A complete turret rework is long overdue

[draxynnic.3719]

@Longstride.9716 said:How about having turrets work like the lesser elemental glyph, allowing you to deploy/build multiple of the same turret. That way engineers utilizing turrets would get stronger in prolonged, stationary fights. Obviously that's very specific and situational, but better have one niche than no use at all.

That's an interesting possibility, although it would probably break the current functionality of detonating turrets to blast their own fields.

[rrusse.7058]

As many have already said, stationary combat is not good for the game unless it is sPvP and we saw that world where turrets are way overtuned and players just bunker down on side nodes with their turrets.

Turrets shouldn't even function like turrets anymore. Make them function more like minions for Necromancers. Instead they are just mobile robots that provide damage or support the player/allies. Traits can be reworked to allow for buffing options at the cost of personal DPS and so on.

[Lynx.9058]

I mean, I like the bunker playstyle, and that's kind of the purpose of turrets isnt it? Obviously the downside is that, if you use that playstyle, you arent mobile, you have to stick with the area you set up in or deal with cooldowns when transitioning. It's kind of like Shamans used to be back in WoW's early days, creating fortified areas with their totems.

There was another game I used to play, a semi-MMO called Global Agenda, with a 'robotics' class that revolved around the use of turrets and drones and stations (buffing, immobile constructs). They had a 'third arm' that shot a repair beam and could be used to heal their constructs. A good robotics player could bunker down in a hallway/chokepoint and basically be unstoppable, but he had to use line of sight to avoid getting targeted by enemies while healing his turrets so they could fortify the position. The worst enemy of a robotics character was an assassin; assassins came in two flavors: sniper or melee, and either one could, with proper technique, get into a robotics' bunker position (or shoot into it from beyond turret range), and take out the robotics player. The thing is, the turrets a robotics' character used had limitations and strengths. Flamethrower turrets were 360 degrees firing arcs, and did extremely high damage, but had very very short range. Autoturrets (like our rifle turrets here) had medium range and a 180 degree firing arc, so if you could get behind them they would no longer harm you, and that was the weak point. Rocket turrets had the longest range, but only a 45 degree firing arc, so they could be flanked more easily. Regardless of which turret was being used, the robotics player had to focus on keeping them alive by using the healing arm - with it, the turrets were nigh-invulnerable, but without it they could be taken down pretty quickly.

I dont see why a similar method would not work here. Give each of the turrets a different firing arc and weak point, so that engineers have to be more mindful of where they set up a turret and what direction it's facing. As of right now, all turrets have 360 degree fire, which is kind of why they cant be properly balanced. At the same time, we need to make the turrets powerful enough (damage-wise) to be worth placing, and strong enough to survive a few hits, but weak enough that they require toolkit healing to avoid being destroyed too quickly. This would (hopefully) create a system where an engineer focusing on bunkering down and healing himself and his turrets would be difficult to take out, but he would also be limited to functioning in a very small area and vulnerable whenever his turrets were not placed (or not placed properly). It would also mean the toolkit and its healing ability on turrets would be required in order to keep turrets alive in a pvp situation, so that's one less utility slot he has available.

[draxynnic.3719]

@rrusse.7058 said:As many have already said, stationary combat is not good for the game unless it is sPvP and we saw that world where turrets are way overtuned and players just bunker down on side nodes with their turrets.

Turrets shouldn't even function like turrets anymore. Make them function more like minions for Necromancers. Instead they are just mobile robots that provide damage or support the player/allies. Traits can be reworked to allow for buffing options at the cost of personal DPS and so on.

I'm not sure that this is really true. There are a lot of instances and open world events where you're fighting in the same general area for an extended period of time, so there's no in-principle reason why turrets couldn't be useful in those environments if balanced appropriately.

[Taril.8619]

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@"rrusse.7058" said:As many have already said, stationary combat is not good for the game unless it is sPvP and we saw that world where turrets are way overtuned and players just bunker down on side nodes with their turrets.

Turrets shouldn't even function like turrets anymore. Make them function more like minions for Necromancers. Instead they are just mobile robots that provide damage or support the player/allies. Traits can be reworked to allow for buffing options at the cost of personal DPS and so on.

I'm not sure that this is really true. There are a lot of instances and open world events where you're fighting in the same general area for an extended period of time, so there's no in-principle reason why turrets couldn't be useful in those environments if balanced appropriately.

Yeah, stationary combat is only not good in WvW due to the amount of movement involved in blob vs blob combat.

In sPvP, there are nodes to fight over. In PvE, literally every event and boss occurs in a stationary area with maybe the occasional boss moving around a bit and could go out of range of turrets.

Heck, in PvE, you have Banners and Spirits being used a bunch as a result of stationary combat.

As far as "That world where turrets were way overtuned" that was entirely due to their stat independance allowing people to use full bunker stats while the turrets dealt full turrety damage to everyone. A scenario that is far more elegantly addressed by making them scale off of your stats so full bunker builds would have weak turrets. This is already the case for Flame Turret which benefits from Condition Damage and Duration for its burn application.

[bambi.6214]

@Taril.8619 said:In sPvP, there are nodes to fight over.Heck, in PvE, you have Banners and Spirits being used a bunch as a result of stationary combat.

And how often do you see those banners and spirits in sPvP?

[Taril.8619]

@Samug.6512 said:

@Taril.8619 said:In sPvP, there are nodes to fight over.Heck, in PvE, you have Banners and Spirits being used a bunch as a result of stationary combat.

And how often do you see those banners and spirits in sPvP?

How often would you expect raw DPS increase buff utility skills to be used in sPvP?

Especially Spirits, which can be killed and would be utterly useless vs any team that has AoE skills...

[bambi.6214]

@Taril.8619 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@Taril.8619 said:In sPvP, there are nodes to fight over.Heck, in PvE, you have Banners and Spirits being used a bunch as a result of stationary combat.

And how often do you see those banners and spirits in sPvP?

How often would you expect raw DPS increase buff utility skills to be used in sPvP?

Especially Spirits, which can be killed and would be utterly useless vs any team that has AoE skills...

Ehm sure, then how often do you see a renegade with Kalla in sPvP?

[Taril.8619]

@Samug.6512 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@Taril.8619 said:In sPvP, there are nodes to fight over.Heck, in PvE, you have Banners and Spirits being used a bunch as a result of stationary combat.

And how often do you see those banners and spirits in sPvP?

How often would you expect raw DPS increase buff utility skills to be used in sPvP?

Especially Spirits, which can be killed and would be utterly useless vs any team that has AoE skills...

Ehm sure, then how often do you see a renegade with Kalla in sPvP?

What's Darkrazor's Daring and Icerazor's Ire?

[draxynnic.3719]

@Samug.6512 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@Taril.8619 said:In sPvP, there are nodes to fight over.Heck, in PvE, you have Banners and Spirits being used a bunch as a result of stationary combat.

And how often do you see those banners and spirits in sPvP?

How often would you expect raw DPS increase buff utility skills to be used in sPvP?

Especially Spirits, which can be killed and would be utterly useless vs any team that has AoE skills...

Ehm sure, then how often do you see a renegade with Kalla in sPvP?

Last 5v5 season... probably once every half-dozen matches or so? The area daze spirit can be really disruptive if you don't immediately realise what's going on. It's not meta, but it's not the meme it used to be either.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Power sword holo uses rifle turret

[Shiyo.3578]

Change turrets into shaman totems from vanilla wow!

[bambi.6214]

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:Power sword holo uses rifle turret

Not for the turret itself, but for the low recharge toolbelt skill. Besides, tools have been out of favour ever since they reworked explosives.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Samug.6512 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:Power sword holo uses rifle turret

Not for the turret itself, but for the low recharge toolbelt skill. Besides, tools have been out of favour ever since they reworked explosives.

Strictly speaking, the turret itself does contribute to DPS as well, even if it doesn't scale with stats.

[Kodama.6453]

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:Power sword holo uses rifle turret

Not for the turret itself, but for the low recharge toolbelt skill. Besides, tools have been out of favour ever since they reworked explosives.

Strictly speaking, the turret itself does contribute to DPS as well, even if it doesn't scale with stats.

That rifle turret hits for like 500 damage every 2 seconds. Which is a total dps increase of 250. That's ridiculously low.

Oh and this damage is unaffected by damage modifiers, might, alacrity....It's 250 dps increase flat. It is a non factor when it comes to dps.

[Lynx.9058]

They definitely need to scale with stats then.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Kodama.6453 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:Power sword holo uses rifle turret

Not for the turret itself, but for the low recharge toolbelt skill. Besides, tools have been out of favour ever since they reworked explosives.

Strictly speaking, the turret itself does contribute to DPS as well, even if it doesn't scale with stats.

That rifle turret hits for like 500 damage every 2 seconds. Which is a total dps increase of 250. That's ridiculously low.

Oh and this damage is unaffected by damage modifiers, might, alacrity....It's 250 dps increase flat. It is a non factor when it comes to dps.

Still 250 more than you'd have if you didn't have it out, without interrupting your rotation. :p

Sure, it's not a lot, and I was being a bit facetious, but it does go to show that it's not just Surprise Shot, but Surprise Shot plus an extra 250/second... or the potential for an overcharge and a blast finisher every 20 seconds or so. Not benefiting from boons also means it doesn't lose as much when running solo, and to really play devil's advocate here, if it's worth taking just for Surprise Shot, buffing it further might push the package as a whole towards being too strong.

(Mind you, on the other hand, would it be a bad thing if buffing the turret itself made the package as a whole a staple for power engineers? Probably not, any more than it's a problem that necromancers tend to take Flesh Golem, Blood Fiend, and/or Shadow Fiend if they don't have anything better. Turrets are supposed to have been an engineer staple, after all, and most raids are relatively stationary fights where turrets should be able to do well.)

[DeanBB.4268]

Turret engineer was my initial great hope in GW2. Weren't there 3-4 traits buffing turrets initially? And only one now? Not sure. But I'd love to see them made relevant if even just for PvE.

[Kodama.6453]

@DeanBB.4268 said:Turret engineer was my initial great hope in GW2. Weren't there 3-4 traits buffing turrets initially? And only one now? Not sure. But I'd love to see them made relevant if even just for PvE.

There were definitely way more traits for turrets in the old trait system.

We had a trait to increase their range.One to make them repair themselves over time.The trait we currently have (reflection bubble + pulsing boons) were 2 seperated traits back then.One trait allowed us to place the turrets at range, throwing them out a distance.Another one made their destruct ability knock back enemies and deal more damage (iirc).

It's really a shame that we got reduced to just 1 turret trait like this.Necromancers still have many different traits to improve their minions, but we lost almost all traits we had for them in the past.

[Thiago.5946]

First they need fix bugs to better synergy with some traitsThe current traits no work in turretsExplosive Entrance, System Shocker, Expert Examination, Kinect StabilizersHere on this site is how it should be http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeAUmBbhxwUYl4w7c1UB-zZx8Ec8Abut in game nopeExplosive Entrace no work in turret detonation or any turret hit

My rework sugestion is unique boons like banners or spirits

[Kodama.6453]

@"Thiago.5946" said:First they need fix bugs to better synergy with some traitsThe current traits no work in turretsExplosive Entrance, System Shocker, Expert Examination, Kinect StabilizersHere on this site is how it should be http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeAUmBbhxwUYl4w7c1UB-zZx8Ec8Abut in game nopeExplosive Entrace no work in turret detonation or any turret hit

My rework sugestion is unique boons like banners or spirits

There are more traits.For example, you also won't get the buffs from explosive temper or big boomer from rocket turret's attacks, even if they are considered to be explosions.

[Aigleborgne.2981]

As previously said, turrets should scale with stats. It make sense in every aspects.I'm currently leveling a new engineer and turrets are great at low levels because of low player power/critical. When I put all 3 turrets, I can do great damage along with control. It stops after overcharge but it is good enough.It will obviously fade with levels but it should not.

ANet can't render turrets useless because of one game mode, which is the least played of all.Maybe turrets should have half health in pvp to counter their offense?

[Overedge.2435]

Engineer was the class I learned GW2 on and remains ones of my most-played, but...I rarely ever use/used turrets for many of the reasons stated above by many of you.

You know, one of the biggest issues I saw repeated was the lack of mobility. So, just...make them mobile. Have it where when you pick up a turret, there is no cooldown; instead, you can immediately drop it somewhere else (the exception being the healing turret and supply drop). Maybe give the pick up ability a half-second channel that can be interrupted, for balance's sake. If you detonate it or it gets destroyed, then it goes on it's full cooldown. Turrets slowly repair after being picked up.

The overcharge effect can occur when they're detonated rather than placed. Maybe rename it to overload and remove the explosion, and you get a field and a projectile effect, but your turret is sacrificed. Rifle turret drops a lightning field and fires a burst of several rounds, basically emptying it's clip and applying some vulnerability at the same time. Flame turret creates the obvious fire field and launches several projectiles that combo to inflict burning. These can target in an AOE around the turrets' location.

No bonuses when they're destroyed though: you shoulda paid attention. In exchange they need more defense so they aren't just casually one-shot. This is something else that can possibly be fixed by scaling the turrets off the engi's stats.

(Edited for spelling/grammar. Thanks autocorrect.)

[draxynnic.3719]

One possible approach they could take on the mobility side, similar to warrior banners, is to substantially reduce the recharge if you pick the turret back up. Wouldn't work for healing turret because that would be a little too much healing, but it could be interesting if other turrets could be picked up and dropped down again with about the same recharge as their overcharges used to have.