3781

Any feelings on turrets from the engineer crowd?

3782

I want to like them, but like pets, it seems like anet went conservative and they die really easily. Sometimes they are helpful (mostly as a PvE taunt), but overall I am moving more and more away from deployables in my build. In any kind of PvP they get obliterated by collateral damage aoe that nobody even aimed at them. If you use one it is probably more for the kit skill than the actuall turret. At least that is how I feel at this point.

3783

I’ve noticed a worrying trend over the last week or so. I am finding increasing incidences of dynamic events and heart events being stuck or broken. I first noticed this in the Norn high level snow areas but now I have noticed this has started occurring in some of the low-level areas.

An example is an event to kill the shaman in a cave is stuck because the preceding quest to rescue bags of food is stuck because the last couple of mobs will not spawn. I’ve encountered many broken or stuck events like this.

I’ve submitted tickets for each issue I have come across but some events are still stuck even four days later. There is even a Norn snow area (lvl 35-40 I think) where almost the entire area is covered in broken/stuck events.

Eric do these events reset themselves or become unstuck after a period of time or is it something the dev team has to manually fix/reset?

3784

I find the turrets need to be nursed. They aren’t really durable unless you put a decent amount of points in the Invention trait line but then I’d prefer to put those points in Firearms and Alchemy which has a bigger ROI. The only two turrets I really use are the rocket turret and the healing turret for soloing. For PvP I switch the rocket turret to one of the elixirs.

3785

That agrees with the consensus on the GW2 forum.

3786

The net turret can be really nice, the rest are pretty useless in my experience.

At level 45 my weapon of choice for PvE is still the Bomb Kit, I’ve not found anything else for the engineer that touches it for DPS (though I’m curious to try out pistols again) and the Smoke Bombs are wonderful for survivability. One trick that I’m fond of is dropping a Fire Bomb, then immediately detonating a Mine Field to trigger a combo that gives all players in area 6-12 stacks of might.

In WvW I rely heavily on grenades and am looking forward to getting the Grenadier trait at 60.

3787

I tend to go with a more balanced power / toughness / vitality build with my Ele, and really haven’t sunk much into precision at all. This gets me through most things, especially now that I’ve learned to attune to water regularly and keep my health up that way. I’ve also finally figured out how the combo system works, and that can make a huge difference with the right kind of combo. I’ve managed some epic battles solo where I’ve been jumped by multiple enemies, although there’s one story mission right now that’s kicking my ass mostly because it’s destroyers that are immune to burning which is my damage crutch. But part of what I like about the game is I still have a bunch of different strategies and skill sets to try before I call for help.

3788

Turrets in sPvP take a bit of effort to make useful. The rifle turret is fantastic because the toolbelt skill it grants is on an absolutely ridiculous 10s cooldown and can be instantly fired at any time. This doesn’t sound like much but if you take the Static Discharge trait it actually does crazy damage. The turrets themselves aren’t that exciting, but you can detonate them for good damage and to trigger Blast finishers. If you take the Accelerant-Packed Turrets trait they gain knockback.

If you basically consider the main draw of turrets being the toolbelt ability and treat them like uber-mines they actually become interesting. Generally pop their toolbelt skill, drop the turret, pop their “overdrive” ability and then detonate them as soon as the overdrive ends to regain access to the toolbelt skill again. Multiple that times 3 skills slot and it’s an interesting build, albeit one that involved triggering a lot of skills rapidly.

3789

The healing turret gives me a nice instant heal when I deploy it. Other than that it’s not worth a lot in WvW. I am not finding that the other turrets to do much.

3790

So I played WvW earlier today and had a nice time and gained about a level and a half. It did leave me a bit concerned, however. I was in a zerg mob and we mostly just attacked towers and supply camps that no enemy players were in. It was easy and gave us nice XP and other rewards. And after we got the rewards we left, presumably meaning the other side could then swarm it and retake it. It reminded me of the keep swapping in Warhammer, which is not a good thing.

3791

Mark that has pretty much been most of my experience with WvW in GW2. We have had some good open field battles though in WvW. The ebb and flow of battle lines is very interesting to watch. I have enjoyed grouping with some organised PvP guilds where they actually have a commander directing people what to do and when. Organised groups really wipe the floor of enemies in WvW. It’s been fun.

3792

I’ve been in some interesting back and forth battles with enemy players, a zerg group that just murdered its way through an enemy borderlands with almost no resistance met, and I’ve defended keeps from very large forces. I was involved in the defense of the main castle in the eternal battlegrounds once, and that was pretty epic. We held it in the end.

I think they need to focus the rewards a bit more on killing players, though. The most profitable thing to do is to form a zerg and take the most lightly defended places. You roll through a map, then there’s nothing left to take so you all hop over to a different map while the enemy take all their stuff back. On the whole, I really enjoy the WvWvW. I think with a few tweaks, it could be even better. Large scale sieges with lots of players on each side are a lot of fun, and very rewarding.

Edit to add: I’m on Ehmry Bay, if there are any organised WvW groups, I’d love to join in.

3793

Yeah, it seems like rolling through undefended points is too easy.

I don’t really understand why there are so many different WvW maps? Shouldn’t WvW be on just one map? It’s a bit confusing to me. I don’t even know why I should pick one map over another. What I’d really like is all the WvW players fighting in one big map with a number of spots to take over or defend.

Anyway, I can see playing and just rolling through undefended spots becoming boring soon.

3794

I would guess that this way allows them to have more players on WvW at any given time. Also, what is wrong with that? If you want to hold a point, stay on longer and defend it! It shouldnt defend itself!

3795

Yeah the reward should be for taking and holding objectives not PKs. Support characters already get screwed by loot/xp in WvW. If you reward PKs you get Ilum from TOR.

3796

…and if you reward just objectives you get Warhammer Online, where zergs would actively avoid fighting each other to play PvD (player vs. door) to take unoccupied keeps from each other. Somehow, there has to be a balance, which is admittedly difficult.

3797

Maybe the event reward should be reverse proportional to the number of players on the friendly team and proportional to the number of players on the enemy team during the event.

This way zerg vs. zerg fights would receive good reward, defending against zerg would grant TONS of reward and attacking empty keeps with a zerg would grant peanuts for rewards. This could also encourage people to break off from a zerg and form smaller groups.

3798

The rewards from WvW also give a lot of server bonuses. Once people are done with leveling those will be much more enticing.

3799

Defense gives substantial rewards if you’re under attack, it’s like taking a keep every 3 minutes. There are also substantial upgrades to all locations that make them much harder to take but few people are going to spend the money to do so while battles are reset every 24 hours.

3800

Yeah, that’s my concern though I don’t even know if players who are naturally level 80 even care about rewards. I’m not sure what you strive for once you’re level 80 in this game and if zerging undefended keeps would even help you.