Feedback talk:User/Tolmos/Engineer Turret Cooldowns

I agree with your suggestion that a turret should not be returned to full "health" when an Engineer picks it up. That just opens itself up to all kinds of abuse. ArenaNet probably added the cooldown-on-pickup mechanic to counter this potential abuse. Still, it just seems too risky in the OP department.

However, I don't want to see the cooldown on re-deployment completely eliminated, either. Shorter, yes; eliminated, no. I think how it's implemented in Team Fortress 2 would be a good balance. The Engineer in that game picks up a turret to relocate it. On dropping it, it goes through it's build animation cycle, taking a few seconds (~5 seconds) to return to an active state. During that time, it can't fire at opponents but can still be damaged and even destroyed. Also, if an Engineer in that game is killed while carrying a turret, the turret is lost. Likewise, if a GW2 Engineer is downed or defeated while carrying a turret, the turret should be lost, too. This forces the GW2 Engineer to have to carefully plan when it's safe to move their turret so as not to risk losing it in transit.

Lastly, implementing this change would accomplish three things:

1) Prevents a turret Engineer from becoming over powered by eliminating the insta-heal that picking up and dropping turrets currently accomplishes. Even though the long cooldown that exists now is an attempt to balance the insta-heal, it could still lead to overly defensive play and the potential for an Engineer's turrets to last indefinitely.

With this suggested change - if the Engineer's area comes under attack - they can't simply stand their ground, knowing they can insta-heal their turrets even after they've taken significant damage. With the insta-heal mechanic eliminated, Engineers now have to be cautious about where they build their turrets, knowing they won't be able to hold out forever if they come under a focused assault.

2) Puts greater emphasis on offense rather than defense (an explicitly stated goal of ArenaNet's). If an Engineer can insta-heal their turrets by simply picking them up and dropping them again, that's going to lead to a situation in which the Engineer will "turtle", playing too defensively.

Conversely, with the reduced cooldown on redeployment, this favors Engineers playing more offensively with their turrets. As the frontline advances, the Engineer can keep pace by moving their turret battery up in support of their allies. With the long cooldown that exists currently, this isn't possible; it creates a lull in the offensive push while the players wait for the turret cooldown to expire. Guild Wars 3 perhaps 18:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

3) Puts greater emphasis on mobility. With turrets taking damage and no longer benefiting from "pick-up-redeploy-insta-heal", the Engineer is going to need to shuffle their turrets around more frequently. Deploy turret, come under attack, pick up the turret to spare it from destruction, retreat, redeploy, resist the assault, use the wrench to repair some turret damage, pick up the the turret again while allies surge forward, advance, redeploy the turret at the frontline, "Oops! That was a bad spot", pick up the turret again, move to a better spot, redeploy again, etc. versus deploy all turrets in one spot and hold it forever, never budging. Guild Wars 3 perhaps 18:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)