What if the skills of the towers were like mantras?

[JDominance.6470]

Recently, I was committed to creating a build focused on the engineer towers, and like many who tried it, I believe they soon got frustrated :(

My initial idea was to be a good support, using the towers with the specialization, inventions. But it didn't take long for me to realize that there is no reward for leaving the towers active, which is somewhat controversial for a tower. Another very frustrating thing is that the towers do not benefit from the Engineer status, which meant that most veterans break them with just one blow.

I believe that, perhaps, the reasons for being so weak and often unusable, are the difficulty in balancing and the players who use it illegally for farming AFK.

My suggestions are:

• Towers do not attack automatically:When planting a tower, it gains 2 charges (similar to mantras), the first generates the active effect of the tower (be it to heal or attack), having a recharge time similar to the automatic of each tower.The second charge detonates the turret (allowing players to still create detonation builds).

• Towers receive percentages of the Engineer attributes:The towers now share defenses, life or even boon duration. Giving more freedom in creating builds, both in high damage or defensive and healer.

I really believe that these changes would bring new life to the towers and make them more versatile.

I hope I was clear and contributed to this wonderful community ^^

[Kodama.6453]

Something clearly needs to be done about turrets, that's for sure. Unfortunately, it seems that Anet simply doesn't care about them at all... I mean, they are nerfed out of existence for how many years now?

I made an own thread about this topic, I think we should still keep the need to keep the turrets alive for better benefit somewhere. As you point out here, it is just intuitive that you should have to keep them alive. My idea has been to make turrets stack up an attack, similar to your mantra mechanic here, but unlike mantras you don't spend just 1 stack, but all stacks are consumed when you activate their skill.

The power of the skill (damage, healing, boons, conditions, etc) scales directly with the number of stacks you are using for the attack.I also think that some turrets should get reworked from the ground. Thumper turret with it's short range doesn't really prove useful as a stationary unit, so I would make that turret in some kind of "static turret", looking like a tesla coil. When activated, it emits an electric wave that ccs enemies in a big area (based on stacks it is either a slow, daze or stun).

Net turret is also pretty underwhelming, since it just ccs a single target. What turrets are missing is another turret that deals condition damage, so I would rework this into a "chemical turret". When activated, it releases fumes in an area which can apply conditions on enemies and boons on allies and it counts as a poison combo field.

[JDominance.6470]

Interesting your suggestions, I really don't understand the abandonment of the towers. But what we can do is continue to give our opinions and hope that something is done so that the towers gain real use.

[Dawdler.8521]

As long as I can build a tower to look down on people I'm good. Though walls would be good too.

[Aeolus.3615]

So the turrets would be amunition based with a longer CD and shorter duration????? is that it?

[JDominance.6470]

In fact, the duration would be longer if your Engineer has more defense and more life. About the CD I really don't know if it would be bigger or smaller.

[Mardomus.6984]

I mean, they could change Engineer turret style similar to what revenants have with "The Legend of Dragon Stance". When activating abilities for certain boons, and when using said ability, the boon is removed through duration and activates what that ability does. For example; "Facet of Elements" provide swiftness and, upon usage, you lose swiftness on duration, but gain the ability Elemental Blast for couple seconds with a 10 second recharge.

In the invention build for Engineers (Experimental turrets), we already have that setup, in way; instead, we lose our turrets to 2 damage aoe attacks and have a very long cooldown making it useless. "Flame Turret" gives Might, "Rifle Turret" gives Fury, etc. Keep the tool belt skills the same, but give the abilities a couple of seconds of duration usage. For example; when using "Flame Turret" once, you and everyone around gains Might. If you use it again, you deploy a flame turret in said spot for a couple of seconds with a 10 second cooldown and it detonates once duration is over; plus it can't be target or destroyed when deployed.

Maybe have the tool kit provide damage buff for deployed turrets, or something.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Ironically, we had this once. The original turrets worked like that.

1.) You placed the Turret with the utility/heal skill.2.) The turret was placed and started operating. Meanwhile the utility-skills turned into overcharge-icons, allowing you to overcharge the turrets when/if you felt like doing it. In addition, the toolbelt-skills turned into the detonate-icon.

They worked like this for a very long time until that one cursed day, when the developers decided this mechanic was too complicated. So they removed the control over the turrets from us and created the auto-overcharge, which triggers right after the turret was placed. They assumed Engineer players would never use the non-overcharged version anyway, so they did us a favor. It was absolutely horrible. This small QOL patch has wrecked so many good builds and promoted the summon=>detonate mentality even more.

So I welcome your suggestion. It would not turn the clock back, but it would give us some control back.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

Even if the increased control was given, it does not change the fact that Arena Net does not like the style turrets promote.

Ideally they should just turn them all to wells and make them stationary to differentiate them from Gyros.

[archmagus.7249]

Sounds like the spirits from the Ritualist class from GW1.

I'd like turrets to operate similar to signets, each granting a minor, passive buff until the turret is placed.

[Cakin.1230]

Some of my thoughts:The turrets need to scale with the player stats, and some turrets should be reworked like mentioned above. Since you might not want to run ALL the turrets for your utility slots, how about giving the Rifle Turret like 3 charges, allowing you to place 3 Rifle Turrets. Or something like the Mantra version, you "prepair" your Rifle Turret, then you can place 1-3 of them.I also think the entire Tool Kit should be dedicated to interact with your turrets. Tool Kit skill 1 right now heals your turrets 5%. That's it. That's all the interaction we get.And the Toolbelt skills from turrets could turn into something ACTUALLY effecting the turrets! Instead of Surprise Shot, how about "Grant your turrets Fury and Might for x seconds". The old overcharges were better, but still needed some work. I'm not a fan of the overcharge idea in general, I'd rather have my previously mentioned suggestion of the Toolbelt interaction. Actually, Tool Kit and/or Toolbelt doing this is fine either way, perhaps both.I would like to see a Turret traitline! Perhaps we are getting a bit too far into the turrets now, but hey, how many didn't fall in love with the idea of an Engineer BECAUSE of the turrets?? (That or the flamethrower..) I suppose a rework of Invention and/or Tools traitlines could do the trick aswell, they feel underwhelming to me.

I don't want the turrets to become the new META BEST BUILD EVER, just to become viable. Heck, even good enough to be a choice! Even if it potentially locks you into using Tool Kit to make the turrets strong enough, that is ok! If you have to give up doing the damage yourself with your sword, pistol, rifle, then fine, you are tuning your turrets to do the job for you! That's what I imagine an Engineer would do in battle! Especially an Asura, but now we're into the cosmetics :P