Engineer turret range extension redjustment

[Karast]

Hello,

After testing out the recent reduction in engineer turret range as a balancing move to better match Engi and Magus dps, I feel that the changes, while doing with good intentions, are not in the best interest of either class or balance in general.

It is very true that generally engineer turret will out dps magus daemons. This comes down to one ability, on one turret. Machine Gun. It is a channeled physical ability, that can do a fair amount of damage to a squishy and armor debuffed target, and it is the source of the complaint between engi pet dps, and magus pet dps, the magus daemon being stuck with casted abilities that cannot drop dps as quickly.

The concept of this change was sound. Decreasing the range, to compensate for the difference in damage is not a bad way of doing things, but there are some core issues with the engi that this affects, and it also ignores some base advantages that daemons have over turrets.

The key issue with the range change is that engineers can no longer apply their armor debuff at 150ft. The armor debuff is vital for engineer dps, the lack of it, the extra 1-2s to apply it. Makes a huge difference. Engineers suffer horridly from the high armor levels in premade groups, and the high armor mitigation cap, an issue that magus does not have to deal with. Attacking an enemy without an armor debuff, is largely a wasted attack since you face 65-75% base mitigation on most premade targets.

The other issue that this ignores is that magus daemons, and maguses themselves have a core advantage to engineers. They have a much simpler stat system. The have only intelligence to stack, while engineer has both ballistic skill and weaponskill. Weaponskill is currently a very junk stat, but even taking steps to avoid it there will always be junk weaponskill on your gear.

More importantly, the gun turrets stat sharing is split between weapon skill and ballistic skill, which means compared to the magus daemon it has far, far less of it's central stat, making it more easily dodged, and lowering the dps of its abilities. At this point you might think, who cares about 100 stats on a pet, but also remember engi pets do physical damage, and are thus subject to the higher armor mitigation caps.

The issue of gun turret out dps'ing the magus daemons is an issue that is only present in solo roaming, and when fighting squishy enemies. When fighting in a group setting, when fighting enemies with medium armor, or those who stack armor, the damage from the gun turret falls far below that of daemons, and its only useful feature becomes the armor debuff, and the setback from machine gun.

Balancing turret and daemon dps is an important issue, but the range decrease is not the best way to go about it, because it ignores a core weakness of turrets, and advantage of daemons. A better solution might have been to make the daemon abilities instant rather than casts, or to adjust their base damage.

Thank you for reading my wall of text.

Sincerely, Karast

(edit horrible spelling fix!)

(edit per Penril: My proposal is to undo the change to engi turret range, and to keep the pet ranges between Engi and Magus the same. To address the difference in pet damage I propose changing the daemon abilities to either A. do more damage to make them more spiky, or B. make them instant rather than casted for fast initial dps. As I stated in my wall of text, the current change to correct the damage difference, creates it's own problems.)

[Penril]

While you correctly identify the issues, you are not really making any proposals for Engi (the only proposal I see is for Magus pet). Edit your post with some specific Engi/turret suggestions.

Edit: Declining for now, since Engi/Magus pets have been changed and give different buffs now.