A future Turret system

[glowpipe]

There is absolutely no way in hell a spec based around micromanaging a turret will happen. Players fucking hated having to feed their pets or they would do shit damage or even run away. It's why you don't have to feed your hunter pets anymore. Turrets are NOTHING like hunter pets. At least they shouldn't be because that would be annoying as fuck. You can issue commands to a pet because it's a living creature. Turrets have absolutely no intelligence.

but you wouldn't be micromanaging your turret.... your turret would just simply be an extension of you and the dmg you deal by pressing the buttons on your action bar is coming from the turret instead of you

[arkanon]

but you wouldn't be micromanaging your turret.... your turret would just simply be an extension of you and the dmg you deal by pressing the buttons on your action bar is coming from the turret instead of you

What percentage of the players damage do you think would come from the turret vs direct damage?

[glowpipe]

What percentage of the players damage do you think would come from the turret vs direct damage?

Since this is a class thats not been designed,. They could make 100% of the dmg come from the turret. And thats my point. Your rotation could simply be you commanding the turret to fire different sort of shots and bombs. It would make litteraly no real difference from say a hunter shooting his arrows. You press the button, a arrow is fired from your bow or you press a button and a rocket is shot from your turret. Makes litteraly no difference

[TheRevenantHero]

but you wouldn't be micromanaging your turret.... your turret would just simply be an extension of you and the dmg you deal by pressing the buttons on your action bar is coming from the turret instead of you

Even BM hunters don't do that. Pretty much all of your abilities involve you attacking WITH your pet. Your description of what a turret could do just makes it sound worse.

[arkanon]

Since this is a class thats not been designed,. They could make 100% of the dmg come from the turret. And thats my point. Your rotation could simply be you commanding the turret to fire different sort of shots and bombs. It would make litteraly no real difference from say a hunter shooting his arrows. You press the button, a arrow is fired from your bow or you press a button and a rocket is shot from your turret. Makes litteraly no difference

oh no, it makes a HUGE difference - your assertion that having a static, placed turret dealing 100% of a players damage, while the player themselves are "safe" is a game breaking problem. Because of this, it would never be implemented, ever. And this is the main issue being discussed - if you follow feedback on this game and others, people do not enjoy their damage being from some secondary source - they want it to come from their character itself. And Blizzard have shown in other games they do not like the idea of a "turret' dealing a significant portion of a players damage, as it really isnt fair on anyone else in the game.

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Even BM hunters don't do that. Pretty much all of your abilities involve you attacking WITH your pet. Your description of what a turret could do just makes it sound worse.

This is the amusing part of the debate for me - when shooting down other fan concepts, its almost universally because of "class overlap", and yet when trying to defend their own concept, they use quite egregious class overlap as a "proof of concept".

"necro cant exist because DK exists"
"Tinker can exist because hunters and locks already exist"

[glowpipe]

oh no, it makes a HUGE difference - your assertion that having a static, placed turret dealing 100% of a players damage, while the player themselves are "safe" is a game breaking problem. Because of this, it would never be implemented, ever. And this is the main issue being discussed - if you follow feedback on this game and others, people do not enjoy their damage being from some secondary source - they want it to come from their character itself. And Blizzard have shown in other games they do not like the idea of a "turret' dealing a significant portion of a players damage, as it really isnt fair on anyone else in the game.

How is the player going to be more safe then say a mage, a hunter or any other ranged ? Just make it so you have to be in melee range of your turret to fire so you can't put down a turret and run out of the boss room, and then you are not more safe then any other ranged class, boss abilities would still hit you, you would still need to do boss mechanics like other ranged etc

[arkanon]

How is the player going to be more safe then say a mage, a hunter or any other ranged ? Just make it so you have to be in melee range of your turret to fire so you can't put down a turret and run out of the boss room, and then you are not more safe then any other ranged class, boss abilities would still hit you, you would still need to do boss mechanics like other ranged etc

They are safer because they can be elsewhere - a mage cannot deal the bulk of their damage while hiding behind a pillar / in the flag room upstairs / out of harms way.

To your "solution", this is a massive shift in direction though, now not only are your totems stuck in place, making it an absolute nightmare on any boss that has a large room / phases / platforms (a LOT if not MOST encounters), but now you deal ZERO dps when moving for void zones, and if your turret ends up in a zone, you have to start with a fresh one, which you then need to place and start upgrading again, only to have THAT end up in a new zone. Its not "just like any other range" because when moving for mechanics, they still deal some damage while moving, and as soon as they are out of the zone/mechanic, they go straight back to dpsing. They dont then have to also move their totems before continuing. This is absolutely game breaking, or in this case, fan concept breaking.

This does occur to a very limited degree with the mage circle (brain fart cant remember the name) but that is not 100% of their damage, only a small component of said damage through the buff it provides. If they place it poorly and need to move, their damage doesnt drop to literally 0, as your concepts would.

No offence, im sure you are a world first raider, but this reads like it comes from someone who has never played wow, and just seen some pics in a pcgamer mag.

The best solution is to have it follow you around, in which case, CONGRATULATIONS! you just described a Hunter with a mechanical pet.

[Simple Rick]

How is the player going to be more safe then say a mage, a hunter or any other ranged ? Just make it so you have to be in melee range of your turret to fire so you can't put down a turret and run out of the boss room, and then you are not more safe then any other ranged class, boss abilities would still hit you, you would still need to do boss mechanics like other ranged etc

You would be useless in pvp with this kind of set up.

[glowpipe]

They are safer because they can be elsewhere - a mage cannot deal the bulk of their damage while hiding behind a pillar / in the flag room upstairs / out of harms way.

To your "solution", this is a massive shift in direction though, now not only are your totems stuck in place, making it an absolute nightmare on any boss that has a large room / phases / platforms (a LOT if not MOST encounters), but now you deal ZERO dps when moving for void zones, and if your turret ends up in a zone, you have to start with a fresh one, which you then need to place and start upgrading again, only to have THAT end up in a new zone. Its not "just like any other range" because when moving for mechanics, they still deal some damage while moving, and as soon as they are out of the zone/mechanic, they go straight back to dpsing. They dont then have to also move their totems before continuing. This is absolutely game breaking, or in this case, fan concept breaking.

This does occur to a very limited degree with the mage circle (brain fart cant remember the name) but that is not 100% of their damage, only a small component of said damage through the buff it provides. If they place it poorly and need to move, their damage doesnt drop to literally 0, as your concepts would.

No offence, im sure you are a world first raider, but this reads like it comes from someone who has never played wow, and just seen some pics in a pcgamer mag.

The best solution is to have it follow you around, in which case, CONGRATULATIONS! you just described a Hunter with a mechanical pet.

We are talking about a theorethical class and you end up in personal attacks. /golf clap.

There are several ways a turret class could work. You could drop new ones after you move, but you can't drop one and hide while it deals all the dmg. You can add in line of sight to the target to be able to use them so you can't hide behind the pillar while your turret fires around the corner. There are several mechanics they could add to make a turret class work just fine and avoid exploitative gameplay

[Garymorilix]

People seem to have a really hard time separating gameplay from thematic design.

Demo lock imps (or other demons) basically function like DoTs, not "turrets", from a gameplay perspective.

You want to create a spec that's entire gameplay revolves around what is basically a Vesper Totem.
If you ever played a kyrian shaman you'd know how horrible an idea this is.

[arkanon]

We are talking about a theorethical class and you end up in personal attacks. /golf clap.

There are several ways a turret class could work. You could drop new ones after you move, but you can't drop one and hide while it deals all the dmg. You can add in line of sight to the target to be able to use them so you can't hide behind the pillar while your turret fires around the corner. There are several mechanics they could add to make a turret class work just fine and avoid exploitative gameplay

You say that, and yet your first attempt at explaining how it would work was entirely dismantled and the absurdity of it proven within seconds of explaining it. Obviously los is required for the turret to shoot, thats fine, but now that you have abandoned your "the player needs to be in melee range of the turret" idea, would the player need LOS to the boss, just their turret, or both? Any of these scenarios either create an OP class in pvp, or, an absolute NIGHTMARE to play.

Let me explain -

- if you just need los to your turret, you can still exploit this by placing your turrent out in the open, while you hide behind something.
- if you just need los to the boss, you can do exactly the same
- if you need los to BOTH, this would be an absolute clusterfuck of constantly moving and repositioning your turret AND yourself.

The LOS stuff works with a hunter, because they are actively attacking the boss themselves anyway, so need los, the pet is not stationary, and it follows the boss in melee.

[Teriz]

Look, I don't design the game. I'm relaying information from the game itself, which you're absolutely ignoring.

Load up Heroes of the Storm. Click on Gazlowe. What role is he?

It will say Melee Bruiser.

Like I said, he's badly defined.

Your argument and your beef is with the devs, not with me. Just making that clear, because you're calling *me* silly and hyperbolic despite these changes being made by *the devs*.

I'm saying you're being silly and hyperbolic because you believe that since Gazlowe is misidentified in HotS that somehow impedes the Tinker's introduction in WoW.

We're not talking about whether Heroes of the Storm abilities can be put into WoW; that isn't the criteria here. We're talking about Turrets being given to a playable class. That involves balance in raid settings, in PVP and staying within a competitive margin amongst other classes.

Simply on that basis, we can see that Turrets are problematic. Can Blizzard make it work? They tried with Searing Totem and the devs simply didn't like how that whole system worked out. When there is a problem, you have to address it. When over a long period of time it's proven that it just doesn't work out, you get rid of it and focus on the things that do work.

The way I see Turrets properly working is if they literally reskinned imps and had them as Turret-mounted mechanical pets that follow you around. They would have to take systems that are already proven to work and build off of that as a basis, not take ones that don't work and try to shoe-horn a more complex version into the game.

Searing totem worked just fine from vanilla to the end of WoD. What killed Searing totem wasn't broken design, it was boring design. The Shaman totem system was simply structured to not allow Elemental or Enhancement Shaman to become a turret-style class because Blizzard didn't want Shaman to become that type of class. The ENTIRE totem system was overhauled. Not because of Searing totem being some broken mechanic, but because the totem system in of itself was an archiac system that needed an overhaul.

We don't need to copy the Warlock Imp system to implement a successful turret system into WoW. The point is that individuals like yourself are completely blowing off the system as unworkable simply because you don't like it. If I proposed a Warlock system where the Warlock could summon up to 8 imps at once constantly shooting volleys of fireballs at their target and there was no way for you to target the imps, you would call that concept absolutely broken. Yet here we are with demonology doing exactly that.

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People seem to have a really hard time separating gameplay from thematic design.

Demo lock imps (or other demons) basically function like DoTs, not "turrets", from a gameplay perspective.

You want to create a spec that's entire gameplay revolves around what is basically a Vesper Totem.
If you ever played a kyrian shaman you'd know how horrible an idea this is.

No, they function like turrets. They're essentially sticks that are firing a consistent fireball at a target at a constant rate for their duration.

You can clear a DoT with a healing spell. The only way to stop the consistent incoming Imp damage is by killing the Warlock or getting out of its range.

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This is the amusing part of the debate for me - when shooting down other fan concepts, its almost universally because of "class overlap", and yet when trying to defend their own concept, they use quite egregious class overlap as a "proof of concept".

"necro cant exist because DK exists"
"Tinker can exist because hunters and locks already exist"

The more amusing part is you purposely ignoring the major difference between those two examples.

[Triceron]

I'm saying you're being silly and hyperbolic because you believe that since Gazlowe is misidentified in HotS that somehow impedes the Tinker's introduction in WoW.

Er, there's nothing misidentified at all. He's a melee bruiser, with all the trappings of one in design.

You are calling him a Ranged Specialist based on his abilities, and then you cite pros use to dismiss the melee abilities that he has.

Guess what? This is what Icy Veins has to say about his cons.

Gazlowe's short-range nature makes him ineffective against anything that can outrange him and his Turrets.

That doesn't sound much like a Ranged specialist to me.

Searing totem worked just fine from vanilla to the end of WoD. What killed Searing totem wasn't broken design, it was boring design.

It was both. It was boring, and it was tedious, and it would nerf your DPS in high-mobility fights.

You're asking Blizzard to double down on boring, tedious, and difficult to properly balance.

We don't need to copy the Warlock Imp system to implement a successful turret system into WoW. The point is that individuals like yourself are completely blowing off the system as unworkable simply because you don't like it

Hardly.

Have you played Guild Wars 2? Engineers have Turrets, and they play fine. I'm an advocate for this style of play in the game even, it works great.

It has nothing to do with me 'not liking' turrets. It's simply recognizing that we have turret-like systems in the game, and that they simply aren't effective when used as a part of significant or rotational DPS because of the mechanics in play.

It works in Guild Wars 2 because GW2 isn't built around maximizing efficient DPS in order to beat a boss; there are no Berserk timer encounters in GW2 and the game is more based on skill application and attrition more than maximizing outputs. WoW is built around maximizing your role. If there is a class or spec that has a track record of mechanics that are difficult to maintain consistent maximum DPS for your class, then that is going to be a very big problem. And Shamans have dealt with that kind of BS for years.

If you want Turret mechanics, you can already play a Shaman and see for yourself how it plays out. That you think it'd be better that they should glorify the mechanic is simply your fantasy, not proof of concept that the system actually works well enough to be expanded upon. I think it's pretty clear that they aren't, and Totems are very situational at best.

It's mostly the same reason they got rid of a majority of Paladin's Auras from the game. They served no real useful gameplay. That they got rid of it was for the better, since Paladins have a much more active role in their gameplay rather than being 'masters of Passive Support Buffs and Auto-attacks' as they were from Vanilla up to the end of Cata. It just didn't really do much for the game. Same can be said of a lot of these archaic Totem mechanics; and they're pretty much only really used as stationary forms of AoE DPS or utility.

[gaymer77]

Druids: Force of Nature (Cata-WoD)

They moved and were not stationary and in fact they moved TO the target and followed it if the target moved

Shaman: Searing Totem (Vanilla-WoD)

Removed as stationary totems all together were removed outside of utility totems like mana tide, healing stream, tremor totem, and grounding totem. Fire/earth elemental totems were also stationary totems for a long time and someone could easily move out of its fixed range while still being able to attack the shaman without the elemental having range to attack them. Those also caused issues on movement fights which caused the shaman to lose dps if repositioning was involved.

Hunter: Spitting Cobra (Legion-Present)

Another thing that is summoned and can move not being stationary as long as the target its attacking moves too

Warlocks: Imp/Wild Imps (Vanilla-present)

All warlock demons move in range or stay with the warlock once summoned so you can't even compare the imps to a turret as they are very mobile.

[Teriz]

Er, there's nothing misidentified at all. He's a melee bruiser, with all the trappings of one in design.

You are calling him a Ranged Specialist based on his abilities, and then you cite pros use to dismiss the melee abilities that he has.

Guess what? This is what Icy Veins has to say about his cons.

Gazlowe's short-range nature makes him ineffective against anything that can outrange him and his Turrets.

That doesn't sound much like a Ranged specialist to me.

If you're taking Grav-O-Bomb 3000 and not Robo-Goblin, please explain how Gazlowe works in melee range in any function whatsoever. Simply because he can be outranged doesn't make him ineffective at range, which is frankly his most effective range.

It was both. It was boring, and it was tedious, and it would nerf your DPS in high-mobility fights.

You're asking Blizzard to double down on boring, tedious, and difficult to properly balance.

And you're being hyperbolic again. It wasn't Searing totem that made the totem system boring and tedious, it was having 20 different types of totems that needed to be summoned at the right time in order to be effective.

You'd only have ONE type of turret to drop all the time. That is nothing like what the totem system was like.

[gaymer77]

The only way to stop the consistent incoming Imp damage is by killing the Warlock or getting out of its range.

Except those imps aren't stationary and literally move with the warlock or move closer to the target if the target moves. This is why you can see a warlock with a massive army of imps and other demons riding around on a mount with the demons following him/her. Are you suggesting that these turrets be mobile and move with this tinker design you are suggesting?

[Teriz]

They moved and were not stationary and in fact they moved TO the target and followed it if the target moved

Not the Balance version.

Removed as stationary totems all together were removed outside of utility totems like mana tide, healing stream, tremor totem, and grounding totem. Fire/earth elemental totems were also stationary totems for a long time and someone could easily move out of its fixed range while still being able to attack the shaman without the elemental having range to attack them. Those also caused issues on movement fights which caused the shaman to lose dps if repositioning was involved.

Yep, I agree.

Another thing that is summoned and can move not being stationary as long as the target its attacking moves too

Something that could be easily added to a mechanical turret if being stationary causes too much of an issue.

All warlock demons move in range or stay with the warlock once summoned so you can't even compare the imps to a turret as they are very mobile.

See above. Additionally, considering that Warlocks are rather stationary casters, I wouldn't say they're "very mobile". They do move with the Warlock, but there's plenty of times where the warlock is standing still casting volleys of spells.

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Except those imps aren't stationary and literally move with the warlock or move closer to the target if the target moves. This is why you can see a warlock with a massive army of imps and other demons riding around on a mount with the demons following him/her. Are you suggesting that these turrets be mobile and move with this tinker design you are suggesting?

Again, if its a major design hurdle, I see no issue with a turret popping out some treads and becoming mobile to catch their target;

[Garymorilix]

No, they function like turrets. They're essentially sticks that are firing a consistent fireball at a target at a constant rate for their duration.

You can clear a DoT with a healing spell. The only way to stop the consistent incoming Imp damage is by killing the Warlock or getting out of its range.

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Exactly. They function like DoTs. You even explained it.

What does "clearing a DoT with a healing spell" even mean? Never seen such a thing (maybe some pvp ability?)
Or you mean healing back the damage it dealt? Oh, yea, you can heal back the "imp fireball" the same way...

Aesthetics don't matter.

[Teriz]

Exactly. They function like DoTs. You even explained it.

What does "clearing a DoT with a healing spell" even mean? Never seen such a thing (maybe some pvp ability?)
Or you mean healing back the damage it dealt? Oh, yea, you can heal back the "imp fireball" the same way...

Aesthetics don't matter.

I'm talking about abilities such as Purge, Remove Curse, Dispell, Cleanse, etc. Abilities that allow you to remove magical effects from a target....

Like Damage Over Time spells.

Those won't work on the consistent incoming Imp damage. Hence why the imps operate more like a turret than a DoT.

[Garymorilix]

I'm talking about abilities such as Purge, Remove Curse, Dispell, Cleanse, etc. Abilities that allow you to remove magical effects from a target....

Like Damage Over Time spells.

Being dispellable or non-dispellable does not change its damage profile whatsoever.

There are many burn/bleed effects that you can't dispel.