and have some control or defensive style abilities linked to their overcharges. The only real control turrets are the net and thumper turret. If you decide that all turrets should be primarily for control or support, you either need to implement a healing “turret” junior (I say “turret” because healing turret is not an actual turret, it’s just a water field maker), or you have to alter the existing abilities (i.e. rifle turret cripples on each attack, flame turret always blinds, rocket turret… gives aegis or something).

Additionally, a turret engineer would largely suffer from the same shortcomings as a minion necro or a spirit ranger. That is, they are dependent on those entities to perform their jobs. Failure to do so means that the engineer is inherently subpar. For instance, if a minion necro has its minions destroyed, it is much weaker compared to other necro builds until it is able to resummon its minions. Similarly, if a ranger’s spirits expire just before a battle or end up being killed off, there is a period where the ranger is playing a spiritless spirit build.

Likewise, an engineer who has its turrets destroyed meets the same issue. In addition, the stationary nature of turrets means the opponent can choose to disengage from the turreted zone, and the engineer must either allow them to go away or decide to fight without their turrets. Obviously this wouldn’t be so much of an issue for the engineer when defending a specific objective, but it makes it more difficult for them to act offensively.

So I would like to see some kind of engineer spec that can be highly dependent on damage output from turrets

Yamsandjams.3267:

MonMalthias.4763:

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

I don’t agree. Why should engineer weapon skills retain the bulk of the damage output? Why can’t there exist a possibility of an engineer build that has a large part of its offensive or defensive power come from the turrets?

Furthermore, if all turrets should only provide methods of control or support, it reduces the variety they can posses. For instance, rifle turret has pure damage for all of its abilities with no semblance of control. Flame and rocket turret are also largely damage based and have some control or defensive style abilities linked to their overcharges. The only real control turrets are the net and thumper turret. If you decide that all turrets should be primarily for control or support, you either need to implement a healing “turret” junior (I say “turret” because healing turret is not an actual turret, it’s just a water field maker), or you have to alter the existing abilities (i.e. rifle turret cripples on each attack, flame turret always blinds, rocket turret… gives aegis or something).

Additionally, a turret engineer would largely suffer from the same shortcomings as a minion necro or a spirit ranger. That is, they are dependent on those entities to perform their jobs. Failure to do so means that the engineer is inherently subpar. For instance, if a minion necro has its minions destroyed, it is much weaker compared to other necro builds until it is able to resummon its minions. Similarly, if a ranger’s spirits expire just before a battle or end up being killed off, there is a period where the ranger is playing a spiritless spirit build.

Likewise, an engineer who has its turrets destroyed meets the same issue. In addition, the stationary nature of turrets means the opponent can choose to disengage from the turreted zone, and the engineer must either allow them to go away or decide to fight without their turrets. Obviously this wouldn’t be so much of an issue for the engineer when defending a specific objective, but it makes it more difficult for them to act offensively.

So I would like to see some kind of engineer spec that can be highly dependent on damage output from turrets

The point is that being highly dependant upon AI results in knife edge balance and passive gameplay. AI entities becoming too strong in and of themselves results in opponent complaints against it for little investment in mechanical execution – and there already enough brain dead specs as is. Adding one to the pot does not help matters.

On the other hand, AI entities becoming too weak then become a “dead” skill on the utility bar.

The point is that making the AI skills strong would necessarily introduce the need to reduce the power of the Engineer him/herself – and this is exactly what happened at the time of the Beastmaster Bunker Ranger nerfs with the nerfs to Shortbow and Longbow. Remember the developer posts at the time with their internal calculations saying that pets accounted for ~30% of Ranger damage? This is exactly the lesson that needs to be learned – and avoid being repeated – with Engineer Turrets.

Phantasm Mesmers also lost their 100% Combo Finisher with iDuelist as a result – 8 stacks of Confusion through an Ethereal Field for each iDuelist was highly exploitable.

What I’m trying to say is that historically speaking, the trend of AI dependant specs has not been positive for the game and in each and every case, has led to passive play (and unfun to counterplay) once the appropriate confluence of traits and stats has been found. Making Turrets strong to the point that they comprise the majority of an Engineer’s damage invites the same mistakes to be made.

Engineer is already balanced in such a way that main hand weapons are intentionally less effective than other classes’, by the admission of the devs – to encourage using Kits, of course, though this also places the burden of damage-dealing upon Utility skills in general.

Figuring out whether Turrets should deal more damage or not is actually kind of a pain in the kitten on the one hand, they’re less effective than autoattacks, on the other hand, we can have up to…five, I think, with Elite Supplies X.
Combined with the Engineer themselves, that makes a potential total of six separate sources of damage – and we’ve seen Anet’s reaction to Supply Crate pushing something over the line.
It really doesn’t help the situation that Turrets don’t scale, leaving them lackluster to begin with.

Complicating the issue is that, well, even with the things that Engineers are balanced around, there’s only one source of damage, that being the Engineer themselves.

Personally, I think they should at least have scaling, have cooldowns start when they’re placed, and…just see where it goes from there.
An improvement to the handling of cooldowns could allow Detonation to occur more often, which would encourage a more dynamic playstyle without directly buffing anything, while giving them scaling would let them stand more evenly alongside other skills, especially toward endgame.

Anymras.5729:

Engineer is already balanced in such a way that main hand weapons are intentionally less effective than other classes’, by the admission of the devs – to encourage using Kits, of course, though this also places the burden of damage-dealing upon Utility skills in general.

Figuring out whether Turrets should deal more damage or not is actually kind of a pain in the kitten on the one hand, they’re less effective than autoattacks, on the other hand, we can have up to…five, I think, with Elite Supplies X.
Combined with the Engineer themselves, that makes a potential total of six separate sources of damage – and we’ve seen Anet’s reaction to Supply Crate pushing something over the line.
It really doesn’t help the situation that Turrets don’t scale, leaving them lackluster to begin with.

Complicating the issue is that, well, even with the things that Engineers are balanced around, there’s only one source of damage, that being the Engineer themselves.

Personally, I think they should at least have scaling, have cooldowns start when they’re placed, and…just see where it goes from there.
An improvement to the handling of cooldowns could allow Detonation to occur more often, which would encourage a more dynamic playstyle without directly buffing anything, while giving them scaling would let them stand more evenly alongside other skills, especially toward endgame.

These are all valid points. I believe that the first issue to be addressed after bugs are fixed for Turrets is the cooldowns and turret scaling. Turrets should at least scale off of Power and Precision such that their direct DPS will be at respectable (Critical damage debatable) levels similar to Engineer autoattacks. After scaling, then comes finishing the implementation:

• AI should be fixed such that Turrets target what the Engineer targets, without exception. Even if the turrets are out of range. Range control is Engineer’s specialty, and introducing the possibility of playing Turrets badly increases the skill floor. More on that on a later point.

• I do think that Turrets should remain almost as fragile as they are at present. (Hitboxes notwithstanding) With low cooldowns and low durability and (hopefully) a high rate of fire to match, Turrets would become highly disposable area control tools that present a clear and present enough threat to draw focus fire for the precious few seconds.

• Toolbelts should then be rebalanced to offer higher utility than pure damage – to reflect the lower turret uptime. Traits tying into Toolbelt use would then have greater synergy than is currently possible. Engineers still lack Condition cleanse on Toolbelt use outside of Elixirs, and lack mobility tools and weapon swap mechanics when running triple Turrets. Traits and possibly new skills should fill these gaps.

• For Engineers wishing to preserve their turrets, a Turret Recall chain skill coming after the Overcharge skill that transports Turrets to the Engineer’s current location will allow the Engineer to save them from incoming AOE for precious seconds more. In addition, Recall would also be useful with controlling range, allowing Turrets left behind to catch up when Recalled in the context of mobile combat, without introducing free Turret movement. Traits tying into Healing Turrets with Recall or extending Overcharge should replace Autotool Installation or Metal Plating or other useless traits at present.

• The primary concern with Turrets is to make them fun to play with, fun to play against. Managing Turrets should require the same skill floor as Kits. Right now AI dominated specs are extremely passive and playing against them is a highly binary experience: Either your build has enough ranged AOE to kill it, or it doesn’t. AI specs are extremely dangerous to Melee specs with many procs and triggers like Death Nova becoming suicidal to face with melee attacks. Turrets should be strong to the point that counterplaying them does not result in the same binary experience. Forcing Recalls or Detonations or Overcharges should be as much a part of fighting against Turret specs as Turret specs should exploit these mechanics to succeed.

I dunno MonMalthias… the premise of your turret ideas is that they need to have less uptime and I just can’t agree with that. Turrets are already made of paper and have pathetically low uptime if you actually want to use them. Your reasons are well thought out but I just can’t agree with that premise.

MonMalthias.4763:

• AI should be fixed such that Turrets target what the Engineer targets, without exception. Even if the turrets are out of range. Range control is Engineer’s specialty, and introducing the possibility of playing Turrets badly increases the skill floor. More on that on a later point.

I agree with you fully here, and this is what they have started heading towards. But yeah, your right

MonMalthias.4763:

• I do think that Turrets should remain almost as fragile as they are at present. (Hitboxes notwithstanding) With low cooldowns and low durability and (hopefully) a high rate of fire to match, Turrets would become highly disposable area control tools that present a clear and present enough threat to draw focus fire for the precious few seconds.

I completely disagree here. Currently they are as fragile as necro pets for instance, but do no more damage or CC, and lack the mobility. I feel that durability is a good exchange for the lack of mobility.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Toolbelts should then be rebalanced to offer higher utility than pure damage – to reflect the lower turret uptime. Traits tying into Toolbelt use would then have greater synergy than is currently possible. Engineers still lack Condition cleanse on Toolbelt use outside of Elixirs, and lack mobility tools and weapon swap mechanics when running triple Turrets. Traits and possibly new skills should fill these gaps.

Makes sense, but I have to say, I would be strongly against any concept limiting turret up time.

MonMalthias.4763:

• For Engineers wishing to preserve their turrets, a Turret Recall chain skill coming after the Overcharge skill that transports Turrets to the Engineer’s current location will allow the Engineer to save them from incoming AOE for precious seconds more. In addition, Recall would also be useful with controlling range, allowing Turrets left behind to catch up when Recalled in the context of mobile combat, without introducing free Turret movement. Traits tying into Healing Turrets with Recall or extending Overcharge should replace Autotool Installation or Metal Plating or other useless traits at present.

Interesting idea. I might have to give this one some thought before I I would have an opinion one way or the other.

MonMalthias.4763:

• The primary concern with Turrets is to make them fun to play with, fun to play against. Managing Turrets should require the same skill floor as Kits. Right now AI dominated specs are extremely passive and playing against them is a highly binary experience: Either your build has enough ranged AOE to kill it, or it doesn’t. AI specs are extremely dangerous to Melee specs with many procs and triggers like Death Nova becoming suicidal to face with melee attacks. Turrets should be strong to the point that counterplaying them does not result in the same binary experience. Forcing Recalls or Detonations or Overcharges should be as much a part of fighting against Turret specs as Turret specs should exploit these mechanics to succeed.

I disagree with your “fun to play against” portion of the comment. In no way should “fun to play against” be part of the balance thought process in my opinion.

coglin.1867:

I disagree with your “fun to play against” portion of the comment. In no way should “fun to play against” be part of the balance thought process in my opinion.

Actually, ANet has specifically stated that they use that perspective in their balancing decisions, and I feel it is actually important.

For instance, recall the beta version of the thief’s dancing dagger. It was basically capable of one-shotting people from stealth at 900 range and there was no real way to react to it.

Fun to play? Yeah, at least for some people. You’d hide away in stealth and wait for the “gotcha” moment, then laugh to yourself when it worked or ran away in an “oh crap” moment when it didn’t work for whatever reason (i.e. hit an aegis).

Fun to play against? No. The victim basically had no way of doing anything about it except hoping the thief would miss somehow. If they got hit, they more or less just died, and that was that.

It’s a similar case for something like the infiltrator’s strike → shadow return changes. The old version was fun to play since the skill was so powerful, but it wasn’t really fun to play against since the thief could completely reset everything at any point in time with an instant cast ability. It’s possible the changes made it less fun to play, but it also made it funner to play against since the thief couldn’t just do whatever the hell they wanted anymore.

The same argument can be applied to the engineer’s kit refinement changes (i.e. 100nades builds, double super elixirs), although they perhaps went a little bit overboard on that since kit refinement has virtually vanished from all forms of play.

Adamantium.3682:

MonMalthias.4763:

Adamantium.3682:

MonMalthias.4763:

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

I haven’t read the rest of your post yet, but I had to stop here and say ZOMG SPIRIT RIT!

I’ve said many times in the past that the more we can make a turret Engineer to function like a spirit Ritualist, the better!

Having Draw Spirit on a chain skill after Overcharge or on the Toolbelt before chaining into Detonate would be all that Turret Engineer needs to be viable after all the bugs are addressed. At that point, the only weakness of the build would be to Conditions – for which there is Automated Medical Response and Healing Turret.

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

Agree on both counts. By being similar to Ritualists I don’t only mean the spirit recall, but I feel that Ritualists were just so much more interactive with their spirits. They had skills that enhanced spirit damage on a target. Skills that healed them when spirits attacked. Protection skills based on number of spirits nearby. Skills that only had an effect (or enhanced effect) within range of a spirit. Damage spirits to heal allies. So much of this could be worked into turrets, and most of it could easily work logically as well. Hide elixirs inside the turret means blowing them up heals allies, etc. I mean just go to the GW1 wiki and type in “spirit” then scroll down and look at all those skills that have some sort of interaction with spirits. Most of them scream Engineer and turrets.

There aren’t many things in this game I can say this about, but when it comes to turrets they really missed the boat IMO. There’s just so much untapped potential.

Don’t just talk about the idea, give an example!

Truth is turrets already embody some of what the Ritualist had, simply by virtue of how the gameplay mechanics of GW2.

“skills to enhance spirit damage on a target” = Vulnerability (still not sure if Modified ammunition affects turrets as well.)
“damage spirits to heal allies” = Detonate + Water field?

Now what else can they add without adding in a new skill?
A trait called Elixir infused Turrets that removes 1 conditions every time you detonate a turret? Sounds good!

Utility Goggles revealing all stealthed enemies in the area when activated near a turret? Sounds awesome!

Come on give some examples.

coglin.1867:

disagree with your “fun to play against” portion of the comment. In no way should “fun to play against” be part of the balance thought process in my opinion.

He means counter-play. Turrets shouldn’t be Pistol Whip or 3 stab warriors where you don’t feel like there is a point in which you can actually hit them and it would be effective.

I made an engineer at launch because as a GW1 player I wanted to make what I saw as the Spirit Spamming Ritualist alternative in GW2 a turret engineer (are you laughing?).

Anyways, it hasn’t happened and my turret engineer farms the easier world bosses now because turrets are hopeless.

Yamsandjams.3267:

coglin.1867:

I disagree with your “fun to play against” portion of the comment. In no way should “fun to play against” be part of the balance thought process in my opinion.

Actually, ANet has specifically stated that they use that perspective in their balancing decisions, and I feel it is actually important.

…

The same argument can be applied to the engineer’s kit refinement changes (i.e. 100nades builds, double super elixirs), although they perhaps went a little bit overboard on that since kit refinement has virtually vanished from all forms of play.

Couldn’t agree with you more. It was 1 skill that was out of balance but they changed 5, and in no way does the 4 second shield of medkit makeup for all of the other useful skills this trait provided.

It’s the same kind of mentality with the pets altho on the opposite end of the spectrum. They don’t go far enough because they’re afraid (rather ignorantly if I may say so considering this has been done before and worked) that pets will somehow become more powerful. They won’t mind you but there’s that fear.

Meanwhile pets (and kits) will continue to be ignored as a viable play option because the system remains broken due to a fear that’s not based on history (because game development history actually provides options for improving pets with systems already tried while this game was in it’s early development stages). This isn’t a new problem and it’s certainly not different, I find people would like us all to think that defense hots dots immunities etc are all somehow “new” ideas like no other mmo combat routine ever existed before this game and somehow since this game has no trinity those concepts are completely different when they aren’t they are basically the same problem rehashed.

If there is one thing that would make me come back it was a turret fix. Any updates?

Theoretically, we might get some turret fixes with the Feature Patch.

…I can’t help but point out that these bugs will have been known for more than two-thirds of a year by the time they’re resolved.
And that almost no bugs from the extensive Turret Buglist have been resolved in the time since I started keeping it up, aside from…maybe four, to be generous, though I can’t actually can’t think what they are.

I’ll be spending a few days testing the ‘fixes’ they put in, of course. Obviously, their QA team is simply incapable of doing the job, considering their various other demands. Like the constant stream of half-functional Living Story content.