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Making Turrets semi-viable again


Naxos.2503

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So, as many engineers know, Engineer's turrets have been a laughing joke since 2017.

As it stands, most turrets can get one shotted by a single veteran mob in PvE, it's not even Worth mentioning how players themselves can tear several turrets down in one big swoop. Their HP technically have always been rather low. Their damage is well balanced, but their low Health makes it Impossible for them to deal their actual damage. They benefit from only 1 trait, Experimental Turrets, and those buff the player, not the turret themselves, which is a very odd choice. Furthermore, ever since their Overcharge was nerfed (No, really Anet, it's not a Tweak, but a nerf) to activate only Once at summon, which them tactically stiff and removes their utility further.

So what can be done ? Well, some of the changes could be reverted, to a degree, but that's rarely an option explored. Arguably, Simply making it so the the turret automatically Overcharge every 10 seconds would be a Noticeable improvement.

The Inventions traitline is rife with traits that could be enhanced to fit in turrets instead of/along with the player. Let's list a couple :

Over ShieldShield skills gain recharge reduction and grant protection to nearby allies. Protection on you gains increased damage reduction.-Apply it to turrets : Suddenly their low low HP makes Protection a bit more interesting. If you cant Apply a player buff to an inanimate object (just in case) Simply Apply a trait buff that reduce damage done to turrets by 20% (To keep it balanced from Boonstrip/Corruption)

Autodefense Bomb DispenserDrop a smoke bomb when you are disabled.-Drop a smoke bomb when your turrets are destroyed. (Every little bit counts)

Bunker DownCreate a proximity mine and med kit at your location when you critically hit with an attack.-Automatically Repair your turrets by 2% when you take damage. Increase turret HP by 10%

Those are examples of traits with fitting thematics that could be applied to turrets to allow a bit more use out of them, without breaking the game. Though that's not all.

Tool Kit :The first skill of this bundle will chain melee attack, and repair your turrets. However : If you're close to your turrets while trying to repair them, either the damage will Simply be too stronger for that measly 5% per hit that you can repair. This in turn makes it the least used Kit of the Engineer, due to other kits performing better at damage and stun. It's only saving grace being a block.

-Make Thwack (Last hit of skill 1) heal for 10% at the very least plus :

Power Wrench (Tools traits)Reduces recharge of your tool-kit skills. Reduce the recharge of your elite skill when you dodge.-Increases Healing done to turrets by 3% per hit.

And now it starts paying off a little bit to care for your turrets.

I dont know, that was just some brainstorming on my part, and I have no guarantee of how it would end up, but atleast I'm making Something with existing materials. Which certainly means the devs can too.

Thoughts from fellow engineers ?

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It's not happening. Turrets have been a laughing stock for way longer than since 2017 -- they were in the gutter since the turret engi was meta back in pre-HoT days. People didn't like the way they played, and they were nerfed into the ground. They never recovered. Even if they were given back their original power, they'd still be underpowered today.

And you know why I say it's not happening? It's been 5 or 6 years since this happened. If they wanted to fix turrets, they could have. They could have done so any time in all those years. I'm not wasting energy on turrets any more, because they simply don't care.

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The best thing they can do to turrets is what they did to Gyros : turn it into something it's not.

I'm still under the impression that turning Gyros into mobile Wells is the most lazy way they could have updated Gyros.

No doubt they will do the same to Turrets, if they even care.

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@Yasai.3549 said:The best thing they can do to turrets is what they did to Gyros : turn it into something it's not.

I'm still under the impression that turning Gyros into mobile Wells is the most lazy way they could have updated Gyros.

No doubt they will do the same to Turrets, if they even care.Or just make it into straight up plop down and forget with decently short cd. IMO the whole overcharge thing, pickups and repairs just way overcomplicate things. GW2 is too fast paced for it. At best, reparing them should be some kind of AoE skill.

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@"Dawdler.8521" said:Or just make it into straight up plop down and forget with decently short cd. IMO the whole overcharge thing, pickups and repairs just way overcomplicate things. GW2 is too fast paced for it. At best, reparing them should be some kind of AoE skill.

Pretty sure that deep down inside the solution isn't so simple.

Anet seems to hate autonomy, ridiculous btw because they allow minions to exist for Necromancers.

But let's say they do make it exactly like yu suggested.

Prepare for the storm of players going "omg turret spammers in pvp and wvw" "turrets op no skill"

But that won't happen either because Turrets are a joke even when it comes to the damage department.

So is an entire skill line for Engineers gonna just stay useless?

Then we come back to posts like this : people begging Anet to rework Turrets.

Like I said, Anet would either rework it by making it totally-not-a-turret or just ignore it.

Guess which is the easier option.

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@Yasai.3549 said:Like I said, Anet would either rework it by making it totally-not-a-turret or just ignore it.

Guess which is the easier option.They've already done that by taking away our choice in when to use overcharge -automatic and only once per deployment. Turrets are now just a combination of a cut rate belt skill and a bomb - on an excessively high cooldown for what they bring. Is it any wonder most turrets are taken for their belt utilities and not for their actual merits? With the exception of healing turret -which is beginning to show its age- on average they're a waste of a slot.

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@"Vagrant.7206" said:And you know why I say it's not happening? It's been 5 or 6 years since this happened. If they wanted to fix turrets, they could have. They could have done so any time in all those years. I'm not wasting energy on turrets any more, because they simply don't care.

Beginning to wonder if that shouldn't be changed to read thusly:

"And you know why I say it's not happening? It's been 5 or 6 years since this happened. If they wanted to fix core, they could have. They could have done so any time in all those years. I'm not wasting energy on core any more, because they simply don't care."

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@Yasai.3549 said:I'm still under the impression that turning Gyros into mobile Wells is the most lazy way they could have updated Gyros.

Eh, most people were requesting they get rid of the AI entirely anyway. Allied AI in GW2 is notoriously bad -- minions, turrets, gyros... all have needed serious changes made, and they still have some pretty garbage AI. Smarter just to get rid of it altogether.

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@Yasai.3549 said:

Anet seems to hate autonomy, ridiculous btw because they allow minions to exist for Necromancers.

I'd like gyros to be minion like too but minions kind of suck for Necros. Really, outside of the flesh golem, wurm (which is stationary...) and maybe shadow they've never really been taken outside of open world. The 'minion tree' for Necros (Death Magic or whatevs) has pretty much always been a dead spec line. Don't even get me started on the shitty AI and the 'disappearing minions' when you mount up too fast...

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@redwing.9580 said:

what? their current state is how they should have been in the first place, unless you can suggest another way they could be that would be better

They literally turned them into mobile wells and labelled them Gyros.

Those aren't even Gyros.

Could have done more interesting stuff with them, as I have mentioned in another post, to make a Gyro skillset which will remove Gyros from the utility bar altogether and give more bruiser-esque or support style utilities in their place.

Example : F5 will toggle open the Gyro module which has Function, Blast, Purge and Bulwurk Gyros which players can either cast on location or cast on target to follow, and a 5th recall button to recall all Gyros and refresh the cooldowns.

Healing Gyro will still be healing skill, Stealth Gyro will still be an Elite skill, and utilities can be replaced with Barrier manipulation, because Scrapper could have been the class which specially played around Barrier gain or Barrier stripping.

Utilities could also have a stronger gap closer with CC to support Scrapper's intended Melee gameplay too.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I started playing at release until end of 2013. Then break until I came back after years ... a few weeks ago in June 2019.

Now as someone mentioned: Turrets were weak alreay back then if I remember correctly. Pistol with condition damage and other stuff (elixirs, gadgets ... or the turrets for toolbelt skill) were popular. I played the rifle for CC though - most of the time.

I only used turrets at the very beginning when I was new to the game and picked engineer cause it sounded cool and turrets seemed like a nice thing. Prette quick I changed to other stuff though. (Mainly bomb kit later. Just spamming attacks and running around not even aiming. Grenade were too much for a noob like me. :D)

Already wondered where the option to overload was. So it really is only 1 time after spawning the turret? Only time I used one was net turret back in Dry Top after my return when trying to solo the defense event where for the achievement not a single item must be stolen. (Almost managed it solo but then some other players arrived to help near the end. :D)

Would be fun if with another elite spec (maybe in the future) they added something pet-like we could customize. (I'd love that for ranger as well.) But then other classes would beg for customizable pets as well. So far all or most classes have stuff they can "summon" (be it only spirit weapons, banners or stuff like that) but the real "pet" have only rangers and while it is not weak it is "boring".

Also a main point why I did not like turrets. Stationary = boring when you are on the move all the time. I doubt I'd use them again ... even if they heavily got buffed. Once I buy my expansions and get elite (HoT and scrapper by the end of this year, PoF next year) I probably will try the gyro thingy stuff.

Edit: Despite that ... engineer is still my favorite class - out of the basic core stuff playable without expansions. The only times I thought "god these mobs are slow to kill ... i want another class" were at the very beginning ... when I still tried for turrets. Might be a lot of new players also get to dislike the class if they have the wrong expectations before trying. (But usually nowadays new players are referred to expansions - for getting mounts first ... and probably directly trying elite specs that bring other stuff - and not even the turrets anymore.)

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Well one pipe dream I had through out the years was to keep range from rifled barrels and have the choice between automation and manuall control, with the manual option working like the old mortar giving addition of 3 new skills and damage/range bonus with the expense of being rooted. So it functions like miniature siege.

PS: Coming from tf2, I always wondered what was so op about the turrets here, it only made up at most 10% of the total damage :/

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I always thought turrets could be treated like traps. They are triggered by an enemy stepping within its radius. To avoid people triggering and moving away from them after 1 "tick" of damage or effect (thus making turrets as useless as they are now in PvP/WvW), make them do just 1 attack or effect then they are done.

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Searching through old posts one can find a lot of great ideas, I can attest to that. I've already made my own thread back in the day. Honestly, the main issue people have IS the automatic function of the turrets - let's take this away. They ONLY attack what you do, when you do, if their auto is up. If you switch targets, they do, if you AFK, they do jack. The turret can become a supplemental damage solution, without allowing for AFK farming. Bunker builds were also an issue: let the turrets scale harshly with power and precision and traits, such that to be where they are now meh without investment (and ideally better with berzerker gear). Obviously they should be able to pose an offensive threat. Perhaps they also scale with your vitality or toughness, so they are also glassy at baseline. Particularly effective would be putting overcharge back on like Mantras, once you run out, you can detonate, and these skills also scale. Once the devs really nail how turrets should work in a healthy game, I am confident the balance team can figure out the details after, and there is no shortage of good player suggestions. Seriously, go check. The ammo/overcharge only idea is a really strong one, and makes counterplay easy through stuns.

I personally still believe that the turret elite deserves and needs a rework to be a standalone choice, not overlap and spam. For that matter, an elite gadget would be cool, but that's pretty much Bootts and WP's missing skills video.

And yeah, I gotta get a gripe in: using any 3 main turrets always yields under 1k DPS, maybe condi flame turret gets a little above. But they all die in seconds. Like I said, figure out the numbers later, they aren't the problem first - clearly with 20k damage spikes in the game in 2-3 seconds, it matters more how it plays than how fast it kills.

As a final note, I think that new players would feel pretty bad if they felt core engi was intentionally bad, just to push them towards PoF or HoT for money. IMO, the core experience should be the most well rounded, polished part, otherwise the game feels like an ugly painting with a few nice trees here and there - or a gross fast food restaurant your hunger dragged you into, you want those tendies, but you deserve better, and you're really only enjoying the shake. I love the expansions, and they are all the better when the base game is a strong stepping stone.

I hope the devs read this, and if you are one, thanks for that. Please consider these improvements for the game, love ya, and hope you have a good one.

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@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:What if the turrets work like the gyro;s did...you have a little turret following you for a certain period that uses its attack when in range of an opponent/enemy.

Unfortunately, if that's the only change, it'll get one of the pitfalls Gyros had originally, namely, if a fly lands on it, it crumbles, much like current turrets.

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Biggest thing with any engineer skill (IMO) is opportunity cost. Engineer has no weapon swap, and the weapons it does have (core, anyway) are pretty bad, so its utility skills need to do enough to cover for those missing cooldowns/damage.. and you still only get 3 utility skills, so you can't afford to waste anything.

Those utility skills need to do a skritt-ton (kits), or the things they do need to be really really valuable (eg. elixir S, rocket boots). In their current state, turrets just aren't going to cut it. If they're going to die so easily, I'd say a lot of them could at least do with lower cooldowns. Even then, I don't think I'd choose them over any current engi kits or gadgets.

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Turrets have to be addressed . In addition of not having skins matching the race using it, they feel very useless. Us poor engineers are one of the rare class that still haven't access to weapon swaps, and the kits if those are considered as weapons are dull, weak and useless apart the overused grenade kits in many build, but have you heard somebody using elixir pistol or toolkit? lol, the option to overcharge when we want the turret was nice, now it doesn't have any sense anymore. The tool traitline is a joke, with nothing interesting apart maybe kinetic battery.

Turrets should have more traits for them, we already have experimental turret giving holo shield+boons depending on turrets. Let's modify Modified Ammunition to turn the projectiles of the turrets into explosive ones. That way; steel packed powder trait would apply on turrets, so more vulnerabilities. In addition, shrapnel would apply: additional cripple and bleeding. So more interesting to use those by SIMPLY EDITING ONE TRAIT.

So to sum up, in my case, turrets have:-The protective shield and give boons-Rocket/Rifle inflict bleeding, vulnerabilities, cripple-All turrets overcharge when you ask for it like before, the overcharge would be very fast, multiplying output damages by 1.5.-Their base damages are a little increased due to modified ammunition.-Have skins matching the race using them: asuran turrets, sylvari ones, charr gunmachine....

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To fix turrets:

  • make them have a considerable amount of HP and damage reduction (should never be one shotted)
  • make them have a defiance bar, If broken it takes a while to start functioning again
  • make it so you can only can have 1 active turret at a time, if traited you get a second one.
  • if destroyed, it should have a very long cooldown, making repairing them part of the gameplay. Care for your turret, keep it alive.
  • picking it up should have a longer cast time, should make it only a few seconds to reposition them, and turrets should maintain their current hp when placed again, picking them up should be for repositioning only.
  • Turrets should be oriented towards a "tower defense" style of gameplay, so no detonation, and they shouldn't be used just for the overload (this would severily nerf the best healing skill we current have, but its a good trade off if we get meaningful improvements on turrets that open viable new builds)
  • with only one turret at a time, the effects of turrets should be improved around each style: healing turret should react to the presense of conditions and release a cleansing mist, with an internal cd. Rifle turret should release a barrage with an ICD, flame turret a smoke cloud when the engi is cced within its range with an ICD, and so on, for each turret the "overcharge" should be part of its AI and be triggered by conditions that could be managed by being within the range of the turret.
  • Turret elite should obviously be changed, it could be various things, from dropping a more volatile version of other turrets, an omni turret that explodes after a while, a portal like turret (inspired by TF 2), and the tool belt should be about repairing turrets instead of the player.
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@"Baltzenger.2467" said:To fix turrets:

  • make them have a considerable amount of HP and damage reduction (should never be one shotted)
  • make them have a defiance bar, If broken it takes a while to start functioning again
  • make it so you can only can have 1 active turret at a time, if traited you get a second one.
  • if destroyed, it should have a very long cooldown, making repairing them part of the gameplay. Care for your turret, keep it alive.
  • picking it up should have a longer cast time, should make it only a few seconds to reposition them, and turrets should maintain their current hp when placed again, picking them up should be for repositioning only.
  • Turrets should be oriented towards a "tower defense" style of gameplay, so no detonation, and they shouldn't be used just for the overload (this would severily nerf the best healing skill we current have, but its a good trade off if we get meaningful improvements on turrets that open viable new builds)
  • with only one turret at a time, the effects of turrets should be improved around each style: healing turret should react to the presense of conditions and release a cleansing mist, with an internal cd. Rifle turret should release a barrage with an ICD, flame turret a smoke cloud when the engi is cced within its range with an ICD, and so on, for each turret the "overcharge" should be part of its AI and be triggered by conditions that could be managed by being within the range of the turret.
  • Turret elite should obviously be changed, it could be various things, from dropping a more volatile version of other turrets, an omni turret that explodes after a while, a portal like turret (inspired by TF 2), and the tool belt should be about repairing turrets instead of the player.

You raise an interesting idea actually. What if to Actually be harmed, the turrets have to be CCed so their health can be effectively lowered (It can still be lowered without, but far slower).

I'm also not against keeping them as a many-choices elite. Provided it's well balanced and Properly elite, it could work nicely.Overall, a fair amount of good ideas in there !

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