trip mines

They are more useful than the Turret.

here's a setup that is easy to play blindfolded:

1 turret : block choke-point to objective
shield boost 4b 5a 6b
trip mines : 5a 5b 6b
offensive tech: 4a 5b 6a
bio: 4b 5b 6a

~perma shield boost while moving from ammo box to ammo box
drop the trip mines at your feet as you run - enemies like to fallow you ))) .  Top the scoreboard while being all but oblivious to the battlefield conditions ...

NO...just


NO!

trip mines are great

Why are people still hating on the turret? It got a pretty heavy damage boost, I seem to get pretty frequent kills with it and either 6 morph primes enemies quickly. My krogan engineer uses the flamethrower morph in chokepoints or on objectives to burn everything while I spam detonators and shotgun rounds.

I think at this point people just hate the turret because it was the cool thing to do.

Nobody's looking for excuses to hate the turret. Even with the damage boost, every character with turret is still better served - strictly in terms of raw damage output, and especially combined with the aggressive playstyle to which most BSN people subscribe - by maxing everything else. It's not a terrible ability, just the worst one among the respective skillsets of each of classes that has it.

Of all the turret classes, the Insurgent is probably the last one for which I'd consider taking points from something else. I could see an argument for shedding rank 6 of one or both of his passives to take the turret to rank 3-4 if you REALLY love it, but crippling his best offensive ability to max the turret is straying a long way from his best build.

If that's your thing, go for it, just understand that it's not some BSN hipster bullshit that makes everyone look at you all side-eyed.

Translation:

Fire-and-forget bigbooms make killdeads gooder than camp dakka.

It's also fun to have a biotic on the team who can Pull or Throw people into the mines.

The turret works best as an aggro dump. And it doesn't really gain much from it's upgrades. If the enemies hard focus it as you want them to it will die before doing significant damage either way. It is a great 1 point ability in this way.

It's damage is very mediocre however, to deal as much damage as one level 1 mine takes something like 10 barrages, which means it has to live a while, which means it needs to not get targeted, which means it isn't doing it's most crucial job.

If there was a rank 6 deals no damage but gains 2000% health and force enemies to shoot it upgrade then I would take it to rank 6 any day.

In 5 seconds you could have destroyed an entire spawn, or a couple of sub-bosses, or a boss using Trip Mines and your gun.

Turret is trash.

But hey, like poultrymancer said up-thread, you play the way you want to. If you want to max out Turret and leave 1 point in Trip Mines, go for it.

How do you prime for mines?

I meant the timing.

When I use trip mines, I use a "fire and forget playstyle", mostly because I never know when they will be tripped. Also, if I am using ammo it seems like most of the time I wind up killing things before they hit the mines or I start shooting so late that they already hit the mines.

So I was wondering if there was some good tactics for making enemies get primed before they hit the mines?

I see two diametrically opposed anecdotal narratives around the Turret and its priming ability:

1 - Turret makes good and reliable primer (with timing.)

2 - Turret is unable to prime.

The problem that I have is my turret is in the second category. I have never successfully detonated a combo off of my turret's flamethrower (never tried the cryo evolution.) It wasn't for lack of trying. I played the character for about 2 hours straight each day for three days, on three different difficulty levels, and varied the timing of my attempts to detonate, as well as the type of targets (mostly redbar health.)

There are others who have reported the exact opposite experience, and I'm sure they are being no less honest.

My best guess is that hosting will allow the priming to function normally, while being off-host will prevent it completely. However, even that contradicts the people who say it primes reliably for them off-host.

If the turret is working for you, and you like it, I say use it as much as you can. I wish mine did, but it's a 1-pointer for me now. Still, as a 1-point ability, it gets quite a bit of utility.