Guild Wars 2

Putting in my vote for:

1. Engineer
2. Ranger
3. Ele

Excited to talk about Engineer development!!

Anymras.5729:

Edit: It strikes me that we’re probably all a bit bitter about this whole Turret situation. On the one hand, I want to take the high road and be like “Let’s try to keep this friendly,” but on the other…after the series of bugs that’ve plagued Turrets from day one, from Deployable Turrets to the current list, after the relentless attempts to balance what does not work, almost unfailingly breaking them worse…
I find myself rather more inclined to go “They brought it upon themselves. If they don’t fix what breaks, they should expect backlash, embitterment, and players being driven away. If they don’t like it, they should do their jobs and fix their game.”

I’m not really bitter at all.

My mood is not affected by how well balanced virtual machines that fire virtual bullets into virtual enemies are vs. other virtual weapons. If it were I would be miserable.

I thought maybe I could take what I’ve observed from the productive CDI threads and try to make a productive turret thread because I like character building and I wanted more options. Obviously I don’t take video games as seriously as most of the people that have replied to this thread. It’s not fun != not a good use of my time. You guys can take it from here.

Manuhell.2759:

And that’s without considering the nerf – no, they call it bug fix – on the overcharge…

You know, I’m not really aware of what the bug was or what the fix did. Care to clarify?

Here’s the bug list so far. I will continue to iterate on it. Feel free to give me suggestions for it.

• Turrets cannot attack epic world bosses
• Turrets have oversized hitboxes
• Some turret fire rates are a slower than tooltips would suggest
• When overcharged, the Rifle and Net Turrets do not benefit form an increased fire rate as the tooltips indicate.
• In exception to the above, if overcharged immediately after deploying, the Rifle Turret fire rate is permanently increased until it’s destroyed.
• On all turrets, the first shot after deploying benefit from the Rifled Turret Barrels trait or scale to your current level.
• The RocketTurret’s overcharge skill does not last as long as the tooltip indicates.
• Deployable Turrets can be detonated twice – once in midair before landing, and once after landing.
• Once overcharged, the Rocket and Thumper turrets no longer benefit from the range increase granted by the Rifled Turret Barrels trait.
• When traited with Rifled Turret Barrels, the Flamethrower turret’s overcharge ability does not activate if it’s target is not within it’s untraited range.
• Turret tooltips indicate that their damage/healing scales with the engineer’s stats however their actual output does not appear to.
• Turrets do not trigger the Runes of Perplexity on interrupt.
• With a few exceptions Turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.
• The red mark on an engineer’s skill bar indicating that a target is out of range does not reflect the range increase of Rifled Turret Barrels on turret skills.
• Deployable Turrets do not receive a range increase from the Rifled Turret Barrels trait.

I’m at work now so I’ll catch up on everything during my downtime and try to stir up some discussion.

Penguin.5197:

If anything flamethrower and healing turrets will get hit next at this rate.

I doubt they will because the healing turret his a really high skill ceiling for a heal skill and heals for a relatively reasonable amount so it isn’t exploited…

…and nobody uses flame turret.

Also sorry I haven’t updated the bug list yet everyone, I’ll try to get around to it today.

So Dhuumfire…

The same reason explosion abilities don’t work w/ pistol 1.

I think it would be super fun if they did though, in both cases.

Anymras.5729:

And yes, I’d agree with ‘With some exceptions, Turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.’ It might be a bit inspecific for my taste, but it’s a general advisory not to use Turrets for achievements.

Keep in mind, I’m not trying to advise players here. You already have 2 great lists geared towards players. I’m trying to come up with a list that suits this particular forum’s guidelines. As I understand it that would be the shortest most well organized list possible.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Burst damage – Turrets have a dire lack of followup DPS after their CC, while their inconsistent Condi application means that even if they do scale with Condi damage, they still suck in a Condi build. Lack of Power Scaling also severely curtails any direct damage Turret build.

I personally don’t see turrets having too much to contribute to a condi build, particularly considering how condi heavy we already are. What does everyone else think about that?

MonMalthias.4763:

• Condition Clear – Only Healing Turret can Cleanse and no traits support Cleansing from Toolbelts or Turrets

The class itself is not in a great place cleanse-wise. I imagine this was intentional since we are pretty well rounded in terms of damage mitigation otherwise. That being said, I wouldn’t say no to some more options.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Down State control – (By which I mean, Stealth/Stability uptime to secure stomps and rezzes, corpse cleave, Poison uptime) – The only “hard CC” Engineers have for stomp denial is Accelerant Packed Turrets, Overcharged Net Turret, Overcharged Rocket Turret – but all other aspects of Down State Control are completely absent

This is not my wheelhouse as I mostly PvE. Would love to hear what people have to say about it.
Also, completely off topic, I would love to see more of this aspect of the game in PvE.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Immobility – Turrets may establish a strong firebase of CC and condi application, but their immobility means that many opponents can engage outside of their range, and their fragility makes Turrets a liability in today’s AOE heavy meta. Turrets by themselves also have no ability to bring an opponent into range – they are only threatening if an opponent chooses to engage.

I think that the Magnet skill on the Tool Kit was added for this purpose. Ideally I would be sucking someone into turret range and then doing my best to CC them so that they can’t get out. Between that and trying to keep my turrets up, the skill ceiling for that playstyle would be pretty high. Ideally the rewards would justify it but they don’t at the moment and I would rather just take a kit which is easier to use rewards me with higher dps/survivability.

Here’s an interesting idea I just had: What if turret DPS increased the longer you were able to keep them alive? Maybe the overcharge cooldown triggers as soon as you place the turret but activating the overcharge actually works/makes the turret significantly more powerful?

Or maybe thwacking it with the wrench could build up stacks of a turret buff? I like that idea so much I’m actually a little disappointed that it doesn’t.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Finisher heavy, Field weak – Weapon Kits can bring so many more Combo Fields and Finishers to the table that Turrets are completely outclassed. Blast Finishers dominate the Turret skills, yet Engineer Weapon skills by themselves have no Combo Field. Also keep in mind that while Blast Finishers do dominate, to execute one requires the sacrifice of a Turret – often for inconsequential reward.

I think giving turrets more fields would be interesting. It could give me some incentive to pick up a turret over a bomb kit in certain builds. It could easily be OP though, for other builds it could be an extra 3 stacks of might or few seconds more of stealth that take them a bit over the top.

With that in mind I think it’s more likely that a dedicated turret build would not be very combo heavy.

Warriors are a very combo-light class with access to only on combo field. What are some other classes that don’t rely much on combo fields to be effective? I feel like some good inspiration could come from there.

MonMalthias.4763:

Now, presuming all Turret bugs are fixed, sometime in the near future (hopefully before 2101AD, when War was Beginning), there are several aspects of Turret builds that Engineers lack:
…

• Dull and Weak Toolbelt Skills – Turret Toolbelt skills are almost entirely boring –
  from straight damage like Surprise Shot and Rocket, to situational utility like Rumble.

…

I’m looking over you list but I just wanted to see what others think about this.

I feel like turrets have a lot of DD tool belt skills to make up for the fact that their damage is underwhelming. This has kind of made the toolbelt skills the main attraction as far as using turrets go.

I think it we’re all in agreement that it would be more fun if the turret was the center of attention and the toolbelt skills were more utility centric.

herrard.1274:

I would like to see turrets give off a buff specifically stability which I think engineers need better access to. I don’t mind turrets being stationary (they’re turrets after all) but we need help to be able to stand around it to at least try and defend it (the thing is made of glass) without being tossed around by hammers or perma-feared everywhere..

Toss elixir B?
If you’re traited to 30 tools that’s 4 seconds of stability on a 21 second cooldown.
Aside from Warriors and Guardians we have the best stability up-time of any class as far as I can tell.

runeblade.7514:

MonMalthias.4763:

adrianz.9672:

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

Anymras’s 27+ Turret Bug list of fear and wonderment

Anywhere that I don’t have to click all these links?

It is terribly unorganized.

I’m working on that.

Anymras has already posted his text version a few times too.

Anymras.5729:

I’ll roll down and attempt clarifications

Thanks! I’ll update my post.

Anymras.5729:

The overcharge turns off the range increase on Thumper and Rocket Turret – the Overcharge itself benefits, and Rocket Turret specifically will fire one normal rocket at traited range, and all attacks after that are at untraited range.
Flame Turret’s overcharge does not trigger (creating a smoke field) unless the turret’s target is within untraited maximum range.

Will split this off into two points.

Anymras.5729:

It’s certainly not indicated that it shouldn’t, and the tooltip does change; the function doesn’t, however.

Sounds like a bug.

The challenging part here and with the power scaling on other turrets is determining whether the tooltips are incorrectly displaying the scaled numbers or the turrets are not scaling as expected. I doubt we’ll be able to determine this ourselves. My feeling is that turrets aren’t meant to scale with stats but use the same tooltips, which are made to scale, as every other skill.

Anymras.5729:

Healing Turret does not affect Condition Remover. Some of the Turrets do contribute to dailies, which is why I didn’t just roll them together, but it’s…very hit-or-miss.

I think it’s safe to say this:

• With some exceptions, turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.

Do you agree?

Anymras.5729:

1. Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the indicator on the skill’s icon itself – if you’re too far away from a target for a given skill to affect said target, a red bar appears on the bottom of the skill’s icon.
Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the distance at which this red bar appears, obfuscating when traited Turrets are in range of a given target.

2. Deployable Turrets do not gain the range increase from Rifled Turret Barrels, no. They have the same maximum range as if Rifled Turret Barrels were inactive, but they do gain the damage.

Thanks for clearing those up too.

digiowl.9620:

Sorry if this is a tangent, but i get the impression that each trait permutation of a skill have its own entry in the game database.

This includes skills that turrets and other AI use.

We can observe how any weapon or utility skill seems to “flip” into its new form upon applying a trait.

As such, i wonder if hitting overcharge makes the turret swap skills for a while. And upon swapping back the server code for some reason reads the wrong skill entry from the database, resulting in the untraited skill being the one used.

Yeah actually that sounds like it could be possible. I’ve had some similar thoughts about a lot of these bugs.

So a bunch of Engineers, Anymras.5729, in particular have taken it up on themselves to contribute to and compile a list of of existing turret issues. The original lists are here:

Anymras.5729:

Here’s the list on the Game Bugs forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/27-Turret-Bugs-I-ve-lost-count/first#post2601719

and here’s the reference guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Bug-Reference-Guide-1/first#post3364904

For posterity’s sake I think we should include the list from the reference guide here for newcomers to see.

• Turrets cannot attack epic world bosses
• Turrets have oversized hitboxes
• Some turret fire rates are a slower than tooltips would suggest
• When overcharged, the Rifle and Net Turrets do not benefit form an increased fire rate as the tooltips indicate.
• In exception to the above, if overcharged immediately after deploying, the Rifle Turret fire rate is permanently increased until it’s destroyed.
• On all turrets, the first shot after deploying benefit from the Rifled Turret Barrels trait or scale to your current level.
• The RocketTurret’s overcharge skill does not last as long as the tooltip indicates.
• Deployable Turrets can be detonated twice – once in midair before landing, and once after landing.
• Once overcharged, the Rocket, Thumper and, Flamethrower turrets do not benefit from the range increase granted by the Rifled Turret Barrels trait. — I’m not sure I correctly understood this one from Anymras’ list
• Turret tooltips indicate that their damage scales with power however their actual damage does not appear to.
• The Healing Turret’s overcharge ability does not scale with Healing Power. —I’m curious, is it officially indicated anywhere that it should?
• Turrets do not trigger the Runes of Perplexity on interrupt.

There are a couple that I think could comfortably be rolled in together and I propose that we do to better suit the forum guidelines.

These are:

• Turrets do not contribute to the skill interrupter daily.
• Turrets do not contribute to the condition applier daily.

These could easily be expressed as “Turrets do not contribute to combat dailies.” However, that may depend on whether the Healing Turret contributes to condition remover.

Finally, I would love some clarification on these 2 bugs:

1. Rifled Turret Barrels does not affect the range indicators on Turret placement skills.
2. Deployable Turrets do not receive Rifled Turret Barrels’ range increase.

As I understand it, the first pertains to the tooltip not indicating a boost in range and the second being that turret placement skills doe not benefit from a boost in range. Is that correct?

Thanks for the links guys. I’ll try to post a concise list bullet point list of bugs today when I get downtime at work.

I’d like to try and provide an easy to read page by page summary of what goes on in this thread too. I’m going to do my best not to be biased. If I do so. Please don’t be shy of calling me out if I miss anything.

Also, in the interest of making this a productive thread that is taken seriously, it would be great if everyone kept their emotions in check. We’re all passionate about the game and the class and we want what’s best for both. There’s no need to argue.

Also x2, just food for thought… I’ve gathered from reading the recent CDI threads that changes are more likely to get implemented if they can be made within the existing game systems. That is to say, I don’t think we’re going to get a huge turret overhaul any time soon but, maybe if we can come up with some improvements to the current turret mechanics of turrets we can get someone to notice. Maybe not though… I don’t know if this thread can potentially accomplish anything but I’ve got time to kill at work and I think it’s worth a try.

MonMalthias.4763:

Wow, this thread went downhill swiftly. I suppose it’s to be expected, but it’s kinda disheartening to watch responses devolve into knee-jerk reactions and ad hominem.

I try not to worry about that too much. It’s just the nature of the Internet.

Anymras.5729:

I think there’s a few things that should be done to improve Turrets. Some of them have been brought up already – Digiowl, for example, brings up an interesting suggestion which I will shamelessly bolt onto my already existing two. Ignore the weld-marks, it was there all along.

1. First and foremost, fix the bloody bugs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fix the 20+ turret bugs first before discussing possible balance.

I know that there is a list of those bugs somewhere on the internet. Do any of you have a link?

Stillshade.7634:

There are plenty of things wrong with turrets and honestly I would love to see them fixed but am terrified the effect that could have on healing turret which I believe is working fine.

With that being said, the cd starting on detonation is terrible and counteracts the point of turrets. Although accelerant packed turrets already promotes this and is a viable option to some extent.

Overcharge works, but the effect could be improved and made more reliable. I never drop a turret without immediately overcharging it because if i don’t it will not happen.

Detonation works well but the fact that it covers up the toolkit which is the defining trait of an engi makes keeping a turret out incredibly counter intuitive.

I think that’s a good point. I always overcharge immediately because I know it’s the only chance I’ll get. Sometimes I don’t even get a chance to reap the benefits before my turret goes down.

It comes back to the risk factor. It’s not like getting a normal cooldown interrupted, you genuinely risk being useless for 15-20 seconds minimum if your turret doesn’t work out.

Arkantos.7460:

Engi is by far the most balanced class in the game, you dont Need more uptime for your turrets or more life on it, or do you want a “Petting zoo reloaded” like rangers, necros troll build????
you have very good healing ability with Combo finisher, very good boons+ perma Speed + vigor and immunites + invulnerable skill, block, blind + stealth Combo+ Elixier
although, you a mid range class with much condi/dmg granade spamming abilities

I think what engi rly Needs is a range indicator for your supply crate and also for granades by 600 to prevent engis from spamming so much ae/condi/dmg and not beeing rly engage into the fight…..

This is a thread about making turrets viable since they’re mostly unused by the engineer community. In effect it’s about balancing the entire engineer class in such a way that turrets will be as fun to use as kits, elixirs and gadgets can be.

I think it goes without saying that if something makes us OP we should be nerfed. Thanks for pointing that out though for those that hadn’t thought of it.

digiowl.9620:

If it was working fine, we would have a incentive to keep it deployed. But right now the HT meta is D(eploy)O(vercharge)D(etonate)/DOP. Meaning it is more like a healing bomb than a turret.

And i have seen similar attitudes expressed towards the other turrets, using them more like remote controlled bombs than actual turrets.

Though I agree with your opinion and think that sort of playstyle with turrets should be viable I also think it’s important to remember that just because it’s called a turret doesn’t mean it needs to behave exactly like the turrets were familiar with in other games.
I guess I’m just trying to say, I don’t think it’s fair to say they aren’t working “fine” because there’s no incentive to keep a turret deployed. I happen to like the current turret playstyle. It’s added a new dimension to what I know as turret.

I think in a perfect world there could be room for both. It could be fun if both were equally balanced. There were actually some hesitation involved in trying to decide whether I’m going to detonate a turret. That is to say, as opposed to now where I’m certain to do it after it’s been out for a few seconds.

Also I love the term Deploy and Destroy. I’m going to use that.

Awesome! I’m glad to see some discussion. I’m going to try to maintain this thread as best as well as I can.

I haven’t gotten around to reading everything yet since I’ve just popped in to check out the status of the thread but, I think it might be beneficial for some readers to explain what the known turret bugs are.

I think there’s already a list online somewhere, could someone who is familiar with it post it?

So I looked through the forum and only found a couple of topics that addressed turrets one was PvP centric and the other wasn’t really an open discussion so I thought I would create a topic and invite the whole engineer community to discuss them.

It’s no secret that they aren’t as great as they could be and they certainly don’t feel as indispensable as kits in an engineer build. So what do you all think? Where are they lacking? How could they be improved?

My personal opinion:

It seems that in their current implementation they’re meant to be kind set and last for the duration of a fight through one means of the other. I think this poses a few problems:

1)It’s kind of boring.
2)It’s risky.

If you look at the most widely used turret, the healing turret a good example most engineers blow it up almost immediately. The cooldown is penalized but it’s still only 20 seconds and if you use a lot of blast finishers your healing effectiveness is restricted to their cooldowns as well. It results in a really fun, interactive skill that I believe is quite well balanced.

Basically, my idea is that if turret cooldowns were reduced it would reduce the risk rendering one of your Util slots useless because you lost a turret. It would open up more interactive gameplay like the healing turret promotes and overall lead to a better experience. Obviously they would need to have their Toolbelt Skills and DPS balanced as a result but even if those took a dip I still think it would be an improvement.

Anyways, that was way more than I should have typed in a discussion post. Please don’t feel obliged to touch on what I’ve said. I really like the idea of turrets and I want to promote discussion as much as possible and hear what everyone thinks.

Wow, I’d love to see all of the calculations and research you did to come to these conclusions.

eldris.8461:

Not really fair to those of us who didn’t own the game last year

It’s not really unusual for an MMO developer, or any company for that matter, to reward customer loyalty.

Ulion.5476:

The ones that had travelers stats are still in the game but you get to select the stats you want. So if you want celestial, dire and such, you make the Quiver of a Thousand Arrows or Yakkingtons Tale. Then you pick that stat. But you can only make those with the vial of mist essence.

It’s my understanding that the 8 new recipes mentioned in the patch notes are 8 currently craftable ascended back slot items that do not have traveler’s stats. This is the question that I am addressing. What you can or cannot craft with mist essence is another topic altogether.

Brother Grimm.5176:

But a confirmation would be nice (especially which 2 of the 10 do NOT work with Bloodstone dust).

The two that don’t work are the two that had Traveler’s stats as Traveler’s stats are not in the game anymore.

Seriously?

That’s like saying: “This software is still in development and it’s not even finished?”

Keep your ill thought out sensationalist bs to yourself.

skullmount.1758:

So it looks kinda like they’re starting the precursor/legendary stuff, eventually anyways. Wonder if the book things at the bottom are pvp only items (at work so I can’t check the chat codes).

I remember hearing something about precursor scavenger hunts being a possibility. I feel like it’s likely related to that. Can’t say for sure though, just being optimistic.

skullmount.1758:

Only problem with the bottom pic, is it looks like storm clouds, not a rock ceiling

Isn’t that kind of what it looked like from the outside?

I mean, regardless, Aetherblade Retreat and the Molten Facility had really strong colour schemes and the bottom and left pics are precisely the same colours. That’s more where I’m coming from with my guess.

Bottom: Molten Facility, Left: Aethernblade Retreat and Right: Thaumanova Reactor.

Looks like Fractals are going to be next patch…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

Also I would encourage you to check out this reddit thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1qh40g/data_mining_upcoming_features_from_the_nightmares/

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

Jon Peters, you’re a good man for weathering through questions like this.

Amineo.8951:

JesseyFranz, then tell me why they don’t remove or rework arah p2 for it’s well known selling spots or arah p4 instead because it’s way too long for casuals? And people knows how stupid is selling spot.

Who ever said that they wouldn’t?

I would love an invite!
I’m at work right now but when I get home I’ll send a whisper/mail.

If you guys are still looking I would love an invite!

Rigel.3092:

Wait, a build strictly for TEQ, what?

Basically, yeah.

There are some things to consider when maximizing dps like how you can’t crit him or any other large scale bosses like that. I believe condition damage is nerfed against them too. Also, surviving against world bosses can be a bit different. You seem to need to dodge more and be mobile so making a build that can take advantage of that as well as having the right amount of survivability in terms of health/armour/condi removal is useful.

I’m not a huge fan of dungeons so running world bosses is very appealing to me. Thinking about these encounters on the build level is going to be necessary to make them consistently doable in the long run.

Ajaxx.3157:

You shouldn’t need stability ( apart from the fear ) if you can jump/dodge the wave. If you cant, then you need to move away and look after the cannons.

That is actually a really good point. I haven’t had much experience with the fight as it was a bit of a clusterkitten last night.

I just finished watching the Blackgate video and it seems like conditions are ideally pretty well controlled in general. I think I might switch out my rifle for a longbow too.

Right now I’m feeling pretty good about this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJATRjcO1wNPKP4wBAzjfAqIVB8SPIzs0A-jwxAorAxBCU2rIasVuioxqXw0lER1egioVLFQVKjA-e

I guess it’s not a huge difference but I’m at work so I don’t really have the opportunity to do anything but sit here and overthink it.

edit: whoops fixed my second link.

So I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days now and wanted to put it up for discussion.

Right now I’m working with something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJAURjgOxw1QKP4wBA0jvqaLzjfAqIVB8A-jwxAorAxBCU2rIasVuioxqXw0lER1egioVLFQVKjA-e

I’m not really sure that Rifle/Greatsword is the right weapon combo since I’ve decided to spec in to Strength to maximize power gain. Mending+cleansing might be a bit overkill for condi removal but I’m going to try it out. I’m also not sure whether Sure-Footed/Frenzy or Cull The Weak provides the best dps gain however, from what I’ve heard, having quickness up is really important. I am also on the fence about Battle Standard v. Signet of Rage. My goal is to have as much might as I can and SoR would cover that the best however, Battle Standard’s ability to benefit the whole group with might/rez seems makes it seem superior in this scenario.

Would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this or any other world boss builds!