Guild Wars 2

I’ve been using Mortar lately a bit in WvWvW and here’s my observation.

Mortar has awesome potential as currently implemented. The skills are useful to me for supporting front line fighters. BUT… The biggest problem with it is either the range is too short or it needs better survivability. Increase one or the other.

Because the range is too short, I have to place it closer to a battle (especially if I’m on top of a wall) and put it at greater risk of massive AoE damage. And when this happens, because of the low survivability, this leads to the mortar sometimes being killed before I even get a chance to fire a single shot off. Happened to me twice last night. Horrible thing to happen for an elite skill with a long cooldown.

If the range were longer, I wouldn’t care so much about having a squishy mortar. If the survivability were greater, I wouldn’t care that I’m closer to battle with a shorter range. Would be nice to be able to fire off a few shots before cooldown…

Changes I would do:

- The knockback and aoe heal really need to have a zero min range. You need them to defend your Mortar!

- reduce that annoying global cooldown and the thing will do a lot more consistant damage.

- either the player takes no damage, or the Mortar takes no damage.
Having to leave your Mortar because of pressure, and seeing it destroyed in 2 hits as well is frustrating and illogical.
Mortars could be a lot tougher, just let them despawn if not used for 20 seconds…

- and the range, could do some better

I agree with the healing and knockback being 0-range minimum.

The GCD is something I always wondered. Why do we need a GCD on an elite kit when that kit is already severely hampered by range and travel time?

Mortars have the ability to be a very good tool, but the problem is they have so many hindrances that they seem unusable.

If they don’t reduce the travel time, we should see a radius increase of the effects.