Hellbender as a turret

I've noticed a lot of Engis using the Hellbender as a turret lately.
Although I have done this with my Engi on occasion I find it a Un-Team oriented way of playing.
I see player placing blocks around the Bender and guarding it with sents and then Spamming the whole map with the shock cannon.
I have refrained from commenting on this till now as it has become a little too common for my liking.
I don't think the Bender is intended to be used as a turret,and the Spam it creates on smaller/mid sized maps is ridiculous.
this tactic effective as it is ,is a detriment to everyones enjoyment here

opinions ? solutions ?
do we need ; new turrets,to change the bender turrets?

How about just making vehicles linkable?

I agree that more teamwork stuff is needed.
this may be a good way

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

I've noticed a lot of Engis using the Hellbender as a turret lately.
Although I have done this with my Engi on occasion I find it a Un-Team oriented way of playing.
I see player placing blocks around the Bender and guarding it with sents and then Spamming the whole map with the shock cannon.
I have refrained from commenting on this till now as it has become a little too common for my liking.
I don't think the Bender is intended to be used as a turret,and the Spam it creates on smaller/mid sized maps is ridiculous.
this tactic effective as it is ,is a detriment to everyones enjoyment here

opinions ? solutions ?
do we need ; new turrets,to change the bender turrets?

Perhaps, make the vehicles available on the large maps only and not available on the small maps such as Tundra.

I know its not team oriented the hellbender turret but how about the rod, the enhaced damage bonus skill, and super weapons, they arent team oriented too.

I am guilty of love'n the shock turret of the bender but have not been useing it much when alot of ppl are on so as not to be a hog on the xp.
It does make the map winable in certain situations, but have not gone gungho on it since ppl do complain about it.

sorry if I caused a problem with the bender use BEFORE everyone else started doing it.

BUT!! I would still LOVE a small FIXED shock turret that could be spawned and manned

Ryuxen wrote:

I know its not team oriented the hellbender turret but how about the rod, the enhaced damage bonus skill, and super weapons, they arent team oriented too.

AMs rely on other players (medics) to keep them alive ,they have to keep moving or they die quickly
Enhanced Damage bonus comes with the problem of having to hit monsters not just combo-ing in there general area.
the problem with the Spam-cannon as I call it. Is this it was not intended to be used as a turret and now we get two of them on a map knocking around other players and killing better than the regular turrets do.
Nothing personal Ryu ,but your opinion will be biased from one of your primary characters being a Engi ,players who have to hunt to kill look at it in a different way.
It took a long time for me to post this grievance ,as I am a very patient man but we need to look at how all weapons are being used be it Rod/Triple ,vehicles,turrets, monsters/pets

I'm not fond of vehicles on small maps at all. They take up way too much room and block access in some cases. I don't know how you would have the ability to exclude one map from another for an eng to spawn a vehicle.

I first thought engineers were no fair. I saw them just chilling out getting a lot more xp by just sitting there with their lightning sent and turret or vehicle, while I had to run around everywhere being vulnerable, killing stuff, and getting less xp.

But then it also isn't so fair when I can camp in their base throwing spider mines or spamming a flakk and getting a ton of XP. I didn't have to build the base. I still get the protection from the walls and def sents.

I know I am not very good at this game, but the most experience I've ever gotten as a WM was when someone else was in with their bender in a small map.

You can't really use the bender in every single map. There are many maps where the bender will just not work (at least past wave 7 or so). Engineers using a bender seems fine with me, after all, I use their base without being able to give back most of the time.

The paladin, or the paladin shot turret should have a similar concern, less people can use them though since it requires a higher level. There have been many maps, where I can't do anything because the paladin or paladin shot turret just kill everything, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs.

List of how classes are team players:

Weapon Masters
* They can share magic weapons they get
* Man turrets with their Adv Dmg Bonus (Usually the one manning the turret gets more xp than the linkers... what a sacrifice)

Adren
* Spheres
* Weapon Maxes
* Man turrets

Engineers
* Build bases
* Put down a lot of def sents

Medics
* Heal

How each class can be non-team players:

Weapon Master
* Don't share weapons

Adren
* Don't max
* Don't sphere
* Lightning Rod everything?

Engineers
* Use vehicles and no other base for others
* No defense sents

Medics
* Don't heal others, only monsters and kill

It seems the most selfish class is the weapon master.

On specifically the topic of the bender. How to make it more team oriented:
* Share xp by linking vehicles
* Remove secondary fire from bender 2 weapon
* Perhaps only have the bender shots be able to explode by someone else shooting them in 3 weapon?

it's off topic but the WM is the primary class here all other classes were designed as supplemental or support classes.I will not apologize for hunting down Bugs as a WM it is their purpose.
I even heal players or drop health for them,but not all players help others ,I've had an Engi repeatedly top up his Sent right in front of me and not shield me up.

If we could please keep this related to Hellbenders it would be best though.
For me this is not an issue of greed (xp or score) it is an issue of the Benders' intended use,and respect for other people playing.
Engis' link fire was reduced because of the constant SPAM that was being created ,I see this as the same .
It is funny though we have an anti-camper mod on this server but most players do little but camp. The bases have become the focal point and main strategy here ,and I for one don't like it !
I love the fact that all these low level characters sit in a base and keep monster DR down and leave lots of monsters around for me to kill,but that isn't the gameplay we want to encourage ,bah off topic again grr

how is this for a suggestion make the cannon only be able to "Combo" one ball at a time , this would make it less effective than a turret.

Ryuxen wrote:

I know its not team oriented the hellbender turret but how about the rod, the enhaced damage bonus skill, and super weapons, they arent team oriented too.

Rod limits on available adren, as do the beam, bolt, blasts, and all the other artifacts, which share the same supply pool as our energy shields, which keep us alive where others may have self-healing or regen/vamp. Which is why I do less and less MWM, maxing and such past say wave 4.

EDB... yep, it helps, but a WM can only do so many combos on a shock before he runs out of ammo, while the hellbender has infinite ammo.

Super weapons get one shot per wave, and then they are worthless.

So putting these up against the hellbender, which has infinite ammo, who knows what fire rate, or damage per hit or combo (of which it can do multiple at once)... people talk about the spamming of a rod or beam... this is a major spammer, making those seem mild in comparison.

Restricting spawning on a per-map basis?? I don't see any way to do that easily. The best way I could think of to do it would be to somehow pick out the size of the map, but I don't think that could be done. And by the name having been tagged as ONS... well, by then, you have the vehicles. I think the best solution so far of was Road's suggestion of reducing the number of combos (or perhaps removing them), and maybe bringing the fire rate down on INV (consider too the range of the weapon in question). And yes, perhaps make them linkable, though I think this may just make the problem worse in some ways.

In the meantime... I have seen some rather creative ways of dealing with this... I have seen a few walls put up around the bender to block view and shots... and then there is always the fun of standing on it and attracting fire. But all of this is indicative that there is a problem.

And like Road, I have noticed we are tending to effectively camp more on a non-camping server (I personally do not mind this, as one of my styles is to be a sniper, and on INV, this tends to be self defeating in terms of kills/xp, but it also avoids using map faults and going outside the map to shoot the monsters). And yes, there is less team play, especially with some players. I will admit I probably do less maxing and almost never do spheres as my XAM. But then, I tend to be a more offensive playing style, and am playing a class which has to use adren to be offensive. But there are lots of others who make sure we are healed, have full shields, etc... generally the older group of players, but not always.