Why were Engineer turrets nerfed? Was it really necessary?

[Rise.8259]

I have recently built a PvE build for turrets focused on dungeon/fractals/difficult group events that is inventions and alchemy as the backbone (the third is kind of optional, and I've been using firearms just to up my damage output) and it seems to be pretty effective so far when my goal is to merely increase the survivability of my teammates but sacrifice my damage in the process.

However, I can't speak to how it will fair at high level fractals or raids because I'm no where near there yet.

I also don't have enough experience on other support/healing characters to judge whether or not my contribution is unique or better in any way compared to what they offer.

The downside of this build is that I feel very weak in terms of my damage contribution, but it's fun to feel like my turret build is at least useful to my team.

I wouldn't want to solo with this build because it's too slow to kill and the increased boon time/survivability doesn't have much impact on just me by myself.

 

It's built around buffing my teammates with turret boons. And then cleansing their conditions while also converting those conditions into boons.

Everytime I protect them I convert conditions to boons, and I can do that via both shield and thumper turret. I use Healing/Rifle/Rocket/Thumper turrets and then supply crate, so that I can have one of each turret type out so that my team benefits by having the maximum number of boons on them. I start to wonder if I will even need to bother with using a shield when I have a thumper turret throwing out protection every 10 seconds.

 

I crafted a full set of giver's armor, which maximizes my concentration for boon duration as well as giving me high amounts of additional healing. The toughness is great because it keeps me alive longer so I can stay active in keeping my team alive. So even though other sets may offer more healing power, we're not concerned about that because the concentration is our primary goal. Healing is secondary to this strategy. But I believe healing synergizes with this strategy because the whole boon and condi cleanse strat is largely a healing/support playstyle. Healing synergizes with the protection/retaliation/condi cleanse I grant to my team to keep them alive longer. It also synergizes with the double healing turrets I have on the field, as well as the med pack drop that comes with supply crate. The toughness also synergizes with your multiple forms of condi cleanse. Condi bypasses toughness, but you don't need to worry about condi, so toughness becomes the optimal defensive stat for you.

Although I suppose you could experiment with other stat sets that provide concentration in addition to offensive power if you wanted to, to me it just seems natural to go in the direction of full support with this strategy so that I don't end up being a half-assed support/healer and a half-assed offense. I want to try to be a top tier support/healer by focusing on just that.

Then I put a Rune of the Water in for 20% boon duration (I could later upgrade to an expensive Rune of Leadership for 30%).

I am working on a full set of jewelry for the same stats too, eventually a back piece and weapons too.

I am already at about 64% boon duration just with my exotic level giver's armor, Rune of the Water, and one exotic snowflake amulet.

 

The concept behind this is that by maximizing boon duration, it means that the boons from my turrets will be up at least half of the time. Stuff like reflection and protection being up 60% of the time instead of 30% of the time,is probably a pretty big deal for team survivability. Fury can be up 100% of the time. Your flame turret will stack might boons more than once because the duration overlaps the reapplication rate by quite a lot. It doubles the duration of my shield protection to myself and allies too.

 

There is also synergy in the fact that my condition cleansing can be converted into boons on my allies, which is then impacted by having longer boon durations than they normally would (assuming that those boons are, in fact, effected by my stats).

 

The upside of this model is that it's a force multiplier. The bigger the group you are with, the more impact you theoretically have on increasing the group's overall power level.

 

I have some success in PvP if my team is competent and the enemy plays into my hands by trying to fight over the middle point too much instead of harassing the flanks and picking off my team. Here I don't actually take toughness stats, but power/concentration/healing. I don't have an option to swap out the power for toughness, but being able to do more damage with my pistol is always a help. I definitely feel in my experience that the concentration plus the healing makes this build work. Just concentration doesn't seem to be enough, and if I don't maximize my team support/healing power than the extra offensive stats I get don't make up for what I'm losing.

 

I am not sure yet how it will work in WvW. It would output a lot less damage so I might be very dependent on my team. The static nature of it might not work out well in WvW either, although you have more opportunity to act as a force multiplier if you are running with a large group (assuming the game allows your buffs to impact everyone around you and not just those in your party).

 

I have seen others claim that the condi cleansing/boon engineer build is a waste of time in PvP because necro scourge will just turn your boons against you by turning them into conditions anyway. Unless you can then turn around and turn those conditions into boons faster than they can turn them back into conditions?

 

 

 

[Castigator.3470]

> @"Sephylon.4938" said:

> There was the semi afk lake doric farm that alot of people were doing that had a hand in turet's nerfing.

 

That was, if I recall correctly a tongue in cheek event to stick it to ANet, that even turrets could be made useful by throwing a sufficient number of engineers at the problem. You could say the solution was "overengineered". And even then, the necromancer farm was actually more successful, showing that somehow immobile turrets are weaker than mobile minions.

Overload when we wanted to was more tactical, but the developers wanted to keep the toolbelt skills, which, given the limited interface space forced them to choose between detonate turret and overcharge at will. And since turrets are forbidden from being a deterrent, detonation was chosen over a buff to turrets.

Don't get me wrong, blast finishers are useful, but in PvP and WvW I'd have taken multiple overcharges over detonation. (Provided turrets got buffed)

[XenoSpyro.1780]

Bring back original overcharge behavior.

Change detonate and overcharge to both occupy the same button space, but split in half in any direction of choice, with color difference to assist clicking.

Make hotkey single tap for overcharge, double tap for detonate.

Still keep toolbelt usage.

 

Everybody wins.

 

[Rhyse.8179]

> @"XenoSpyro.1780" said:

> Bring back original overcharge behavior.

> Change detonate and overcharge to both occupy the same button space, but split in half in any direction of choice, with color difference to assist clicking.

> Make hotkey single tap for overcharge, double tap for detonate.

> Still keep toolbelt usage.

>

> Everybody wins.

>

 

Or make them like mantras.

 

Place Turret > Overcharge uses ammo mechanic (only 1 ammo, but recharges over time)> If 0 ammo uses detonate. As long as overcharge in instant you can just spam the button at any time to detonate.

[Iozeph.5617]

> @"Rise.8259" said:

>...

>

Interesting read. In that vein a build I've been toying around with to some satisfaction after considering your earlier post was this:

 

Alchemy - Health Insurance, Comeback Cure, Purity of Purpose

 

Inventions - Over Shield, Experimental Turrets, Anticorrosion Plating

 

Firearms - Sanguine Array, Pinpoint Distribution, Juggernaut

 

Firstly, this is a flamethrower support build. A more active flamethrower play style that gives back some of that jack of all trades feeling to the profession. I'll try to explain what I did and why;

 

Weapons: A couple of exotic crafted weapons- A Zealot pistol, a Zealot Shield. One with a fire sigil, another with an accuracy sigil- they do what they say, aren't terribly fiddly to get the benefits from, and the bonus is that for now they're relatively cheap for something that's essentially an experimental build.

 

Pistol and shield - as you've stated- for the purposes of shifting out to regular weapons and taking advantage of Overshield's use of protection applications for condition clearing in conjucntion with Comback Cure, Purity of Purpose, and Anticorrosion Plating. Which will grant protection, clear conditions, change them to boons, and grant regeneration, as well as the other regular abilities gains from using the shield reflects, knockback, throw shield, and field blasting.

 

The Armour is an exotic set from Path of Fire,(Majors: Power, Healing - Minors: Precision, Condition Damage) I put Travelers Runes on it as again they're cheap, they give additional boon and condition duration, a solid boost to all attributes, and give you twenty five percents movement speed increase(no need for mecha legs)

 

Accessories:

 

These are Ascended but don't necessarily have to be you ould probably workw ith other bits to fill out what I'm doing here but I'll list what I'm using as a rough notion.

 

Backpack: Clerics.

 

Amulet: Luxon Pendant.(Rampagers)

 

Rings: Purge Signet(Healing ,Tough, Con), Vassar's Band(Con, Tough, Vit, Pre)

 

Accessories: Anton's Secret, Fledgeling Charm.(Rampagers)

 

Most of my infusions are from WvW and were plus Precision with the exception being the purge signet which I gave either additional healing or condition to tough to remember as I'm not in game as I type this.

 

The purpose of the build was to hybridise. It's a strong supporter and not too much of a slouch on damage, what it gives up from the Scrapper support build(which was full support survival all Magis for full Vitality and healing power- the precision was less important) is gyros in the form of Bulwark and purge. Hurts a bit but then I wanted to do some damage so...

 

The attributes without food were around two thousandish power, over seven hundred condition damage, and over seven hundred healing power with mid forties to around fiftyish percent to crit and around twenty three hundred or so armour. Not the best but this build has a little bit of everything. The power and condi go up of course, first depending on the food and stone you use, and secondly with Juggernaut's organic might stacks.

 

Right hand bar set up was:

 

Medkit, Flamethrower Kit, Rifle Turret, Thumper Turret, And situationally either Supply Drop or Mortar Kit.

 

There's a good deal of synergy and field blasting within this set up as shield four is a blast finisher, thumper turret belt skill is a blast finisher, turret destruction is a blast finisher, Infusion bomb is a blast finisher(just set the bomb first before laying the field over it immediately), and Flamethrower two's Detonate Flame Blast -if timed right- is also a blast finisher.

 

You've got control from Thumper turret, added damage from Rifle turret as well as its belt skill, you also have Incendiary Ammo, three pistol skills(bleeding, poison, blind and confusion) as well as the Flamethrower kit itself.

 

There's a lot of condition clearing in this package as well as the potential to lay on some good condition damage if circumstances permit. It's quite active as well as far as swapping into and out of kits goes so if you find you don't care about either the fire or the accuracy sigil feel free to put in your favourite weapon swap sigils(renewal, energy, intelligence etc.) or as well because going from weapons to kits counts.

 

You still have the potential to lock up a point with turrets and have good boon support from experimentals and combining this with the knockbacks from shield, flamethrower, and thumper for keeping enemies off balance.

 

Don't listen to people who tell you cleansing is worthless against a necro, because what makes this setup so keen is that you have multiple cleanses and they come up quickly, which means you allow a necro to blow their wad and then you just cleanse again. If it's Scourge just stay away from them in melee, let your team handle them, and just continue to play spoiler by rendering them useless with your cleanses heals and knockbacks(including dropping supply drop on their head for the stun.) Having back to back cleanses and protects from shield four and five is wonderful for this.

 

When damage isn't coming at you and requiring you to ride cleanse and healing support there is quite a bit of pressure applied in conjunction with your team from the flamethrower.

 

Also of note- I play with a trackball, so I turn auto targeting off for this and use mouselook to aim the nozzle of either Med Blast or Flamejet. This allows a good deal of control as well as fluidity of movement when tracking across targets without being locked by an autotarget. The dded benefit is that if you do need to follow someone the option of click selecting a target is still there for you.

 

I wasn't terribly worried about boon up time especially on turrets apart from the travelers runes, because when it comes to running with a team good enough is good enough- particularly if you have a mobile team that isn't going to stay on top of wherever you drop your turrets. You tend to have to move with them and play around there peculiarities so it's better -in my mind at least- to have something to use as a surprise(turrets) that I'm still comfortable abandoning rather than to be tied to an untenable position due to my gimmick.

 

All that said, yes, you're going to win some and lose some but you'll be having fun because these setups have a lot of offer to keep things fresh or rather keep you from humping one kit indefinitely.

 

P.S. if you're more for support I suggest trying all Clerics Armour for toughness or all Magi armour for high vitality(use monk's runes for bonus to healing and outgoing healing to team mates), Clerics or Magi weapons for the same reasons(sword shield one with Renewal, one with Transference) and then using A cleric backpack and for the jewelry - if you're heavy into wvw all ascended Magis. Using these setups- clerics first you're going to have near the armour cap and good vitality. using the magic setup you'll have middling toughness but will make up for that with health topping out between twenty five and twenty seven thousand range. The rationale behind both of these is that for a healer to be of any use they have to stay alive longer to keep the healing flowing. Yes there's necros and other profs with higher health attainable but this is just for keeping a mid to front line healer alive long enough to do the job. These setups are built around holding points but also having the versatility to push with their teams when called for.

 

 

[lorddarkflare.9186]

Even had they not nerfed them, Turrets would still be pretty bad now purely due to the power creep of the past 2 expansions.

[Majic.4801]

I also miss the old turrets, but still use the new/neutered turrets, since as utility skills go, they're not that bad compared to a lot of others in terms of cooldowns versus effects.

[Vordrax.5243]

If they have a problem with passive play, turrets will never see a buff in their current iteration. Why not just make them die automatically after overcharge is finished? Let them go on cooldown immediately, fire for like 10 seconds, and then break. Then buff the heck out of their damage and utility. Make them ranged by default. Make them tanky. If ANet has a problem with permanent turrets, just get rid of that aspect. Turn them into high damage stationary gyros.

[Aigleborgne.2981]

If passive play is the reason, what about necro minions? Quite similar to old turrets with an active skill that go on cooldown when you use it.

 

Old turrets needed active play for overcharge.

 

> @"Vordrax.5243" said:

> If they have a problem with passive play, turrets will never see a buff in their current iteration. Why not just make them die automatically after overcharge is finished? Let them go on cooldown immediately, fire for like 10 seconds, and then break. Then buff the heck out of their damage and utility. Make them ranged by default. Make them tanky. If ANet has a problem with permanent turrets, just get rid of that aspect. Turn them into high damage stationary gyros.

 

 

[Alchimist.4738]

There were nerfed at a moment of time where it was really hard to deal with, nowadays if Bunker Turret came back to what it used to be I'm not even sure it would be any good with the amount of cancer AoE and damage burst.

[Iozeph.5617]

At least they need to give back Deployable Turrets, every single argument made against them back in the day has been addressed many fold. Near on every profession that didn't have a ranged option to countre them before now has one. It's time.