Guild Wars 2

I just had an idea, probably bad, but oh well.

All turrets toolbelts get changed to what used to be the overload attack skills and possibly change some around, no more auto overload on placement. Also make turrets more tough and longer range/faster fire rates: I’m thinking Net Turret and Thumper turret RoF every 1 second, rifler turret every .5 second base and rocket every 2 seconds.

Thumper Turret: Toolbelt is a small shield around all turrets currently out (like the ones that spawn on turrets with the trait, but able to be toggled with a CD)

Rifle Turret: Mark a target (revealed) then fire 4 shots per second for 3 seconds at them (like a rapid fire, will do decent damage)

Rocket Turret: Fire rockets at up to 5 targets in range of turret that inflict knockdown for 1 second on hit. Would bring more AoE potential to the turrets as all but thumper are single target (flame is basically single though it is a cone).

Net Turret: Fire a big cast net around the turret immobilizing anyone within 900 range (up to 5 targets) for 3 seconds. No stun like the overload has but its AoE now.

Flame Turret: A skill that makes Flame turret whirl around for 5 seconds in an AoE circle at 900 range inflicting 1 or 2 burning per second (duration would be shorter if higher stack).

Healing Turret: Personally this overload was always pretty good so I don’t suggest a change.

I’d suggest very short CD’s on the overload abilities, maybe around 5 to 10 seconds depending on which ones, because turrets are meant to be kept up. I’d like to see auto regen turrets be brought back as well and make it 10% every 2 seconds (considering turrets take condi and are able to be crit nowadays I don’t see this as OP).

For the traits I’d make Experimental Turrets give their boons on turret overload, and change the HT boon to resistance.

As for Advanced Turrets, keep the damage reduction and either add the healing over time to this trait or if that is baseline make it improve the damage of all turrets by 20%.

What do you all think?

Thats virtually the same as how turrets were before the patch… they were chwnged how they were because people were only ever using turrets for their toolbelt skills and the fact that placing the turret removed the toolbelt skill meant people wouldn’t ever place the turrets.

However, ANet screwed up by removing manual overloads… now people dont feel its worthwhile to keep turrets out and the previous problem remains unresolved…

How to fix this:

Leave toolbelt skills alone.
Return manual overload.
Add detonate as a flip skill after overload that is only available while overload is on cooldown.
For those who want to detonate without overloading, they can keep the 1/2 sec delay on overload and flip the skill immediately, allowing you to double tap for an instant detonate before the overload can trigger.
Also, overloads will now happen exactly 1/2 second after being triggered, no more waiting for the turrets next cycle.

My fun suggestion is to take the initial cast and overload and combine it into one skill. Since the overload is used immediately anyway, why not have everything just cast at once?

Healing turret would be less clunky, which is the primary complaint right now.

Things like the thumper turret knock-up would cast instantly as you put it down, rather than having that annoying delay. This makes it so that the initial cast of the skill is the primary use, with the actual turret as a secondary benefit.

Next change would be making it so that when turrets land a hit, they shave off a few seconds from the overall cool-down. Turrets that are allowed to land consecutive hits on enemies will refresh cool-downs faster (i.e. 2-5 seconds per hit). This will promote the Engineer to set up turrets in safer locations (thumper turret obviously needs to be right in the middle of a teamfight, which is good because with my suggestions it would be stupidly strong), and enemies will be encouraged prioritize killing turrets. Note that cool-downs would still only start ticking after the turret is destroyed. So a turret that never hit any enemies and is destroyed would have the full cool-down. This is to de-incentivize “pre-trapping” a point, like what old turret engineer did and what the current dragonhunter does with traps.

Then, I would make the power portion of turrets scale with an engineer’s power, precision and ferocity. If you want the turrets to actually hit hard, then you need to choose a less tanky amulet.

If you want the old turret engineer gameplay, where you set up a nest and tank enemies while turrets kill them, then my suggestions are definitely not what you want. The idea of the turret engineer I want to create is one that is semi-squishy, and moves around strategically to catch enemies in the initial overload turret casts while setting turrets up to distract and disrupt enemy teams. The turrets will be very temporary, but will provide enough of an impact such that the Engineer can rebuild them rather quickly if they are actually hitting enemies, and the enemy makes the mistake of letting them live.

Weaknesses would be the lack of stability, and that condi-removal occurs in bursts rather than continuous (you only really have healing turret, supply crate tool-belt and the traits in Inventions).

Unfortunately, until Rifle is buffed there is no way my suggestions could work. Also, this idea assumes turrets have their current weak survivability. If they become tougher in the future, then this idea should never be implemented.

I think Detonating or Destroying an overcharged turret should cause various effects. Make Overcharge manually triggered again while Detonate Turret will be the flip for it. Turrets overall should also have a faster rate of fire and Overcharge should reset the fire rate which will make it automatically fire again once used.

Depending on which turret explodes:

-Rifle Turret will riddle nearby enemies with bullets which will cripple them for a duration.
-Rocket Turret will blast out a couple of homing rockets that will randomly target nearby enemies.
-Flame Turret will cause a fiery explosion giving stacks of burning.
-Net Turret will cause an electrical explosion causing a brief stun.
-Thumper Turret will just do massive explosive damage.
-Healing Turret will….not to sure. Extended water field sounds nice though.

Experimental Turrets should also do additional effects to nearby turrets depending on which turret is used:

-Rifle Turret increases rate of fire of nearby turrets.
-Rocket Turret increases power of nearby turrets.
-Flame Turret will give nearby turrets some sort of retaliation.
-Net Turret will give turrets a very brief cripple effect.
-Thumper Turret will give turrets some decrease damage taken.
-Healing Turret will give turrets regeneration.

Advanced Turrets should enhance the functions of Overcharge such as significantly increasing the damage, rate of fire etc. It could also decrease the recharge or extend the duration of Overcharge.

This would give Turrets an option of being a decent turret or could be treated similar to a claymore mine.

I’d wish the turrets would either overload automatically every 12 to 15 seconds, at least in PvE, or get a highly reduced cd. Or a trait that adds this or that effect. Skills already have different effects in PvP/PvE, but the turrets now only serve as event-scarifier to earn gold reward.
Before the change I never feared a fight with Centraltyria-Champs during leveling. I used the overloads when I needed them, e.g. to make the gun-turret grabbing the attention or to put a bit more space between the mob and me by knocking it down with the rocket. I used the healing-turret’s overload to clean conditions when I actually had them and not at the beginning of a fight. The combo field of toolbelt skill Regenerating Mist has a too short duration and too small radius to blast heal with shield 4 or a bomb (in case the related blast-trait was chosen) – because to stop moving isn’t a good decision when fighting a champ chasing you.

They will need to up the power of the turrets kits elixirs and explosives in order to contend with the new skills of the other classes because if they choose not to do that that means this class will be even further behind then it already is!

It had almost no changes to elixirs (the potions not the guns) or explosives in Heart of Thorns!

I suggest they make them elite turrets so they have the same power and defense as veteran creatures and that they improve explosives to make them more like traps found on Heart of Thorns Guardian mastery and original GW2 trapper rangers.

Additionally they’ll need to improve the toolbelt tremendously.

I should add that this is a great opportunity for them to finally at long last make turrets and kits look like the technology of the race that’s using them.