Guild Wars 2

I’m definitely a supporter of this – more control over Turrets can’t be a bad thing (though I’d not recommend making Turret Overcharges reset the firing cycle).

On my full Turret build (P/P, Cleric armor with Carrion trinkets, both the new GM Turret traits, Accelerant-Packed Turrets), I’ve recently switched from using Traveler’s Runes to Runes of Altruism – a decrease in speed and duration in exchange for more stacks of might and fury on a 20/15-second cooldown.

…The three most damaging Turrets, traited with Rifled Turret Barrels, deal less damage combined than a Weapon Power 1 version of the worst-DPS autoattack of any Engineer weapon used by a naked, otherwise traitless level 80, with pretty much any and all considerations made to try to make Turrets not look like they deal piddly damage, including ignoring minor traits that give unavoidable boosts.

Even myself, with a full Turret loadout and gear picked to improve my survivability, mostly gaining Power and Condition Damage from conversion traits like Blood Injection, deal more damage than my Turrets.

Therefore, I’m pretty sure this is a troll thread…unless it’s entirely based on experiences at low levels, before Turrets start to fall behind due to lack of scaling.
If the latter: Learn to use the Bomb Kit. It’s the highest-damage AA Kit, I’m pretty sure.

The new trait system only uses 14 trait points – each of the new points is equivalent to five of the old points.

Also, the transmutation system has been merged with the wardrobe system – using the transmutation items gives you Transmutation Charges, which you can then use in the Wardrobe to reskin your gear.

I have noticed that my turrets could withstand a few more hits than I recall in PvE, but I chalked that up to not playing for quite a while. If they’ve ever increased the HP and Defense of Turrets, it was a stealth change – Turrets didn’t even get the PvE HP boost other minions got.
Maybe the hitbox fix is actually having the anticipated survivability improvement effect.

That said – the only thing about this patch that’s making a Turret Engineer themselves tougher, I’d guess, is the fact that now there’s a GM trait in a line that gives Vitality and Boon Duration, which really works pretty well with the other Turret GM traits being in a Toughness/Healing Power line. The boons said trait gives are probably also having an effect.
There’s also nothing else in that line directly applicable to Turrets, which means that Turret Engineers with that trait have two Alchemy traits…which are all defensive traits aside from Blood Injection.
Combined with Hidden Flask (Boons at 75% HP), Transmute (converts incoming Condition into a Boon), and Energy Conversion Matrix (+1% damage per Boon on user)…well. You get the idea – it’s the traitline, more than anything direct, making Turret Engineers harder to kill (at least, in my opinion).

…also, what does ‘reg’ mean? Regen? Healing Turret was and is the only Turret with that boon, and it’s always had it. They just fixed the firing rate, so now it keeps it up ~100% like it did before they screwed the firing rate up to begin with.

tl;dr: Bugs and hitboxes got fixed, HP/Def not improved unless stealth, Turret Engineers now have a reason to go into a traitline that gives HP, said traitline is Boon Central.

You know what? Let’s try to brainstorm ways to make Turrets better, then we can go try to get it done by posting the results on the Profession Balance board. It’ll at least feel semiproductive, instead of just sitting around going “Turrets aren’t as good as they could be! Argh!”

First, we need to identify the issues. In my opinion, the following are problematic, though this may not be an opinion shared:

• Low uptime for long cooldown – drop-and-pop is probably the closest to an optimal system of Turret use given Turrets as they are, making Turrets effectively fancy landmines. There’s also a lack of incentive not to simply drop-and-pop them.

• Lack of Power scaling – Currently, Turrets only scale to Condition Damage/Duration, Healing Power, and Boon Duration, although the tooltips seem to indicate the following Power scaling at Power 1,922:
  Rifle Turret – .104
  Flame Turret – .027
  Thumper Turret – .138 Normal/.272 Overcharge
  Rocket Turret – .313 Normal/.379 Overcharge
  Net Turret – .069 Overcharge
  While some Turrets are very useful for their control aspect, others are almost entirely focused on damage-dealing, and don’t inflict damaging conditions, which leaves them feeling anemic in comparison to other means of dealing supplementary damage.

The following are my suggestions to handle these issues, and why:

• Start Turret placement cooldown on placement. This would alleviate the long cooldowns, as well as encourage freer use of Turrets; with the cooldowns less of an issue, both those who use Turrets and keep them up and those who drop-and-pop Turrets could use them more often, making both playstyles easier and more mobile.

• Give a reason to keep Turrets on the field – The Experimental Turrets trait is pretty obviously an attempt at this. Perhaps Turrets should always grant boons when Overcharging, or create Combo Fields? Maybe make Overcharges cool down faster when the Turret is still on the field?

• I’d also suggest implementing the power scaling listed above – I sincerely doubt that improving the damage by that margin would be overpowering, even in the hands of a Berserker. Control is very nice, but some Turrets just don’t do it. Even a bit more damage, I think, would also encourage keeping them on the field.

I don’t expect all of my opinions to be shared, and I’d welcome being able to present multiple options for the staff to examine regarding making Turrets a better choice, so – if you disagree, or have different ideas, it’d be appreciated to have them available for presentation.

Hopefully that’ll work better than the rally.

Enhance Performance is only a personal boost. Altruism Runes are good for AoE Might-granting, as well, using the Overcharge to trigger it every 15 seconds.

Also, if you’re running 30 Alchemy for whatever reason, Enhance Performance, Altruism Runes and the Experimental Turrets could keep you at a fairly consistent 9 stacks and your party at 6.

ripAnubis.5817:

WEXXES.2378:

Surprisingly, I’m seeing no one using the Throw Mine. The toolbelt has a potential 5 boon removal, does ~600 each (when they all crit they can do upwards to 7-8k with the right build), and if you have the gadgeteer GM trait, with gadget cooldown, you can get aegis every 14.5 seconds, unblockable knockback with a boon removal.

Did I miss something? Since when is there a boon removal on the Minefield? These mines as well as the ones from Bunker Down are only explosive devices…

Mine Field’s been able to boon strip for quite a while, as far as I can recall – I remember using Mine Field during the Southsun event to strip Veteran Karka of their boons and spike some damage in, at the very least.

Turrets do not scale to Power.
Turrets do scale to Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Boon Duration, and Healing Power.
Disregard the tooltips.

Oh, that’s annoying. Dolyaks in Frostgorge Sound, then, might work.

I’ve been testing things that I’d normally test on the target dummies in LA on the golems in Heart of the Mists; if nobody else is running up and killing them while you’re testing, it’s fairly similar, though you do have to finish them off or wait for them to deaggro before you can move on to testing the next thing.

Haven’t had the opportunity to test them on world bosses – but they haven’t been attacking world bosses for months anyway.

They’re terrible at tooltips. Turrets have been displaying power scaling that doesn’t exist for months now – it only becomes clear that it’s nonexistent when you see them in action.

When both Deployable Turrets and Rifled Turret Barrels are active, Rocket Turret’s default attack is converted to the attack delivered by its Overcharge – relatively slow, arcing missiles, which inflict knockdown on hit.

This is easily reproducible by following these steps:

1. Equip Deployable Turrets.
2. Equip Rifled Turret Barrels.
3. Place Rocket Turret.
4. Do not overcharge.

This should probably be hotfixed, as it’s absurdly broken.

Ambrecombe.4398:

I don’t know why but I just tried out my Rocket Turret and it shoots continual Overcharged Rockets, wich is OP, otherwise hitbox is definitly much smaller! And by the way, nice bug fixes A-net!

This only happens with Deployable Turrets and Rifled Turret Barrels active – WEXXES helped me test that out. I’ll make some new bug posts in a little while to report the issues we’ve found – that one, of course, is likely to get hotfixed.

Haven’t gotten the new traits yet, so can’t comment on those – definitely thanks for the info, though.

4) Tested my firing rates with a stopwatch; as the numbers were spot-on (within .2 seconds of expected, which could easily be accounted for by the time it takes me to perceive and press the button).

7) Yeah, that might be a bug.

Flame and Thumper Turret Overcharges were affected, I think, though Flame wouldn’t trigger unless the enemy was in the circle. It’s been quite some time, however, so I may be mistaken.

…oh, yeah, that sounds like an issue – maybe it’s related to the duration of the Overcharge; if the overcharge lasts to the next iteration…

So, I finally managed to get an eyeful of the patch notes. As is probably obvious from my efforts to archive the bugs afflicting a particular skillset, I have a somewhat vested interest in bugfixes to said skillset – said skillset being Turrets, of course. I figured I might as well list the supposed fixes (no, I don’t trust that they’re actually fixed, not until I’ve tested them) for any and all to see.
Once my client finishes patching, I’ll set about testing – and as I test a fix, I’ll mark whether it’s confirmed to be resolved or not. Some of these will be simple in the extreme to check, some will not.

Engineer Turrets:
Fixed a bug causing all turrets to shoot slower than intended.
Confirmed – even the Healing Turret fires faster.
Fixed a bug causing all turrets to have a larger hit box than intended.

Deployable Turrets:
Fixed a bug in which engineers could activate overcharge skills before a turret finished deploying, wasting the skill and placing it on cooldown.
Confirmed.
Fixed a bug in which engineers could blow up their turrets before they finished deploying, dealing damage without destroying the turret.
Confirmed.
Fixed a bug in which turrets created with this trait were not benefiting from Rifled Turret Barrels.
Confirmed.
An issue has been introduced, wherein Rocket Turret fires Explosive Rocket shots as default while Deployable Turrets is traited; overcharging causes it to switch to normal Rocket attacks. Hotfix likely, given that it’s a knockdown every four seconds.

Automatic Fire:
Fixed a bug in which overcharging a turret with this skill would not increase its rate of fire.
Confirmed. No longer does it need overcharged on-placement.
Updated the skill description to better communicate the skill’s effects.
Congratulations on changing the print output. Likewise for Explosive, no, Fragmentation Shot.

Electrified Net: Removed an incorrect skill fact for rate of fire increase.
Net Turret: Reduced the cooldown on this turret’s basic attack from 13 seconds to 10 seconds. Decreased the immobilize duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds on the basic attack.
Confirmed, and fire rate is accurate. Give some, lose some.

Rocket Turret: Changed this turret to allow it to benefit from traits that improve explosives.
Explosive Rockets: Updated the duration skill fact to correctly display 4 seconds.
See Deployable Turrets note.

Edit: Just need to get the hitboxes tested, now. To Orr I go.

Bombsaway.7198:

Actually, the explosives is for bombs as otherwise you would want grenadier. It is also amazing if you blow up turrets. Every 20 secs you get some quickness isn’t bad at all.

The firearms bunker down has some real potential I think IF I were to build around going 30 in firearms.

Fortified turrets may or may not help. Just depends on how big that force field is and if I can stand under it. Could be useful in siege (then quickly switching to a different skill/spec)

Experimental Turrets I am excited about. Especially if it applies to the supply crate too.
3 secs of vigor/10 secs for the healing turret alone is nice especially in standoffs or pve.

I guess we will see soon enough!

Synaptic Overload will only be useful for Turret-detonators if it actually realizes the knockback comes from the player, rather than the Turret; as it stands, Turret Detonation knockbacks don’t even contribute to Skill Interrupter.

Experimental Turrets, though, I’m pretty sure is supposed to work with the Supply Crate.

Oh. Welp. Nevermind me, then.

An Anet staffer said to ‘ask again in a couple weeks,’ if I recall correctly…roughly two weeks ago.

I think the ‘I can’t tell if you’re joking’ might have been a reference to ‘Do you mean ’*collusion*,’ as in ‘collusion’ detection?’ Probably just a typo.

Then the devs shouldn’t have called them Turrets, just different kinds of Mine. Turret implies fortification, not ‘drop-and-pop.’ Calling them Turrets, if they intended drop-and-pop to be the main playstyle, simply sends the wrong message.

As far as I can tell, Turrets are pretty much the following:

Rifle – Damage, with a debuff to increase damage (to a particular target from every ) on Overcharge.
Damage with a damage OC.

Flame – AoE+condition damage, with a pulsing radial blind and Smoke Field on Overcharge.
Damage with a Utility (is this what utility is? I’m honestly unsure) OC.

Rocket – Damage, with a more damaging knockdown shot on Overcharge.
Damage, with a Damage/Control OC.

Net – Control, with more Control and slight damage on Overcharge.
Control, with a Control/Damage Overcharge.

Thumper – Damage and Cripple, with more damage and Blowout on Overcharge, which is also a Blast Finisher.
Damage/Control, with a Damage/Control/Utility Overcharge.

and then there’s Healing Turret, which is Healing, with a Water Field on Overcharge; as Water Fields are primarily Healing (be it removal of conditions or direct healing) -focused.

That makes three Damage regular attack elements, and two Control regular attack elements. Damage obviously a large part of non-Overcharged Turret operation, as it’s simply present more often than Control.
On the Overcharge side, there’s four Damage elements, three Control elements, and two Utility elements. Damage elements still outnumber Control and Utility individually.

All that aside, the Turrets used for the comparison are the most damaging Turrets available, and…They’re not even good enough, traited, at their _ only non-Overcharged function_ to deal more combined damage than an impossibly kitten variation of our worst-damage weapon. Are they capable of Control and/or Utility? Sure – but on a long cooldown. Between uses of Overcharge, however, they (and other Turrets) deal minimal damage, so there’s very little reason to leave them on the field, aside from Net and Thumper Turret’s Control aspects.

I consider this a flaw in the very idea of a Turret skillset; if they’d just add scaling, it might improve things quite a bit, giving Turrets some kind of use besides drop-overcharge-pop (or drop-overcharge-pop-benefit from boons/fortified shields).

…You really think it’ll work to go ‘I don’t have a Turret trait, look how bad they are?’ Don’t do that. Look at them when they should be good, and compare that – if you’re fully traited, and the results are the same…well, that’s a lot more striking.

On that note, I actually ran the numbers on how much damage Turrets deal vs how much damage our Autoattacks deal.

Here’s the results, quoted from another thread, which I intend to post onto the Profession Balance board once the Feature Patch is out:

Pistol: 5256 [438×12] + 3460 [(346×2)x5]
Rifle: 9306 [846×11]
Speargun: 4506 [751×6]
Bomb: 13740 [1145×12]
Grenade: 4908 [409×12; possibly x3]
Tranquilizer Dart: 5456 [496×11] + 10320 [(1032×4)x2.5]
Flame Jet: 7083 [1864×3.8] + 2655 [(557+328)x3]; proccing 10% damage boost not accounted for.
Smack-Whack-Thwack: 12468 [(992×2 + 2172)x3]; haven’t accounted for 4+ stacks of Vulnerability.

Rifle Turret: 549 [183×3]
Harpoon Turret: 621 [207×3]
Flame Turret: 98 [49×2]+ 2426 [1213×2]
Rocket Turret: 1096 [548×2]
Thumper Turret: 488 [244×2]

if they resolve the fire rate issue, Turrets may be dealing something like the following, presented here (again) for comparison’s sake:

Rifle Turret: 915 [183×5]
Harpoon Turret: 1035 [207×5]
Flame Turret: 147 [49×3]+3639 [1213×3]
Rocket Turret: 1096 [548×2]
Thumper Turret: 732 [244×3]

These numbers are for a theoretical naked, traitless level 80 with a Weapon Power 1 version of any weapon or kit they may be using, attacking over a period of ten seconds.
I didn’t add RTB bonuses to Turret damage because of this traitlessness, but in this case…I really don’t think there’s any reason to, given that the only Turret that even breaks 1k with direct damage (the only kind of damage RTB helps with) is Rocket Turret.

But, well. I did say to take a look when they’re supposed to be good, didn’t I? I guess it would be hypocritical not to give an example to show my point…so let’s take that naked, traitless level 80 with a Weapon Power 1 Speargun (worst AA in terms of damage), and give them Rifled Turret Barrels (and I’m not accounting for any minor traits gained on the way, such as 10% of Healing Power to Power).
They’ll be placing Rocket Turret, Flame Turret, and Rifle Turret, all with RTB. This is the most damaging combination of Turrets, going by the numbers above and personal experience.

3694 total damage (direct and condition) for Rifled Turret Barrel Rocket, Flame, and Rifle Turrets over a period of ten seconds.
4506 for Autoattacking with Speargun for the same time period.

Even breaking rules just to skew it toward Turrets doesn’t make them seem good. As far as I am aware, there are no Weapon Power 1 weapons, after all, and I’m not accounting for that Healing Power to Power buff from a minor trait…and the most powerful set of turrets available deals only 80% of our worst Autoattack.

But one dev did make a cryptic comment about asking again in a couple weeks.

Alyssa.7254:

I thought they stated in one of those dev speaks on their twitch channel that it would not knock back.

Either way, I think the traits look promising. The only one that bothers me is the turret trait that buffs going into alchemy.

That really is an awkward place for a Turret trait – Alchemy is a traitline with nothing for Turret-users, aside from Blood Injection (which buffs Condition Damage by a percentage of Vitality, thereby buffing the Flame Turret), after all. I think the theory is that Alchemy is for party support…but Alchemy is almost exclusively Elixirs, Flamethrower or Elixir Gun.

I’ll be giving it a shot, since I don’t really care for Deployable Turrets and I think it sounds very useful, but I really would like to have some more benefit for my turrets from the Adept or Master traits.

Khalic.3561:

Is it wrong if I’m slightly annoyed that they feel the need to tease this instead of just saying something?

I pretty much feel the same way about it. ‘We could just tell you, but we won’t! Instead, have some cryptic hints. This way, we don’t have to worry about actually delivering on promises to make something happen!’

Turret bug added: Underwater Rocket Turrets start their placement cooldown when Turret is placed, not when it is destroyed.

As title says; the Engineer’s Rocket Turret starts its cooldown on-placement, if it is placed underwater.

Steps to reproduce:
Go underwater.
Slot Rocket Turret.
Place Rocket Turret.
Count an arbitrary number of seconds.
Detonate.
Cooldown will be 50-number of seconds (with skill immediately becoming usable once more if second count >= 50.)

Yeah, that’s one that nobody’s reported yet – and I really do think that would be a good thing to make normal. I’ll add it to the buglist later, probably.

Reasons I can come up with to make it happen:
It would make Turrets more mobile – by making it easier to put them down more often, it makes it easier for a Turret Engineer to run at just the same pace as others.

It encourages leaving Turrets out – by making the cooldown start when the Turret is placed, the drop-and-pop playstyle loses part of its appeal: Starting the cooldown on the Turret ASAP.

It also, interestingly enough, makes Turrets able to be detonated more freely, opening up further strategic opportunities; with the cooldown issues reduced, Turrets would become an even better source of blast finishers and, when traited with Accelerant-Packed, be excellent tools for interruption/crowd-control.

It makes a Turret Engineer something to be concerned about – with cooldowns starting when Turrets are placed, Turret Engineers could become a snowballing problem in combat: Destroy the Turrets, or force Detonation, too slowly…and they’ll just have another one ready.

This also creates options of counterplay: whether to go for the Engineer themselves to stop Turret placement, or clear out their Turrets as quickly as possible.

Reasons I’ve got to not make it happen: Honestly, I can’t think of nearly as many reasons to not do it, though I may be biased.
Turrets aren’t especially damaging (to the tune of ‘our intentionally gimpy main-hand weapon autoattacks do far more damage than they do’), and have well-known issues with survivability.

Electro.4173:

As a turret Engineer, I love this trait. Free boons just for using turrets? Heck yah. Boon support is definitely a major weak point for Turret engineers and this will fix that deficit nicely. And it works much better for an actual turret user than the other new turret trait, since that one encourages you to place a turret than pick it back up / explode it after the shield goes down so you can get the shield more often, where this one actually rewards keeping turrets active all the time, which is what a turret build wants already.

But the placement is just terrible. The Alchemy line has almost nothing to offer turrets. The minor Alchemy traits are decent, especially Energy Conversion, though running just turrets won’t get you THAT many boons, so its not quite as good as it could be if you were running Elixirs or something. And as far as the Majors go, if you’re running a full utility bar of turrets, over half of the Alchemy traits are useless (any that buff elixirs or other utilities). And the few that aren’t completely useless aren’t all that impressive.

Furthermore, Alchemy is a defensive traitline. And if you want to run Experimental turrets and the “main” turret traitline (Inventions, also a defensive traitline) you’re very pigeonholed into a defensive build. Which means you’re basically relying completely on your turrets for damage, which isn’t very good IMO. I find that using turrets as supplemental damage on a mostly offensive build is the better way to go.

This pretty much nails my opinion. I will, I think, be trying to sort of…break the defensive mold, though, after the 15th; Dual Pistols, Healing/Rifle/Flame/Thumper Turrets, Experimental and Fortified Turrets, with the traits that convert Toughness/Vitality into Power/Condition Damage.
Might be able to do some damage, especially given a consistent source of Fury and Might, with Thumper’s Protection to keep me up alongside Healing Turret’s regen and Vigor.

Okay, numbers rerun using both aftercast and current fire rate.

Pistol: 5256 [438×12] + 3460 [(346×2)x5]
Rifle: 9306 [846×11]
Speargun: 4506 [751×6]
Bomb: 13740 [1145×12]
Grenade: 4908 [409×12; possibly x3]
Tranquilizer Dart: 5456 [496×11] + 10320 [(1032×4)x2.5]
Flame Jet: 7083 [1864×3.8] + 2655 [(557+328)x3]; proccing 10% damage boost not accounted for.
Smack-Whack-Thwack: 12468 [(992×2 + 2172)x3]; haven’t accounted for 4+ stacks of Vulnerability.

Rifle Turret: 549 [183×3]
Harpoon Turret: 621 [207×3]
Flame Turret: 98 [49×2]+ 2426 [1213×2]
Rocket Turret: 1096 [548×2]
Thumper Turret: 488 [244×2]

if they resolve the fire rate issue, Turrets may be dealing something like the following, presented here (again) for comparison’s sake:
Rifle Turret: 915 [183×5]
Harpoon Turret: 1035 [207×5]
Flame Turret: 147 [49×3]+3639 [1213×3]
Rocket Turret: 1096 [548×2]
Thumper Turret: 732 [244×3]

Think this would make a good enough case for increasing Turret damage? If so, I’ll clean it up a bit and pop it onto the Profession Balance board.

Wonderful, I’ll try rerunning the numbers with aftercast accounted for.
I’ll also run them with the current real fire rate; I would have done so to begin with, but without knowing the aftercast, it would’ve skewed things particularly unfairly.

I pretty much don’t expect things to look good for Turrets even if the tooltip fire rates were up against the aftercast AAs – due to the lack of Power scaling, especially.

Toolkit might be getting about a 150% DPS boost from not accounting for the aftercast; combined with counting all three attacks in the chain as the autoattack, it’s the one I’m least comfortable with the numbers on.

It’s also the one I almost ignored because it has an autoattack chain.

Anymras.5729:

ellesee.8297:

the trait doesn’t encourage you to blow them up. the shield only lasts as long as the turret is active. and if you detonate it the recharge time goes to its full duration. ideally you’d place it, overcharge and let it shoot for 4 seconds, then pick it up. an underwhelming utility? you bet!

if you want anet to encourage turrets to be left out indefinitely like ranger spirits, let them know that turrets are useless and they need to do more damage. atm they’re like a worse version of spirit weapons, and spirit weapons are godawful.

How would one go about proving that Turrets should deal more damage, is the question. They won’t listen without numbers – “I don’t think my Turrets deal enough damage!” just sounds like whining.

First thing that comes to mind is possibly comparing #1 skills on Pistol, Rifle, and Kits to the non-Overcharged attacks of all damage-dealing Turrets, as well as listed cast time vs listed fire rate to figure out DPS totals. Sound like it might work?

Other things that would be listed alongside to help figure out relative effectiveness: Cooldowns and cumulative multiturret damage.

I got bored, went ahead and attempted the math. I probably screwed something up.

Autoattacks: All numbers in parentheses are to be multiplied by the user’s Power and Weapon Strength; Armor has been disregarded, as it varies depending on target.

Aftercast has not been accounted for, as precise measurements are unknown; all fire rates and cast times are according to wiki, and assuming that each attack’s cast time begins as soon as the previous ends.

I’ve attempted to account for condition damage, but I may have the math somewhat off; I’m going by the wiki, and it doesn’t appear to have a slot for ‘base’ damage of a skill’s condition effects. Damage calculations are in [brackets].

I would like to rerun these numbers with aftercast accounted for, as I’m somewhat concerned about number skewing due to not accounting for it – given that Toolkit #1 takes roughly 3 seconds, rather than the 2 the cast times add up to, in particular – so I may or may not be running stopwatch tests to determine aftercast sometime in the next couple of days.

Reasons for the ‘buildless’ character used in tests: Makes the math easier.

http://pastebin.com/68aYK4RH

Cold Hearted Person.6154:

…kitten , you guys are a real PRO at being optimistic, i mean, how long ago this thread was started? and how long ago any dev posted something here? and yet you are still here…

If next patch won’t change this, then you can give up on the hope that this issue will ever be adresed.

It’s less about being optimistic and more about being stubborn, at this point.

ellesee.8297:

the trait doesn’t encourage you to blow them up. the shield only lasts as long as the turret is active. and if you detonate it the recharge time goes to its full duration. ideally you’d place it, overcharge and let it shoot for 4 seconds, then pick it up. an underwhelming utility? you bet!

if you want anet to encourage turrets to be left out indefinitely like ranger spirits, let them know that turrets are useless and they need to do more damage. atm they’re like a worse version of spirit weapons, and spirit weapons are godawful.

How would one go about proving that Turrets should deal more damage, is the question. They won’t listen without numbers – “I don’t think my Turrets deal enough damage!” just sounds like whining.

First thing that comes to mind is possibly comparing #1 skills on Pistol, Rifle, and Kits to the non-Overcharged attacks of all damage-dealing Turrets, as well as listed cast time vs listed fire rate to figure out DPS totals. Sound like it might work?

Other things that would be listed alongside to help figure out relative effectiveness: Cooldowns and cumulative multiturret damage.

As a primarily Turret-using Engineer, I’m ill-equipped to comment on three of the five new Grandmaster traits.

I am, however, quite equipped (I think so, anyway) to comment on Fortified and Experimental Turrets. The following are my opinions thereof, attempting to see both pros and cons.

Fortified:
I think this trait is good, because it emphasizes tactical placement of Turrets; rather than putting them down willy-nilly, position and timing become important, as well as making them defensive tools a full Turret build is sorely lacking in otherwise.
I think this trait is bad, because it emphasizes an on-placement effect and thus reinforces the drop-and-pop mindset, while also competing with Rifled Turret Barrels for a trait slot (unless they move RTB down to Master, and maybe do something about that worthless Autotool Installation trait); RTB is the only way to increase Turret direct damage at the moment, and it’s thus really important in a Turret-focused build.
I will definitely be trying this trait out; if I find that I like it, it might give me the ranged defense I’m currently relying on a shield for, allowing me more flexibility in my builds. It has been a very long time since I ran a dual pistol build…might be time to try it again.

Experimental:
I think this trait is good, because it encourages leaving turrets on the field, and theoretically dovetails nicely with the fortification bubble in terms of group support.
I think this trait is bad, because it’s a Grandmaster Turret trait in a traitline that has until now held nothing for Turrets, thus requiring a Turret-user who wants to get it to invest heavily in a tree that has so little appeal aside from the Grandmaster trait.
I will also definitely be trying this trait out; I’m curious, and it may find itself a fixture, despite its placement, due to the boons.

Overall? I welcome the arrival of diversity to Turret traits, and hope it’s an indicator of attempting to actually make them good.

Reading comments and agreeing are two vastly different things.

Mortifer.2946:

Steam creatures were made by Scarlet.

There’s also a segment of the Asura personal story (Infinity Ball path) wherein the player character is a world-conquering warlord in a parallel dimension, who uses steam creatures.

Viking Jorun.5413:

style.6173:

Turrets = passive game play. I’d rather see ANET focus on other areas of the class

People seem to think that turrets are passive, and while Supply Crate makes them passive (can’t detonate), a build encorporating Accelerant Packed Turrets and Fortified Turrets would be extremely active, especially if you plan on getting the most out of Fortified Turrets.

As the Viking says – it might seem passive at first glance, but I can personally tell you that it’s anything but passive when you’re trying to coordinate your own actions with the attacks, overcharges, ranges, and detonations of your turrets, as well as trying to keep said turrets up.
Turret Engineers seem to acquire way more aggro than expected, as well, so it’s not exactly an easy playstyle.

I thought Synaptic Overload was supposed to have a 20 second ICD, actually.

They’re also putting a Turret trait into Alchemy.
To date, there has been absolutely no reason for a Turret Engineer to ever go into Alchemy at all, and their first action toward changing that…is a Grandmaster trait. At least it’ll be easy to reset out of it if the trait’s kitten.

Adamantium.3682:

On the bright side if turrets not only get bug fixes but some buffs turret builds look like they could be really fun. Sucky part of that is even in a full turret build you can’t fit all the traits

Being incapable of fitting all the traits is both good and bad, I think.

Good: It means variance, even within full Turret builds. People will adjust the build to fit themselves, and this will lead to enrichment of a currently kind of static build type. Also, I can’t help but notice that the Experimental Turret trait is very similar to player suggestions about Turrets giving boons, which seems to indicate a possibility that they’re listening to us (and given the current state of Turrets, I can’t blame them for not wanting to say anything; even the bugfixes are irksome, because they’re being held back).

Bad: It means having to choose between things like Rifled Turret Barrels vs Fortified Turrets, between Accelerant-Packed vs Deployable, and Experimental Turrets is in a completely bonkers traitline to begin with – Turret Engineers desirous of Experimental will need to go full into a traitline that, until this point, has had absolutely nothing for them. This only exacerbates the simple expense of a full-Turret build.

One way or another, I think Autotool and Metal-Plating should be consolidated, even if it means a nerf to the already-useless regeneration feature of Autotool Installation; as it is, I’ll literally never take Autotool Installation over anything else due to Turrets’ terrible survivability and my own tendency to Detonate them for one reason or another.

I know I’ll be mucking about with a dual-pistol hybrid power/condition build for the first time in forever, in any case.

Manuhell.2759:

Experimental Turrets can be fine just in PvP. In any other mode they just explode when someone glances at them.
Gadgeteer is a nice trait. The problem is that gadgets aren’t exactly much good.

Neither are Turrets.

On that note, I’m almost certainly going to end up using Experimental Turrets in my main build. I only hope that the boon isn’t random, though it likely will be.*

*I was at work during the stream, so I have no idea one way or another.

A couple things:

First, this is only one of five Grandmaster Traits that are being added. There will also be an addition to Explosives, Firearms, Alchemy, and Tools. It’s entirely possible that these will all be Kit-focused.
I do hope these are not Kit-focused additions, but that’s because I feel like most of our other skillsets don’t get enough attention to really work out as well as they could.

Second, this might actually be interesting; I’m not looking forward to finding out if it has to share a slot with RTB, although they might move RTB down to Master (and I hope they do – Autotool Installation is still rubbish, and they’ve moved a few traits from GM to Master anyway).
The devil’s in the details on whether it’ll be a particularly good trait, I think – does it have an ICD? Is it limited in how many can be up at once? Will it work, especially with Deployable Turrets? Will using it require giving up Rifled Turret Barrels? How big is the field? All of these are up in the air, and we won’t find out until the Feature Patch.

Finally, they have stated that there will be fixes for Turrets. I’m not happy about waiting until the Feature Patch for some long-awaited resolution for some of the many issues, but at least they’re finally, theoretically, making progress. With luck, this will also be the starting point of actually making Turrets as good as other skills available – I like Turrets, but it’s impossible to use them and not realize that they kind of suck.

In the end, we can’t really say we know anything about this trait, much less whether it’s interesting or not, until the Feature Patch hits – and when it does, I’ll be bugtesting.

Oh, also: I think this trait will just encourage the drop-and-pop playstyle (drop turret, overcharge, benefit from bubble, pick turret up or blow it up, drop another turret upon bubble dissolution). Too bad.

I hope this new Grandmaster’s implementation will include RTB moving down to Master, with Autotool (which I still don’t consider worth taking) and Metal Plating merging to be Adept. Otherwise, I just don’t see it being used very much in comparison to RTB; consistent increase of both range and damage, against a short-lived defensive tool.

In theory, this would make Turrets a more tactical playstyle, though – instead of placing them as soon as battle is joined, using them to counteract ranged pressure or cover a melee rush, for example.

Also, as things stand, this trait will only encourage drop-and-pop play with low-cooldown turrets like Healing and Rifle.
It’ll just mean a short delay between dropping and popping.

I find the thing they’re doing with the Turret bugfixes more concerning, personally. See, here’s an excerpt of what Karl McLain wrote in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview/page/16#post3667926

Here’s a few more changes we’ll be including for the next feature build:

Engineer:
We’ve fixed a lot of turret issues that were causing them to behave poorly or inconsistently (many of these issues have been reported via the bug forums, thanks guys!) In the coming patch, you’ll see quite a few improvements in this area. For example:
• Fixed the bug that was causing all turrets to have a lower rate of fire than intended.
• Fixed the bug that was preventing the overcharge for the Rifle Turret from increasing its rate of fire.

They’re not implementing bugfixes to a skillset direly in need of them until the feature patch.

I’d really like to know why. Oh, and how long it’ll be.

Unfortunately, May 31st is likely to be the soonest possible date for it, given that they don’t want to implement the Feature Patch during WvW Season 2, which ends May 30th.

These bugs have been known for more than seven months, and by the time May rolls around, it’ll have been more than nine months that they’ve known of the issues, and about three months after they said they fixed some of the issues.
What is the purpose of waiting three more months?
Is making a skillset function closer to properly now seen as a buff?

They’re also holding bugfixes to several other classes, which honestly kind of irritates me for very similar reasons – are they terrified that making something function the way it should will unbalance things?
Are they declaring things fixed, and then running QA, and hoping nobody thinks it’s a little strange that they apparently want to wait to implement some much-needed fixes?

Theoretically, we might get some turret fixes with the Feature Patch.

…I can’t help but point out that these bugs will have been known for more than two-thirds of a year by the time they’re resolved.
And that almost no bugs from the extensive Turret Buglist have been resolved in the time since I started keeping it up, aside from…maybe four, to be generous, though I can’t actually can’t think what they are.

I’ll be spending a few days testing the ‘fixes’ they put in, of course. Obviously, their QA team is simply incapable of doing the job, considering their various other demands. Like the constant stream of half-functional Living Story content.