Guild Wars 2

I thought, I’d post this here, because more engineers are bound to look at it here. (and less people, who just want to see turrets purged from pvp, which the currently proposed changes certainly will…)

Arena.Net has set their eyes on Turrets. However, their concern wasn’t about how useless they are in PvE, but rather, they were concerned with how strong turret builds are in the current PvP meta.

So I’d like to use this thread to first outline the problem from a PvP standpoint and then use the fact, this forum is also used by PvE players to brainstorm for better solution.

Firstly, why do people play turrets in PvP?
The turret engineer, henceforth called turreteer or turret engi, is a point bunker. It’s a common misconception, people who play turreteers do so, because they want to play engineer. While this may be true, when the aim is to get the daily win as engineer, people usually play turret engineers because they want to do exactly that. Bunker a point. Stand on the point, kill anyone, who tries anything stupid and hold on for long enough, when a serious threat comes, so allies can react.

Turrets and turreteers have been around for quite some time and even the experimental turrets trait didn’t give them a lot of popularity, so why now?
It mostly comes down to some little changes and the current metagame. The biggest change, that caused a huge rise in the number of turret players, was the introduction of an amulet with Sentinel’s stats (VIT/pow/tuff) to PvP. The increase in survivability over the up to then common Soldier’s amulet is immense.
The big strength of the turret engineer is the fact, that his turrets have their stats independent of his own. Which means, regardless of how tanky or squishy he is, the thumper turret will always be hard to take down and the rocket turret and the rifle turret will always hit like a truck full of bricks.
This means, a character with 27k hitpoints will be able to stay on point, thus preventing the opponent from capturing that point, keep evading attacks and spamming cc to keep said opponent in place, while his turrets deal disproportionally large amounts of damage.

In addition, the current meta is defined by people wanting to have their cake and eat it.
Elementalists, Warriors and Guardians all currently run a hard to kill build, which can still generate immense pressure. Elementalists and Warriors do so by equipping Celestial stats, while Guardians do so on the power of Meditations alone. The meta is rounded up by thieves being the dps.
As this already sums up large parts of the meta, here we encounter our first problem: Turrets can’t be critical hit, turrets can’t be affected by conditions and the turreteer has a huge health pool and lots of boon support, so cutting through him with an allround build just won’t do much.
Warriors, Eles and Guardians of the current meta are incapable of fighting turrets. Not by design, but by choice. Thieves, on the other hand, are really screwed over by design. If I, as a thief player, had the choice between duking it out with a turreteer on his point, on a tight clock, trying to cap the point as fast as possible and fighting naked against Lupicus with nothing but a rusty dagger… I’d take my chances with Lupicus. Thieves are at a disadvantage, because turrets can’t be blinded, hit hard, can react instantly to him popping out of stealth of shadow stepping in and the amount of cc really tying the thief down regardless of the fact, the turreteer has 27k health and lots of protection and regeneration.

This means, out of the current meta, 4 of the 5 most meta defining classes (the fifth being engineer) already struggle for answers against turrets. One by design, three by choice.
So who can defeat a turreteer?
Rangers, Engineers and Mesmers can reliably solo kill a turreteer. Mesmers got pushed out of the meta by Thieves, Rangers got pushed out of the meta by shoutbows, Engineers, regardless of the build, are largely regarded as broken, but non-turret variants are hard to play. But you generally don’t 1v1 in PvP. Your goal should always be to quickly decide a 2v1 before reinforcements arrive. What exists on this front? Again, the classes, which can 1v1 are obviously good in 2v1. In addition to Ranger, Mesmer and Engineer, we now also have: Necromancers can kill the turreteer with condi or blast him away with lich form. They got pushed out of the meta because of the celestial meta in general and shoutbows in particular. Elementalists can bring a frost bow, if they are willing to sacrifice a slot, to instantly vaporize turrets in a 2v1. Guardians and Warriors can be the second player to provide pressure, but generally need one of the aforementioned 5 to reliably secure the kill even in a 2v1 situation. Thieves shouldn’t even engage in a 2v1 unless they are with one of the solo kill classes. It’s just such a bad match for them.

With this being said, what is currently being debated?
The current debate is to have turrets vulnerable to crits and be affected by conditions. This is some sort of knee-jerk response to the popular demand for a solution to the “turret plague”.

What this would do to turreteers:
Turrets would be killed by any celestial spec. This alone would be enough to push turreteers out of the meta. Even worse, thieves, up till now completely helpless, could have a field day picking off turret engis… In between blind spam and with cluster bombs generally critting turrets to smithereens, turreteers would now die in a 1v1 against any class, if not immediately, then after a little bit. Turrets would also just die in team fights, making them even bad at bunkering mid. A bunker, who can’t hold a point against a single attacker is no bunker. People will just go back to playing bunker guardian without giving any alternate engi builds a chance.[/spoiler]

What this would do to other engi builds:
You know supply crate, right? Well, guess what. The things deployed by it are also turrets. Even with you not putting in any traits and them even being killed easily by non-crits. Dropping a crate into the middle of a team fight? Sure, you get a stun. Then the turrets die.

What this would do to PvE:
It would sent a totally wrong signal. Turrets are already not played in PvE. So why nerf it?

So what to do?
Here’s a couple suggestions to kick off the discussion:
1) Make turrets scale with the engineer’s stat spread. Make them be able to crit, so precision and ferocity also count in. Tanky engi —> tanky turret. Zerker engi --> zerker turret. This would also help turrets in PvE.
2) Make turrets more active. A lot of people complain about the lack of active play with turrets. Making overcharge more relevant, toning down the normal auto attacks, have them easier re-deployed, when picked up, etc. All of this would do a lot to make the turreteer a more active build. This could potentially help turrets in PvE.
3) Go on with Arena.Net’s suggestions. Then buff turrets for PvE otherwise.
4) Do nothing and let the meta sort itself out. This would leave the glaring problems of turrets to be sorted later.
5) Do changes, which change the meta, so turrets fit in. Again, this would leave the problems to be sorted later.

I hope, we can somehow manage to improve turrets instead of merely ruining them. Large parts of the PvP community are out to do exactly that. So with this, the discussion is open. Let those ideas come in. We need them badly.

I’ll copypaste a recent proposal i made in some thread.

Anyway, if they can fix the “braindead” AI, that’s good. Turrets could use a more active playstyle – i just don’t think these suggestions can give them one. Making them paper mache isn’t a solution, unless they plan on redesigning them completely; and neither would make them inherently more active.
The problem is about how you can have a full turret build, with a single main weapon, and still have active plays while the turrets are down, assuming that they won’t change some fundamental designs about them (like being immobile, relatively sturdy, and have their cooldown start after their death). Also, they would still have to work with the limitations of the command inputs – as now, we have at most two buttons per turret, one of which is used to destroy them.
The only way i can see, with these premises, would be to rework the overcharge system, along with shifting some power from the turret autoattacks to overcharges (not too much, though, else they become too bursty). Maybe multiple tiers of overcharges? Overcharges would work akin to chain skills as far as inputs go, assuming you’ve got the energy costs to pay for them, and there would be clear tells to understand what overcharge tier is being shot right now (albeit, unlike actual chain skills, it would only use one overcharge at a time). Tier 1 would just be a stronger autoattack with a relatively short cooldown, whereas tier 2 would be the current overcharge. In doing so, the autoattacks’ importance would be diminished, whereas the relevant attacks become more clear (and thus are more avoidable if ones wishes so).
If we want to do things more complex, turrets could have some kind of energy system. Like, they start with X energy when they’re put down, enough for a tier 2 overcharge. Turrets gain Y energy every Z seconds, and overcharges have different energy costs based on the tiers but also have lower cooldowns, thus leaving more micromanagement to the player’s hand. In doing so, there may even be a tier 3 overcharge with high energy costs, so that it needs some build-up time before it can be used after the turret has been put down (like, at least 15s, for example).
Turrets’ energy could then be displayed above each turret’s icon on the skill bar, as a sort-of boon when clicking on turrets, or may even be displayed as graphical changes on the turrets themselves (they could shift to a different model once they have enough energy to use an higher tier of overcharges).

Albeit, this was proposed when them being immune to crits and conditions was still a thing.

Nice overview, but i’ll add some stuff.

- Turret engie are relatively hard to play against for some meta build for the reason you said but it have huge weakness. They don’t have the mobility or the versatility to compete with the meta. Yes if you try to fight them head on with celestial meta you could have difficulty, but you can simply ignore them and concentrate on the other two point to gain an advantage in term of numbers to win fight.

The turret engineer can then rotate to the other point, but he can’t rotate as fast as other profession because of his turrets. He can pick them up, but won’t be of any use during the cooldown while he rotate to another point.

The second weakness is against organized team or at least group of player know what they are doing. If your team have a lot of celestial and a terramancer, then focus on the engineer with condi pressure since he almost have no condi clear. If you pack ranger and power necro focus the turrets. If he spread his turret then thief and medi guardian can focus them as well. But in most pug team it can be difficult if no possible to end up with a strategy and communicate what is the target. A team could have a terromancer and 2 celestial, if someone target the turret engineer the team will probably attack something else even if they should attack him and focusing turrets are even harder to communicate.

That’s why turret engineer are a pain in pugs group, but are so weak against organized group. They place right build against it, us the right focus and make good rotation to make the Turret engineer useless. Things that are hard if not impossible to do in a pugs where turret engineer can be frustrating.

The ideas have been kicked around for years. Anet hasn’t listened, though, so Turrets continue to be terrible, and will become more terrible as a result of the nerf.

That said, both 1 and 2 have been popular ideas for improving Turrets and their playstyle.
Number 1 would be a good way to handle, I think, the apparent issue of consistency (what with the issue being ‘turrets are too tough, turreteers are too tough’), as well as introducing a reason to do something besides ‘So, I’ll just go Soldier, Turrets, x/x/6/6/x, and be the most annoying tanky bunker ever.’
Number 2 would address something else that’s been hitting Turrets hard – they’re relatively static in a game that wants to be dynamic.

Unfortunately, I doubt either will happen. 1 would cause nerfs to Turrets or other skills, most likely, as a result of people using Turrets in Berserker builds, and 2 would actually require effort, something I really doubt I’ll see from the Anet that can’t be bothered to fix Hobosacks.

Another indicator that Anet just wants to nerf Turrets, and likely won’t bother doing anything but ticking ‘can be crit’ and ‘can receive conditions’: They’ve explicitly stated that Turrets will not be able to receive boons or do any critting themselves. The most they’ve said is “well, they’ll still be immune to CC, and they don’t currently trigger marks on their own, but we can change that second one.” It seems evident that they don’t really care what happens to Turrets, as long as people stop whining about them being too good.

the in line spoiler thing is kind of annoying

frankly, i wont be sad to see the spec go. i actually think the proposed nerf is reasonable. i think they can do better, but im still thinking about how. its gonna have something to do with nerfing their protection.