I was baffled by this, too. Would’ve thought that somebody would think to go “Hm, you know, this is kind of a new thing, a bundle that goes into the inventory when not being used. Maybe we should mention that it does that, or-nah, they’ll just look in their inventory. Sooner or later, anyway.”
You see the bit about deleting the email with the serial number, thinking they wouldn’t need that?
Yeah, turns out they need that for resetting. It’s something I’m currently having issues with, in fact.
This is a small victory for Engineers, but the fight is far from over.
So getting traits that were broken a month earlier fixed counts as a victory now days?
“Woo! We broke even! Yah!! Rounds for every one!”Sarcasm aside, it is nice having these traits back. Despite my turrets having an average lifespan of 0.1 sec. I still try to make them work. I started the engineer to be an engineer and Ill be kitten if im going to let being UP force me to conform into being a grenade or elixir tossing monkey.
Oh, are they? Dandy. Maybe it’ll get looked at.
I actually don’t have much trouble in Southsun Cove, and I’m running a 20/0/30/0/20 Turrets, Toolkit and Static Discharge build at the moment.
Well, except for Reef Drakes. Man, kitten Reef Drakes.
They wouldn’t put it on the list if it was broken. They act like kittenes, but they’re not going to lie and say that it’s been fixed if it wasn’t.
They probably just did something stupid like add a whole other set of turrets with the stats they wanted to use and then forgot to tell traits to all affect that set of turrets instead of the old set.
Also, they’ve mentioned that they’ll be working on traits; whether this means ‘well, we’re going to be navel-gazing’ or not…well, that’s the question.
On a brighter note: I’m pretty sure this is the first hotfix that’s ever been for the Engineer.
The Thumper’s great for comedic relief.
Scope’s been dead since release, all turret traits in the Inventions line are (currently, at 3:39 AM 5/14/2013, before the patch of 5/14/2013) dead, Elite Supplies X is inaccurate (does nothing for Mortar – instead, Rifled Turret Barrels enhances that) and Static Discharge, as far as I know, has some issues with sending bolts of lightning into the dirt.
I like turrets quite a bit. They’re kitten in WvW (I actually tried that earlier; going to try modifying my build slightly and ditching Deployable Turrets) and as durable in dungeons as dryer lint run through a lawnmower, but they’re still the one skillset I like most about the Engineer.
That said, yes, Turrets definitely need work. So does most of the class in general – the ongoing Kit Refinement fiasco alone tells me all I need to as far as whether the Engineer was ready for release or good enough at a once-over, many of our abilities are weakened knockoffs of other classes’ skills, and there’s just nowhere the class really shines except for being okay.
It’s still the only class I’m really interested in, though, and I wish Anet would look at these boards sometime; maybe things would change in a way that would bring the class more in line with the others in terms of effort-reward or identity.
I would ask the Devs about whether they read the forums, mostly, and if not, suggest to them that they do. Also, yes, I’d ask what the hell is going on with Turrets – why they can’t keep them working, why they don’t fix them, why they stopped the changes where they did instead of implementing full scaling, etcetera.
After that, I’d probably just ask them if they actually consider any player suggestions; some of the suggestions I’ve seen on here to make the Engineer a more polished class are really cool.
We probably won’t see any actual advances in balance and bugfixing until they give releasing new content every month a rest so they A ) don’t have to dedicate their already-stretched-thin live bugfixing crew to fixing bugs introduced by new content and B ) can dedicate their resources to fixing the game. Doesn’t mean we can’t try to come up with ways for them to fix things, on the off-chance they take a half a gander at the board.
Torches would also be quite nice. Maces, too. Sceptres and Foci…maybe the Engineer could have some sort of minidrones, summoned via weapon skills.
Kits have always struck me as rather similar to the Elementalist’s attunements – the Engineer, looked at like that, ends up seeming like an inverted Elementalist in Medium armor:
Engineer: No Weapon Swapping, gets pre-selected skill on Toolbelt to compensate for giving up Utility Slots for freely-selected (restricted only by level) Kits/Attunements to acquire a facsimile.
Elementalist: No Weapon Swapping, gets pre-selected Kits/Attunements as facsimile; can choose Utility Skills freely.
Besides this comparison (which I did my best to keep unbiased), the Kits are only a part of the class identity of the Engineers who use Kits. As somebody who prefers Turrets, and typically travels with a full complement of them on my skillbar (Healing, Rifle, Flame, Net, for example), kits have as little to do with my class identity as Turrets have to do with a Kit Engineer’s class identity. The only factors shared between myself and any Engineer who uses Kits, and nothing but, are that we’re both Engineers, we may both have points in Explosives and Tools, and the existence of the Toolbelt, though everything else may be utterly disparate.
A couple of the ideas posited above – the Turret-as-Temporary-Kit, obviously, and the Toolbelt Freedom, would give my Turrets-and-nothing-but and their Kits-and-nothing-but some common ground, but they’d leave other skillsets in the cold, so…perhaps allow us to Engineer our Engineer skills like the Engineers we play. Let us tinker, and maximize the potential of all our abilities by doing what, logic suggests, our class should do best. This, I think, would give all Engineers some common ground – and would go a long way toward giving us more of a unique class identity.
OP makes some weird comparisons. The only ones that I see that aren’t “So they get this, but we can’t X thing opposite?” are the Crossfire/Explosive Shot one, and the Weapon Slot one. If the Crossfire/Explosive Shot comparison is accurate, it’s a bug and they need to get off their kitten and fix it. The Weapon Slot one, however, we have the Toolbelt to (theoretically) make up for it, as pointed out by another poster already – although the Toolbelt doesn’t let us choose what skill we get, instead having it linked intrinsically with the skills on our Utility bar.
Also, just a thought, OP: It might help if you didn’t compare a class’s strong point to something the Engineer is, admittedly, mediocre at. 1000 Blades and Killshot are both Warrior Finishing Blow skills, so they’re going to be powerful – I’m not sure about Eviscerate, but I have the feeling it’s one of those as well. Thieves are glass cannons who are at their best when bursting, such as by spamming, say, Heartseeker, which is why they use Initiative instead of cooldowns on their regular attacks. Rangers rely on their pet for quite a lot of their damage, because it’s their class mechanic. None of these have anything to do with how much the class can heal for, or how much health the pet has. I almost want to go “Eh, fair enough” about the “Turrets need more damage,” but now you’re comparing a utility skill set to a class’s main mechanic, and even as a Turret Engineer, I don’t think that’s a valid comparison.
Oh, and I forgot to add:
Engineering as a class mechanic: Essentially, give the Engineer a way to modify their skills (possibly via that old Engineering Traitline thing I had) to better suit their playstyle. This would give the Engineer more of a class identity.
There may be some bug regarding when it actually activates, perhaps. Maybe it’s only told to explode if it fires a shot before doing so.
If that’s how the devs see that, should we have upvoted everyone who mentioned the Scope bug? Would that have gotten their attention? Besides which, staff callout threads are also against the rules, but we’ve had plenty of those.
Anyway, I’m going to do as the OP asks: +1.
Okay, the title may have been a little misleading; I’m really going to focus on how to improve Turrets, and give the Engineer more of that versatility they said we’d have without sacrificing skill slots to do it.
Turret Issues (And how I’d fix them):
- Ineffective: Implement across-the-board scaling on all turrets; turrets at low levels would need to be toned down, but it would improve late-game Turrets. Give them additional resistance to AoEs.
- Too Immobile: Allow them to be picked up and carried, either like the Ghostbore Turrets in story bits (pick up and move, nothing else) or like Banners (temporary kit-like bundle, allowing Turret Engineers to benefit more from the Runes of the Engineer.)
- Drop-and-Pop Playstyle: Start the cooldown when the turret is placed, not when it is removed, to encourage leaving them on the field, and add a cooldown-reduction trait. Won’t counter people detonating the turret for quick damage or to access the toolbelt, but this way, the cooldown isn’t a factor.
Versatility (How I’d Improve It)
- Toolbelt: Unbind Toolbelt skills from the utility bar, so they can be chosen independently. Add tech-based, Engineer-skill-centric, signet-style skills to the toolbelt – a Turret Control System, Elixir Synthesizer, Kit Harmonizer, and Gadget Thingamajig, perhaps, maybe moving some traits to the Toolbelt to allow for more flexibility in trait selection (which would also encourage versatility). Maybe convert some Gadgets into this type of Toolbelt skill.
- Weapons: More choices, such as the Hammer and Mace, and allow kits to be equipped both as secondary weapons and utilities – kits equipped as secondary weapons would not grant Toolbelt skills, but could be swapped to and from freely. This would allow all Engineers to carry a kit, a healing skill, three utilities, and their Elite, as well as their main weapons, which would encourage versatility by adding options. Kit-loving Engineers would be able to carry…potentially four Utility-slot Kits, and the Medkit, under this idea, while Turret Engineers could carry three Utility-slot Turrets, the Healing Turret, and the Toolkit.
TL;DR:
There is no tl;dr, you intellectually subsapient, gnat-brained simpleton. I would compare your attention span to that of a lone Skritt, but the Skritt does not deserve the insult. Okay, I’m joking, but seriously, you better not have just skipped down here.
Moving on.
I find myself at a loss for how to improve: Kits, Elixirs and Gadgets, as these are things I have much less familiarity with, and would like feedback regarding the changes above, before I hurl them into the turbulent sea of the Suggestions board.
Try using it on an actual enemy – I’ve used the detonation to ping-pong enemies back and forth, personally.
This is probably an effect of Elixir R, not the Healing Turret – Elixir R creates an area-of-effect circle wherein any downed (but not dead) player friendly to the user recovers something like 20% of their HP every pulse. If timed just right, the Engineer can use it just before they go down, so that they pop back up again like a jack-in-the-box.
There’s probably also something about Scope in there, yet they didn’t seem to know that problem existed until somebody said something about it on these boards.
Guess we’ll just have to hope they fix it in the next patch, then – they’ll probably break something else, of course, considering their track record. Maybe Accelerant-Packed Turrets will be accidentally replaced by a blast of confetti that heals any hostile it hits.
You read this far and still had to ask? It’s broken. Always has been, likely will be until they actually decide to buckle down and do something about the Engineer’s buglist and trait issues.
At least nobody’s tried to tell us that they’re working and we just can’t see it.
Since the recent changes to turrets, Metal Plating, Autotool Installation and Rifled Turret Barrels have all ceased functioning, as far as I can tell. They working for anybody else?
The reason they’re so susceptible to AoE is because they have piddly health.
You can insist that the hitbox is the biggest problem for them all you want, but in the end, it’s just one of many, and it’s not even the one that’ll keep people from using turrets to begin with.
Is more health/toughness really going to make a diffidence when turrets are sucking up every AoE with such big hit boxes? even when they are not in the AoE ring
If they can take more than one AoE, it’s an improvement over what we have now, regardless of hitbox. Aside from that, this suggestion involves introduction of overall scaling, including non-condition damage, something turrets are sorely lacking in at 80+, when every other skillset benefits from gear.
Of course, you also made the argument that the hitbox was the biggest problem in the thread about almost every single turret trait being nonfunctional.
The reason they’re so susceptible to AoE is because they have piddly health.
You can insist that the hitbox is the biggest problem for them all you want, but in the end, it’s just one of many, and it’s not even the one that’ll keep people from using turrets to begin with.
The goggles really are pretty underwhelming, even as stunbreakers – I might switch ’em out for the bomb kit, as you suggested, or maybe the Flame Turret, for the Smoke field.
So, I started a new engineer (my fourth in my time playing the game; it’s pretty much the only profession that I actually find interesting, despite its issues), hoping to maybe regain some of the optimism and liking of the game that I’ve lost after patch after patch of “so, we don’t really have a clue what we’re doing, so here’s an attempt at fixing something that doesn’t actually address the issues it has,” and I decided to branch out from turretmania.
This is the result: http://tinyurl.com/cwvc9he
Does it look terrible?
I doubt Scope was not reported using the bug report mechanisms. They still didn’t know that was actually broken, instead insisting that it just sucked. Seems like they just don’t read these boards, and it even shows in the way they’re moderated.
I agree with Raestloz; the inability to control the turrets, move them, or otherwise use them in a way that doesn’t go “this is my island, I really hope I don’t get moved away from here” or “I’m petrified that I won’t be able to rely on my turrets due to mobile combat; I’ll just stand here and hope not to get pulled or pushed. And that nobody has an area of effect attack. Or stealth when there’s furniture nearby.” is a pretty big mark against them.
Fixing the hitbox is pointless if nobody uses turrets because all the traits are nonfunctional.
It’s entirely possible that Static Shield letting you attack while using it is one of the few bugs that work in our favor that Anet hasn’t fixed. Overall, I’d even put this low on the list of Engineer’s Priority List of bugs to be fixed – we have one trait that’s never functioned (and the devs denied that this was the case, until people threw numbers in their faces on the sPvP board), turrets don’t work with anything but Deployable Turrets, and those’re just what I can think of at this exact instant.
I did pretty well (relatively speaking) as a kite in the Ascalonian Catacombs using: Flame Turret, Thumper Turret, and Throw Mine, with a P/S weapon set, and traited for a combination of turrets and mines. The toolbelt of Throw Mine served surprisingly well as a burst, too.
I’ve seen nothing regarding fixes to mortar bugs. Apparently, they managed to break everything about turrets again, besides – and the Mortar, technically, is a Turret.
I doubt this’ll get a hotfix – it’s not a Thief bug. Or an Elementalist change. Or an sPvP bug. It’s an Engineer bug, and they’ll ignore that it exists.
In my opinion, the problem is…well, here, I’ll explain it.
They don’t seem to listen when anybody that isn’t on the sPvP forums (or Thief profession board, perhaps, going by a comment in another thread) says anything. They didn’t know Scope was broken, and the only way that could be possible is complete and total ignorance of player response, as well as a lack of testing (which players are now doing for them, due to their ignorance of an issue). They can’t be bothered to so much as know what problems exist, much less acknowledge that they do to the playerbase (or at least our little section of it) and this is frustrating, to say the least. If anyone who was in charge of bugfixes knew about the problem before players threw it in their faces (on the sPvP forum, as opposed to the forum where an Engineer bug actually kittening gets talked about, more often than not, and rightly kitten so) complete with tests encompassing thousands of attacks, they didn’t tell anybody else – and that, if I’m not mistaken, tells me that somebody’s not doing their job, whether it’s the testers, the bugfixers or whoever tells the bugfixers about the bugs.
That paragraph. It’s a few things.
They probably switched the turrets without bothering to tell the traits about it. Normally, I’d probably go “Eh, it happens,” but this has just gotten stupid.
I agree with this, I really do – I’m glad to see somebody suggesting a possible method of scaling turrets, especially. However…
Anet can’t be reading these forums, or paying half a lick of mind to them if they do – the recent fiasco with Scope brought that much to light. I guess I’ll hope that if they happen to glance in, they see this idea.
They probably won’t read it unless it’s in sPvP – if you’ll notice, that’s where the Scope bug had to be posted before they responded.
We’re in a different situation every patch, and it always seems like it’s about to improve, but then they move on before they actually change anything that needs it, or change things enough to really make a difference.
Looks like now they’re going to rework signets and traits, but guess which class hasn’t got signets? Maybe they’ll improve our traits and maybe they won’t, but so far, their track record’s been pretty terrible regarding that particular section. They’ll have to start paying at least cursory attention to the forums before they can fix anything in any kind of meaningful way – less than twelve hours ago, they finally realized that Scope hasn’t been functional at all, as opposed to simply needing a boost, after several people stepped up and presented figures.
I thought a fix to Deployable Turrets was ‘just around the corner’ months before it ever hit – and then they broke it again.
I thought fixes to Turrets were ‘just around the corner’ from the time I realized they honestly kinda suck most of the time.
At this point, all I see ‘just around the corner’ is more clueless, hamhanded attempts to balance on the part of the devs.
I don’t like this. It would both be unfair (every single Engineer would have 28 skills and access to several kits regardless of other chosen skill) and too much like the Elementalist’s attunements.
To resolve this: Maybe give one Kit as a secondary weapon choice that doesn’t offer a Toolbelt skill, and allow other kits to be chosen on the Utility bar. Give swapping between the two an identical cooldown to that of weapon-switching, since that’s what it bloody well is. Full stop. There, Kit users get a free extra, non-Kit users get a freebie that they might never have looked at, and it’s not going to be 20 skills available with only a 5-second cooldown between each set of five.
If you were seriously going to try to make this thing work, you’d need a cooldown at least equivalent to the elementalist’s attunement swapping – I’m pretty sure that’s at 15 seconds, though it has been quite a while since I played my Elementalist (pretty sure I deleted them, come to think of it). You’d also need to nerf kitten everything into the ground to compensate for having 20 weapon skills, 4 utilities and 4 toolbelts – it’s just too bloody many skills to have available all at once. Then there’s the speed piano aspect.
As for skill ceilings: Sure, it might look high…but kits aren’t hard to use to begin with. Aside from that, you’ll end up establishing routine combinations, at which point muscle memory kicks in and you essentially end up playing Street Fighter. To not end up getting muscle-memory combinations, you’d have to somehow establish a way to make it so that no combination would be useful more than a little of the time, which just means that we’d end up with more RNG.
Seen the turret kit idea a few times. Never seems to gain much traction; I myself disagree with the idea because: That would leave us with more Kits than any other skill, I don’t like Elixirs or Gadgets enough to use them (except for Throw Mine, which is awesome), and I don’t like how much of the class revolves around Kits to begin with.
I’ve also seen (and expanded on) an idea that essentially lets each Turret be a bundle/kit on its own as a counter to the mobility issues – kind of like how you can pick up a Banner and run with it. That idea did…sort of okay. Had some people kittening about how it was comparable to something a Warrior skill did, though it would have been a more active variation.
Think I’ve also seen the Turret Field thing before, and I do like that – think it was framed as ‘Well, Turrets should be good for area denial, shouldn’t they, especially if they’re difficult to move with any kind of speed?’
As for the sentiment that nobody uses Turrets outside of starting area: I’d say something rude, but the post would be deleted wholesale because apparently there’s no ‘modify post’ function. Instead, I’ll point out that I use, and have used, Turrets from level 5 to level 80 – they’re less speed piano than Kits, more reliable than Elixirs, and just somehow have more oomph than Gadgets, at least in my opinion.
What I think should be done (all from a PvE standpoint):
- Autotool Installation should either be replaced by, or merged with, a trait that allows a 20% cooldown on Turrets – every single other skill type available to the Engineer has a trait of this type, some of them divided across several traits.
- Turrets should scale with everything on the user – Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality, in addition to what they’ve already got Turrets scaling to; they aren’t strong enough or tough enough to have the Turret of a naked kittening Turret Engineer be just as strong/tough as the same Engineer in Glass Cannon/Tank gear.
- Review and reconstruction of Turret Toolbelt skills, and/or a modification of the Toolbelt system in general (allowing all Toolbelt skills to be chosen independently of Utility); some Turret Toolbelt skills suck, and will suck unless the cooldown is reduced heavily or they’re made worth it.
- A general baseline improvement of Turret cooldown would be appreciated, both upon turret destruction and pick-up, as well as having the cooldown begin when the turret is placed instead of when it’s removed.
- Improvement of Turret AI is a must – at least enough to have them change target if the one they’re focusing on is Obstructed.
- Mobility could stand a thought – even if it’s just “Pick it up and walk it somewhere else,” like the Ghostbore Turrets in the story missions.
I’d suggest the following changes:
Ditch Autotool Installation. The 10% HP per 10 seconds just isn’t worth it considering how squishy they are to begin with (if a damage-focus enemy targets them, that 10% does nothing), or how often you’ll need to pick them up if you’re mobile. Instead, I’d suggest Power Shoes, Cloaking Device, Elite Supplies X or Energized Armor.
Consider exchanging one pistol for a shield; the defensive skills, I’ve found, are incredibly handy, more than making up for the lack of Blowtorch or Glue Shot – at least in PvE, though I’m uncertain as to its effectiveness in PvP. If you do switch one pistol for a shield, then maybe swap Autotool for the Shield trait instead. This would also cause you to have no reason to use the Forge rune, allowing you to fill that slot with something else – such as the Rune of the Afflicted or the Krait rune, to improve Bleed duration (considering Explosive Shot’s guaranteed Bleed, Sharpshooter and the Earth sigil’s on-crit bleed chances, this might be at least a little bit useful to get higher stacks), or the Necromancer’s, to improve Vitality slightly.
Last thing: The build really could use some more health; maybe try swapping the jewels for Rampager’s jewels to maintain the CD focus while also improving HP.
Feel free to disregard, of course – my playstyle may be very different from yours, despite being a Turret Engineer myself.
I don’t see the need for this idea, sorry.
Turrets mostly need their traits cleaned up, and I’m extremely disapointed they didn’t do this in the so called ‘turret patch’.
This would also resolve the issue pretty well – turret traits, as noted in other threads, can run 60 or 70 points, depending on whether you take Power Wrench or not, and of these traits, one of them (Deployable Turrets) was only functioning correctly for a month or two until they tried to improve turrets and broke it again in a different way, another (Autotool Installation) is uselessly low healing over too long a period, and the defensive trait (Metal-Plated Turrets) is both a must-have and underwhelming for a turret-user – it’s a must-have because otherwise turrets are as durable as a wisp of smoke, and it’s underwhelming because 30% less damage really isn’t all that much of a help when you’re fighting level 80/dungeon monsters.
As a result of the existence of at least one of the above traits, turrets don’t get something that Gadgets, Bombs, Grenades, Elixirs, Kits, Weapons, and Mines all get (some of the traits even reduce the cooldown of multiple things on that list) – a cooldown-reduction trait.
I don’t like this idea. I’ve occasionally considered how nice it would be to be able to just place more Rifle turrets (low cooldown and all), but inevitably gone “And then they’d nerf them into the ground. Or somebody would use three Thumpers or three Rockets and just cycle the overcharges and then they’d get everything else nerfed. Or three Flames, to cycle the overcharges while also constantly inflicting Burn. Nets to constantly dish out Stun and Immobilize.” Rifle is probably the only utility turret that wouldn’t end up being ridiculous in a set of three.
A trait to reduce Turret cooldown, and a general improvement of Turret effectiveness would be better, I think; with lower cooldowns, more turrets would be more easily usable (with a 20% reduction, Rocket and Thumper turrets would have a 40-second cooldown, Rifle and Healing an 18, Flame a 20, and Net Turret a 24) and with improved scaling (at least allowing them to scale off of all player stats, perhaps having all Turret attacks be treated as if they were done by the user in order to allow easy appraisal of turret effectiveness, use of on-crit traits with turrets, etcetera), possible improvement of baseline effectiveness and AI, they’d be just about taken care of.
I used to play a lot. When I do play GW2, it’s on my Engineer – my second Engineer, in fact. I even have a third waiting for me to be interested in playing the game again, who I might buy some gems for in order to level off of crafting.
Of course, for them to make it interesting for me to play the game again, they’ll have to actually improve things regarding the only profession I actually like playing, as irritatingly clunky as some of it is. They’ll have to make sure their patches actually function properly, too – none of this taking six months to fix one trait, and then taking one or two to break it all over again in a different way. To even the playing field, so I don’t remember the Warriors I’ve made (and then deleted because they were boring to play) and go “Man, they’d probably have gone through that just fine, so why can’t the class I actually like do that?”
So far, I’m thinking that this is only going to potentially be achieved by rebuilding the class entirely, balancing things against other classes without penalizing the Engineer for the illusory ‘versatility’ that the Engineer’s supposed to have, according to the class balance philosophy (or for this ‘utility’ they apparently mentioned regarding turrets), and either ditching or improving the Toolbelt; give it unique, interesting skills that make it worthy of being a class mechanic, or come up with something better, easier to balance (I blame our balance issues partly on the two-skills-for-the-price-of-one nature of the Toolbelt) and easier to use (or at least customizable, so Toolbelt skills can be selected to complement playstyle instead of being autoselected by the Utility bar). Maybe think about switching the Engineer to Heavy Armor and bring the Dervish in to fill out the Medium Armor tier.
I still play for a little while after each patch, just long enough to get an idea whether it’s functioning correctly or not, and to see if things feel more interesting than they used to.