Guild Wars 2

I mean i could have understood Forgemaster (as its also strongly rooted in the lore with the FoW and so on), but i prefer scrapper as it fits well with the survivalist theme of the expansion.

Forge on the other hand?

Guess the base professions of the following specializations:

*Dojo
*Storm
*Trap
*Clock
*House of Horrors
*Treehug
*Knuckles

Okay maybe exaggerating a bit/a huge amount but a forge (okay sure there’s a super hero just like the daredevill, that doesn’t mean that green lantern/magneto/aquaman whatever should be next) sounds silly when you use their own ruleset of saying “im a forge specializing in this and that”. Of course the current names like daredevil and dragonhunter could have used a lot of work. All im saying is we got through the naming process lightly and unscathed.

Still waiting for commando though.

Oh you.

Its a good tool with setups for blasts (without a lot of blasts its performance drops and a long delay 2x blast when traited in a mediocre tree on a 40 sec cooldown is nothing particularly mind blowing). Its a field dispenser and it does that job nicely. Another water field never hurts and with the removal of the poison from nades it provides us with access to two fields otherwise unavailable and the bugged version of flash shell is good for area denial when node fighting. As a condi build it offers little offense but as a power build it gives you the ability to plink down stationary targets like carts or cannons at the old nade distance. At closer ranges you should probably be in another kit most of the time after deploying the field you need.

Now on the other hand all of our elites have their uses. Elixir x is going to be vital for denying warriors the ability to rampage channel heroes in stronghold, crate have been buffed to a great extent (unless im running in a large group in wvw its my main choice) with 75% of the power behind the old elite having been redeployed to a separate skill with less than a third of the recharge and the other part having been buffed with overcharges and a third of its cooldown shaved.

Im not saying mortar is bad because its fine, but its not objectively better than the other elites and that’s good. If people start shouting op just for kittens and giggles then why, we might end up with another 28% nerf (considering how fast we got the first one).

EDIT: To be honest i joke a lot about kneejerk nerfreactions but similar to mtd it feels like a nerf planned long before hand but lost in the patch considering how they nerfed the rest of the skills in both duration, cooldown and effect.

It is without doubt bugged, and the reason we didn’t have a “nerf” before the weekend is probably because this needs a mechanical fix, namely causing the grenades not to pierce.

How did this happen? Well they where planning to make coated bullets for pistols baseline, and yet here we are without that pierce and suddenly grenades pierce. Hmmm. And to my fellow engineers please do not abuse or “defend” this, theres nothing to defend. Its a bug, and hopefully we can get the pierce back where it was supposed to be. And its not a small bug. Its like when rocket turret only fired overcharged rockets in its auto attack. Grenade kit is going to be just fine without this.

And on the other hand for the people using the favoritism argument. You know how long it took them to nerf mortar kit? And who even complained about that? And yeah maim the disillusioned was a strange kneejerk nerf, what with the out of nowhere buff to PU still going strong.

I wouldn’t even call it that overpowered, it opens up the possibility for full gadget builds where you constantly need to sacrifice gadgets to get the one you need desperately (for example AED) recharged. Remember that while you can use normal—>oc’d, if you use oc’d both will go on cooldown (thus why using it with more gadgets is preferable) and the effect will not go away until you actually use a gadget.

For example in this super burst or die meta ive had a ton of fun making sure that i use the correct version of AED together with AMR, with proper use rewarding you with chains of close to non stop AED (when planets align). This feels like how AED was originally intended, for as long as the enemy keeps bursting you with AED up, you are going to keep resetting, but if anything goes wrong you are in big trouble.

Really i would like this to be the intended version, i feel like a chronomancer and boy the skillcap is through the roof. Only problematic skill i think is slick shoes. But as ive said the trait really shines when you go dedicated gadgeteer in which its not as much of a problem.

#gadgetmeta

As for the delay on drop the hammer, it works fine for BoB, and thats Pbaoe with a much longer delay. It will work as a way to discourage enemies from occupying certain spaces for too long (like capture points, chokepoints, downed teammates/enemies). The weapon costs and cooldowns seems low while the utilities are higher, meaning that if you really want to land something it might cost an extra taunt and so on. That might also be the use for phase smash, a bit similar to the glue bomb/Bob combo. The chill might be enough to catch someone expecting to just kite out of the hammer by surprise, while still allowing you to stay at range and combo the Kd with a well timed ruin.

Another thing to consider, and this is rather interesting, is the power coefficients. People noted that revenants did less damage than X class (well yes we have a primary condiweapon and what amounts to a ranged support weapon revealed so far with a conditank and physical tank legend) in the same gear. This gear being celestial. Now we take a look at the power scaling. See while the revenant skills seems to have a low base damage they also have a pretty hefty power scaling. Take ruin for example. Now that thing has a 2 sec cooldown and if we are talking ye ol’ pve dps at high power it overtakes jump shots landing damage (traited for damage) while staying at range. The ingame links are wonky with the calculations but support this, and if the wiki is true this is even more so the case. They wanted to avoid ending up in another celetrapp, so they increased the power scaling, meaning the difference between low power and high power is more pronounced here. This might actually be a sound move considering the ridiculous self healing traits available for the rev.

+comparing dps with longbow might be futile when its quite obvious that the intention is not for a rev to go toe to toe with a ranger at range dps wise when they got a massive upkeep of mobile projectile blocks and aoe CC, not to mention other forms of survivability. Once again that seems like a fragile speedster vs mighty glacier kind of fight.

Of course i am talking from a pvp/wvw perspective as i do consider that to be the top priority for balance as i dont care what numbers you hit a npc for as long as we don’t see a return of the gw1 dervish update.

Bonus nostalgia:

^The problem is that 1st 50% on damaging conditions will mostly not have any effect as they will usually still have enough duration to kill you anyways (since you are sub 33% health) and more importantly the condistacks that got you below 33% in the first case are still in full effect, meaning you are still dead. Had it been 50% i could consider rolling with it as a gimmick (since we now have to choose a grandmaster anyways).

All skill types (except traps and shouts) more or less.

The engineer have a very special bond to their utilities and cramming in nonsensical stuff like consecrations, signets or nature rituals are just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Our current categories can be used extensively within our theme. Kits for advanced weponry or equipment. Turrets for stationary artillery (or they would if they where good) or general area denial with the twist that instead of waiting for an aoe to pass you can destroy it. Explosives for aoe and spectacular michael bay moments. Elixirs to double dip into magical effects (like stealth, projectile blocks, buffs etc.). And then we have gadgets for the rest of the shenanigans (in the fashion of physicals, survival, tricks etc.).

But i could see a trap and deployables focused specialization using devices sneakily planted into the environment.

And as for shouts, if they make sure to not step on the warriors or guardians toes of commanding and so on i could see it working. One cool way of doing this would be to have the engineers shouts be radio communication . Meaning we talk into a little radio device while requesting artillery strikes or sniper support and so on(insert orbital strike). Even supply crate could then be considered a shout. It provides us with yet another distinct take on a familiar utility type while still keeping the theme of the engineer. Could be named commando or operative or something, i dont know.

But as ive said, i think they should focus on adding more of our current skill types (another kit, another gadget, another elixir etc.).

Yeah hes clearly biased because he suggests more effective nerfs to slick shoes and realizes that a burn on crit trait is not a good idea in the first place.

If you don’t agree to every nerf thrown your way on the forum you are a defensive X who only rolls fotm and should git gud against my Y metabuild.

Or that’s what it seems like these days.

^ In my turrety build used toolkit and HT, standard in many a engineer build, but i also used flameturret and thumper for tripple blasts and guaranteed launches (no random blind proc from a mesmers chaos armor negating your vital launch) with a good stealth (overcharging FT,placing thumper with overcharge and then detonating all creates a poor mans shadow refuge for rezzing). The two turret related traits i ran was fortified for a fast rotation of turrets meaning high reflect uptime against enemies with projectiles (bowwars, rangers etc.) and experimental turrets (to support allies with thumper should i risk leaving it out for a team fight).

The thing about this build, interestingly enough is that there was a lot of resource management and creativity involved. To kill a sturdier enemy comboing your one firefield with your wrench and blasts is now suddenly very important since i can’t just proc IP with my auto, and while i normally i pick my turrets up after the overcharge is over i had the option to go more aggressive and increase my dps enough to push for a kill at the cost of denying me my shields which in turn could have caused more dps if the enemy had any vital projectiles (like impale). And then we have the question of stealth. Should i risk a few ticks on the point to confuse and reposition (kitten stealthed prybars)? How many blasts are worth sacrificing on this stealth or heal?
And since damage didn’t come out of any fire air procs or super crit box i could be faced with situations where a sudden detonation of everything caught my enemy by surprise could be enough to finish him off, but could also mean that i put my shields, dps and blasts on a longer recharge. Your turrets where a resource which you had to manage, and there was more than one or two ways to use them. Ironically i felt more connected to turrets as a resource than i have when i play multikit builds, using your stunbreak wasn’t just a case of having more use of it later but it could also reduce your effectiveness in other ways (lose a blast and possibly a turret). And thats not the end of it. The funny thing is that the one turret i thought overpreformed, that being the rocket turret was probably less hurt by this nerf than the utilitarian thumper and flameturret.

And yes i was bunkerish, ill admit. Very much so. I enjoy helping allies and standing my ground. Im the guy who actually use healing power gear for fun. Because the game is bashing me over my head saying “No healers allowed!” i cant resist. And pushing through a sea of players, stealthing both you and your ally while launching the attackers everywhere and pushing of that impossible rez when your friend is telling you to run is more rewarding to me than any split second zerk kill or 15 stacks of confusion on a ele out of water is ever going to be.

But that does not mean this is the only build i play (or rather played), i do enjoy playing quite polar builds, from static discharge to condibomber and even to strange countries like zerk elixir commando, brave wrenching barbarian amulet gadget user, minespiker, medkit medic and a whole lot of nonsense. Hell i even teamed up with a leg specialist warrior for a aoe perma immobilizing mortar team just for fun back in the days, (and yes venoms work on turrets, we have tried that as well).

Noha.3749:

miriforst.1290:

They already made the turrets scale with player condition damage, boon/condi duration and healing power (remember when healing turret caused that bugged regen? Fun times.)

As for engine limitations, well they couldn’t be crit or afflicted by conditions either but they changed that apparently.

The funny thing is, everyone acts like there was one overboard buff at the time when turrets became popular when the main buff was reducing their hitboxes and fixing the firerate. The firerate fix was a boon primarily for the net turret but in turn they then nerfed the duration. Heck, remember when rocket turret caused a 4 sec aoe burn? Or when rifle turret was bugged to have permanent double firerate when you overcharged it immediately. And Rocket turret had longer reach baseline. Its kind of odd seeing them turn from the prime joke build of the game (if you actually saw a turret engi you knew he was new and if anything you felt pity for him). Its like discovering that during the night the 5 mortar engi team has suddenly become meta and everyone want to slap a 5 sec duration on it because thieves are oneshotted by healing shot and shoutbows are reduced to a puddle by the might of caltrops. What happened? You would have thought they would be better earlier in the games lifetime when the Ai nature can be exploited to its maximum because people haven’t optimized their builds.

It feels really strange, like reading in the local newspaper that the blind, nice old lady next door has been revealed to be a bloodthirsty massmurderer.

Well the oldschool turreteers were.. something..
However the modern day turret(pre- nerf) builds probably crawled to its shimmering hall of fame due to the amount of sales on GW2 which boosted the new player population by quite a bit. Giving freshlings a way to dominate other freshlings, while better/more experienced players dominated about every freshling with the build. Which in result filled the forums with cryhard posts until the recent nerf. Even avrage-good players struggled against AI bunkers as if its some new raised star with alot of questionmarks to it, because it never really was common before they became the flavour of the month. Resulting in your posted scenario with the blind old woman being a massmurderer, you dont know how to react or how to go about. Whilst the resulting amount of increasing crazy old women made people uncomfortable to a degree they had to inject every old woman with tranqualizers. Now old women are no longer viable. They need to rework their teeth or something so they still scale with stats, the right way.

That was quite the extrapolation of my metaphor ill give you that.

They already made the turrets scale with player condition damage, boon/condi duration and healing power (remember when healing turret caused that bugged regen? Fun times.)

As for engine limitations, well they couldn’t be crit or afflicted by conditions either but they changed that apparently.

The funny thing is, everyone acts like there was one overboard buff at the time when turrets became popular when the main buff was reducing their hitboxes and fixing the firerate. The firerate fix was a boon primarily for the net turret but in turn they then nerfed the duration. Heck, remember when rocket turret caused a 4 sec aoe burn? Or when rifle turret was bugged to have permanent double firerate when you overcharged it immediately. And Rocket turret had longer reach baseline. Its kind of odd seeing them turn from the prime joke build of the game (if you actually saw a turret engi you knew he was new and if anything you felt pity for him). Its like discovering that during the night the 5 mortar engi team has suddenly become meta and everyone want to slap a 5 sec duration on it because thieves are oneshotted by healing shot and shoutbows are reduced to a puddle by the might of caltrops. What happened? You would have thought they would be better earlier in the games lifetime when the Ai nature can be exploited to its maximum because people haven’t optimized their builds.

It feels really strange, like reading in the local newspaper that the blind, nice old lady next door has been revealed to be a bloodthirsty massmurderer.

Varylk.5628:

Good grief. QQ more turret abusers, i for one welcome this change.

Users, abusers where the players bothering to place them midair.
Otherwise any meta build is abusing something that is effective.

When it comes to the purpose of defending a point from (y/s)olocappers it had a purpose, in the same way that a scout in tf2 didn’t waltz straight onto a point filled with sentries and stickybombs, if thieves have a hard time with turrets for example its a natural counter to their ability to zip across the map and cap any undefended ones in the blink of an eye. Its fragile speedster vs mighty glacier.

Now the fact that they didn’t scale is unfortunate, and i would prefer if they where deployable kits with a larger number of skills and tricks, meaning that the engineer still had the superior firepower as long as you are on his point and playing by his rules because i do like to have power over my own abilities. People also seem to strongly dislike anything that doesn’t keel over and die after the first rotation is done, thats why the anger cannon is now back on tracking celengis and celes and so on.

^

Yeah i totally agree, mesmers and rangers should never have a place in pvp ever!

Never!

I think i get what you mean, immobilizing skills (not the condition) have a mixture of tactical and reactive gameplay. Arenanet seems to be all for the reactive gameplay of reducing cast times, making everything mobile and then in turn have players dodge and block each other. Thats fun. But there could be more depth if we mixed the two gameplay styles a bit more.

I remember the early stages of develolment when for example the longbow on the ranger was immobile (even on the auto i think), meaning it was made for calculated long range and hard hitting shots and where positioning truly is a resource. Then we had the shortbow with considerably shorter range but with mobility. The distinction between the two where really clear, this is a long range support/sniping weapon, this one is all about skirmishing. Now you can even move during rapid fire meaning a longbow ranger is still going to follow you around corners and so on. We have had skills like killshot considerably reduced when it comes to cast time as well as skills like our shield made mobile. And while we could not return to the idea of mobile skirmishing vs powerful, slow longrange vs hard hitting, controlling melee, vs sticky mobile light melee with how much this would need us to rebalance everything back its an interesting thought.

I do love elements with a planning nature built in, placing medkits for emergency evacuations before hand, placing a SD rifle turret in a corridor so i know when the thief is going to appear, a mine here should knock them down the ledge and make them more exposed etc. Or have a turret placed here to make them look in this direction when they enter the point, long enough for me to get a drop on them at this other location. Across all professions though it seems that on the move gameplay is all the rage. Mantras that where supposed to be a reward for perfect resource management, but arenanet have slowly been reducing their cast time instead of figuring out a way to make them work better while still preserving the resource feel, rangers throw their traps directly at enemies like grenades because its better than having a clone triggering them etc. And how many thieves use traps (seriously make them work like a line of warding effect that pop up for 5 sec when triggered or something)?

Why would the flamethrower be a better candidate for knocking stuff back than the landmine? And why is the best use of it to throw it like a Frisbee?

When i faced turreters as a static discharge engineer while they could be annoying for a number of reasons at least i got the urge to plan my approach to the point, not just skill x-y-z repeat. I popped up from different angles nullifying his/her defense and offense before making the actual kill. This though is made nonviable for a number of reasons.

Points tick fast, meaning the time spent clearing up the trap is not a stalling but a loss.

Some classes, not mentioning names have a tendency to port across the map in the blink of an eye and also have excellent synergy with a tanky character on point.

Turrets are placed with full power in a second, meaning setup can be made on the fly without leaving them exposed to clever planning.

And finally supply crate gives them another round of turrets and medkits on the fly (again) meaning that he/she can continue to stall even after you have spent time disarming the point.

There could be much more thought involved on both sides, but everything is homogenized.

For example in a alien version of gw2 the mortar could maybe have long enough range and a targeting system (minimap alá bf3/bf4 anyone?) to support points from other points in pvp, meaning that while you where decapping a point a concussion barrage could be requested to disrupt the enemy teams stomping/reviving on your mid.
A siege weapon giving you the ability to be anywhere but at the cost of shooting blindly unless communicating with allies.

I could see that being a thing absolutely.

At the same time a rocket launcher is awesome.

sigh I ranted again didn’t i?

TLDR: I love it when a plan comes together.

Maybe replace the turrets with more medkits or vials of antidote?

I am really interested to hear how it improved your burst.

^As long as a cleric water ele can’t auto it to death in a reasonable amount of time and a warrior can not out out heal them with healing signetalone there will be someone to complain about them cos ai.

I saw that thread about flying turrets after the patch and i was wondering if they where placed up in the stratosphere, because i cant see any turrets no more. :P

On a serious note my original idea was to turn them into fully fledged stationary remote controlled kits.

Or we could bandaid further by replacing turrets entirely with their overcharge.

Rocket launcher, healing bomb, smoke pellets.

And then change traits accordingly. Meaning fortified turrets becomes fortify etc.

No ai, that means they cant complain about that atleast. And then we could actually crit with them.

Or what about making them traps?

Rocket trap calls down a rocket when triggered, seismic trap launches etc.

nerfed or sbooned, not fixed.

Just sayin.

Like saying removing stealth, blinds,ports and evades from thieves wont affect em. I mean they still deal damage right?

The nerf will do the job in removing them alright.

If the way in which this is done is good or not or even if we should base our balance on removing things at all is another question.

But for now i suppose it will have to do for another year.

miriforst.1290:

jportell.2197:

miriforst.1290:

The problem though is how do we define fun?

For a lot of people it seems the engi is fun to play against if its dead.

And due to the nature of pvp i cant blame them i suppose.

The fact that nearly everyone just sighs and goes FML when they see an engi, because chances are it’s turrets. Most of the players in the game agree, its not fun to fight turrets. So think on that.

Yes, but most people go “ehrmagerd make the turrets kill the engineer that spawned them, permaban then and give meh all their gold” style instead of suggesting reasonable reworks.

Imho the game has so few skills that smitersbooning an entire type should not be the way to go.

For example here is how you could do it:

The turrets are reworked to become stationary, destructible but stronger kits.

The overcharge is replaced by remotes that you can switch to to control the turrets which will then have an entire skill bar worth (to truly make them “kits”), hell you could even let allies control them. Why not slap on something like a disable of certain skills when placed similar to downed state, meaning you get a sense of scaling power the longer you manage to keep them up. Or why not skills that disable the entire turret for a while?

For example rocket turret could have the following skills:

1: Rocket-Fire a basic rocket at your target.
2:Heavy payload- A slow moving high aoe damage rocket, hits hard but have a large tell. Aoe targeted.
3:Countermeasures- Your rocket turret fires a barrage of countermeasures in the area, blocking projectiles for a short duration.
4:Heatseeker: A slow moving missile that homes onto its target. The target will get a crosshair above its head. Disables the rocket turrets skills for X seconds. Causes bleed.
5:Tactical strike:(initially disabled) After designating an area (kill shot cast, immobile) with a laser, a slow moving and arching rocket is launched towards the area. Causes a launch on the enemies affected.

Is this stronger than the current turrets? I don’t know. Is it different? Yes.

And it would hopefully take turrets from being the entry level to probably some of the harder skills to use for the engineer. This was just an example, but its different to simply removing them, creating a unique style of play and hopefully a fairer sense of counter play. Oh and turrets should scale (but that means critting as well, remember).

Its faster though to simply break them, but i suppose thats how it is.

Its easier and faster to break something than fixing or creating.
And what most people are arguing for is breaking.

And in the same move please fix mortar.

Good nerf:
Reducing the range of the A.P.T. trait meant that it still worked as a defensive/offensive interruption at the cost of destroying a turret without making the process of decapping trivial with it. Same goes for the airblast nerf, just enough of a tell for fast players to react, but its still reliable.

Bad nerf:
This for example, or smiters boon. Or Automated response. Troublesome mechanics which where not reworked as they probably should have but simply tuned down from 11 to 0. This works as a temporary fix, but it needs to be followed up with a rework. Take automated response for example, what if it did something entirely different like: " When under the effect of X or more conditions you create a sphere at your position which will discharge after Y seconds, transfering conditions to enemies". It could be anything, but its easier to remove than redesign.

Bad rework:
Kit refinment, everyone was running this until suddenly noone did. It mainly got reworked due to grenade barrage, but when it finally was it had already been hit by long global icd, meaning the interesting new mechanics that came with it couldn’t work with the nature of switching between kits. E for effort though.

Good rework:
Well im unsure about this, nothing really springs to mind. Im not talking about pure buffs here but troublesome skills being reworked to bring something new, while still being reasonable.

The thing is that everyone is cheering and waving flags for a sinking ship, we have had so little tools to play with these years that simply removing a large percentage of them is tragic and should not be cheered for. If anything it should be mourned, not for the sake of turrets as they where but for turrets as they could have been.

And if anyone has read this far i do not play the rocket turret, rifle turret etc engi.

I got one build that uses thumper and flame turret for blasts, stealth, utility and versatility together with toolkit. Only turret traits i got is that of the reflecting shields and boon share (for the few moments i leave my thumper out to give partymembers protection).

the thing is that this is one build not THE build, i also play zerk when i feel like it and condi when i feel like it and i would hope that this remains the case, that balance is not considered okay because everyone got exactly one build, leaving us a MOBA with 8 (soon to be 9) heroes.

I will now post my earlier suggestion, or atleast effort:

Josh Davis.6015:

We’d love to hear your feedback on these changes. Feel free to respond below with your comments.

-Grouch

Dissapointed.

(And dont copy and paste the “u just ba turrrrent enji no ju have to git gud laike me” response until you have read my entire post.)

Because as others have already said, this would be fine as a monday morning hotfix after hearing about the first engineer running turrets after the hitbox patch. But after all this time? Everyone knows this is the smiters boon again, removing from play because its troublesome to fix. And yeah it is that big of a change. The thing about smiters boon is that despite being a quick “hotnerf” its still there, and this was considered bad manner in a game with 1000’s of skills to choose from, although at first im sure people where relieved that they didn’t have to run into this anymore and even cheered for the nerfbat. Hell, we even got a commemorative skill and a weapon.

Having the turrets destroyed within seconds even when not focused leaves them a empty slot on the skill bar. And utility slots are what evades, blind and stealth are to a thief for a engi. An engineer filling his bar with turrets is like a thief focusing on venoms, trait heavy, cumbersome and very, very niche, but of course it will have its peak performance somewhere. The single game mode we have is that place for peak performance for turrets, defending a point. If they can’t be implemented here, they might as well be gone. And here everyone goes “Horray thats exactly what we want!”. Yep, probably you do, as a knee jerk reaction to every engineer daily but please remember:

We where told the game would have fever slotable skills, but “all” of them would be useful because its easier to balance a handful per class than hundreds. So does that mean that they have been more active and creative with their balance? Now i will only speak from the engineers perspective because that is the class im most familiar with but this probably goes for all classes, the engineer though have been quite the gimmick, be it weapon swapping for might or being immune to condis while under 25% health or dedicating your build to Punting People off Point. The criteria to a good “nerf” or better, rework for me is that the nerftarget is still viable and can still be used seriously afterwards. For example:

jportell.2197:

miriforst.1290:

The problem though is how do we define fun?

For a lot of people it seems the engi is fun to play against if its dead.

And due to the nature of pvp i cant blame them i suppose.

The fact that nearly everyone just sighs and goes FML when they see an engi, because chances are it’s turrets. Most of the players in the game agree, its not fun to fight turrets. So think on that.

Yes, but most people go “ehrmagerd make the turrets kill the engineer that spawned them, permaban then and give meh all their gold” style instead of suggesting reasonable reworks.

Imho the game has so few skills that smitersbooning an entire type should not be the way to go.

For example here is how you could do it:

The turrets are reworked to become stationary, destructible but stronger kits.

The overcharge is replaced by remotes that you can switch to to control the turrets which will then have an entire skill bar worth (to truly make them “kits”), hell you could even let allies control them. Why not slap on something like a disable of certain skills when placed similar to downed state, meaning you get a sense of scaling power the longer you manage to keep them up. Or why not skills that disable the entire turret for a while?

For example rocket turret could have the following skills:

1: Rocket-Fire a basic rocket at your target.
2:Heavy payload- A slow moving high aoe damage rocket, hits hard but have a large tell. Aoe targeted.
3:Countermeasures- Your rocket turret fires a barrage of countermeasures in the area, blocking projectiles for a short duration.
4:Heatseeker: A slow moving missile that homes onto its target. The target will get a crosshair above its head. Disables the rocket turrets skills for X seconds. Causes bleed.
5:Tactical strike:(initially disabled) After designating an area (kill shot cast, immobile) with a laser, a slow moving and arching rocket is launched towards the area. Causes a launch on the enemies affected.

Is this stronger than the current turrets? I don’t know. Is it different? Yes.

And it would hopefully take turrets from being the entry level to probably some of the harder skills to use for the engineer. This was just an example, but its different to simply removing them, creating a unique style of play and hopefully a fairer sense of counter play. Oh and turrets should scale (but that means critting as well, remember).

Its faster though to simply break them, but i suppose thats how it is.

Its easier and faster to break something than fixing or creating.
And what most people are arguing for is breaking.

And in the same move please fix mortar.

The problem though is how do we define fun?

For a lot of people it seems the engi is fun to play against if its dead.

And due to the nature of pvp i cant blame them i suppose.

I would be more concerned about his/her autoattacks hitting 10k at that point. not to mention his bomb auto onehitting everything on the point.

ronpierce.2760:

I’d rather Celest Engi get nerfed before turrets. Actually being OP is more of an issue to me than perceived OPness because its a strong AI build.

Also, I noticed today (and this goes for both engi builds) what’s with net shot?!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Net_Shot
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Pact

I get it’s ever so slightly short of an Immob but sheesh…
2 sec immob, 10 sec cd, instant, 1000 range verus 3 sec, 1 second cast, 25 second CD, 600 range on the class that’s supposed to lock people in and so on. Net Shots freaking ridiculous. With just a bit of condi duration its like a 20-25% uptime immob (assuming lands). I think that itself needs to be looked at. I tend to defend builds across the board but this skill alone blows my mind, even when I run Turret engi just for easy wins for the day, I can’t get past how insane it is.

Its also not a combo finisher, deals no damage and do not cause 6 stack of bleed. And its on a profession designed to use high CC as main defense as opposed to heavy armor and high base hp. The fast cast is also compensated by the low velocity of the projectile, meaning aiming for strafing targets is risky at range, making its primary range shot.

EDIT: Sorry, a bit tired, read the class designed to lock people in as hambow.

Try getting killed in a pvp match and see if it stop working.

In a lot of cases the rocket boots actually do allow you to traverse ring of warding and such, might need just a slight tilt but as far as i know i usually pass them without much hindrance.

Will need to test this in a more controlled environment

I just used it a while for giggles, can’t remember how the block absorb interacted, but mostly i felt the mesmer had more important utilities providing team support/enemy debuffing. Gear shield changes the survivability of the engineer drastically while on the mesmer i don’t think it would be as much of a must have. Its like adding incendiary powder to elementalists, “cool bro but i got quite a lot of burning already.”

That being said i sorta miss the old mimic, a rework where it blocked before the absorb as well as after (if it didn’t) would have been enough in my book to make it an interesting option.

StickerHappy.8052:

Hey Mia, I dont get why people still defend the gear shield, its an absurdly powerful block, I would trade other mesmer utilities for a full 3 sec block.

Imagine running Blink or Decoy + Port + Block on a full zerk mes.

There was Mimmic, but no one apparently used that so they changed it. Mesmers had other priorities and with a decent evade uptime already + invulns and stealth it wasn’t a gamechanger. Do note that it did block melee attacks and reflected projectiles despite not reflecting (huh!) this in the tooltip.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Mimic&oldid=719236

Anyways on topic maybe they could nerf gear shield if they buffed static shield?

Also it rallies enemies when its destroyed (atleast in wvw).

Would having the tags be a guild upgrade be a fair system?

-Tags costs a large amount of influence (not merits) to give the guild leader the ability to promote 1 commander per purchase.

-The tag is shown as a miniature guild emblem of the guild promoting recognition and community. Also helps guilds in wvw to easily get an overview of the whereabouts of other guilds.

-Multiple tags of the same emblem are held separate by roman numbers.

-Possibly the tag could be duration bound forcing guilds to be active to command.

It would hopefully be fair to both the wvw and the pve playerbase, if not tweak the influence rewards.

Just to be clear, i fully support removing IP as it is now, playing without it feels refreshing, having to rely on fir field combos or actual skills hitting is refreshing.

What i do not support however is to simply nerf its numbers into oblivion in the sole purpose of never seing it taken again as the title implies, thats just vicious bitter vengance and we really need to be better gamers than simply spouting out nonsense like that about balance problems.

What is needed is remakes that changes the mechanics to be more interesting for both the engineer and the enemy.

Examples could be having mines apply burn on hit (not the invisible trap one obviously), having explosives appy a short burn when blocked (counter bunker countering), remove a boon when applying a burn (on a cooldown), apply vulnerability or deal more damage when hitting a burning foe (to improve hybrids/power specs), firefield finishers apply torment or whatever, foes takes more damage from burn the more vulnerability they have, foes affected by your burns attack or move or recharges skills x% slower. There are bazillion options leaving out rng.

Silverthorn.8576:

it is funny, Dhuumfire has been nerfed because it was too easy, no brain etc and devs want it more skillplay.
Engie has a pre nerf Dhummfire as master trait when Dhuumfire is a grand master one but devs don’t really care about.
Where is balance? My main is a necromancer and I don’t even play it in sPvP, i am not really found of being a ping pong ball for other players, now i play my engi has condi bunker it has lot more sustain than my necromancer, can handle 1vs1 and 1vs2 more easily than my necromancer and brings heals and condi removals for my team.

Look at the bleeds, torment and fear a necro applies. Now look at the engineers bleed, and torment. Now consider that the engineer have a multitude of ways to apply long burns. Now also consider that burn do not stack in intensity. Now combine the two professions condition damage output and you see why necros after the dhuumfire implementation where a bit silly.

IP is strong as it allows an engineer to have offensive even when going with a P/S and defensive setup.

It actually used to be adept, but they rightfully moved it up a tier.

Well turrets could be made into enviromental weapons ala siege but with a full skillset and the ability to crit/scale with stats. Then you could have a trait allowing the engineer to remote control them by switching over to them like a kit. Or you could trait them so you constructed a mobile enviromental version of them instead (rifle turret becomes a minigun kit for the ally using it and rocket turret becomes a rocket launcher). Ive longed for some way to construct emplacements or weapon kits for our allies, no AI but still some sense of siege and construction of a defensive perimeter. Also because rocket launchers are cool.

It would match the kits gameplay while still having a unique feel to it.

So essentially untraited they work like mortar does now but allow them to crit/scale and traiting to remotely operate them just like a kit but through the turret (allowing for setting up some interesting ambushes) or to create unmounted enviromental that are mobile carried versions, allowing us to share the joy (i know a thief who would love to preform rocket strikes from stealth. )

Obviously you survived because you stood near the healing turret.

jportell.2197:

miriforst.1290:

Yeah they surely hit like a truck compared to, lets say phantasms? I mean that rifle turret dealing 300ish damage a second is surely ridiculous compared to a illusionary unload hitting for what now again? And while phantasms die faster they also start their recharge at deployment, can reposition themselves to attack instead of firing into a wall, is on a profession with baseline 2 weapon sets with good access of stealth, prot, vigor, blocks invulns evades are affected by boons and traits in general. The only thing i could argue for is crit and conditions, but their base survivability is so low you don’t need to crit them to hit them for lots. But yeah sucks to be a condition necro or condi thief i suppose.

But for a mesmer encountering one of these “kitten i should just setup my rifle, rocket and net turret in a triangle here and be happy” engineers (rolled by people trying to make the point that turrets are overpowered i would give the following words of advice: Greatsword, Sword, Pistol. Not necessarily all of them if you still want to retain the ability to switch over to staff to survive extremely well for a glass cannon you can do so.

I have ended up in duels ending in a tie with PU mesmers, but that kitten well isn’t by just setting up turrets and autoattacking.

Thieves getting kittened over by the tricorn turrets i suppose i understand better though.

Not just thieves. mesmers while rifle turret may not hit hard rocket turret hits like a truck. Lets not forget the thumper turret launch combined with the rifle launch… The turrets pump out so many boons that engis damage isn’t half bad. Meanwhile their survivability is ridiculously over the top.

Simply put turret engis do too much damage while being too tanky.
Low risk Low reward hands down easiest build in the game.

Rocket is 50 sec recharge after destruction and is glassy, thumper is melee, has a smaller aoe and recharge and damage than BOB (if we are comparing the launch) and is still a low damage per second (even lower than rifle if i remember) and also has got a 50 sec cooldown at destruction. Also the more turrets that engineer gets and the more you trait for them (and believe me you have to trait for them) the less damage and survivability will the engineer have in both damage and survivability. Reflects helps against rifle CC (as well as rocket turrets, rifle turrets net turrets etc.). We tried playing around a bit with the mesmer/turret engi setup, and the impression i got as the mesmer was that the real danger behind them as of now is the attack range, because of nerfing the baserange on some turrets but making rtb increase the range by 50%(!). The rocket turret traited remained much the same but the rifle turret, flame and net turret all got a sudden spike in range traited. This decreased the care needed in placing them and made it harder to range them down first without getting hit by all three + engi (some points are better for this than others). It also makes it harder to find the range of thumper and flame turret. Reverting this change will make them easier to range down, and from there it shouldn’t be any big problem taking down the engineer. But rocket turret should remain long range, its glassy and can be taken down in seconds depending on your build (phantasms clear it fast enough). Thumper is sturdy, but the main problem as with the above is the hard telling of the attack range when traited (no red circles etc). It should be short range defense.

I’ve toyed with the idea of implementing turrets alá global agenda, that is having them powerfull but vulnerable to positioning. This means that depending on the turret they are limited to a certain firing arc. Rocket for example might only be 90 degrees, rifle might be 180 degrees, flame 270 and thumper aoe. But also making them strong. That way both the engineer and the enemy have to plan their attack/defense.

Yeah they surely hit like a truck compared to, lets say phantasms? I mean that rifle turret dealing 300ish damage a second is surely ridiculous compared to a illusionary unload hitting for what now again? And while phantasms die faster they also start their recharge at deployment, can reposition themselves to attack instead of firing into a wall, is on a profession with baseline 2 weapon sets with good access of stealth, prot, vigor, blocks invulns evades are affected by boons and traits in general. The only thing i could argue for is incritability and conditionimmuntity, but their base survivability is so low you don’t need to crit them to hit them for lots. But yeah sucks to be a condition necro or condi thief i suppose.

But for a mesmer encountering one of these “kitten i should just setup my rifle, rocket and net turret in a triangle here and be happy” engineers (rolled by people trying to make the point that turrets are overpowered i would give the following words of advice: Greatsword, Sword, Pistol. Not necessarily all of them if you still want to retain the ability to switch over to staff to survive extremely well for a glass cannon you can do so.

I have ended up in duels ending in a tie with PU mesmers, but that kitten well isn’t by just setting up turrets and autoattacking. And thats without gs.

Thieves getting kittened over by the tricorn turrets i suppose i understand better though.

The difference being that clones and phantasms can move , do not limit a profession with one weak weapon set base with dedicating his utility bar to take them, scale with stats, can crit (even clones can be offensive with bleed on crit or other condis like on staff) and in the case of phantasms deal massively more damage than turrets, can be traited for summoning on frickin dodgeroll on a profession with no lack of vigor (and stealth, invulnerabilities, teleports, blocks and boons, but thats mostly not ai related. Most of them.), are also used for offence and defense through the mesmers traits and shatter and have generally low recharges when it comes to phantasms (instead of that stationary thumper turret on the point that got 50 seconds cooldown after its destroyed or picked up. Oh and they can be traited for retaliation loveliness en masse. And a mesmer stealthspamming with clones and phantasms causes way more clutter on the point than simply picking out the engineer from his stationary low profile turrets.

The thing is im okay with this on mesmers, its the mechanic they are built around, but complaining about turrets as the arch villain of the AI animalfarm looks ridiculous if you are completely fine with phantasms and clones. turrets are a part of the engineers mechanics as well, namely they are supposed to reinforce the engineer while defending an area at the cost of making him very, very stationary and removes a huge deal of his utilities helping him to survive and or kill. Up until the recent patch most people didn’t consider turrets worth the sacrifice given that offensively you didn’t earn much or anything as you would often kill people faster by traiting for grenades or bombs and defensively you loose a lot of good skills as well. Utility and support wise you didn’t bring much to the table either. There was little to no reward for exposing yourself like turrets did by making you worse at about everything with the extra of being immobile and easy to counter by killing the mechanic you traited like crazy for. The exception to this was the buffed healing turret, offering both team support, utility and generally excelling as a healing skill. This was not because it was used like a turret, more like a healing bomb, there was zero incentive to leave it out, limiting counterplay by killing it.

Now after the patch why are we trying out turrets? Added utility. The team support we lacked can now be achieved by traiting for experimental turrets, a tree that also helps us defensively. The reflection trait allows us to use our turrets as a low recharge reflect if we just pick them up as soon as the reflect is over. With the APT trait now being adept (instead of IP being adept, remember that) we can actually take it when we dedicate ourselves to making the turrets worth having. Or if you don’t play with turrets viable on point, traiting into tools instead to throw fragile rocket turrets into sneaky places is an alternative to that.

I originally intended this for education purposes for non engineers how the turrets viability and mechanics have changed. Hence the over explanatory wording. I especially try to highlight the room for skill and decision making for people who think “It got AI which makes the player a bad auto attack to win spammer” infused in every possible build bringing a turret.

“I tried constructing a node fighter build with flameturret and thumper along with toolkit and HT going 2 0 6 6 0 and had a lot of fun with it. But i did not play it like i see new engineers and the type of engineers getting a lot of hate now do (setting up a triangle of net, rifle and rocket turret and then killing people wading into the point with not a single thought in the world of dodging or blocking the overcharge, ranging the engineer with condipressure in the turrets dead spots or nuking his turrets from orbit first and then killing the engineer). I agree that kind of play is not that exciting. Instead my turrets are on pointers with short range and they work as a resource in every way as much as a clone does for the mesmer and i do not use them until the effect is required, depending on which role i need them to fill.

For example using my healing turret and picking it up at once resulting in the highest possible condiclear and hps or blasting it up for a longer recharge to allow me to buy a breathing room from a melee character beating me up and thus possibly negating enough damage to compensate the hps and condiclear/s loss along with making it a bigger burst heal or gasp leaving it out for a few seconds to use the shield to negate enough damage and gaining a bit of dps back, this also lowering my hps and condiclear but negating damage proactively, sometimes i judge it worth it to activate it before needing the healing effect itself just for this reason. All these possibilities with a single healing skill. Note that doing one of these things is at the cost of the other.

And this works in the same way for flame and thumper turret. Will i use the flameturret mainly as a reflect and thus not keeping it out at all but maximizing the reflect uptime? Will i stop it from DPSing to create a smokefield allowing me to blast it for stealth for stomping or pure survival. I can sacrifice a number of turrets for that blast depending on how much stealth i need. I can keep it out for a steady low stack of might or use the firefield on napalm (which itself is a “skillshot”) and sacrifice turrets and blast for a mightspike.

For the thumper turret i can keep it out halfway into the battle to cripple my enemy and buy a bit of breathing space with the overcharge, ideally i will try to combine this with a smoke vent from flame turret to stealth me and disorientate my opponent. Then i get periodical protection as long as it is up. And my stunbreak means not having the thumper up or destroying it, is it worth destroying the tumper for the stunbreak?

I will also have to keep an eye out for their health, will they last long enough to get that welcome launch up again or will i pick it up to ensure a shorter cooldown than if it had been destroyed. They have done a good job of making the turrets more active as a resource and force some decision making to get the most out of them. Instead of switching to a kit and using all skills independent of eachother i decide what function i need right now and try pulling that of, again at the cost of other possible uses."

Sidenote i actually tried this in wvw a bit and got a tie with a PU hybrid roamer mesmer, when she got low she stealthed so i followed her example. And so it went on for a loooong while until we simply jumped and /waved. Fun times.

Oh and for some reason i eat warriors for breakfast, that reflected pindown and burn field or impale cant be good for their health.

Bhawb.7408:

I think the only real annoyance about something like this is that the Engi can leave turrets then run all the way across the map and then when you go to cap the point his thief friend shows up and its a 1.5 v 1. Besides that, turrets still have loads of issues of their own.

But the thing is, yes the engineer can leave his turrets on a point and then go for another point, but then if the engineer himself encounters a roamer it will be a 0.5vs1. Having your turrets at another point is worthless if you aren’t giving backup to an ally on that point with them (turrets don’t hold points and are easy to take down without the annoyance of the engineer) and even if so its a rather risky move since you will be easy prey to anyone cutting you off (meaning you essentially have to cap points no one is defending or even in proximity to).

And its hardly the only way to be at two places at once in this game, look at traps or banners or portal.

Turrets are extremely trait heavy, requiring you to spend a lot of points buffing them instead of the engineer. You can do hybrids but either you loose out on damage or defense.

What i find annoying is that the mega server system is working against us. Had it not been there it would be easier to do organized farmruns.

If you are a ranger or other profession with melee AI, stand behind them when stomping, 100% stomp success.

Keep in mind that there is a long delay before booby trap becomes accessible, more often than not you are killed so fast by cleave not even directed at you that there’s no time for it to be available before you are dead.

But im not complaining about our downedstate, i got the best possible downedstate in the game, its n1 skill is called “personal rezbot thief”. Better not use anything else though as you then become revealed.

Crion.8465:

The problem with making an entirely new elite means that every other class needs to get a new elite as well which means they’ll need to come up with these new elites, design them, balance etc which would take far longer than just changing mortar from immobile to mobile.

An immobile mortar will likely never be a threat simply because it is immobile, and being immobile in WvW, or anywhere, likely means death because mobility means survival. It might have some small use on walls in sieges or shooting onto walls but that’s a very small use and an elite skill shouldn’t be so useless at everything except in one situation in one part of the game, that’s my opinion at least.

Well given that we got heal skills and then new grandmaster traits its not hard to imagine elites might be next (1 new elite per class instead of 1 new utility for every category).

Also i have nothing against situational skills, its just that they need to be really shining in those scenarios where they can be used.

To be honest, a rpg or javelin style kit could fit as an entire new elite, mortar i think should just be improved until it is a threat to be worth countering. I like the idea of our own personal siege weapon, its just that it got such a minuscule range. I say let the mortar work with rifled turret barrels again (50% range) add a 400 range atleast instead of 100 on elite supplies and make the base range 1600. That way we could actually spec to counter siege in wvw which is its primary market. And we would also then get a 35% bonus to the damage from traits.

Because the range is the most critical thing about it.

I would love o see mortar companies in wvw laying siege to everything. ^^

Oh and i would have loved to see more disruptive skills on the mortar, we got a bit of an overlap with both chill and cripple, two types i’m missing is a smoke shell similar to the old smokebomb and a large aoe poison gas shell.

What if caltrops where made into a larger aoe Toxic gas shell which applied 2 seconds of poison and the bleeding of caltrops mortar in each pulse (tune the recharge) allowing us to pressure zergs and points by dampening their healing and putting pressure. And what if the chill shot applied a second of blind every now and then, protecting that area defensively, or maybe the heal could pulse protection tequatl style?

Overpowered like heck probably but no one uses it seriously as it is now.

^and you do realize the enemy can also equip generosity and simply send them back to you? Back to square one!

And also that weapon might actually use condition transfer in a good manner considering Rifle is power based.

And yeah, engineer condition removal is Healing turret.

Now someone might say “but you can take elixir c and elixier gun!”. In the same way that a mesmer got a heck of a lot of options to remove conditions, i mean just look at nullfield, arcane thievery, torch, menders purity, disenchanter, power cleanse, cleansing inscriptions and removal on shatter!

I mean why do mesmers complain about their condition removal?

EDIT: I did use AR in wvw to avoid getting immobistacked to death on a power build but didn’t use it in spvp. I accept that it must go for the sake of standing on circles, but this nerf simply kills it in a lazy fashion instead of actually giving us a viable condition removal trait by completely redesigning it. Not to mention diamond skin is still there, a trait which is better, but on a worse profession for now.

Simply implement the following changes:

1. Make automated response a adept minor.
2. Change function to “whenever you are struck by a critical attack you gain stealth and become dazed for 4 seconds (10 sec icd).”

Done! Now we can cap the points back all we want and the decapers wont be able to go into alchemy without bringing it!

In all seriousness this just illustrates how badly designed this gamemode have been for such a long time, when being stealthed is a huge drawback and pushing people out of a circle is the best use of a class, hopefully we can get that kitten tdm map so that people can get a healthy dose of PU up their noses.

The problem with bunker down and the quickness trait is that they are in the wrong traitlines entirely. Firearms is the traitline you go when you want to burst, explosives is usually not. And not to mention that the trait that creates explosive landmines on crit would make sense in you know explosives. They even went on about what a synergy it would have with the explosives traits (vulnerability and the like) and how you could easier follow up a overcharged shot with a grenade barrage thanks to quickness (who uses grenade kit when you can’t have grenadier?

Swap those two and it would make a little more sense.

Also keeping the boon removal on the mines would have given us a leg up similar to boon removal on mesmers shatters.

I am probably the only one who have been longing for deployable shields then :P

Think this with healing turret and rifle turret, place em, charge em pick them up. It would be a amazingly good upkeep on projectile reflect.

Ive always envied guardians a bit. But no more!

Im not saying this will be the savior of turrets, but i do really see the potential for fun play with this.