Guild Wars 2

I paid $150 for my pre purchase of GW2 I’ve bought gems since 2012 off and on with cash, I bought an account for my wife who also buys gems, I’ve built 2 custom PCs worth thousands that we play on, so this isn’t about being unable to pay $50 for an expansion.

When I bought GW2 I was wary of the gemstore which we were promised wouldn’t drive development, which was a lie (or as the hard core call it a shift in business models), but I’d already bought the game and loved it so we let that slide. This time however, I’m expected to reward Anet with another purchase (2 actually) with no idea if they’ve included raids or the size of the new map or anything of substance, they want me to trust them. Then they want to penalize me for owning the game by devaluing my purchase vs a brand new player’s purchase? No. I’ll play the core game and live in WvW if I have to, in protest.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I prebought the game, played in the betas, played almost every day, bought gems with real money every month cuz I figured they were worth it, and I still think this expansion is overpriced for what we are getting.

100% agree. I pre ordered the collector’s edition started 3 day early access bought a second account for my wife, and bought gems with cash. I don’t support this direction Anet is headed in and will vote with the only thing they care about, my wallet.

I’m not going to pay the same and get less value for my money than a new player, I won’t.

Jelzouki.4128:

The typical MMO will charge you 15$/month as a subscription fee.

First off no, sub MMOs aren’t typical in 2015 they are rare and dying. Secondly, I would never have looked into gw1 or gw2 if they required a sub, I was happy with WoW so your arguement begins with non starters.

I own a collector’s edition I’ve bought gems I own a second account and I will not be pre ordering HoT that’s my decision as a consumer.

The OP is clearly playing the same game in china we are. I agree with every point. I hope HoT marks a shift in Anet’s game design away from “now in the gemstore!” to rewards being earned in game. The pvp que imo should be split back to party and solo and I love the suggestion of a pvp rank icon by the player’s name (like the world completion star).

To the OP your English is much better than my Mandarin.

Is the leader board broken or are you saying I got zero points from all those wins?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Turrets are far better and able to be traited for than any other summon. They are balanced around the fact that you only have 1 set. Nobody is forcing you to take 5 turret skills, same as nobody forces a ranger to use 5 spirit skills. Btw, spirits give the Ranger a 35% CHANCE to do some extra damage or get swiftness… Not like a turret that shoots missiles, bullets, nets or flames. Yeah, check out the Water spirit heal and compare to HT.

Turrets needed to be more vulnerable from the start, now, they are in line in that respect.

If you don’t think turrets are stronger than any other summon, organise a MM necro to summon his minions in range of your turrets, let the minions attack them. Try the same with a ranger with spirits, just get him to place them within range. Illusions too. I bet not one turret goes down.

Health of Turrets; Thumper Turret: 11950, Flame Turret: 8960, Rifle/Net/Rocket Turret: 7470, Healing Turret: 5980.

Then you get the traits; Turrets explode when killed. When your turrets explode, they push back foes. Reduces damage dealt to turrets. Turrets are self-repairing. Turrets deal more damage and have a longer attack range. Your turrets are surrounded by a reflective shield when created. Turrets apply boons to allies around them. Turret skills use ground targeting.

Turrets aren’t summons they’re constructs. Engineers aren’t able to weapon swap and rely on kits or gadgets to “swap” as other classes do. When using turrets that’s all the engineer has, they’re meant to function as they did and seriously, a ranger could destroy a turret without ever being in firing range of the turret.

DeceiverX.8361:

Turrets were never good. The players that ran them were never good through quantifiable means within the scope of playing the build because the skill floor was so high. Now that the build can be shut down, people are all in arms because it can be shut down by people who aren’t the best in the game. NEWSFLASH: The people which many mid-tier turret engineers were wiping were often more-skilled players than the engineers. Not MLG-levels of amazing (as then they wouldn’t have issues), but in many cases, players not on the top echelons of PvP playing turret builds were not particularly skilled and were being carried by something that was blatantly overpowered.

I do not see how it is unreasonable to kill a turret as a glass cannon in 2-3 seconds. Or how a utility skill can bodyblock for a period of time, or take target priority, etc., especially when that set of turrets could kill a glass cannon in 2-3 seconds. When tanks are dealing more damage, or at the very least the same amount of damage as full DPS to something in a PvP environment, there’s either a really kitten good reason why, or it’s because of an imbalance.

You have zero evidence to back this up, none.

As for glass destroying a bunker in seconds, you must be joking. The turret is the offensive extension of the player who runs a bunker build without the healing, cleanses, immunity, and mobility of other bunker builds that you consider more viable or “skilled” builds. A shoutbow can’t have his offense removed by a glass build but you find it completely reasonable to unbunker turret engineers based on your bias.

jihm.2315:

depends if you already win by a lot points then its sometimes rude

Never. Always kill the enemy and help a 1v1, if they want to duel they need to do so in a private or empty arena.

Please pull up my last match in ranked and ask yourself 3 questions.

1. Is this fair?
2. Is this fun?
3. Is there any reason why a player would PVP if this was their experience?

I suspect they put in a change to matchmaking the last 2 weeks as this is a ladder test. My win% was over 60% and I’ve seen first hand what the OP has described, minus the landslide victories.

The PVP reward tracks have some very good rewards.
Swords at the top and then track will be on the left.

As for progression you’re probably right. I hope Anet add something in the future to separate the achieved from the new other than finishers.

Arantheal.7396:

Born 09/1987.
Anyways, sorry for that rant then.

That was my freshman year

Arantheal.7396:

Oh, now we go on with accusations of whining?
Want to hurt me a little? Then step up your game son, and at least do your homework properly.
Click on my name next to this post. The click on Read all messages. Jump ~6weeks back. And then use cites from my posts back then. Ironically you will not find whining, but actual berating on whiners.

But how does this fit together with my current responses to you, you ask? Simple: Turreteers are bad, and were profiting from exploitive advantages rather than actual player-skill. But they were very much killable. Still the Ape-house, that the PvP subforum is, had no better incentive as to whine and nerf all turrets, including those who are very well balanced, out of the game.
So back then I was worried that a nerf to turrets, specifically HT would mean a nerf to almost all engi builds, just because of a single build that forced a different playstyle on newbies.
So I went ahead and worked on getting knowledge out how to kill turreteers quite easily (since it is always quite easy if you get rid of the rocket-turret first / spam them ranged from off point, using proper LOS to potential other turrets). Sadly this was not enough to stop the rage-train so the whining was loud enough to spawn a nerf.
But since that nerf is live, no (for me)important builds are scratched by it, the harassment of engis in almost all matches stopped, and seeing a engi on the opposing team finally is a promise for a engaging fight. Most people, including me, do not play PvP to deal with AI solely. That’s what PvE is for. I want to fight the person on the other side of the line.
And turrets are not even unique to engineers, since you can find points littered with turrets, guarded by a single hambow or cele ele as well, while the engi caps the nearby buff, just because it really made no difference whatsoever if the turreteer was present in a 3v3 or not, as long as his turrets are up and he keeps their overcharges on cd.
Turrets were making the game less enjoyable, even tho dealing with the turreteer is and was easy to begin with. The only people you felt strong against were the ones in which category you belong: newbies. For the rest you were perceived as nothing but a nuisance or good reason to laugh.
Just ask yourself the following: How often has your MMR reached high enough levels to meet players / teams that were steamrolling you with ease? Didn’t it felt frustrating to be completely powerless in such a situation? Didn’t it felt unfair that your precious rocket-turret was destroyed all the time? It was your fault to distribute so much offensive potential to nothing but AI in the first place.
And in case you never experienced this scenario, you most likely were not even performing half as good as you want to represent yourself, so your MMR stayed low.

Actually just saw this response so I’ll respond now.

I never said you. Sorry if you thought otherwise, I’ve never heard of you, met you, or had any issue to call you anything. My MMR is rather high and it’s impossible for you to have played this game any longer than I have, I’m also almost certainly your elder, so please refrain from the “son” comment (although I do understand you thought I’d insulted you). I said meta build players whined, which they certainly did, making turrets a serious enough build in My eyes.

All the best – Megamite

Arantheal.7396:

Wait wait wait.
You complain about guardians and cele engis being easy mode, when – in fact – you were hiding behind turrets so you can farm noobs more easily?
I mean, it’s fine to over-exaggerate stuff with out of place adjectives, but do you at least understand what player-input it takes to let the cele rifle perform as good as it can be?

I don’t like cele rifle as well, because I rather burst or condi-bomb my targets, which is why I prefer s/d builds and 2kit condi, but I’m very well aware of what it takes to play a cele rifle effectively, and respect every engi who goes this route.

I really doubt that you’ve ever met a good cele rifle while turrets were still viable, since the build itself is available on multiple sources, and newbies like to stick to the meta in the beginning. Nothing wrong with that, since one must learn to become good, but do you seriously try to judge a build, based on the few newbies that you’ve met running it?

This is not elitism, since i actually like to help out new players who want to become better. But I despise turreteers, especially those kind of turreteers who rather cry after a nerfed, exploitive build to be brought back instead of moving on and looking for better builds to run. You know, while your fellow newbies currently train on cele rifle, s/d builds, condi 2kit or less popular but more fun builds, you sit here, together with this manuhel and lewis B guy and try to convince people that apples == bananas.
You are a echo of the past in your current mindset, and a rather hilarious one at that.

You’re confusing me for a new player, I’ve been active since 3 days before launch, or a poor PVP player, which I most certainly am not. Turret engineers required a great amount of activity to kill while not being killed. Sure plenty of new players ran them as the skill floor was high, but I was elite with mine, not good.

It’s absolutely absurd to claim I didn’t face good players as I solo que ranked and won 60% of my matches which with the current MMR means I was always getting put against good players. I’ve played Cele rifle myself, as well as condi and even zerk SD but I chose to run turrets as I solo que and could never count on having a point holder on my team. Turrets were designed for capture PVP and were the optimal choice for players with skill to be able to hold off attacks on points.

What we gave up was:

1. Mobility
2. Condition Cleanses
3. Stealth or Escapes
4. Blocks

If a fight began we had no choice but to fight to the death. I fought bunker on points vs the horde of enemy players trying to kill me and steal our cap every match. If that’s not what you’d call PVP then ok.

I’ve killed Cele rifle engies you’d consider amazing.

darres.8203:

Justin ODell.9517:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

After hundreds and thousands of matches, it is very visible that your MMR system functions as this:

• Ten players que at the same time
• High MMRs are 10, low MMRs are 1
• The ten players qued look like this: 10, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1
• System tries to balance two teams from these MMRs
• Result looks like this -> RED: 10, 4, 3, 2, 1 --- BLUE: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2

This is not how the system works. The old solo queue worked like this, sort of.

You can find more details on matchmaking here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

The current system is more likely to produce a result like this…
Red: 10, 5, 4, 3, 2
Blue: 6, 4, 3, 2, 1

Which could be argued is less fair, but really because MMR isn’t the only factor this is an oversimplification.

honestly it does not feel like that at all

u can check out my past 20 games from last 2 days

My last 2 days vs your last 2 days might be the most balanced fight we’ll see. I’m getting shredded by the MMR.

@Arantheal.7396 just being silly and he did answer exactly as I would have. I consider guardians broken easy which is why I avoid playing one. They’re my only class that isn’t 80 and although I have PVP’d on mine, I despise the easy mode nature of them. Focus shielding, immunities, cleanses, OP party buffs, and monster heals even when full zerk.

I get that “pro” engineers never took turret engies seriously (unless we’d just killed you in which case the /s chat was always respectful) but that’s ok, I think celestial engineer is straight chedar cheese and that’s why I don’t run it.

Didn’t like your suggestions enough to comment. Not to be rude but you removed the auto attacks completely, these are constructs designed to shoot, that would no longer do so without micro management.

Laraley.7695:

Teutos.8620:

Aidenwolf.5964:

we faced a full dragon squad.

Why does this point still show up everywhere when someone complains about bad match making?

The PvP rank has absolutely nothing to do with skill!

No, it does not. But 5 dragon ranks will have more experience than a team of 5 deer players. It’s still some indication of how the game will go.

Exactly why I brought it up, New vs Experienced. Also, new players or bad ones seem to panic when they see the finishers.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Arantheal.7396:

Medi-hammer (cele bruiser build) has 1 teleport, only teleporting you towards your target.
Medi-dps (zerker) does not come with the hammer (so no trap-circle) and again only utilizes Judge’s Intervention as teleport.
both teleports are on 36sec cd’s

The bruiser variant is very vulnerable to focused dps.
The zerker variant is even more vulnerable to focused dps.
They don’t trap you in a bubble, they trap you in a ring. The bubble (shield-skill. the do not utilize shield, they run focus) just pushes you back, and the ring is useless on slightly elevated terrain since you can simply jump out on the lower side.
As rifle engineer you also can use the self-knockback from OS to both break immobilize and escape the ring on flat terrain. Acid bomb jumps you over the ring, rocket-boots, while shortened significantly, also lets you escape the ring, gearshield-block lets you almost outlast the ring. If you additionally run shield you can chain #5 with gearshield to completely outlast the dps inside the ring…
The ring itself is on a 40sec cd…
s/d builds kite / shred them.
Power bombs/mines shred them.
Cele rifle shreds them.
Power / cele nades in general shred them.
Magnet-pull nullifies their main-heal.

The counterplay is real.

Do you start to compare (incorrect) apples with bananas again?

If we’re arguing over semantics, I’ll happily play.

I’m fully aware of the Medi Guardians strengths and weaknesses – I have one myself (you can see her here: http://goo.gl/M33XxH)

In a competitive environment, almost all Medi Guardians take a hammer. It has better CC, high spike damage thanks to Sigil Of Intelligence and is capable of ringing off a player – while teleporting – thanks to Ring Of Wards and Judge’s Intervention. Discussions on their cooldown is largely irrelevant in this matter as they vary depending on the Meditation.

Combined with the damage output from Scepter thanks to Sigil of Air and Fire, the Medi Guardian is capable of dealing enormous damage while still maintaining huge amounts of survivability:

Shelter = Provides a block and heal
Virtue Of Justice = Provides a blind
Virtue Of Resolve = Removes 3 conditions, heals and applies Regen
Virtue Of Courage = Provides a block, stability, protection and regeneration
Meditations = All heal for nearly 2,000 health. Two of those Meditations also remove conditions.
Renewed Focus = Provides invulnerability, heals you for nearly 2,000 health and resets all your Virtues.
Shield Of Wrath = A 4 second block
Ray Of Judgement = Provides regeneration and removes conditions

So yes, Medi Hammer Guardians are not only capable of dealing enormous damage (Shield Of Wrath + Aegis + Judges Intervention + Smite Condition) but they sacrifice very little survivability because of it. Careful management of your Meditations, Elite and Virtue’s can keep you alive for a frighteningly long period of time. I personally never have trouble against any Engineers and have never had my Ring fail when teleport bombing.

Is there counter play? Yes, of course. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Gern was stating berzerker builds sacrifice a lot and that’s not true when it comes to Guardian’s.

/DropsMike

Lordrosicky.5813:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

So what is the problem in your particular case then?

Sorry for not elaborating.

One match I had a thief who pre match apologized for being new in advance, and my team ran around off points, we faced a full dragon squad.

Nearly every match last night was a similarly out matched senario and this entire week wasn’t much better. I’m not certain but maybe having a win rate above 60% triggered a kill code on my pairings.

Fighting off point isn’t a bad thing universally and if you think it is then you probably need to l2p in that respect. If they are fighting off point and you are sat on point all game then you are the problem not them. You have to get off point and help your team and peel for them etc.

You made me laugh. You should’ve been able to infer that we were losing in points which means we need caps. If you’re arguing semantically then you are correct that it’s not always bad to fight off points, but if you think holding a point is a bad thing (against pressure, did I ever say I was just standing there?) then you are certainly the kind of player I wouldn’t want to team with.

The match I mentioned had players fighting (and dying) off point. If they at least fought on the point, they could contest it causing the other team to not gain points.

Solo que giving me nothing but no win situations again (I know, why am I solo queuing). I’d like to ask the PVP balance gurus how putting a group of scrubs on my team then matching us with an all guild squad is balanced or fair, or fun. I can’t have been favored in any match I’ve played this week. Is the goal of this system to force players to party que?

I hope you’ve collected fantastic data from this test and that it motivates you to split solo que from team que again.

Streaks.5076:

Thank god, turret engi’s were the bane of pvp.

Odd. You said it was mesmers.

Seems like a QQ thread. Warrior is in no means OP. Their burst is easily negated if you know how to play, Thieves also are easy to counter but could use some tweaking to weaken Heartseeker though. If you want to complain about OP then complain about the Mesmers, because they’re the most frustrating class out right now.

Turrets unlike other builds were perfectly designed for conquest. The community considered them sub optimal builds because they actually don’t understand what optimal means. Did they need a reduction in damage? Sure, but a small one, not what was done.

Since Anet might want a reasonable suggestion on how to balance turrets (who knows they might), here is what I believe they should’ve done instead of making turrets worthless.

Add 1s to the fire rates of all turrets. This sounds overly simplistic but that’s how balancing without destroying a playstyle works.

What I just propsed would In the case of the rifle turret, reduce damage substantially. The current fire rate is 2s meaning a 3s cast is a significant nerf. This would help to balance without breaking and would be far superior to the crit condition vulnerability turrets weren’t and aren’t capable or designed to cope with.

Arantheal.7396:

Because it was not.
Show me one successful, competitive team that did run turreteers.

The problems with turrets was the frustrating and dull game-play they did oppose on their enemies, the way too easy pug-farm and a way too high reward for way too low risk.
Don’t get me wrong, in direct comparison the reward itself was not that high, but since there was almost no risk tied to it, this build was considered broken by the community, and as of now, also by the devs.

The last thing that had a similar story to tell were spirit-rangers, which is why spirits got nerfed into the ground as well.

I know you don’t like it, but turreteer was never considered a serious build to beginn with since there was no real space to “play” this build. It was merely stacking broken utilities while hiding behind giant survivability, limiting both the engi and the player who goes against it in options.
The worst offender where they inability to receive conditions, and their inability to be crit’d on, which rendered any investment of precision, ferocity and condition-damage by attackers useless.
A skill, that is shutting down reasonable counterplay, from whole families of builds permanently, by its mere existence, is – in fact – a broken skill.

It seriously annoyed your serious builds enough to seriously whine about them being OP. As for no high ranking team running them, what rank even counts in this game? You mean tournament teams? Never bothered me if anyone else ran them, I did, and I was great with mine.

I played engineer one of the ways it was built to be played and some of us were good enough to beat all of your optimal builds, since the community never chose to concede that you’d lost a fair fight the profession lost 1 of it’s 3 core builds (which is what turrets were).

The reasonable counter play was killing the engineer who, because he ran turrets, possessed no stun breaks, no real condition clears, and could not escape via stealth or rocket boots.

Necrotize.2974:

I feel like at this point its just people being upset that a sub-optimal build isn’t overperforming anymore. I mean, think of it from a different perspective. Why isn’t banner warrior or glamour mesmer a strong option in pvp? Clearly this must been that banners and glamours are underpowered and need to be greatly buffed, right? Or maybe Anet didn’t intend for a person to run 4 banners/glamours and have an effective build. You can argue what engineers and turrets are “supposed” to do, but in the end Anet has the final say in what their vision or turrets are, and apparently triple turret bunkers were not in that vision.

As for cross class comparisons, phantasms are by far not the closest things to turrets. In fact it makes me wonder if you deliberately ignored other options to provide the most biased comparison. Spirits are far more similar(IMO) to turrets, and even upcoming changes draw some parallels. Yes these skills have differences, but lets look at the similarities.

Both are utility skills(which is important considering traits, cds, and effectiveness). Spirits when traited have 8k hp IIRC, much closer to turrets than phantasms’ 3k. Spirits are susceptible to conditions and crits, just like turrets now. In the upcoming changes, spirits will no longer be able to move, just like turrets, so positioning will be vital.

Like I said, cross class comparisons are usually very weak arguments unless there is a great deal of similarity between the builds. This comparison is no exception, I just wanted to make it clear that if you wanted to do a cross class comparison, phantasms are so different from turrets compared to other skill types that it really doesn’t make any point at all.

PVP isn’t a min/max speed clear dungeon encounter and calling an excellent point holding build sub optimal is offensive to anyone who understands that holding points in a point capture PVP map is invaluable.

Ground acquisition is very important but you are rewarded for holding that ground in this system.

From an engineers perspective, you’re claiming that Cele rifle is optimal (or double or triple kit, or condi) which is highly subjective. From my perspective (which is also subjective) I consider those builds sub optimal as they cannot hold ground like turrets did.

Objectively speaking why were turrets nerfed in the first place if they weren’t in fact the best engineer build in PVP?

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Aidenwolf.5964:

SPESHAL.9106:

Shylock.4653:

At the moment many people farm for their beta key so PvP is even less populated. Lesser population means fewer matchmaking options.

I don’t think people are avoiding ranked PvP because of beta key farming. Check your friends list and see how many are actually farming.

If they ARE choosing to mindlessly farm versus PvP, then that is even more indicative of problems with this game.

IMO, most people aren’t doing ranked because the leaderboard is a joke and the matchmaking is equally bad.

It’s almost unfathomable that ANET…

1. CHANGED from an MMR based leaderboard to this grind based model
2. CHANGED from the totally logical and fair model of separating premade and solo quers to a system.
3. Match totally new players against (and with) very experienced players.

Think of ANY other game…not just MMOs…how popular do you think that game would be with players with all of the above ridiculousness.

Exactly how I feel at the moment. I always solo que because I que when I want, not on my team’s schedule, but after this I’ll be teaming up.

Who says you need a fixed team to queue with a team? Make friends in soloq, group together with friends that are online, make more friends from queues, repeat until you’re always able to throw together a spontaneous team.

That’s what I do when I que as a group. I see guild members or friends or good players I’ve met in ranked and we team for a few matches. When I say team I simply mean non solo.

I’ll be queuing as a party from now on or not all. Anet can’t balance teams to my satisfaction and it isn’t worth the frustration.

Love you Lewis. Well written as always mate.

SPESHAL.9106:

Shylock.4653:

At the moment many people farm for their beta key so PvP is even less populated. Lesser population means fewer matchmaking options.

I don’t think people are avoiding ranked PvP because of beta key farming. Check your friends list and see how many are actually farming.

If they ARE choosing to mindlessly farm versus PvP, then that is even more indicative of problems with this game.

IMO, most people aren’t doing ranked because the leaderboard is a joke and the matchmaking is equally bad.

It’s almost unfathomable that ANET…

1. CHANGED from an MMR based leaderboard to this grind based model
2. CHANGED from the totally logical and fair model of separating premade and solo quers to a system.
3. Match totally new players against (and with) very experienced players.

Think of ANY other game…not just MMOs…how popular do you think that game would be with players with all of the above ridiculousness.

Exactly how I feel at the moment. I always solo que because I que when I want, not on my team’s schedule, but after this I’ll be teaming up.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

So what is the problem in your particular case then?

Sorry for not elaborating.

One match I had a thief who pre match apologized for being new in advance, and my team ran around off points, we faced a full dragon squad.

Nearly every match last night was a similarly out matched senario and this entire week wasn’t much better. I’m not certain but maybe having a win rate above 60% triggered a kill code on my pairings.

Last night was the worst matchmaking in my pvp experience with gw2. I solo qued as I normally do and won 1 match and had 1 close loss (1 point) the rest made me turn the game off ignoring my unfinished daily, and boot up the ps4.

As this is a test season Anet should look at my matches to glean what info they can on how not to pair teams. As this is also destroying my rank, I’m done pugging.

I solo qued last night and will never do it again. Crap team vs dragons all night. You know you’re going to lose when you pug.

Cynz.9437:

it’s a bug and been reported plenty of times

Unfortunately I lost points

Agreed, and add hacking as all I can do is report suspected hackers as botters at the moment.

Played a ranked match 2 matches ago…

My team had 4 players vs their 5 (which is bad enough) but their mesmer was fully invisible to me the entire match. Using staff to create clones right on top of me at our home point the entire match and I never saw him.

I ask that Anet look at my play log and find out if that player was hacking or if it was a bug.

Ashern.5328:

Ehecatl.9172:

Ashern.5328:

If you actually enjoyed playing on a turret engi, then go right ahead and keep using it. The only difference now is that you don’t have a ridiculous lifeline that allows you to stay alive against 3 people at a time while running around on a point. It’s only more sad to see how everyone completely ditched Turrets now that they have a vulnerability like all other classes — it shows the true colors of the people that used to play on them.

I haven’t fought one turret engi within the last 3 days of active pvping. Sad part is I’ve encountered double if not triple the amount of shoutbows — talk about moving to the next ridiculous build that 3/5 of teams on average are composed of. It’s quite sad.

The reason they stopped using turrets wasn’t because they are suddenly balanced with the other professions. it’s because they are now free kills to literally anyone. The turrets don’t have the survivability to last longer than a couple seconds against any kind of pressure, and placing the turrets in unique spots only saves them for a few more seconds so long as the opponent doesn’t have any kind of ranged damage.

So now they are a bunker build that is only effective on certain points on certain maps against opponents who have absolutely no range at all. In other words they are completely non-viable in any form of PVP. They also no longer have the boon production they relied on for survival and their heal skill can be immediately killed with auto attack cleave by accident, so they don’t even have innate sustain beyond their toughness and vitality stats.

The turrets are actually dying faster than necro minions. The big difference there is necro minions can actually move out of AoE. Turrets just die.

I don’t have any sympathy for turret engis because of this. Goes to show how their turrets were doing all the work against multiple enemies and still killing them. The moment everyone else has a chance to kill the turrets, they are useless. Which goes back to my previous statement: no one played on turret engis because they were good, they did it because they generally didn’t die and killed in the process.

Any build that is able to do what turret engis did were fine. The fact of the matter is that people began to abuse it going with 2, 3+ turret engis on one team and completely shattering the purpose of PvP in the first place — it became PvEvCC. Now as I stated, more and more people are going on shoutbows because it’s the next most ridiculous thing to jam pack into a team..

The reason turret engineers die when you kill the turrets is because they’ve sacrificed every single utility to run turrets. No stealth, no escapes, nothing but the turrets.

Also you just described every defensive build, which is what turret engineers were.

coglin.1867:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Obtena.7952:

sorrychief.2563:

My healing turret gets blown up before I can overcharge and pick it up sometimes.

10/10

Kind of the point of the nerf … having to think about how turrets are used instead of just putting the down where ever 4TW.

Frankly, turrets allowed too many damage sources. Drawbacks aside, it was too much up front with little recourse than to overwhelm them with numbers.

I agree with this actually. It was expected that turrets would be nerfed, but a reduction in damage was all that called for.

No. It is perfectly reasonable to allow crits and condition damage to effect turets. Players invest in those stats through gear, trait points, sigil, and runes. Thus, nothing justifies the entire value of that stat investment.

Damage reduction would have done nothing to fix the issue with turret ignoring those reasonable stat investments from other players. That is a different issue from turret damage output. Certainly they should have adjusted the turrets armor and hit points to compensate to an extent. But to me, it is unreasonable to claim that a damage reduction was al that was needed, when turrets ignored other players stat investments entirely.

The turrets are constructs not living entities and are incapable of movement to avoid damage. Conditions were never useless against turret Engineers they simply needed to be applied to the player not the construct.

Running turrets meant the only condi clear an engineer had was the healing turret, so a condi bomb did down the engineer and upon his/her death, the turrets.

As for power builds, LB rangers and power necros ate turret engineers for lunch if they landed a burst. I think the general perception of turreteers was that they didn’t do anything in combat, the fact was I dodged and lept around actively trying not to die, the same as any other class I play defensively.

Obtena.7952:

sorrychief.2563:

My healing turret gets blown up before I can overcharge and pick it up sometimes.

10/10

Kind of the point of the nerf … having to think about how turrets are used instead of just putting the down where ever 4TW.

Frankly, turrets allowed too many damage sources. Drawbacks aside, it was too much up front with little recourse than to overwhelm them with numbers.

I agree with this actually. It was expected that turrets would be nerfed, but a reduction in damage was all that called for.

Necrotize.2974:

Apologies in advance for the long post, I try to say everything I can on the subject so there’s no need to constantly repost.

Who said I never ran turrets? I’ve played my fair share of engineer, usually P/S, but I’ve played around with 3-kit condi, celestial rifle, static discharge burst, and yes, even turrets. Turret engi is by far the least interactive playstyle. Place Rifle+Rocket as far off point as possible, on a high platform overlooking the point, especially if it isn’t in LoS from several angles behind it. Drop thumper turret mid point to aid in decaps/recapping. Since turrets deal a constant damage, way more stat points can be invested into toughness and vitality. There’s really not much to it. I grew bored of turrets after 10-15 matches because compared to using several kits or a high burst build, it was just slow.

I feel like I’m just repeating myself at this point, but like I said, you can cite the class description all you want, but clearly Anet had no intentions of people being triple turret bunkers and having such high success, otherwise no change would’ve been made. That bit you cited also says engineers can pack up turrets and move at anytime, which is a bit strange seeing as the general playstyle was to leave your turrets in a very inaccessible spot overlooking the point and never pick them up again. Heck, people even discovered you could placed turrets slightly in the air to reduce their hitbox so that they had even less reason to pick them up and replace.

@RabbitUp

Active and passive are not just random buzzwords. It compares types of skills and effects. For example, logically, a heal like Consume Conditions with its high risk high reward scenario should be more effective than the almost entirely passive(in that you slot it then forgot it) Healing Signet, which is reflected in their upcoming changes that reduce Healing Signet’s effectiveness and makes it better to activate. Again, those comparisons you used are hardly fair. Phantasms deal damage passively in that the mesmer can’t control them apart from summoning them. In this aspect they are like turrets. However, phantasms also die relatively easily and are usually on point, whereas turrets did not die quickly and are usually placed very out of reach from the point.

Just a recap, the nerf to turrets was necessary in my opinion, hopefully they’ll add more depth to turrets in the coming weeks. Anet’s recent changes show they encourage smart plays that require coordination on the player’s part and adapting to your opponent, not just setting up base camp and waiting for the match to end. Turrets while designed to hold a point, were far to effective without ever even needing to be near the point or in harms way, this is why they required a nerf.

This conversation doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere, so unless that changes, I probably won’t be posting again since I feel I’ve already made my case and said all that needs to be said(sometimes numerous times). I really hope I’m not coming off as rude or disrespectful because that was not my intention at all, I just wanted to express my opinion on this topic as it affects more than just the people that played as turret engineers frequently.

The only part that came off as rude was telling me to be silent on my own thread.

I have little hope that these changes will be reverted or adjusted as Anet are working on living story season 3 aka HoT. The turrets needed the following adjustments to be balanced but that won’t happen now I fear.

1. Turrets can only exist while within a 1500 range of the engineer. If the engi leaves the radius, the turret explodes.

2. Turret power scale to the engineer’s stats.
(current power would be full zerk but just as glassy as they are now, sans conditions) Full soldiers would be as tough as ever but hit half as hard.

3. Turret CDs are cut in half to promote redeployment style.

RabbitUp.8294:

Is passive play the new buzzword? Should we gut Banners next? Or Phantasms, since they got tons of new trait support? Or even conditions, since you don’t have to do anything after you apply them, you can sit back and watch them tick. I don’t see how any of the above is more active.

A competitive game should focus on play and counterplay, not active and passive gamestyle.

Turrets could do damage even when the Engineer built full tank. That, (and the fact they were viable enough in the first place to cause this), were the problems. You are complaining that the engineer’s own actions didn’t matter after the turrets were deployed. How does the fix change that? How does making the turrets be made out of paper makes engineers more active in the fight?

The answer is it doesn’t. It’s just a more delicate way to basically delete the skills from game. And it sets a bad example; if you can’t balance it, remove it.

If you want more active turret engineers, then give them more options. They can’t have a utility bar, a toolbelt, or a second weapon. This didn’t change. At the very least, make the respective toolbelt skill usable while the turret is deployed, by putting the detonation button to the turret skill, and it can used when the overcharge skill is on cooldown.

Logic on the forums. +1000 internets

Well put, it’s not a matter of active or passive, it’s that turrets were too effective in the eyes of “the community” who saw turrets as cheese and an unskilled build.

I saw turrets as defense, which in combat and point capture pvp modes, is as valuable as attack. The class was designed to have turrets be the bunker line of the profession and did the job too well. It didn’t need destroying it needed balancing.

Necrotize.2974:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Necrotize.2974:

I guess my overall stance on this is that the nerf was justified, but in application maybe went a little overboard. Turrets absolutely should be affected by crits, condis I’m not so sure, but I can see the reasoning since before turrets were pretty much unkillable by anyone who wasn’t very high dps zerker. Condi builds couldn’t even scratch them and had to engage the engi on point, ignoring the turrets.

They should probably be adjusted to be a little more durable, but nowhere near where they were before. Turret camping on a point is the epitome of passive-play for engineers and the fact that such a build was so prevalent and successful for so long seems directly against Anets new balancing changes. All across the classes, passive defenses and offenses are being nerfed or even completely removed(I mentioned these above, but you can also just look at the new trait changes they announced for yourself). Turrets are very low risk for the engineer seeing as to get rid of them, you pretty much need to be as far away from the engi as he wants and in that time he still holds the point. Therefore they should be very low reward.

Since engineers lack weapon swapping, it’d be reasonable to assume that Anet expects most engineers to take at least one kit so that you’re doing more than just autoattacking the whole time. If that’s their vision for engineer, I seriously doubt they’d be fine with a build that sacrifices all utilities to passive offense/defense and then even sacrifices all your toolbelt skills while they’re active. You can argue against this point all you want, but that’s just my observation going off their most recent changes to shut down passive play and encourage more active combat.

That’s what they’re designed to do. In the actual description of the class it clearly states that turrets hold an area. The community dislikes turrets, got it. They destroyed the play style without adding anything to compensate for the now worthless point holding turrets and didn’t adjust traits or cooldowns.

Imagine if warriors lost banners. They’re not essential they’re passive once placed, and everyone loves them. The only reason turrets got hate is they were effective against cookie cutter cheese builds.

I already stated that I believe it was a bandaid fix that could have been more finely tuned, but it was still necessary. So unless you plan on bringing new evidence as to why this change was not needed at all or have a new point to make, I hope you’ll refrain from bringing this up yet again.

You can get pedantic about class descriptions all you want, the point is Anet is clearly against passive play commonly associated with triple turret bunker engis, which by the way was a very “cookie cutter cheese build”(in my opinion), heck you could even find a detailed outline on Meta Battle and countless people claimed it was the perfect build for new players who want to compete in Ranked/Unranked without spending a lot of time learning the class mechanics. Sure banners are passive, but honestly I can’t remember the last time I saw a warrior running anything more than Battle Standard, and even that is uncommon in uncoordinated teams. Its also quite a false comparison if you ask me, seeing as banners don’t allow you to hold a point any better than normal, don’t attack people and generally have a minimal impact on PvP.

Face it, turrets got hate because they WERE the passive “cookie cutter cheese build” as you put it. When banners start shooting down people at 1500 range and bunker banner warriors become a thing, I’m sure they’ll get nerfed too. But until then, drawing flimsy comparisons between very different skills from different classes won’t prove your point or bring back the old turrets.

As this is my post and I ran turrets which you clearly did not I’ll ask you to move on. Turrets’ purpose is clearly defined in the class description which is all the evidence I require to disprove any claims that they weren’t “working as intended”.

Turrets
Engineers can also deploy turrets, immobile devices that help defend and control an area. For example, engineers can plant thumper turrets to cause damage to all foes in the area, or a healing turret that regenerates the health of nearby allies. Engineers can pack up and move turrets at will, and only one of each type can exist at a time.

If you care to check my sources, here you go.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/

The fact that turrets needed an adjustment in damage or survivability wasn’t disputed, but they were always meant to work as they did.

NitroApe.9104:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Saying otherwise means you’ve been getting lucky, try to get closer to the action and you’ll see.

Sometimes i’m as close to the action as it gets and my turret still doesn’t explode. You know what i think? I think, it’s not us who are lucky, but you who has really bad luck with his turret. HT has 6k life, and it’s up for not even a second. If it gets destroyed that often, well…

Ranger 1 alone fired through the turret does that by itself.

Gern.2978:

shion.2084:

Are you doing PvP Gern? Haven’t you noticed that your crate almost instantly becomes a pile of bandages if you drop it on point and the other team has a few folks there or some wells? Used to be you might get off a net shot as a follow up to the stun… or at least something…

Yes, I am PvPing. I have done quite a bit of PvP every day since the patch, and as I said: I haven’t noticed any less effectiveness in my Healing Turret or my crate, and I don’t use them any different than I ever have. I still put down my turret, over-charge it, and then either pick it up or blast the water field depending on the situation. I even do this in the middle of AOE fields and I am able to blast that water field or pick up my healing turret every single time.

As for my crate, I have yet to see any of the turrets from it die instantly, I also do not see any enemy turrets die instantly and I run a zerker build. They definitely die faster, but not instantly. I can always count on my crate to get off at least one or two blasts from the flame turret and the net turret.

I get the feeling that a lot of the people who complain about turrets “dying instantly” haven’t actually been playing with turrets in such situations, and are just repeating what they read on the forums. Either that or they have a sub-par computer/internet and there is enough delay that their healing turret is down too long and gets killed.

Sorry but not seeing what everyone else sees makes me think you fight in between points away from group situations. Supply crate gets completely destroyed leaving only banages.

Gern.2978:

MiniEquine.6014:

Gern.2978:

I don’t understand where everyone is coming from when they say that the healing turret is useless now. I use my healing turret as I always have: If I only need a little healing, I put it down, overcharge it and then pick it up. If I need a big heal I put it down, over-charge it and then detonate it to blast the water field. I haven’t seen any loss of effectiveness in my healing turret since the patch, even in SPvP.

It depends on the situation. OP mentioned it in their post. You used to be able to drop Healing Turret in a batch on heavy conditions to give you that extra health and condition removal, and even have it possibly give you an extra tick of regen before it died, but now that’s not possible to do. It can still be used, but it needs to be placed where it won’t get cleaved at all. I’ve noticed significant changes to its survivability where, even in team fights, the turret will just die almost immediately after placing it because the entire area is covered in AoE.

As I said, I don’t know where you all are getting this. I use my healing turret the same way I always have, even putting it right in the middl of AOE fields and I am still able to detonate it in it’s water field every single time. I am even abel to pick it back up after overcharging it if I don’t want to detonate it. I haven’t seen any loss of functionality at all.

Not all engineers stay out of melee range. If you’re a nade spammer you might notice no change to your healing turret but if you are in close combat a cleave or aoe will kaboom your HT. Saying otherwise means you’ve been getting lucky, try to get closer to the action and you’ll see.

Necrotize.2974:

I guess my overall stance on this is that the nerf was justified, but in application maybe went a little overboard. Turrets absolutely should be affected by crits, condis I’m not so sure, but I can see the reasoning since before turrets were pretty much unkillable by anyone who wasn’t very high dps zerker. Condi builds couldn’t even scratch them and had to engage the engi on point, ignoring the turrets.

They should probably be adjusted to be a little more durable, but nowhere near where they were before. Turret camping on a point is the epitome of passive-play for engineers and the fact that such a build was so prevalent and successful for so long seems directly against Anets new balancing changes. All across the classes, passive defenses and offenses are being nerfed or even completely removed(I mentioned these above, but you can also just look at the new trait changes they announced for yourself). Turrets are very low risk for the engineer seeing as to get rid of them, you pretty much need to be as far away from the engi as he wants and in that time he still holds the point. Therefore they should be very low reward.

Since engineers lack weapon swapping, it’d be reasonable to assume that Anet expects most engineers to take at least one kit so that you’re doing more than just autoattacking the whole time. If that’s their vision for engineer, I seriously doubt they’d be fine with a build that sacrifices all utilities to passive offense/defense and then even sacrifices all your toolbelt skills while they’re active. You can argue against this point all you want, but that’s just my observation going off their most recent changes to shut down passive play and encourage more active combat.

That’s what they’re designed to do. In the actual description of the class it clearly states that turrets hold an area. The community dislikes turrets, got it. They destroyed the play style without adding anything to compensate for the now worthless point holding turrets and didn’t adjust traits or cooldowns.

Imagine if warriors lost banners. They’re not essential they’re passive once placed, and everyone loves them. The only reason turrets got hate is they were effective against cookie cutter cheese builds.

Noha.3749:

Jesus this is hilarious.
Firstly, Turret builds have never been strong outside games filled with freshlings.
Secondly, Yeah, maybe they were too strong vs beginners and deserved a nerf so people wouldnt feel completely exhausted and give up sPvP for struggeling vs turrets.

Another problem is turrets usability in higher-ups games, where they lack usability when they get outrotated, and now after the patch easily solo smacked by alot of builds.

(Quick note on thiefs + stealth;
Sure they can stealth alot, not permanently though, thiefs in sPvP dont go that far into shadow art traitline and leaps through black powder chew away at your innitiative, which means they sacrifice burst potantial to stealth. But yes, they will easily flee from most fights they wont win. Thiefs however are very, very active no matter build in sPvP)

My suggestion would be to make turrets scale with player stats.
Keep the condi dmg and crit vulnerability, just make them scale with your stats.
So if you go sentinel amulet, you get some tanky, though annoying turrets.
If you go damage, you will get some bursty but squishy turrets.
This would allow for more build diversity.

Imagine SD builds which usually uses a rifle turret almost only for the toolkit skill – now they can actually put it down to pump out some decent-good damage.

Imagine 2kit condi builds using the flame turret, now they can possibly skip Incindenary power for the toolkit active + they have a decent condi bursting turret.

Imagine decap engineers coming back bringing a relatively tanky thumper turret, now with a stun-break + an utterly annoying cripple + knockdown.

Imagine when mortar kit gets live, with a rocket turret for additional range havoc.

100% agreed.

Let me clarify my perma stealth thief comments. I refer to a full troll stealth build that I myself tested (in unranked) and you are correct that it’s not used (often) in ranked. I’m in no way calling for a thief nerf as I love mine.

To your points on Turret engineers, you nailed it. I never understood why anyone directed hate at a build I killed easily. Although while I ran it, I was a nightmare.

I’ve suggested myself that players stats should determine damage output and taken by turrets. It would’ve balanced the entire build.

You fought on a point all match, this makes you a better team player than several on the first page of the leaderboards that I fight with / against. On that map you should help cap Stillness when it appears as the holder gets all three points insta flipped but other than that, you played (based on your description) the style I look for in a teammate.

Players like to rotate and that’s great if you are coordinated but when solo queing it’s difficult to organize sometimes. Never let anyone tell you holding a point isn’t valuable as all maps require it.

The balance issue Anet was 100% correct in taking action but they should’ve adjusted the damage of turrets instead of making them irrelevant. The stated job of turrets is to hold points and they cannot do so now. What the community thinks of them isn’t my concern As my dislike for medi guardians shouldn’t concern them.

Just trying to keep this thread fact filled, here is what Anet says turrets are for.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/

Turk.5460:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Turrets only fire every 20 seconds… Learn to dodge

Rifle turret – rate of fire 2s
Flame turret – rate of fire 3s
Net turret – rate of fire 10s
Rocket turret – rate of fire 4s
Thumper turret – rate of fire 3s

Your credibility – zero

;3

Meant 2s I fixed the error

As for street cred I’ve killed you in pvp