Guild Wars 2

…as you can see here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Allow-turrets-objects-to-take-burn-damage/first#post4983454

Welp, seems that Others and I were right and a nerf is inbound.
In hope that the Dev’s will read this thread:

How would you weaken turreteer builds reasonably WITHOUT nerfing Healing turret and Supply-crate into the ground?

This is what I’ve read about / came up with myself in the past months:

- Allow turrets to be crited on / make them vulnerable to condis
- Swap Elixir Infused bombs with Experimental turrets ( = no insane boon-uptime AND insane range to the same time)
- Plainly increase their cd’s (very bad for supply-crate and healing turret)
- Shorten their uptime drastically (very bad for supply-crate)
- Decrease thumper’s HP noticeable
- Reduce their dmg-output
- Various nerfs to turret-related traits (Accelerant packed turrets already received one, still is often complained about, so maybe will see another nerf soon)

So, apart from what we’ve seen on the forums already, what are your ideas for nerfing them in a reasonable manner?
Trait changes?
Utility-Overhauls?
Stat-Changes?
Go ahead and prevent a-net from demolishing a whole utility-family, just because of a single, silly build-family.

“the effectiveness of turret engineer is something we’re looking into very closely right now”
That doesn’t mean it’s a nerf. For all we know it means they might even buff them cuz they are considered not effective enough in top tier play.
New trait: Turrets unbound- turrets now follow the engineer.

I’d rather they didn’t touch elixer infused bombs any, as swapping that with experimental turrets would mean I wouldn’t need to go into inventions for my healing bomb build, possibly making that a bit too strong. I play healing bombs with rifle and cele ammy, it’s already good enough in a co-ordinated team as it is, i’d rather not see it buffed then nerfed because we tried to fix another build.

Making turrets auto detonate if you move out of a certain range would be best imo, as the least intrusive change. Say 1500 or something like that. That way, they would be unable to keep dps on a point without actually being there, which is plain silly atm.

Turret engi is mainly strong for the large amount of CC and the rocket turret doing a ton of damage. The CC is fine, it’s what engi is supposed to do, so i’d say rocket turret is what should be looked at if the range thing doesn’t help.

Turret engi is still very vulnerable to CC and condi tho, I normally kill them 1v1 by just CC’ing them before they can do it to me, and by keeping them on fire.

Thanks for bringing this to the engineer forum. I really hope they go light with the nerfs.

Here are what I think would be fair:
-Reduce turret health per second from 5%/3sec to 5%/5sec. This nerfs their healing by about 40%.
-Reduce the health of thumper turret by 10%.

Those two should be enough, but if A-net is beant on removing turrets from any play outside of hotjoin, they can also make turrets (only in pvp) take 5%/sec damage when the engineer is farther than 1500 range. So if a turet enginner leaves his point, his turrets will die in 25 seconds. Slowly getting weaker, allowing another player to come in and destroy them even earlier. This would have to only be in pvp!! Even still, this just makes turret engineers less skill based, and I don’t like it. The first two nerfs I mentioned should be plenty to allow some builds that currently can’t 1v1 a turret engineer have an easier time taking out the rocket turret, so they can 1v1. And bombarding the point will even kill the thumper quickly.

In the end, I don’t really agree with nerfing turrets, but if its happening that is how I’d do it.

I don’t play turrets, but I like having them in the game. They spice up the meta, and force me to think a bit more when facing an enemy turret, or trying to make use of our teams turret player.

I’ve heard and seen enginner turret premades, if that is the source of their issue, then they could consider that experimental turrets buffs dont stack form multiple turrets. (Aka, a thumper will give protection in its area, and any others will be put on hold until that one is destroyed.) This would force turret groups to spread their turrets out more, which makes them more vulnerable to being picked off.

Agreed, I don’t want them to be unplayable, as they make a nice change imo, and I personally don’t have many issues with them. I play pretty tanky though, I haven’t played against one on my thief and I imagine I wouldn’t enjoy that.

As a bunker they do exactly what they’re supposed to do, but every premade team i’ve seen running more than one turret engi in tourneys wins the first game but then loses the match, which is interesting.

“every premade team i’ve seen running more than one turret engi in tourneys wins the first game but then loses the match, which is interesting.”
I think that that steems from the fact that regular play does not work against turreteer-supported fights.

Usually you try to charge in, target the most squishy enemy and stun-lock / burst him to death, while the bruisers contest the node and cc-spam / heal / condi-clear and peel on your zerker setups.
In a comp with 2-3 bruisers, 1-2 zerker and a roamer that totally works out, but as soon as you have 2 turreteers on the node everybody and their mother has protection, aoe-cripple, almost perma-fury and so many targets on the field that your cleave get eaten up by the AoE-cap.
Additionally you have so many AI-powered peel going on that you can simply not survive long enough in the area to get rid of the bursty squishies. and since you expected Cele rifle engis first, you already ran in heads first when this forrest’o’turrets suddenly pops up and eats you in a maw of immobilizes, burn, heavy AoE that you don’t even have the time to flee and regroup. usually the first stomps go to the turreteer-party

But that is a one-trick pony.
As soon as the enemy team notices that you left out most of your mobility by bringing 2 turreteers to one point, they just out-rotate you and let the moving turreteers getting sniped by their roamer and bursty classes.
And while a single turreteer on a node already is good defense against single roamers, they get rushed too easily by a bruiser and a zerker together, so are unable to hold the node long enough for reinforcements from mid/far to arrive.
this is where the fight usually turns around since turreteers get suppressed to heavily to even set up shop properly again for the rest of the match.

I think turrets need a complete rework. They need ammunation and have stronger attacks, yet YOU have to attack by YOURSELF. No ki, just utility skills you can activate and the turret shoots. Rocket turret will be like a grenade shot to aim and flame turret like a smoke bomb + fire bomb.

Don’t nerv it into the ground, fix it!

Xyonon.3987:

I think turrets need a complete rework. They need ammunation and have stronger attacks, yet YOU have to attack by YOURSELF. No ki, just utility skills you can activate and the turret shoots. Rocket turret will be like a grenade shot to aim and flame turret like a smoke bomb + fire bomb.

Don’t nerv it into the ground, fix it!

That cannot work, because those same turrets take up slots required for an engineer to have a weapon swap. I hardly call taking damage from an entire utility skill set as a fix. Until you remove damage from every sigil in the game. If you going to make sets of utilities that offer passive effects, as unable to do damage, why would other skills for other professions be allowed? Remove all elites and utilities from the other professions that do passive damage such as necro minions, spirit weapons, elmentalist pets, and clones.

Who want to start a pool to see what professions or its aspect the PvP community irrationally rails against next?

If the turret’s up time is supposed to be nerfed or if you’d be able to crit turrets I’d like the overcharged abilities to do somethign useful. Like the mesmer f-skills.

What about making turrents scale off your stats/amulet?

Imho, they should rework how overcharges work and in doing so make turrets’ playstyle less passive. They need to deal damage – after all, we still lack that second weapon, so utilities have to take its place – but at least that damage will be mostly dealt via player commands, rather than autoattacks. I’ve posted an example of a possible rework in another thread, anyway.
Some trait could be rebalanced, like autotool installation, or even reworked as well (tied to overcharge use, maybe). I still can’t agree with that proposed elixir-infused bomb switching, anyway.

What i think won’t solve anything is doing some change on a vacuum – their current properties are all intertwined. They are sturdy because they’re supposed to stay on a point, tank damage (not that they have other choices, being unmoveable) and stay alive until the next overcharge, since their cooldown starts only after they die (or get picked up). If the engineer goes away, they can’t follow him; the engineer will have to make up with the lack of their utilities slots while he’s away, and can’t properly make them work without an understanding of the situation (at most, he can overcharge his abilities randomly). Also, they have to be effective enough to balance out the lack of a second main weapon.
Unless they change their whole design, changing anyone of these factors would impact all the others. Making them easily destructible would make the player unable to use overcharge for long periods of time, and people would just end up using them like they already do with the healing turret – put down, overcharge, destroy or pickup and repeat – basically thwarting their supposed use. Destroying them when the engineer is over a certain range would just be redundant – them being unmovable is already a liability, and an engineer that fights somewhere else has to do so without his utilities (or toolbelts) – they’re still locked wherever he left them, and he can’t even use their overcharges well if he has no understanding of the situation. Diminishing their offensive capabilities may make them not effective enough as to counter the lack of a second weapon, and thus worthless to use.
If they plan to fix the situation by just changing some hp, defense or attack value, they may as well redesign them anew. Cause it won’t solve anything – either they’ll smithersboon them or make changes so small that will end up irrelevant in practice.

Albeit, what will likely happen is that they’ll “accidentally” end up making them useless just to appeal at the whining crowd.

Spasticlese.2358:

What about making turrents scale off your stats/amulet?

This, all AI need to, I’ll be waiting for viable turrets at higher level.

Xyonon.3987:

I think turrets need a complete rework. They need ammunation and have stronger attacks, yet YOU have to attack by YOURSELF. No ki, just utility skills you can activate and the turret shoots. Rocket turret will be like a grenade shot to aim and flame turret like a smoke bomb + fire bomb.

Don’t nerv it into the ground, fix it!

I really like this idea.
- No AA for all turrets (except healing turret which works as usual)
- Turrets always turn their barrels at your currently selected target
- Supply-crate drops flame, healing and net turret (+ rifle if traited with elite supplies) who go on overcharge as often as they can during their 60sec uptime period. They also get affected by the trait-changes.

Traits-changes:
- Fortified turrets
Turrets will activate a reflective shield for 4 seconds everytime they are overcharged. It aborts instantly if the turret is destroyed/picked up.
- Auto-tool installation
Reduces the cd on overcharges by 20%

Overcharge-skills:
- Thumper turret
Lasts 6 seconds (3 shockwaves in total if the first one goes off immediately)
Releases shockwave that launch foes and deals medium damage every 3 seconds
Each shockwave is a blast-finisher
cd: 30 seconds

- Rocket-turret
Lasts 3 seconds (2 rockets in total if the first one goes off immediately)
Fires a homming projectile at your target that deals heavy dmg and 1 second daze every 3 seconds
cd: 20 seconds

- Rifle turret
Lasts 9 Seconds (10 Projectiles in total if the first one goes off immediately)
Fires Shots that cause vulnerability and deal minor damage every Second
100% Projectile-finishers (guess how awesome napalm actually can get with it)
cd: 30 seconds

- Net turret
Lasts for 1 shot
Fires a net that stuns for 2 seconds and applies immobilize for 4 seconds
cd: 20 Seconds

- Flame Turret
Lasts for 6 Seconds (3 burns in total if the first one goes off immediately)
Releases a smoke-field that pulses 1s blind each second. Additionally releases a blowtorch at your target that causes burn for 3 seconds and deals minor damage every 3 seconds
cd: 30 seconds

This allows the trait fortified turrets to be way more powerful and allows for decent aerial protection against most things that normally would out-range turrets, while taking away their ability to self-repair in order to make them more Dependant on active defense and cd-management by picking them up in time.
One still can choose to trait rocket/rifle on 1.5k range, on the cost of most of their survivability. I guess this would make a fair change to turrets since they now reward active play more while also nerfing the turreteer build into the ground since it can not rely on the constant dps-pressure from going full out turrets anymore.

Sagat.3285:

Spasticlese.2358:

What about making turrents scale off your stats/amulet?

This, all AI need to, I’ll be waiting for viable turrets at higher level.

I’d support this; nerfing their base values, in exchange for adding scaling, is something I’ve thought they should do for, literally, years.

Other than that, though, I’m pretty sure Turrets need reworked from the ground up. They’re static in a very mobile game, which ends up making them pointless everywhere except for King of the Hill/Domination, where they end up just drawing complaints from people who don’t bother to learn their counter-play. On top of that, of course, is the Engineer reliance on Kits for weapon swapping, etcetera, which becomes an issue for Turret builds because traiting for Turrets is cripplingly expensive, trait-point-wise, which can make it difficult to work a Kit into the build without it feeling like at least part of that investment was wasted.

I’m not sure what I’d suggest as a rework, though. It’s been a long time since I played at all, much less regularly enough to really have any ideas that aren’t just half-remembered.

Arantheal.7396:

cut

Two main issues here, imho.
To make up for the lack of AA damage, some turrets would end up having to do high burst damage unlike anything the profession has ever seen. Particularly the rocket turret.
Net turret has a slow autoattack to start with even now, so it would pose less of an issue.
Flame turret would just end up with a long, easily cleansable burning (in your example it didn’t even account for all the autoattacks it should have done during that period, though, so it would just be really bad; one would just use either the flamethrower or bomb kit instead).
I don’t even think they would be kept in such a state. Everytime we got a way to deal proper burst damage, it got nerfed shortly thereafter.

Second issue, and the most glaring one, is that such a roundabout way of working doesn’t make sense to start with.
In practice, they would end up used as put down, overcharged, and picked up. Cause if they don’t do anything there is no reason to keep them down to begin with, especially if they still have their cooldown starting after their death.
Frankly speaking, it makes no sense for it to work like that from a gameplay standpoint. What’s the point of having a pet that does absolutely nothing most of the time, beside being a target for other people to destroy, especially since it cannot even move?
It seems designed just to be overly obnoxious and detrimental to use.
We could just have an item that gets put down, does the effect of those overcharges, and gets destroyed (thus going on cooldown). It would have the same, exact gameplay effects, without being an hassle to use. Sure, it wouldn’t be a turret either, more like a gizmo, but at least it makes sense working like so.

Change all turrets like Spirit Weapons on guardian. -> 30-45 sec durations CD 30-45 sec(start when turrets is detroyed) This change fix all problems.

Evilek.5690:

Change all turrets like Spirit Weapons on guardian. -> 30-45 sec durations CD 30-45 sec(start when turrets is detroyed) This change fix all problems.

No SWs on guardian are terrible, give turrets the banner treatment those made all three 3 modes. How does it fix floating turrets?

Sagat.3285:

Evilek.5690:

Change all turrets like Spirit Weapons on guardian. -> 30-45 sec durations CD 30-45 sec(start when turrets is detroyed) This change fix all problems.

No SWs on guardian are terrible, give turrets the banner treatment those made all three 3 modes. How does it fix floating turrets?

What’s “the banner treatment”? Banners don’t do anything but supply an AOE buff. Nothing you could do to either would really allow them to be related in the same way. o.O Except that they can be picked up…

Because they’re overly tanky atm, but engineers want more mobility on turrets, I think something like this would be great:

Change Autotool Installation (5% HP/3 seconds) to, Quick Re-position: Picking up a turret reduces the cooldown by 50% (Instead of 25%?) and grants the engineer 5 seconds of swiftness.

I think this would be a good step in the right direction as far as handling placement and mobility. (Doesn’t fix the damage/CC for effort issue though)

ronpierce.2760:

Sagat.3285:

Evilek.5690:

Change all turrets like Spirit Weapons on guardian. -> 30-45 sec durations CD 30-45 sec(start when turrets is detroyed) This change fix all problems.

No SWs on guardian are terrible, give turrets the banner treatment those made all three 3 modes. How does it fix floating turrets?

What’s “the banner treatment”? Banners don’t do anything but supply an AOE buff. Nothing you could do to either would really allow them to be related in the same way. o.O Except that they can be picked up…

Because they’re overly tanky atm, but engineers want more mobility on turrets, I think something like this would be great:

Change Autotool Installation (5% HP/3 seconds) to, Quick Re-position: Picking up a turret reduces the cooldown by 50% (Instead of 25%?) and grants the engineer 5 seconds of swiftness.

I think this would be a good step in the right direction as far as handling placement and mobility. (Doesn’t fix the damage/CC for effort issue though)

Make them pick it up to get access to the better skills, make it less effective to just place it somewhere, probably too much work but I have bigger complaints. Mobile tanks are not a good idea.

They should have a duration and then disappear forcing at least an upkeep. As in you have to maintain them, feed them ammo, refuel them w/e . It’s the element of letting the AI take over where other classes need to constantly think and manage resources. Eles have them no weapon swap issue too, but they at least have to play smart with attune nets to be effective

Its only good thing. Daily turret engi scums will move to some other proffesion with cheese build and us dedicated engis will sleep in peace:-)