Turrets: the absolute minimum

[Kodama.6453]

I am getting tired asking for a turret rework which might never actually come, it seems that you at Anet are fine with them being unplayable in all game modes. So I will just ask for the absolute bare minimum here: can we at least fix trait interactions with turrets to make them not have straight up anti-synergy with the tools engineer has available?

 

I will list now stuff which should work with turrets, but currently doesn't:

 

Explosives

• Explosive Temper: hits from rocket turret don't apply stacks of explosive temper on the engineer (rocket turrets attacks are listed as explosives)
• Big Boomer: hits from rocket turret don't apply the healing portion of this trait on the engineer

 

Tools

• Lock On: CC from turrets (rocket turret overcharge, thumper turret overcharge, net turret overcharge) doesn't trigger controlled analysis, nor do hits from turrets on stealthed foes trigger invisible analysis
• Takedown Round: hits from turrets don't put the charge down

 

Scrapper

• Expert Examination: net turret's stun (overcharge) does not apply weakness or vulnerability
• System Shocker: CC from turrets (rocket turret overcharge, thumper turret overcharge, net turret overcharge) doesn't apply barrier on the scrapper
• Impact Savant: hits from turrets don't apply barrier on the scrapper

 

Boons

Turrets should benefit from boons in general, but they currently don't. This should have been done back when turrets started to get affected by conditions. It made sense that they didn't get boons when they also didn't get conditions, but with the immunity gone, I think they should at least get the upside to receive buffs as well as debuffs.

 

Outgoing Healing

Tool Kit auto attacks heal turrets for a set amount of 5%, which is not increased by outgoing healing effectiveness. I guess it is not considered healing by the system, since they are environmental objects, but I think this should change.

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Kodama.6453

[Vagrant.7206]

I suspect all this lack of synergy is because turrets are considered their own entities, and technically aren't the engineer itself. 

 

The only real way to resolve that is to actually make the engineer the turret itself and cut out the AI - I always thought shoulder-mounted turrets would've been a smarter idea anyway.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Vagrant.7206

[Kodama.6453]

1 minute ago, Vagrant.7206 said:

I suspect all this lack of synergy is because turrets are considered their own entities, and technically aren't the engineer itself. 

 

The only real way to resolve that is to actually make the engineer the turret itself and cut out the AI - I always thought shoulder-mounted turrets would've been a smarter idea anyway.

The weird thing is that the turrets do work with some stuff. 

For example, rocket turret's attacks apply the vulnerability from steel packed powder and also can cripple/bleed enemies if you take shrapnel.

 

It just doesn't make sense.

[Matoro.9708]

Completely agree with all of this and I know anet can do it, if at the very least by doing behind the scenes reworks rewriting turrets as stationary minions, like the flesh wurm. Necro gets all synergies with minions afaik. But they don't care and they won't do it.

[The Boz.2038]

It's a mess that needs overhauled, yes.

[RobinotX.1604]

I think a good overhaul could be by making Turrets work similar as the Renegade legends?

[Fueki.4753]

Turrets are considered their own entities.

Traits that trigger based on our character's actions are not supposed to trigger when your turrets do something.

 

Virtuoso has the same technical issue.

In the beta, Psychic Riposte didn't trigger when Phantasmal Defender blocked,, because Phantasmal Defender is its own entity.

 

Edited September 12, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Bomboed.5697]

Turrets should get the same treatment as gyros. They should not be minions, but like more like zone effects. Just like wells.
But if gyros are wells that stick to Engineer character model, Turrets should be more like traditional wells, that could be summoned at distance. Just like Supply Crate.
And mechanically all turrets should affect zone, not to target a single enemy. For example, Healing Turret and Thumper Turret already work in this way. And both of them don't even look like turrets. They are more like Devices - that could be a new skill type for engineers in place of turrets.

So what a Device should be in summary? It should be a well-like ability, that Engineer can summon at distance, that affects the targeted area with persistent effect and can be Overcharged once to perform a powerful effect in that zone.
Or maybe Devices should be temporary, and their Overcharge should work automatically at the start. Like as opposite to Chronomancer's wells.

In form of temporary well-like abilities they could be balanced better. Currently, because of their "theoretically infinite" lifespan, most of them have enormously big CDs for effects, that deserve such CD only because they could stay for long period of time. But in reality you never need a turret for longer than several seconds.
These abilities should be temporary and provide either very impactful effects with longer CD, or less impactful effects with much more shorter CD. For example, Thumper Turret in temporary form does not deserve a 40 CD at all, because all it does is cripples enemies in a pretty small area, and launches them once. We have other abilities in the game, that do the same, but have much shorter CD.

[Kodama.6453]

6 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Turrets are considered their own entities.

Traits that trigger based on our character's actions are not supposed to trigger when your turrets do something.

 

Virtuoso has a the same technical issue.

In the beta, Psychic Riposte didn't trigger when Phantasmal Defender blocked,, because Phantasmal Defender is its own entity.

 

I am not entirely convinced that this is really the case. If all traits wouldn't work with turrets, then I would absolutely agree with you. But there are traits and interactions which work with your turrets:

• rocket turret applies vulnerability to enemies with steel packed powder, also applies the bleed and crippe if traited with shrapnel
• conditions applied by your turrets use the engineer's condition damage and expertise
• burning applied by flame turret applies the thermal vision buff on the engineer
• boon duration and healing power (in case of regeneration/healing turret overcharge) are used from the engineer, so thumper turret pulsing protection to allies around also interacts with the trait anticorrosion plating (famous combo in the prot holo build)

Honestly, the very big majority of traits which don't interact with turrets in some way are new and reworked stuff... I don't consider it unlikely that anet really just forgot about these interactions and doesn't care since turrets are basically never used anyway.

Especially since they forget to keep gadgeteer interactions in mind iterally every single time they make a change to a gadget.

Turrets are already bad. That they are directly working against the engineer's trait system like this makes them extra bad for no real reason. If they refuse to rework turrets, they could at least put the absolute minimum effort into them and let them actually work with our traits.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Kodama.6453

[Fueki.4753]

49 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I am not entirely convinced that this is really the case. If all traits wouldn't work with turrets, then I would absolutely agree with you. But there are traits and interactions which work with your turrets:

• rocket turret applies vulnerability to enemies with steel packed powder
• conditions applied by your turrets use the engineer's condition damage and expertise
• burning applied by flame turret applies the thermal vision buff on the engineer
• boon duration and healing power (in case of regeneration) are used from the engineer, so thumper turret pulsing protection to allies around also interacts with the trait anticorrosion plating (famous combo in the prot holo build)

Honestly, the very big majority of traits which don't interact with turrets in some way are new and reworked stuff... I don't consider it unlikely that anet really just forgot about these interactions and doesn't care since turrets are basically never used anyway.

Especially since they forget to keep gadgeteer interactions in mind iterally every single time they make a change to a gadget.

Turrets are already bad. That they are directly working against the engineer's trait system like this makes them extra bad for no real reason.

That's why I wrote turrets are not supposed to trigger traits.

If most traits that work with turrets are old ones, maybe those are the ones with faulty coding.

But it's mostly Engineers and Mesmers with these problems, so I doubt it'll get fixed in the next years.

 

Quote

If they refuse to rework turrets, they could at least put the absolute minimum effort into them and let them actually work with our traits.

Arenanet has constantly shown not to give the minimum effort to the professions that need it.

Just look at Warrior, who needs the attention far more than any other profession, yet practically has been abandoned.

 

58 minutes ago, Bomboed.5697 said:

Turrets should get the same treatment as gyros. They should not be minions, but like more like zone effects. Just like wells.

I think they should stay killable though.

So maybe make them more like Revenant ghosts, but place them at your location instead of having them be ground-targetted.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Kodama.6453]

3 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

That's why I wrote turrets are not supposed to trigger traits.

This is just an assumption of yours, meanwhile I have the assumption that turrets are supposed to trigger traits. We can't tell which one of these statements is correct until Anet comes forth and tells us how they are intended to work.

3 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

If most traits that work with turrets are old ones, maybe those are the ones with faulty coding.

Could be. Or it could be the very same thing which happens every time they made a change to gadgets, which is just forgetting that gadgeteer is changing the skills to different versions which they have to keep in mind to change as well.

Considering that Anet didn't made any meaningful changes to turrets for years and just left them to rot, I would honestly not be surprised if simply all at anet forgot to change this stuff when they reworked the explosions and scrapper trait lines, for example. They seriously need someone working on these changes who actually knows engineer, how they handle engineer changes this far, it seems they have no one in these teams.

3 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

But it's mostly Engineers and Mesmers with these problems, so I doubt it'll get fixed in the next years.

Unfortunately true, but I will keep trying to ask for at least some minimal changes to turrets. Anet hates them and leaves them unviable for years, fine, but at least make them not work against the engineer trait system, dammit.

3 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Arenanet has constantly shown not to give the minimum effort to the professions that need it.

Just look at Warrior, who needs the attention far more than any other profession, yet practically has been abandoned.

Again, anet's refusal to do the bare minimum should not make us stop demanding it. Turrets need changes, everyone knows it. I don't expect that they do something, honestly, since anet couldn't care less about them. They killed them years ago with so many nerfs that they are worse than starting zone creeps, but we should still bring this to attention and demand that they change their stance there.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Kodama.6453