Guild Wars 2

The longer they piddle around with balance changes, the longer they can put off actually fixing things. Overly cynical way of looking at it? Sure. They seem to be just shrugging and going “Well, we’ll get back to that” in regards to at least one bugged trait (Deployable Turrets) and one bugged skill (Rocket Boots – especially underwater).

These are suggestions that are likely somewhat silly and/or unrealistic, but could be interesting.

1: Custom Turrets: It would be interesting to be able to modify our turrets to suit our playstyle, beyond just using the same old set. Being able to switch out different types of ammo, different barrels, etcetera, would just be kinda neat, y’know?

2: Elite Turret: Don’t even talk to me about Mortar. No. It didn’t happen. There should be an Elite Turret that actually acts like a turret, such as, for example, firing on it’s friggin’ own, being able to picked up to reduce the cooldown, and having an Overcharge. Maybe there could be a few of them, offering different combinations of regular turrets: Close Combat could be a Flame Turret + Thumper Turret, Offense could be Rocket Turret + Rifle Turret, Support could be Healing Turret + Net Turret, etcetera, I guess.

3: It’d also be interesting to be able to equip turrets with sigils. No idea how to balance it, as part of me is going “It’d probably be best to keep it just the one on the main hand weapon…” and another part is going “But it’d be more interesting to have each turret have a different sigil.” Maybe have each turret be able to equip a sigil 20 levels lower than the user’s level?

The Engineer has a variety of issues, and this past patch has done little to address most of them; most of them, however, are not ones I have dealt with as a consequence of my playstyle choice.

See, I used to use Turrets. I say ‘used to’ because I now only use Kits, and that pisses me right the kitten off. Here’s a list of the various issues I’ve found Turrets to have, and how they might be addressed.

1: Turrets are weak. They can’t take a hit, and they deal subpar damage, requiring several to do the job of one kit. They scale only with player traits, ignoring gear bonuses; for a game which places such an emphasis on gear and the bonuses it provides, this is…irritating, to say the least. Ever watched a creature one-shot several turrets simultaneously? Go fight a Risen Knight with fully-traited Turrets. Go into a dungeon. Doesn’t matter how heavily invested in them you are, they’re tissue paper.
Suggestion: Have Turrets scale, even if to a reduced extent in light of their potential numbers (potentially: 1 Rocket, 2 Rifle, 2 Flame, 1 Net, 2 Healing, if Supply Crate is traited properly), to gear, including Vitality/Toughness enhancements.

2: Turrets are immobile. Well, freakin’ duh, they’re turrets – generally not things viewed as paragons of agility. However, they are both immobile and have long cooldowns, both on placement and overcharge. Sure, picking one up can reduce the cooldown by 25%; that’s still a long wait, in most cases, and if you happen to be separated from it, then you’re SOL to begin with. In a game where mobility is such a factor, this is problematic.
Suggestion: Reduce their cooldown time. Fixing Deployable Turrets would help a little as well, but it’s only useful for placing them. Perhaps change Deployable Turrets to a trait that gives them a movement mode, or add such a function? Or, more realistically – Autotool Installation is worthless. Why not Zoidberg slip it a bit of the ol’ 20% Cooldown Reduction to make it worth bothering with, even if that means discarding the 10% HP/10 sec Turret regen? Hell, maybe have the turret cooldown start upon placement of the turret, so if you have it out for long enough, you can blow it up and place a new one immediately?

3: Turrets have terrible AI. Seriously. Go find some furniture. Place a turret. Watch it destroy the furniture…and keep shooting at the space where it was, like it’s trying to kill the very concept of “that couch that was here a minute ago THAT I KILLED ‘CAUSE I’M A TURRET and that’s what I do. Oh, what, something’s killing you? That, uh, that sucks, bro. Did you see me kill that couch?”
Suggestion: Give the user some way to refocus Turrets, or improve the AI. Preferably both.

And thus ends the ‘This is actually problematic’ section. I’m not even going to comment on the various bugged traits (like Accelerant-Packed Turrets, basically every Explosives trait that could or should be triggered by Turrets, or Deployable Turrets) except to mention that I’m not going to talk about them. They don’t need to be talked about; they need to be fixed. Moving on.

Except that he’s not proposing any -removal- of content, just a different scale of it.

As someone who similarly dislikes grouping up with randoms for dungeons, events, etcetera, I made a similar suggestion in the Wintersday boards.

Perhaps having Holiday Dungeons scale to the group would be better, though – if one person goes in, it should be challenging, but soloable, if two people go in, it should be challenging, but duoable, and so forth? (No, soloable and duoable are not words.)

WithoutAssumption.7936:

If you’re really feeling helpful and have a computer that can handle recording, you could even post videos of mobs one-shotting turrets, and maybe they’ll get some needed fixes too.

I’ll do this on my next day off (or sooner). I’ll even trait Turrets again, before going to find a Risen Knight to one-shot all of them.

Edit: Have acquired video capture software, will travel probably do this in a little while.

Edit edit: Or I would have, except I can’t find Risen Knights, for some reason.

Then try a different build; HGH isn’t -necessary.- I made it to 80 using nothing but Turrets – you know, those things that’re kind of like gimpy kits that only have two attacks, can’t move, don’t scale with gear, die in a few hits and will almost certainly never get sigils at all? It might not have been easy, or the best build ever, but it worked.

I think it reflects a set amount of damage, based on level.

I’m tired of the ‘sex sells’ philosophy, and find it a trifle ridiculous that females get saddled with cleavage armor and chainmail bikinis while males, in the same armor type, are walls of metal. Still, it’s a preference some people have; I think they should just put a client-side option for it in, so each person can see the armor as they want.

Of course, if you want to be satirical, you could always look at it as “Women are obviously much more durable than men – look! They don’t even need armor! That one just deflected an arrow with her breasts! Let’s see a man do that with his pecs.”

That…could maybe, just maybe, be what they were thinking of, then – still doesn’t seem right. Can’t be -that- strong.

Raine.1394:

It would be interesting to see a distribution of professions played over time and see the possible effect patches have on them. I’d be willing to bet you would see fewer professions being played due to their “crushed” balancing rather than anything approaching a more even distribution. Not saying even is possible, but more even would be the goal of profession balance, i.e., all professions remain viable in PvE and PvP.

I wonder if there’s a way to get, say, a timeline chart, regarding the number of people playing each profession, marked at the time of each patch? Anet’re probably the only ones with the data to do so, unless somebody else’s been keeping track…

Crafting, maybe, to get a few more levels? It’s not too hard to get the materials if you run through lowbie areas, gathering T1 items, and sell them en masse.

Do kits get two sigils if you’re dual-wielding Sigil’d weapons? If so, that’s probably the only thing I’ve heard of that might possibly explain the Grenade Kit’s nerf.

I like playing with people I know. I don’t particularly enjoy playing with random groups. I’d still like to be able to play Holiday events and have fun if people I know aren’t around, without having to join up with a random group or brace myself for a slog, neither of which I find particularly fun.

I actually got through eight of the eighteen malfunctioning turrets in the event before quitting, in light of the likelihood that there was A ) a boss and B ) the boss would hit harder than the Veteran Skritt that could already keep me running at low health.

Would’ve done the event with my girlfriend, but she had to go to work a little after we started – we had just enough time to do the tar elemental bit. Would do it later, but I work nights and she works days; when she gets home, I will have already left for work.

Oh, wait, duh. Somehow thought that was referring to the turrets. My bad. Previous post now amended to acknowledge being a kitten. Meow.

I’m thinking of slapping a Sigil of Water on my Flamethrower kit, for slightly greater survivability and group healing. Elixir Gun would also benefit, depending on where the Sigil of Water heal is centered.

Tolmos.8395:

Engineer turrets still need AI love, or at least a hotkey to focus fire them. In some pve matches (modniir ulgoth and the dragon in sparkfly fen, for example), they are 100% worthless. In the modniir fight they target invulnerable air elementals, ignoring the boss entirely, and in the dragon fight they will not target the dragon at all. Even if nothing else is on the field, they will simply idle rather than shoot it.

They need more than AI love – they need more ability to take hits and better damage. It’d be nice if they’d at least scale with gear, considering how much of a part of the game gear is, but they don’t. Shouldn’t need three turrets to match one Flamethrower Kit.

Oh, is the boss not some ludicrously tough thing? I know the random Skritt (particularly the Veterans, but they at least were Veterans) were giving my level 80 Engineer trouble, and that was before the toys went Chucky.

I never noticed my Turrets offering much in the way of a distraction for PvE enemies. Might’ve had something to do with them being crushed in moments, with long cooldowns keeping me from placing them again, or with them just being straight-up ignored by the majority of things. I distinctly remember kiting event bosses through groups of my Turrets (specifically, the Harathi Warlord or whatever it is; can’t remember the name very well), with the boss completely ignoring every other player involved in the battle, and my turrets, to chase me down.

Also: Flame Turret doesn’t have a knockback. It has a Smoke Field overcharge that doubles as a Blind. Thumper turret has a knockback, but it’s on a bit more of a cooldown than fifteen seconds. (I’m a kitten, this section used to claim inaccuracy regarding Flamethrower right here, if anybody is wondering why I’m bothering to say this. That’s right.)

What I’m asking for is not for new content to be single-player – it’s for it to offer a single-player option, or to scale with the number of people. Currently, Holiday events seem to emphasize group play more than anything, to the point where it’s borderline impossible to do them alone – and a slog through hordes to find out that the boss is just too much.

I know a lot of people like playing in big groups, or going and just joining a random party – I just don’t. I prefer to group up with people I know (generally met elsewhere, or through mutual acquaintances), and if they aren’t around, then I’d still like to be able to do events like Holiday things without joining group #5632, -and- have fun. I’m also a big fan of more options, thus my suggestion of having things like this scale.

I realize that this is perhaps a strange issue to have as far as an MMO goes; it just so happens that I am terrible with people, for a variety of reasons I’m just not going to go into, but like playing games.

Edit: Also, when I say “They make it take forever?” I’m not being a speed-snob, if there is such a thing. I actually like taking my time and examining things. I just happen to also find “Now go destroy eighteen turrets, in the midst of hordes of enemies,” incredibly uninteresting after the first, I don’t know, five? Doesn’t matter if there’s five people in the group or just me – hordes of enemies and a high objective count doesn’t seem like fun, just padding.

Maybe they’re trying to walk all the Engineer stuff down to the level of Turrets, so people will quit using the class and they can replace it with something they’re more enthused about. </caricature>

Speaking of Turrets, how long has it been that Deployable Turrets has failed to function for, now? How long have they targeted destroyed objects? Been tissue-paper? The only thing I’ve heard on the subject of Deployable Turrets was that they apparently have no idea what’s causing the issue, and I’ve heard nothing explaining why Turrets in general are crap.

And of unaddressed bugs: I didn’t use the Rocket Boots a whole lot, admittedly, especially underwater, but I can’t help but be curious when they’re going to re-enable them.

But at least underwater combat can have combos now. Great.

That’s it. Just…holiday events are a pain in the donkey, if you don’t particularly like joining up with a random group of people and your guildies are offline. Not saying they’re bad, or unenjoyable; I’m sure the instances are more fun if you have a group, or don’t mind hopping in with a random group.

As it is, I’m finding Toymaker Tixx’s thing in the Grove honestly kind of boring – hordes of enemies and double-digit objectives don’t make a segment fun. They make it take forever – doubly so if, for example, you started with help, and then the help had to head to work (poor planning on our parts, I’ll admit).

I’d like to see a holiday event that works more like a Personal Story section than a dungeon, or perhaps a holiday event that adapts depending on how many people are in the group. Anybody else?

Yeah, didn’t say it was a particularly good explanation; they’re just the points about it that I could guess to be a factor.

Hey, at least Kit effects scale with gear – as somebody who used to use Turrets just about exclusively, the difference is massive. And now they have Sigils, to make them further more useful than Turrets.

I wish I could be more enthused about this patch, but the best I can manage is an “About time.”

Edit: As for the people commenting on Grenade’s damage being nerfed to balance against kits – Grenade drops multiple attacks at a time, giving it more chances to trigger a Sigil or more attacks that will benefit from said Sigil. Without Grenadier, it still has greater range than an Engineer’s Rifle or Pistol, and with Grenadier, it has the same range as a Mortar traited with Rifled Turret Barrels. I don’t know if that makes the damage reduction necessary, but it’s what I can see as possibly being the explanation.

I think he’s referring to turrets as far as the ‘staying in one locale or eat a bad cooldown’ thing goes – which is funny, because last time I checked, turrets kinda sucked…and this is coming from somebody who almost exclusively used them from the time he could get them to 80 and onward, only switching to kits upon getting to Orr and watching a Risen Knight one-shot four turrets simultaneously. Not ‘very good’ abilities at all, unless you can manage to get one regular mook to run into a mob of them.

Yes, but I try to avoid getting my hopes up when patches come around, after the ‘thirty bullet points for Engineers’ thing. If turrets get buffed, good, but I’m not going to go around going “Yeah! They might do something about them!” or anything.

Peters has said something about HGH possibly getting a boost, but I don’t think he’s said anything about turrets. Somebody would’ve said something, I’d like to think.

Let’s not get too excited about the patch yet. We’ll already probably be going “Well, that was pointless.” or whining about getting nerfed, if previous patches are any indication, without having everyone getting hyped up about it. Admittedly, having a staff member actually say -anything- in these parts is rare, but it’s not really much to celebrate.

I’d like Turrets to scale with gear – it honestly kinda pisses me off that I bothered crafting my gear, even to the point of making Exotics, and could be going completely naked into every situation with no difference in the power, etcetera, of my skills, aside from the layout of my traits. Even Kits, the thing that people constantly bring up not getting bonuses from sigils, or weapon stats, scale with your total stats, while Turrets function entirely off of traits (not that they get sigil bonuses or weapon stat bonuses) – and the difference is clear, even in the potential playstyles involved in the use of each. Kit Engineers can go toe-to-toe; Turret Engineers get the hell out of town and hope their turrets can forget they’re tissue paper long enough to be distracting, or have to put on one hell of an acrobatic pyroshow to fight just about anything level-appropriate, if the enemy doesn’t just wave their hand and erase the turrets to begin with.

Since Deployable Turrets only working with two is a bug, I figure they’ll eventually figure it out (though at this point I’m wondering if they’re having to rewrite all code involved), and will not mention it further.

I’d also like for them to do something about Fast-Acting Elixirs – either make it stack with Tools Trait cooldown reduction and Fireforged Trigger, or take the Elixir tag off of Elixir Toolbelt skills and the Elixir Gun’s Elixir skills.

On Elixirs: The unpredictability of so many of them is incredibly irritating to me. I’m big on having a basic plan of action, even if it’s very loose, and having to plan around “Well, uh, I guess I can hope this does this effect, and not this one” makes having one difficult due to the number of “But if I get this instead of this, what next? And if…?” issues. Something involving context sensitive buffs might be interesting, probably based on profession type – soldier, adventurer, or scholar.

An Elite for each type of skill the Engineer possesses (Gadget, Elixir, Turret, Kit) of both the 10-point and 30-point varieties would also be nice, but probably a terrible idea, considering the amount of bugs that would inevitably crop up. (I don’t even consider the Mortar to be a proper Turret, either – it’s a gimpy Kit that makes you stand still. The best use for it is to place it, use #5, get out of it while it’s firing, and ignore that it exists thereafter – especially if you’ve got grenades, since apparently a Mortar and your throwing arm are evenly matched. Beef it up, automate it, or get it out and give us one that isn’t a joke.)

Some more Elite skills being usable underwater would also be nice – more underwater skills in general, really.

On the subject of underwater combat and the Engineer: I’d also like there to be a different set of toolbelt skills for Elixirs, at least. As they stand, trying to use an Elixir on an ally is difficult, to say the least, if in deep water, and a pain in the kitten in shallow (what with having to unlock off an enemy, aim at the ground near them and hope they get the bright idea to stay still). Perhaps some sort of cloud dispersal, either centered on the Engineer or special-targeted to fly toward the ally nearest the target before detonating upon contact.

Yeah, there’s just not a lot of ‘elegant’ fixes for ‘well, this thing should, according to what I can see, affect these traits, and does not; if it were to affect these traits, thus overlapping with some other traits, the issue of cooldown-reduction stacking needs to be addressed, but how?’

Then again, I do tend to overthink things; any ideas?

Part of what I’m looking forward to with the Sorrow’s Embrace armor – helmet looks like a post-apocalyptic filtration helmet or something.

Cooking and Jeweling are the only crafts I’ve tried that break better than even – Cooking, because most of the things involved work from nodes or karma, and Jeweling, because people will buy the puppy out of some Ruby Bling.

There’s a few other issues that make turrets irritating to use, but AI is one of the more frustrating ones.

Especially when they shoot furniture that’s already been destroyed.

As for them fixing it already: Yeah, that and the various buggy traits, underwater Rocket Boots…basically everything but the Explosives, which seem to have actually worked, somehow. I figure the rest of the stuff should be in sometime, oh, March-ish.

…and it would be awesomelarious if the gas mask helmet caused a secondary effect of muffling all the stuff the wearer says.

What I used up to 80: Turrets. Nothing but. Great for farming if traited properly, simply because you can do something else and just check back and loot once in a while, but buggy traits (particularly Deployable Turrets (doesn’t deploy most turrets) and Accelerant-Packed Turrets (Turret explosions/detonations don’t activate Explosives traits)) and lack of scaling (Turrets scale only with traits and level, ignoring all other bonuses – a naked Turret Engineer is just as capable of fighting using nothing but Turrets as one in level 80 Exotic armor) drove me to switch to kits.

Right now, I’m using: 0E/30F/20I/20A/0T, specced for use of Elixirs, Elixir Gun and Flamethrower, with Elixirs H and B, with my Elite skill varying depending on my mood; currently, it’s the Asura D-Series Golem, but I’ve tried (and found a use for) each and every Elite skill I currently possess (all of them but Mistfire Wolves). As far as gear goes, I stick to tanky; I’m a bit of an aggromagnet, even with this build, so it’s important to be hard to kill.

I’ve also run a few areas with Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, and Throw Mine (specced accordingly – pretty much the same, anyway, except the 30 points in Firearms is in Explosives instead); tends to work best in lower-level areas, from what I’ve seen. Will likely try both when I eventually run a dungeon.

Unsure of how useful this will be in dungeons, though – the current design of dungeons has left me disliking them, but one of these days, I’m going to have to run Sorrow’s Embrace three times a day (once on each path) for ten days. Should be a fairly good data sample.

On a similar note, I’d dig a gas mask helmet.

Now that I’ve gotten Jeweler up to 380, I’m starting to have to make rings with three sets of five gems apiece – and it’s got me thinking.

How hilarious would it be if the materials used in crafting didn’t just poof off into the land of the aesthetically unimportant? You’d be able to spot high-crafting characters by their ball of insignia-encrusted armor (and tendency to roll haplessly down hills), ludicrously titanic inscription-covered weapons (they could barely move), their rings, covered with so many gems they’d have to rig up systems of levers to be able to use their ridiculous cannonrifles, their necklaces – of proportions which explain why Flava Flav wore that gigantic clock (he was a GW2 player from the future) – and, last but not least, their earrings, so huge they alternately prop up, and pull down, the head (if they don’t just rip the ears off).

I almost wonder where it all goes.

Wow, didn’t realize how long it took me to work out the Fast-Acting Elixir stuff. Anyway: Yeah, tried to focus on function.

I’m going to not comment on the bugged traits, just because they’d be too easy.

Rifled Turret Barrels: Why does this increase the range of the Mortar, while Elite Supplies does not? Also, why does it increase the range of the Mortar to 1500 (on par with traited Grenade kit) and not further? It’s an immobile support platform with mediocre power except for the one random-spread attack; it needs more range, if nothing else.

Grenadier/Rifled Barrels: Grenade kit, untraited, has the range of a Rifle, traited. What kind of super throwing arm does the Engineer have that they can lob grenades farther than they can shoot? I’d probably swap the base ranges of the weapon kit and weapons, really, and leave the traits be on this one.

Fast-Acting Elixirs: If it’s not going to affect everything marked with the Elixir tag, then take the freakin’ tag off (my preferred solution, as it’s less likely to lead to yet more rebalances and nerfs). If there’s concern about balance with the thing stacking, then clarify that it won’t stack, or apply a diminishing return, either by applying each reduction in sequence or halving all after the first/largest. Using Elixir B’s toolbelt skill as example, here’s how that could work:

Base Cooldown: 20 sec
Tools Trait reductions at 10/20/30 points applied: 18/16/14
Fast-Acting Elixir reduction applied simultaneously (for 30/40/50 total): 14/12/10
Tools Trait and F-AE reductions applied sequentially (starting with highest reduction): 14.4/12.8/11.2
TT&F-AE reductions applied with diminishing returns: 15.2/14.4/12.6

If any stacking is used, I’d like the diminishing return type more, simply because it’s less likely to unbalance things; it’s worth noting, though, that whatever way it could be chosen to work, the Elixir Gun’s skills would also have to be considered.
Elixir Gun 2’s cooldown could be as low as 3 seconds, or as high as 3.6, Elixir Gun 4’s cooldown could be as low as 9 seconds, or as high as 10.6, and Elixir Gun 5’s cooldown could be as low as 12 seconds, or as high as 14.4 (if it were affected by Fireforged Trigger to begin with – countdown merely starts at 15, jumps back up to 19 after counting to 14, and then counts down as normal when Fireforged Trigger is active).

Also: Elite Supplies. If it doesn’t increase the Mortar’s range, it shouldn’t say it does – just like Rifled Turret Barrels should mention that the Mortar counts.

I’ve not managed to complete it once yet, due to the disconnection issues. There’s also a lot of lag. No issues anywhere else in the game, either.

On a related note, regarding Rocket Boots:

Anybody else notice that they still haven’t reenabled them underwater? They turn them off to try to figure out what’s making people zoom into the sky on occasion while using them, they still haven’t reenabled them – have they still not figured it out?

On the subject of mobile turrets: I’d kinda like an Elite Turret that’s actually, y’know, a Turret, as opposed to the Mortar. Perhaps that could be the Mobile Turret – some sort of mobile utility platform with variations on the abilities of of the other turrets, perhaps, or a skill that supports turrets by causing all turrets under the control of the Engineer to gain mobility as long as it’s active, and various other minor improvements.

I’d suggest multiple modes for the first version, but that might be a bit much. Of course, the other thing I’m suggesting is basically Super Mode for Turrets…

Maybe not have them scale as well to stats as the player’s other skills, considering the potential for various (up to…six or so, with Elite Supplies X, including the player) sources of damage – but a Turret Engineer might as well be naked, for all the good their gear does their skills.

Perhaps, to start with, try having turrets scale to non-damage stats like Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power, and Defense – yes, Defense, from armor, because not everyone is going to end up with Toughness/Vitality gear. By making them harder to kill, it’d increase their overall usefulness, and maybe mitigate the other issues – aside from Cooldown, which only really makes sense to be as high as it is for the high-damage turrets.

Edit: In addition, it’s perhaps worth considering that, with a traited Grenade Kit (with Bomb Kit and Throw Mine as the other two utilities, and Mortar as my Elite), I’ve been able to repeatedly solo the Champion Spider Queen in Metrica Province in under five minutes each time, while trying to do the same with Turrets (various configurations) took maybe about twenty minutes to get her down to half health.

If the intent of turrets being so weak in comparison to the Engineer’s kits is to prevent farming, it’s ironically counterproductive, what with farming becoming their only use aside from control; I feel like there’s something else going on, and that they’re not supposed to be this weak, but they’re not likely to get around to fixing the bugs for another few months, some time after they’ve rebalanced the kits some more.

Not sure if I particularly like the idea of having my turrets be eliminated every time I used the Overcharge – as they currently stand, Overcharging is one of the few things they’re really good for. Considering that turrets don’t scale with gear/total player stats, I’d really rather they try making them do so, and -then- figure out if they need to work on them more – the less radical a change, the better, or so it seems to me.

Oh, and fix the freakin’ trait bugs – with a traited Grenade Kit, it’s easy to get 25 stacks of Vulnerability onto an enemy, causing an additional 25% damage from anybody hitting that particular enemy, on top of dealing 10% of extra damage. The Rocket Turret should receive the ability to cause Vulnerability and the 10% damage boost, as it uses explosives, as well as turrets affected by Accelerant-Packed Turrets, but they don’t, just as an example.

In PvE, Deployable Turrets functions as follows:
Healing Turret is Deployable, Healing Turret Toolbelt is replaced by non-Deployable Healing Turret.
Rocket Turret is Deployable, Rocket Turret Toolbelt remains Rocket.
No other turret is Deployable at all, and the Toolbelt skills thereof are unaffected.

That’s precisely one turret it actually functions -properly- with (Rocket Turret), one turret that it only functions half-way with (Healing Turret), and four turrets I consider it to not work at all with (as the turret remains unDeployable, regardless of toolbelt status).

In PvP, apparently, it functions better. Far as I’ve heard, the same code is used in both places, so they’re not sure what’s going on with it.

Turrets scale with traits – Explosives, for example, will increase the damage dealt by all turrets and improve the duration of the Net Turret. They do not gain bonuses from equipment.

Which kit you use will likely influence/depend on which turret you use to some extent. For example, if you’re using a Bomb kit, the Thumper Turret would let you increase the damage in a particular spot by a decent amount, while the Net Turret could immobilize targets for the Grenade kit. The Rifle Turret’s toolbelt is especially handy if you inflict a lot of Vulnerability, such as with enough points in Explosives, to say nothing of the Rifle Turret itself.

My Engineer, at level 80, traited into Inventions, with Knight’s Emblazoned Leather (Exotic Leather Armor) and a Knight’s Pearl Blunderbuss (Exotic Rifle) has 1,778 Toughness, and 16,232 HP – they’re in Break On Touch category on that math thing.

Seriously need some more Vitality.

Then they could change the trait into a cooldown-reduction trait or something. Never said making them scale wouldn’t possibly require a bit of reworking the traits – which need reworked/fixed to begin with, what with the various bugged/inaccurate/ineffective traits. Accelerant-Packed Turrets doesn’t trigger Explosives traits, Deployable Turrets only works 25% of the way in PvE, Elite Supplies says it boosts the range of Mortar (the only manned turret) and doesn’t, etcetera.

Point is, right now they’re made of tissue paper, and do too little damage, as they scale only with level and traits – a completely buck-naked Engineer with Turrets, traited for Power, will see better damage from the Rifle Turret, at least, than the same Engineer, armored in the best gear, with no trait points spent.

They don’t scale with gear, but everything else does – what’s the point?

Certainly explains why switching to kits felt like Easy Mode.

As somebody who, until recently, almost exclusively used turrets: I’d like for them to scale across the board with player stats. Damage, Health, Defense, Healing Power, Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Precision – Turrets need a boost, at the very least in comparison with kits. The easiest way would be to make them scale, just as kits do – with player stats.

That 30% less damage per attack the turrets take when traited? I’ve had my turrets be disposed of instantly by the Risen Knights in Orr’s spread projectiles, while using that trait. It’s even worse in dungeons, where I’ve had eight turrets at a time be erased by a single AoE attack from one of the hounds in Twilight Arbor.

Cooldown also needs to be worked on; perhaps Autotool Installation should be used to reduce cooldowns (easier to thematically link, as well as generally useless for a mobile character who doesn’t leave turrets down for more than ten or twenty seconds) at a rate consistent with the other cooldown reduction traits: 20%, whether the turret is destroyed or retrieved.

Until they give turrets a boost, I’ll use them for farming…and kits for fighting.

Possible setups, untraited, from what I can figure out:
Healing: Elixir H/Healing Turret
Utilities:Throw Mine (AoE circles, one with knockback), Slick Shoes (Knockdown, mobility), Elixir C (Condition removal)
Elite: Supply Crate (drops a crate with turrets and medkits, stuns on impact)

With traits, more flexibility in choice of elixir; could trait Cleaning Solution 409 and use Elixir B instead of C – or, if they were an Asura, Technobabble for a daze, using Elixir H for condition removal. Supply Crate can be traited to include a Flame, Net, Rifle, and Healing turret set.

Durability’s probably from traiting Toughness or Vitality, then wearing gear to emphasize. There’s a few traits that increase defense, as well, usually by 5% or so from one stat into another.

I’ve been farming a particular bit of Cursed Shore (specifically, the beach near Rotbeard’s ship) for a while on my Engineer, using a bunch of turrets. Only really check when I hear an unusual amount of turret activity, loot the doubledead, and return to doing anything else.

Don’t really like Orr, though. It might be the way that I blitzed through it to try to get to where I am, but it just feels…dense. There’s a lot of enemies, which makes sense – but their respawn is what causes issues for me, just as it does in most other zones. If I get swarmed, I stay swarmed, simply because more enemies spawned. Kinda feels like the Orr zones are meant to be zerged more than most other areas, overall.