I made a ranger myself. Needless to say, I enjoy playing it a lot. (Engineer main)
I’m walking around the lower level areas and there are rangers everywhere.
I know there will be a lot more people due to mega servers but in a single day, I’ve counted:
30+ rangers
few engineers, warriors, guardians
like 1-2 of the other classes
So what happened?
If you used rifle turret pre-patch, then actually yes, they do fire slower than pre-patch.
The reason is because their firing rate was actually 50% faster due to the overcharge bug.
Because it doesn’t do it anymore, their normal attack rate is much slower but is intended.
Howdy folks! Dancing monkery here, #5286th engi in NA and worlds Last rank 80! With a 100% Win ratio against Vee Wee in Combat !!!
LOL I didn’t think you would keep that…
Surprisingly, a lot of people do not know that coated bullets allows the #1 to do double damage.
I guess there can be new things with the experimental turrets trait, sure, but you will be lacking in a lot of other areas if you go that far to make it worth it.
Infinite protection is not worth it you say? Perma 6 stacks of might when you drop Flame turret and Supply crate is not worth it?
I think I’ll just give up as well because frankly it isn’t worth.
I love the reading ability of people…
You will be lacking in a lot of other areas if you go that far to make it worth it. Such as damage, active utilities, conditions, etc. Where did I say it experimental turrets were worthless?
The biggest problem is not the damage, but the fact there is no counter play to it.
If you block, dodge, or blind it through, it does not break stealth, thus letting the thief get away with it, which makes no sense.
Maybe the hitbox fix is actually having the anticipated survivability improvement effect.
Bingo.
This, by far, was the #1 fix for me.
The problem was that EVERYTHING hit the turret. Even things not aimed at them. Now it properly gets hit when it should be getting hit.
i like the turrets
just not how i do SO MUCH less damage with out the turrets
90% percentile opinion.
Nades, bomb, power rifle, FT, are decent damage dealers.
The thing with full zerker engineer is that we have more CC out of everyone for a zerker, hence why so many people say engineers are pretty good for PvP.
In PvE, CC isn’t that helpful on a regular basis.
Turrets will, and should not, ever be a superior source of damage. That’s not what they are for.
The only times I see my turrets “die in 1 hit” is when I specifically place them in front of something or a huge boss AoE hits them.
Gadgets are pretty nice, Turrets are ‘fixed’ (Many minor issues and some big ones with traits), etc.
Anything that relies on critical damage does less damage, but still hurt like hell.
Um…
I think bombs and nades are still superior in terms of practical damage/utility.
Honestly, turrets suddenly becoming popular will die out really fast.
Damage (which actually is a lot lower due to Rifle Turret fix, see the overcharge bug), Health, Mobility, all remain the same. Now they have 1-2 new gimmicks, both which last for a very short time.
People will soon remember what turrets are actually like and then go back to what they usually ran before. Unless they are that dedicated, then good luck to you.
As for specifically decap engies, Bomb, Flamethrower, and thumper turret will always be the best options. Using turret knockbacks for decapping, most of the time, does not work when you really need it since they have to be near the turrets. Anyone that stays a short distance away from them makes that knockback useless.
I guess there can be new things with the experimental turrets trait, sure, but you will be lacking in a lot of other areas if you go that far to make it worth it.
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.
Thank you sir, so would turrets now be more worthwhile to use in pve berserk meta for increasing dps?
I’ve been using berserk turrets in PvE for a long time before the patch. It had moderately high dps but the key feature of turrets is control and CC.
If you are trying to reach high damage and want to use turrets, turrets are not for you.
That combo wouldnt really work in an actual fight though since you started off with battering ram. The golem didnt get knockbacked but a player would.
Half of it is ranged, ending with blunderbuss and jump shot.
On a side note, a little bit more damage can be done if you place rifle turret before hand. Detonating the turret results in a static discharge.
Slightly unrelated to turrets:
1) My Synaptic Overload is proccing when I start shooting into the mystic forge. lol?
Did turrets get their health buffed to match the buff that every other summon got a few patches ago?
lolno
Seriously if anyone thought turrets were suddenly going to be a magical second player at your side, you will be sorrily mistaken.
Its just now that they are working as intended: which is very good!
I have tested some things about the turrets so far, below is a list of (un)interesting things I noticed:
1) Graphics bug with the Fortified Turrets. If you pick up the turret as the shield goes up, the shield stays. Not sure if the shield still works at that point, but it looks like it doesn’t.
2) Shields do not go up immediately. I assume its a feature, as it does take turrets a split moment to start shooting anyway. It goes up after 0.5 seconds of being deployed.
3) Turrets do in fact have been fixed (from what it looks like). Yay! Overcharges work as intended, tooltips are cleaned up.
4) There is no special effect for the Experimental Turrets. It just “happens”. But it works as intended for sure. Firing rates “feel” correct, but exact numbers need to be taken first.
5) The reflective shields on Fortified Turrets work both ways, much like the mesmer’s dome.
6) Blast finishers from blowing up turrets is still centered on your position. I assume at this point it is a feature, and a good one too imo.
7) Bug?: Rocket Turret, although it says it benefits from traits that improves explosives, does not get a damage boost, cool down reduction, or anything. The toolbelt skill does.
The biggest explosion radius trait also doesn’t work with either.
8) Due to the overcharge “fix” for turrets, if you were used to using them right before they landed, this will mess with you. You have to hit the skill AFTER it lands, which can suck if the turret fires right away and misses the overcharge skill.
Edit:
9) Flame and Thumper turret Overcharge AOE are affected by rifle barred turrets. (I believe before it wasn’t)
10)Bug?: Thumper Turret Overcharge can activate up to two times before going back to normal.
(edited by WEXXES.2378)
Because they were too useful? Make warriors look bad? make too much sense?
Because they broke the game.
It caused people to get stuck (in which I think they had to re-log or waypoint, it wasn’t just a “oh I blocked your pathing” issue) , it was hella buggy, and sometimes you were able to access areas you normally shouldn’t.
Did people forget how buggy turrets were at the beginning?
Maybe it was designed to do more damage upfront than at a distance?
We actually did have collision on turrets way back.
It was removed for various reasons.
Keep in mind that they also said they wanted not to ruin the current precursor market so one can really assume that crafting them will be quite pricey
800 gold worth of Icy Runestones
I have never understood why some people feel the need to come on a game forum and explain the reasons why they have quit and/or gotten tired of a mmorpg.
Feedback in hopes of change for later.
Which rarely happens, but it does when it does.
But choosing the pistol gives you an insta blind, a combo finisher and a double line stun.
Pistol / Shield
Pistols do really bad damage. Unfortunately the devs actually feel they have to do bad damage to compensate for our 1s weapon swap on kits. It really appears from the dev statements on the subject, that they want you to use at least one kit. I do not like their philosophy on this matter, but it is an unfortunate philosophy they have.
You know… if the devs really wanted it that way…
Why didn’t they make our class skill a kit instead of a tool belt?
What’s all this sarcasm and bashing for?
Hey OP we really should do it. I’ll use elixir gun cause someone told me the autoattack is very good. How about arah p4? All turret engi dps/support/crit tank builds?
That sarcasm.
(edited by WEXXES.2378)
that might say more about dungeons than about turrets…………
I use the same build in PvE, sPvP, WvW, and fractals.
Perhaps you should say this after the upcoming patch when turrets may actually be useful.
Or maybe you’re just a masochist.
But perhaps a before and after comparison for turret builds would be somewhat useful.
Nope, ran several dungeons today. Same as always. A breeze through them all no matter what party comp.
I use 4 turrets and mortar.
Lets run a dungeon or something together.
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).
I think the devs intended turrets to be like that, and if you happen to leave them out its just extra damage.
Even if it was a reserve mine, those things can do quite a bit of damage (2-2.5k crits)
Some skills even have specific condition removals for non-harmful conditions (Crippe, Chill, Immobilize).
So no.
I’m pretty sure someone here has logged each change they are either planning to make or speculated to make for the feature pack.
Mind sharing?
Play what you know best and enjoy.
If you want the best, just nades or something….
I’m seeing all this stuff about turrets and stuff lately, what’s all that about? Turrets still useless?
Anyway, happy that they fixed some bugs with them, still need some work though.
…I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but honestly, I can’t really…
Look, just tell me if there’s any new Turret bugs.
As far as it goes with the list here, haven’t discovered any.
Also confirmed how AoE targeting works. Last target hit (literally, meaning farthest enemy away from center of AoE) will be the turret priority target.
Just some clarifications and additions:
For the AoE targeting, it seems it will priortize the LAST target hit in an AoE or ‘chained’ attack (Static Discharge’s last hit enemy, for example, or for more clarification, it bounces 2 times. The 3rd hit will be the priority for turrets). Expect the furthest target away from the AoE to be the priority.
The damage numbers for the turrets are incorrect for pretty much…all of them… in tooltip only. Note that the actual damage they do is still the same.
Rocket Turret is the one that had its damage changed. While it no longer applies burning, it is doing about 1,400+ damage per shot.
Rocket Turret’s Toolbelt got a huge buff and nerf. The damage is significantly higher (Pretty much the same as Big ’Ol Bomb now, my critical hits with it can go up to 4k+), the range is 1,500, the radius is 240 (still the same), hits multiple targets now (used to only hit one target only). The catch? The arc is the same as the overcharge of Rocket Turret, same with the traveling speed of the rocket. Its also ground targeted now, so no more fire and forget.
Again with the health on turrets: Immune to conditions, can be placed out of reach of enemies making it take 0 from melee mobs forever > 71% more health
Turret Size… a bit hard to tell. I’ve had a guardian do whirling wrath right in the middle of supply crate and not hit all my turrets for the first time ever (flame turret was out of reach!). Needs testing.
I don’t know what K-style is, or Skiing, or Orb Walking, but Wave Dashing and Rocket Jumping are exploits, not simply the result of bugs, as far as I’m aware, and I figure the rest probably follow the same pattern of “I can do this thing that’s not expected, but not the result of something malfunctioning, and it actually adds something to the game.” The developers had no reason to remove those, so they didn’t.
They have, by contrast, at least two reasons to remove this: It’s a bug, and it’s an exploit that allows a quad-Turret Engineer to access up to eight, if I’m counting this properly, Blast Finishers. I’m not sure whether this bug would trigger Accelerant-Packed Turrets or deal damage if the turret weren’t detonated upon landing, but it’s still an exploitable bug.
This doesn’t add anything, it’s simply an unintended consequence of mistimed Toolbelt skill changes and a lack of persistence between midair actions and actions after landing. The result is a nonsensical exploit and yet another bug on the already massive list, except for some reason this one’s supposed to be intentionally overlooked based on the idea that it will be embraced as a facet of Turret play.
Are we supposed to embrace the unavoidable exploit resulting from the workaround involving the Rifle Turret Overcharge’s faulty fire rate, too?
It does not activate Accelerant-Packed Turrets or deal damage. It is ONLY a blast finisher. That is it. It also procs confusion stacks if they are on you, if you are wondering.
Up to seven, without thumper turret, on a normal basis with turrets alone. 4 normal in which you lose your turrets, 3 without losing turrets.
Whoever said having such a thing is OP is definitely wrong. This exploit, despite how optimistic that sounds for the user, is quite balanced. Use it to know it, but just to lay it down:
1) If you want to make use of this, you cannot have a single turret out other than healing turret.
2) To make full use of the 3 extras, meaning you have all 3 utility skills as turrets, you will be doing NOTHING for 3 seconds other than placing turrets. During all this, especially in an important time like in combat, you’d better watch what buttons you are pressing to not use up other skills by accident. Remember, you don’t get to use the detonate skill until the turret is THROWN: that means after 1 second, you gotta press the corresponding toolbelt skill. And if you want to time it even better, you’d have to throw it early. Now you have to keep track of a turret flying in the air while focusing on throwing out your other turrets and keeping track of those 2 so when the combo field pops up, you press the correct keys in order and timed accordingly. So simple, yea?
3) To use the extra detonation, you cannot do anything for 1 second to throw the turret out. If you want them out early and ready whenever, even when stunned, they would have to be out already but then you would not have the extra blast finishers.
4) Despite this bug, you can reach the max stealth time with stealth bomb, so perma stealth engie with 3 others using full turrets and a bomb kit is still possible. In fact nothing really changes, except you have a chance of messing up if you try the bugged finishers.
5) Your turret placement is delayed. If you place it too close, you have no time to use the bugged finisher anyway. So to even use this properly, you will probably have to increase your own turret deployment time anyway.
And, just a prediction:
1) By fixing this, you are probably going to introduce a new bug. Thrown turrets cannot be detonated? Or you lose the detonate skill permanently after thrown, making it so you have to pick it up or get it destroyed by someone else to make use of it? You get the idea.
If you overcharge to early before your turret is even droped, your overcharge goes on cooldown and you turret will shoot a simple net. If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.
While it isn’t the easiest bug to replicate, a bug stays a bug no matter what you think and anyone taking advantage of it to get extra benefits for themselve are indeed exploiting a mechanic of the game. Is it overpowered? No! Is it a bug and should be fixed by the devs? Yes! Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.
If you overcharge when the turret is deployed right before its initial attack your net turret will cease doing any actions for the rest of its lifespan. That’s how it works.
You should switch to Krytan-Made Net Turrets, guaranteed to work or your money back. That or I’m definitely doing something wrong.
“Because it is clearly an unpredictable side effect that wasn’t intended in the first place.”,
is not a good enough reason.
K-Style in gunz is an exploit. Skiing in Tribes, Wave Dashing in Super Smash Bros, Orb Walking in most ARTS/MOBA games, Rocket Jumping in TF2: these are all exploits that are now embraced by the developers and the community.
Your reasoning to fix this exploit is obviously wrong. Now if it the detonate turret exploit allowed you to spam it in one turrets lifetime, then hell, of course it should be fixed. If it caused the knockback on use without the turret being there, then yes, it should be fixed. But no, it does nothing but act as a blast finisher.
I can understand where Anymras is coming from. There are so many bugs with turrets that HAMPER anyone that uses them. Its been months since they decided to say anything or fix them.
But I really don’t get it. Explain to me, other than the reason its an exploit and how its unintended, why it should be fixed. Otherwise, I’m against you both for this.
Huge paragraph
With great regards,
Ambrecombe.
None taken. That guide I wrote was mainly on the features of turrets.
As I stated before, turret gameplay is highly reliant on positioning. By fixing all of those bugs, including this one, they will still be viable. Maybe even more. I will be sad if they do take this feature specifically out, but that doesn’t change the way I play.
Even before I discovered this, I was still highly successful in dungeons, fractals, WvW, and sPvP.
Now add in a trick to get 3 blast finishers without blowing up your turrets. It only adds, really. There is no relying on a trick to accomplish something. Its simply that. A trick, but also a small exploit.
What I wanted to ask Devs is to keep this neat trick in. It’s not super easy to use, quite the contrary. If you try this trick mid fight without practice, you are going to use up your toolbelt skills by accident, forget for a split second about attacking, pretty much anything. This is something that takes a lot of getting used to use. If it was easy mode, then sure, I wouldn’t recommend keeping it in the game.
But to address this as a bug that takes away from turret gameplay is definitely wrong, and that’s a fact. It doesn’t break turrets, it doesn’t make them overpowered, it doesn’t make them underpowered, it doesn’t bug the turrets, it doesn’t do anything except give 1 extra blast finisher per turret use. You can’t spam it. You can’t benefit from anything except having more blast finishers. It doesn’t make turrets weaker or hit harder.
So can someone explain to me how this takes away from the turret experience? Try it yourselves in WvW and in sPvP. It definitely gave a fresh breath of air for me and I already loved turrets before that.
This is a mechanic I discovered a good 2 weeks after I picked up full turret engineer. Before I even discovered this I already found out turrets were viable anyway. But with this discovery, they were even MORE viable. Forgive my wording up above, of course this alone doesn’t make them viable.
It’s obviously not something I would go full turret engineer just to use this ‘bug’.
You guys make everything sound horrible.
“This is just like what Static Shield used to be. You could use it, then use other skills while still blocking.”
“If thieves had the ability to hit you with heartseeker mid shadowstep then again at the end of the shadowstep, and only pay the initiative price once”
It’s not even close to any of those. Those bring pain to other classes. How does a 0 damage skill that is a blast finisher equal to something overpowered in use?
The reason why I mentioned the word ‘viable’ is because:
With OTHER skill choices, you can achieve the same effect and MORE than turrets for blast finishers alone. With this feature, it lets you keep your turrets for half of what it really can do right now.
You can’t deny that, period. Rocket Boots, Bomb Kit, Elixir Gun. 3 Blast finishers, just like any other turret, except you have an escape and 10 extra skills to use. Not only that, those blast finishers actually do something.
I see almost everyone complaining about how bad turrets are in PvE. I decide to share a useful feature, despite being a ‘bug’. Now you guys want this bug fixed rather than kept? It doesn’t break anything, it only adds. And unlike most exploits, this doesn’t really hurt other classes.
If you guys really hate it that much, then I’ll support the cause to fix it. I thought this nice feature would bump up the spirits of people who use turrets, but I guess you guys don’t want that at all. Because even if this is fixed, which I hardly use or exploit 5% of the time I actually deploy a turret, everything else I know about how to use turrets still works and will be better with the new patch.
Bug added 2:38 AM, 10/1/2013
Deployable Turrets may be Detonated in midair without destroying the Turret, subsequently allowing a secondary Detonation upon landing.
Healing Turret may be exempt from this; the person who brought this to my attention didn’t intend to, so I’m not going to ask them to clarify it.
This is confirmed, healing turret is exempted.
After writing my guide someone mentioned that this was an exploit. I say it shouldn’t be, and should stay as a feature of turrets. No one has complained about it for a full year, and this was in here since the beginning.
When you throw a turret, you gain the detonate toolbelt skill, which can be used as an extra blast finisher without destroying your turret, but only during the time it is thrown and when it lands. You can only do it once per turret, except healing turret. You will get the detonate skill again when the turret lands.
By leaving it in the game, you do the following:
-Keeping turrets viable.
-Don’t have to do anything. It’s already in the game.
-Keep turret engineers happy.
-Keep an interesting and hard to use mechanic that comes with using turrets, which would otherwise be considered a lazy skill.
By taking it out, you have to:
-Fix it, in which along with many other things, would take forever to do and time could be better spent somewhere else.
-Pretty much the opposite of the above list.
Hezzerz – Isle of Janthir [XIII]
After writing my guide someone mentioned that this was an exploit. I say it shouldn’t be, and should stay as a feature of turrets. No one has complained about it for a full year, and this was in here since the beginning.
When you throw a turret, you gain the detonate toolbelt skill, which can be used as an extra blast finisher without destroying your turret, but only during the time it is thrown and when it lands. You can only do it once per turret, except healing turret. You will get the detonate skill again when the turret lands.
By leaving it in the game, you do the following:
-Keeping turrets viable.
-Don’t have to do anything. It’s already in the game.
-Keep turret engineers happy.
-Keep an interesting and hard to use mechanic that comes with using turrets, which would otherwise be considered a lazy skill.
By taking it out, you have to:
-Fix it, in which along with many other things, would take forever to do and time could be better spent somewhere else.
-Pretty much the opposite of the above list.
Hezzerz – Isle of Janthir [XIII]
Hi,
A couple of things :
- You should mention Turret Blast Finishers are centered around the Engineer and not the turrets themselve.- Rocket Turret does AoE damage with its basic attack (up to 5 targets), the radius is just small. The overcharge on the other hand only affects a single target (but has larger explosion radius).
- Flame turret does attack during the smoke screen, but only 2sec (+ rotation time) after the initial smoke pulse. And can be self detonated when you stand in the Smoke Screen for team stealth (stacks in duration if you blow other turrets).
- Accelerant Packed Turrets are only recommended if you play an offensive Engineer. Any Engineer investing in Toughness doesn’t need that trait because doing so will allow him take aggro away from the turrets making it more intersting to leave them into relative safespots.
- Autotool Installation is the only real sustain tool for our turrets, the Wrench is better at healing turrets but is counter productive sinds it force your ennemies close to your turrets leaving them vulnerable to cleave.
- It is not recommended to overcharge Net Turret at its initial attack because right now there is a bug causing it to cease fire whenever your turret initial attack is overcharged.
- Recommending to use bugs like Rifle Turret firerate on initial attack and quick detonation finishers should never be shown in any guide, it’s called an exploit and it’s against the chart of the forum to share those openly between players on these same forums.
Thats about all.
1st one: Look under Detonate Turret, it’s already there.
2nd: The first part of it doesn’t work for me if I don’t use it as soon as the turret is placed. Any other use and it just stands there doing nothing but spewing smoke. But really, at that point, I wouldn’t care for anything but the smoke field. The 2nd part of that is also listed under Detonate Turret.
3rd: Accelerant-Packed Turrets are recommended because they give your turrets much more functionality. If theres a mob that keeps doing high damage constantly, you can just CC it with all your turrets by drop n pop. For turret aggro, at the very end I did mention to at least wait about 10-15 seconds (on boss fights at least, definitely less time on regular mobs).
4th: I still don’t like it. My turrets shouldn’t take that much damage and sometimes I’d like my toolbelt skills to use in a final burst of insane damage. As for running around with toolkit, there are ways around that.
5th: That happens when I overcharge too early during deployment. I usually use it right as the turret lands, and never really had a problem.
6th: Rifle Turret Firerate is not an exploit. It clearly says Rate of Fire increase: 50%. Duration is 10s. There’s a lot of things the tool tips don’t say. So if you want to get all technical, it can’t be considered an exploit if its doing what it says. And by the way, if you don’t use it as I ‘recommoneded’, you will lose the attack speed bonus altogether, forever, until the turret is redeployed, so I’d rather have it working as intended, yea?
As for the extra detonate finishers I’d say that should be the benefit of turret engineer and reward for skillful play. It’s not easy keeping track of turret land times and timing things in the middle of a fight. What do the devs think? Does the devs want to take away from something that everyone says isn’t “viable”, and “fix” it, or leave something cool that has been there the entire time and no one has complained about it for a full year…? That may sound a bit biased, and also, there are other ways of accomplishing the same effect within the same class as well, so its obviously not broken or overpowered.
nice guide. Though in my opinion its useless until the issues with turrets are fixed turret builds will continue to be weaker.:
Mobility
Cool down timesThese 2 being the main ones, the cool downs are a bit to high in my opinion, then you get the fact you use access to the toolbelt is another weakness and then you have the fact that once placed that’s it. Unlike necro Minions, Mesmer clones and illusions and even Ranger Spirits.
This, no.
Turret balance comes from it having no mobility. You cannot kite turrets without out ranging them. You can’t place condition damage on them and let them wither away since they are immune to them. If you are having problems with turret mobility, you are most likely playing it wrong. guaranteed. Ranger spirits and necro minions are easy to deal with because they will most likely be clumped together for AoE. But engineer turrets? You can have them on the roof of things. They can be scattered all over the place to be a pain for the enemy. You can actually choose where the turret will be, and even have them in places where melee classes will be unable to reach them so they are also immune to melee damage.
As for the tool belt skills you get from turrets, think of them as a burst extension of the turret itself. Would you rather have a burst of 5k damage with an average cooldown time of 20s or 15k damage over a 10 second period, unaffected by blind and will fire regardless of your character status and continues to do damage? The tool belt from turrets act like a mobile turret on your own body, so to speak.
As for the other question, I use a rifle with mostly knight’s gear.
As far as power vs Condi damage goes, that’s up to you. The play styles are definitely not the same though, and I have favored power over it, but condi works just as well, if not better in some cases.