(edited by Conncept.7638)
Wrench+turret suggestion
No input whatsoever? C’mon guys it can’t be that bad of a suggestion…
Not a huge fan of this idea personally, though I do think the toolkit needs…something to present more incentive to using it. Right now it’s just awkward, and if it’s intended to work with turret builds…well, it does cost you a turret to use.
I’m not sure what the best option would be.
Not a huge fan of this idea personally, though I do think the toolkit needs…something to present more incentive to using it. Right now it’s just awkward, and if it’s intended to work with turret builds…well, it does cost you a turret to use.
I’m not sure what the best option would be.
I appreciate the input either way. It needs something, right now slotting the wrench kit feels like you’re missing a turret, not slotting it feels like you’re missing support your turrets desperately need. The slot/trait system is supposed to give you choices, but when it comes to turrets and the wrench it only seems to give you bad ones.
New idea in the OP, just came up with it while playing my asura engineer.
Here’s the problem with the wrench: It takes a slot and heals for poop. You only get three slots for turrets (barring Healing turret), and there are 5 turrets. If you want to get the most out of speccing straight turrets, you need all three utility slots to be a turret. If anything, the Thumper or Flame turret should have been the Tool Kit’s Tool Belt skill as it is a close-range pack, and those are the closest ranged turrets.
Secondly, as stated, there are already almost twice as many turrets as there are utility slots, adding more will not help. The goal is to make Tool kit useful for a turret-specced Engineer, and to make turrets viable by not increasing the damage (as doing so would create imbalance with larger groups where no threat exists to turrets), but increasing the frequency in which you can use them. The solution would be as follows:
1) 20% faster recharge to turrets appended to Autotool Installation or Deployable Turrets.
2) 20% faster recharge to turrets appended to Power Wrench, which is only active while using the Tool Kit.
3) Every auto attack from Wrench should heal turrets, and it should autoattack even without a target or while targeting a turret. The heal amount should be doubled.
4) Healing Turret also repairs turrets within its range (not itself).
5) Throw Wrench should be swapped with a 20 second cooldown (before traits) Thumper/Flame Turret. When in-use it should change to Thump/Smoke screen. Detonate Thumper/Flame Turret (for this Thumper/Flame, not the Utility slot one) is pointless because you will likely be near it, meaning you can simply pick it up.
6) Mortar should have its range increased, it should only be usable by party members and the Engineer (much like what should happen to banners), and it should auto-fire when not in use by another player.
Power Wrench+Metal Plating+Autotool Installation+Healing Turret should be defensive enough to turn the average turret into a tank on par with, if not better than, a Ranger’s Wolf/Drake pet with Natural Healing, Signet of Stone, and Signet of the Wild. That is a lot of trait points and utility slots and it currently makes a turret survive two more hits at most, which is garbage. Being able to pop out turrets at an increased rate makes their use in PvE managable, and makes their destruction in PvP less devastating to the Engineer.
Additionally, like Ranger Bear and Wolf/Drake pets and close range Warriors and Guardians, the Thumper Turret should be the target priority of enemies. As it stands, the high health of Thumper turret is negated by the fact the enemies will always run past it and go straight for the Engineer, leaving it to be mostly useless unless you stand on top of it, removing any point it originally had and giving enemies twice as many targets to freely hit. The game is in desperate need of a hate system, however primitive or simple.
(edited by CHunterX.4083)
Spawning a turret automatically would be nice, plus that gives some incentive to actually use the tool kit. I kinda like it. I like the mini turret as well, but throw wrench is useful.
I’m also hijacking this thread to add some ideas of my own (no prior thought went into these, just came up with them).
Suggestion 1: Make turrets act more like a gadget. Turrets are deployed, last for 6 seconds, then explode. They would do increased damage for their brief effect. This solves the problem of enemies killing them because they will likely explode before they are focused. It would also make the trait that allowed you to throw turrets MUCH more effective. However, I completely understand that this negates the idea of a turret, making it function more like a gadget.
Suggestion 2: “Pick up” turrets allows you to carry them around while they continue to fire. When you pick up a deployed turret (assuming suggestion 1 is not in place), it will continue to fire. It replaces your weapon set so you can’t use any abilities (ability 1 is replaced with a “Re-deploy” button (4 second channel to re-deploy), the rest are empty). This allows the engineer to be much more mobile, re-deploy as needed, and potentially save the turret from being killed. To prevent engineers from being able to kite endlessly, just have the turret fire in the direction the engineer is facing while picked up rather than a nearby enemy. I admit, this isn’t a great suggestion, but better than the current implementation.
The biggest problem is that they’re easily killed. This MIGHT be ok if they were able to do some decent damage before they died, but they don’t. Plus, enemies seem to LOVE to smash them first. I would love to see a mechanics that allowed the turret to be invulnerable, but obviously only under the right conditions.
Suggestion 3: Master trait: Turrets take no damage as long as the engineer remains within 200 range. This would allow an engineer to hold a point for a while, but the turret would not get immediately focued down. The downside – engineer is no longer mobile. However, it is the tradeoff you make when you go deep into turrets so it kinda works well. You would see engineers with 4 turrets just bunker down in them all. While they could hold points fairly well, this makes them 100% immobile.
Suggestion 4: Take a page out of the Team Fortress 2 book. Have turrets spawn as very basic turrets, use the tool kit to upgrade them. Could include a grandmaster trait that allowed the turret to be deployed as upgraded. Upgraded turrets could do more damage and have more health. Again, this works towards the “holding a point” mentality that turrets were CLEARLY designed for.
With stat scaling, a reduction in the cool down times on rocket, flame, and thumper for both the tool belt abilities and utility abilities, and some way to assign target or having the turrets follow the player target would drastically help turrets.
Right now they are extremely sub par to any other pet.
If you compare the damage of a mesmer’s illusions to that of a turret there is a drastic difference. Turrets are not even close on the dps. 2-3k crits, versus at best with rocket 800-1000 hit with vulnerability up.
Even the Guardian Spirit weapons hit harder.
^ Not to mention the lack of mobility with a turret. That alone should give turrets the upper hand in terms of damage… and .. ANet decided to go a different direction.
Whoa, lots of great input guys, thanks. And no, I have no problems with anybody posting, selling, or hocking their own ideas. Hijack my thread at your leisure.
If you pick up a turret with wrench kit on, you should be able to instantly place it. you should do much more healing to the turrets with the wrench, theres no way to keep them alive and they don’t even do much damage… Skill on wrench to buff a turret would also be nice.
The wrench does good dps but who is going to go melee with an engineer?
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If you pick up a turret with wrench kit on, you should be able to instantly place it. you should do much more healing to the turrets with the wrench, there’s no way to keep them alive and they don’t even do much damage… Skill on wrench to buff a turret would also be nice.
The wrench does good dps but who is going to go melee with an engineer?
I think the thing about tool kit dps is more about “why not just use rifle, grenade, or bomb”
The do more damage and have better range with just as good if not better utility.
But back to the OP I am really starting to like the idea of tieing turrets into kits and traits more.
Having the turrets actually be an ability on the tool kit rather than as a separate utility could be really nice.
Or having a new kit made of turrets. 5 abilities 3 of them turrets, 1 turret heal / repair ability / 1 turret move / reposition ability.
- ability Rifle Turret
- ability Flame Turret
- ability Net Turret
- ability Turret Healing Ability
- Call all your turrets to redeploy at your current location.
We can still have turrets as utilities as well. Opening up the ability to have a small army of turrets for limited amounts of time. Similar to mesmers and necros but with a different, and more unique flare.
I think the thing about tool kit dps is more about “why not just use rifle, grenade, or bomb”
The do more damage and have better range with just as good if not better utility.
But back to the OP I am really starting to like the idea of tieing turrets into kits and traits more.
Having the turrets actually be an ability on the tool kit rather than as a separate utility could be really nice.
Or having a new kit made of turrets. 5 abilities 3 of them turrets, 1 turret heal / repair ability / 1 turret move / reposition ability.
- ability Rifle Turret
- ability Flame Turret
- ability Net Turret
- ability Turret Healing Ability
- Call all your turrets to redeploy at your current location.
We can still have turrets as utilities as well. Opening up the ability to have a small army of turrets for limited amounts of time. Similar to mesmers and necros but with a different, and more unique flare.
Well, for me personally, it isn’t all about power and mechanics. I want to play a melee engineer because I think it sounds awesome. Fantasy comes in to play, a lot of players imagine a big buff John Henry or Frank Reade-esque character. Optimally, I would love to see my engineer wading in to battle with a hammer alongside his turrets, but unfortunately, Arenanet has pretty much stated that isn’t going to happen. So I, and those who have a similar minds eye, have to settle for the wrench.
But, if we’re going to settle for that, we’d like it to at least feel like a real weapon, actually contributing to the fight in a meaningful way, and be able to choose which way we like best to use it, rather than choosing the least worst way to use it.
But as an additional result, this could speed up a turret build in PvE to a somewhat decent level, and make a full turret build actually viable in PvP for more than just defending the clocktower in Kyhlo. Bonus points.
(edited by Conncept.7638)
The wrench does good dps but who is going to go melee with an engineer?
I would. In fact, I do. I play melee on every character I have, including my necromancer, mesmer, and ranger. When I play my engineer, I imagine my big, brawny charr fighting with technical gadgets augmenting his fighting ability. Keep in mind the design philosophy that’s been taken in GW2: every class should be able to function in any role, and be able to function as both a melee and a ranged character. This is true for every profession in the game.
The problem with the toolkit is that…honestly, I don’t think that turrets would be my first choice as a set of utilities for a melee character. Turrets are about point defense, and melee tends to have to be much more mobile than ranged. If I’m busy trying to smack my turrets with my wrench to heal them, then most likely I’m out of range to actually smack my enemies. Having the wrench heal turrets is a nice little shout-out, but I don’t think it should be the main focus of the weapon, because it’s just not practical. If I were choosing, I’d rather be using gadgets than turrets.
Beyond the lack of synergy on a base level, I think the toolkit suffers another problem…difficulty in developing a trait spec. The traits would suggest that you ought to be going Tools/Inventions, but Inventions has very…overly specific traits in its grandmaster slots. One specifically buffs turret range (do you want us using melee turrets or not?) and the other is a buff for the bomb kit. I’d really like to see one of the Inventions grandmaster traits be changed to be something a bit more generally useful.