Elite Gatling Turret Suggestion, other Turret Engineer rework ideas

Main Idea:

• I think that adding an elite turret skill to Engineer to fully line up the utilities with unique turret skills would be great, especially because in their current state they're more like a pest than something threatening. Supply drop is kinda good but relatively unthreatening and boring, it's just more newbie turrets.

• Maybe this should be something for elite spec in the future, so you really have to specialize to get it, but I would like a really badass, huge gatling turret on a solid metal platform to drop in from orbit and start shredding through people who don't avoid or block it, and it will run out of ammo eventually and blow up or something so it doesn't just lock down a point for 5 minutes, which would be dumb. This would be really cool. Any decent player with a reflect wall could probably negate it entirely, so it would have to have some good luck to be powerful. Dropping it in the middle of a teamfight should get it killed fast as all turrets will, since most of its damage will be sustained DPS.

Extra ideas:

• Add trait lines to upgrade your turrets specifically: Give a choice of freezing, incendiary, or poison bullets for your elite turret. Hybrid builds are fun to make work.

• Choice of shrapnel, radioactive, or concussive (daze) rockets for the rocket turret, and a visual update (why is it on 3 sticks?)

• The flamethrower turret is in a good state I think conceptually and visually, currently it hits like wet tissue paper though even with some fair condi stats. So I'd add a napalm upgrade or something to that.

• Maybe you could also add traits to make the turrets explode when they die too. We could make that with remote detonation be more deadly with bleeding.

• Visually I would update most of these turrets too, removing the cranks they have on the side: if you can make a holoforge, surely your clockwork should be better than a chronomancer, but that's just me. (If you care about specifics, make the thumper turret a compact magnetic pile driver). Primarily, make it consistent. The visuals on the PoF stuff are excellent, and having an awesome elite turret and a silly looking rifle turret next to it would be bad.

• I also think changing the look and function of the rifle turret to a sniper rifle turret would be great, lowering the rate of fire for super long range (1500 or 2000?) and potentially useful shots to harass weaker enemies.

• I think that the turrets F1-4 abilities should be their overcharge skills, so you don't have to detonate and replace them just for that extra kick when you need it. Since the F5 Ability is not meant to be up long: it won't have a reusable overcharge, so for this ability I think you can either have some stability buff, or way more cool is an automatically targeting immobilize on all nearby enemies so they can't run away from it. Massive cooldown though. I do like all the overcharge skills as they are.

• Another cool idea for even more turrets to choose from are short lived ones that move in a predictable manner, so that they circle around a point firing projectiles at enemies inside from various angles, like a drone (scrapper didn't do this exactly. This is a static zone control.) There are a lot of directional blocks and this would be really fun to mess with.

• Even more turret fun: make a turret that strips boons from enemies, extra with its overcharge. You can make so many fun strategies depending on where and how you place these guys. Engineer doesn't have to be complicated with kits and stuff, you just have to be a creative player and get out there and learn strategies with things like this.

• Another idea I had after posting: a turret that sets up a customizable combo field that's up either permanently or has a very high duty cycle. You could pick any one of the fields in the game for it to set up.

• I guess while I'm at it too I think the autoattack on the rifle should be a short range buck shot like skill, very shotgun oriented. I know blunderbuss is on there, this would be a bit more narrow and less powerful. I'd put damaging conditions on both, but should both be bleed? Idk. Its base autoattack is a meme compared to other autos. If you want long range rifle combat, look at the deadeye. Hell, the deadeye is perfect for screwing your turret placements from out of range. Easy counter. An engineer specced into turrets without turrets should be easy to kill.

I get a lot of joy out of placing turrets carefully and relying on strategy to help me out but it doesn't really work, and it feels like such a missed opportunity for such a unique playstyle. There is definitely hope though, and if there's another expansion, I think a total revamp for the turret engineer would be my dream come true. I think a few weeks of dev time could do this really easily and I certainly would be very thankful, and definitely pay for an expansion with that. I just wanted to throw this idea out there for now, maybe god will answer my prayers. If anyone else likes the idea of this comment I guess so devs know it's popular.

@"Matoro.9708" said:Main Idea:

• I think that adding an elite turret skill to Engineer to fully line up the utilities with unique turret skills would be great, especially because in their current state they're more like a pest than something threatening. Supply drop is kinda good but relatively unthreatening and boring, it's just more newbie turrets.

Maybe if ArenaNet lowered the cooldown on Supply Crate from 120 seconds to 90 seconds and increased the health on the turrets, it would probably make them more threatening and "elite".

Extra ideas:

• Add trait lines to upgrade your turrets specifically: Give a choice of freezing, incendiary, or poison bullets for your elite turret. Hybrid builds are fun to make work.
• Choice of shrapnel, radioactive, or concussive (daze) rockets for the rocket turret, and a visual update (why is it on 3 sticks?)

There is the Experimental Turrets trait that adds a reflective shield on the turrets. The problem with the trait is that it adds the reflective shield like a second or two after they're deployed.

• The flamethrower turret is in a good state I think conceptually and visually, currently it hits like wet tissue paper though even with some fair condi stats. So I'd add a napalm upgrade or something to that.

They could change it to fire like the Flamethrower.

• I also think changing the look and function of the rifle turret to a sniper rifle turret would be great, lowering the rate of fire for super long range (1500 or 2000?) and potentially useful shots to harass weaker enemies.

1500-2000 range is too much in my opinion. The only thing that could improve the Rifle Turret is lowering the cast time to 1 second similar to the engineers' Rifle, increasing the damage and increasing the range to 1200.

• I guess while I'm at it too I think the autoattack on the rifle should be a short range buck shot like skill, very shotgun oriented. I know blunderbuss is on there, this would be a bit more narrow and less powerful. I'd put damaging conditions on both, but should both be bleed? Idk. Its base autoattack is a meme compared to other autos. If you want long range rifle combat, look at the deadeye. Hell, the deadeye is perfect for screwing your turret placements from out of range. Easy counter. An engineer specced into turrets without turrets should be easy to kill.

Increasing the damage on the rifle would be the best way to buff the weapon. But removing the long ranged auto attack and replacing it with a close range buck shot would make Scourges and Rangers hard counter the engineer.

Yeah I use and like experimental turrets, and I think it works out OK as is, but I was thinking of a whole elite skill tree with customizable turret options. I do really like the flamethrower idea, and you're probably right about the rifle turret gameplay ideas. Engineer does have fair pistol range and the mortar kit, so long range options aren't lacking really, and currently no full shotgun theme exists among the 3 classes that use rifle, so it was more a personal preference but in the end balance is more important.

Thanks for the ideas, I think it helps bring this all a bit more back into reality. Here's hoping it happens some day.

I am in favor of anything that makes turret builds truly viable. I would love to use all 3 on my bar.

I would like to suggest to implant turrets on players shoulders, so you could run around with them shooting stuff while you move, they would have their duration the same , but it would give a nice position in PvP pve and raids if they got buffed up.

Instead of staying on the ground they would be implanted in your gear :) would be fancy and a great upgrade, flamethrower turret for example has a low range fire, if you got it in your shoulders you could be always close to enemies allowing your turrets to fire in your enemies.

Probably the hp should incrase, once you are close fights they could get easily destroyed . :)

To put it bluntly, Anet will never allow Turret Engi to be good again. Not after the cancerous Turret tank meta back pre HoT.

I would prefer a gatling gun kit, without grounded turret or AI involved.

Not too long ago i was playing around with ideas like: Turrets cant be killed but has a breakbar instead, and when it reaches 0 the turret is disabled until it regens back its breabar (which it cna only do out of combat) or if the engineer repairs it with the toolkit.

Or a trait that makes the overcharge reset if the engineer repairs a turret with the toolkit, with a cd ofc

@Matoro.9708 said:Extra ideas:

• Add trait lines to upgrade your turrets specifically: Give a choice of freezing, incendiary, or poison bullets for your elite turret. Hybrid builds are fun to make work.
• Choice of shrapnel, radioactive, or concussive (daze) rockets for the rocket turret, and a visual update (why is it on 3 sticks?)I like it.
• Maybe you could also add traits to make the turrets explode when they die too. We could make that with remote detonation be more deadly with bleeding.Don't turrets explode when you detonate them and the detonation can cause bleeding and so on when traited?
• Visually I would update most of these turrets too, removing the cranks they have on the side: if you can make a holoforge, surely your clockwork should be better than a chronomancer, but that's just me. (If you care about specifics, make the thumper turret a compact magnetic pile driver). Primarily, make it consistent. The visuals on the PoF stuff are excellent, and having an awesome elite turret and a silly looking rifle turret next to it would be bad.
• I also think changing the look and function of the rifle turret to a sniper rifle turret would be great, lowering the rate of fire for super long range (1500 or 2000?) and potentially useful shots to harass weaker enemies.

I think a super long range (even a range only a LB ranger and DE can achieve) is too much for a short cd, drop and forget skill. Especially if you consider pvp/wvw.

• I think that the turrets F1-4 abilities should be their overcharge skills, so you don't have to detonate and replace them just for that extra kick when you need it. Since the F5 Ability is not meant to be up long: it won't have a reusable overcharge, so for this ability I think you can either have some stability buff, or way more cool is an automatically targeting immobilize on all nearby enemies so they can't run away from it. Massive cooldown though. I do like all the overcharge skills as they are.

I was also thinking about this last week, wishing anet would rework the overloads so that we have more control over it and we can use it multiple times rather than just the initial cast.

• Even more turret fun: make a turret that strips boons from enemies, extra with its overcharge. You can make so many fun strategies depending on where and how you place these guys. Engineer doesn't have to be complicated with kits and stuff, you just have to be a creative player and get out there and learn strategies with things like this.
• Another idea I had after posting: a turret that sets up a customizable combo field that's up either permanently or has a very high duty cycle. You could pick any one of the fields in the game for it to set up.omg yes!!!I get a lot of joy out of placing turrets carefully and relying on strategy to help me out but it doesn't really work, and it feels like such a missed opportunity for such a unique playstyle. There is definitely hope though, and if there's another expansion, I think a total revamp for the turret engineer would be my dream come true. I think a few weeks of dev time could do this really easily and I certainly would be very thankful, and definitely pay for an expansion with that. I just wanted to throw this idea out there for now, maybe god will answer my prayers. If anyone else likes the idea of this comment I guess so devs know it's popular.bump

the reason most turrets blow is because of the old turret engi meta. the biggest problem i had with it was that it didn't require much effort on the engi's part to pull of since the turrets use themselves when put down. so if you want to buff turrets you'll need to make sure that doesn't happen again.so if you want to buff turrets it shouldn't be with a passive/stat buff. you can use 'tool kit' for this.

a few of my (not thought out) ideas are:

• tool kit auto-attack applies a bit of barrier either when the turret is full health or along side the healing it currently has. a full barrier can be maintained with continuous wacking
• tool kit 3 pry bar can trigger an overcharge on the turret you hit it with. could maybe 'store' the overcharge until an enemy got close with a spark effect on the turret to warn other players (since it's a turret and not a trap a trap)*picked up turrets don't have a cooldown but their health won't reset and they wont auto overcharge when placed. (so you could pick it up, run away, place it down and fix it with tool kit)

also supply crate is engi's turret elite

I want a Tesla Coil Turret that stuns enemies lol.

@DragonSlayer.1087 said:I want a Tesla Coil Turret that stuns enemies lol.

Yes!