Guild Wars 2

I’m sure we’re all excited about the upcoming mortar kit changes, but I’m somewhat cautious as to how much of an improvement we’re going to see – and how viable it will become.

Basing my information off Dulfy’s summary, we only know of two certain and two probable improvements:

• We’ll definitely be able to move about with it.
• It can be traited so that #1 is a blast finisher.
• It’ll probably drop more fields than it currently does.
• As a ‘kit-like skill’, we’ll probably be able to swap into/out of it more freely (ideally, as easily as any other kit – but that’s not guaranteed).

Things which haven’t been mentioned at all, but currently severely restrict mortar:

• Using one skill puts all the others on a short cooldown.
• The slow projectile speed.
• The lacklustre damage.
• The minimum range.

Likely nerfs:

• No more stability while in mortar kit.

Anyone care to offer corrections, or speculation on the above?

Not really. It’s all pretty well-based speculation and concerns at this point. I imagine that the minimum range is going to stay so that it doesn’t step on the toes of grenade kit and the stability is most likely going away. However, I would hope we could expect to see an increase in damage. Not sure on where projectile speed is going to stand though.

The relatively low DPS of the Mortar is what leads me to think it will be about as swapable as other kits. Theoretically, the current mortar has near 100% uptime if it doesn’t get destroyed, so the numbers are balanced more around that and having easy access as a kit wouldn’t throw off it’s current balance that much.

If it’s going to be a field generating and blasting utility, it sounds more like an offensive support thing than a DPS thing; which makes me think the current low damage might not actually need adjusting. You’d pull it out, pop an ice mortar, then close the gap and switch to a close range weapon while spamming finishers in the ice field to lock enemies down. It may have more of those kinds of uses than pure damage.

Being an elite, if they get rid of certain mortar weaknesses, like the universal cooldown, they’d have to instead increase individual skill cooldowns, I think. The current mortar has so many drawbacks it’s near useless, but it’d be bad to remove all the drawbacks and make it OP. I think the universal cooldown is still a good balancing mechanism that fits the feel of a mortar. It’s less of a “spaming” weapon than grenades, and honestly, the slow feel of it is appropriate with an artillery weapon. You can’t just roll through the skills since each one is just a different type of shell you’re loading, and it’s a single shot weapon that requires a reload each shot.

The minimum range is far less of a problem with mobility, you can back up and kite things that are chasing you and step within your range, but if it’s a field kit, I’d be nice if that were removed so that you could drop fields at your feet.

The perma-stability was supposed to be the tradeoff for the lack of mobility, so it is very likely to go. Jugernaught now gives stability, and might work with the mortar kit which could be a functional replacement.

There might be a new trait that gives stability with the mortar. Perhaps while firing or reloading the mortar you get a stack of stability. When you actually use that type of weapon you’d plant your stance firmly to withstand the recoil, so that could take the form of a short burst of stability which makes mortar attacks harder to interrupt. Now that I think of it, that might be an interesting way to balance it’s slow firing speed: slow but hard to interrupt attacks.

I don’t think they will make it usable in point blank area (especially with blast on AA). But they can make it more powerful, so it will become ranged alternative.
I would happily welcome changes that would even make it powerful enough (very powerful) for kit swapping to be suboptimal (I never was a fan of kit juggling), for price of “after moving, you need 1 second preparing and standing still before attacking”, as I never considered mortal to be “mobile weapon”. It would made it situational weapon, that work great in specific situation (as I would think about elite that have 100% up time). If you want to fight in point blanc then you would use bomb kit, if you want to do some mobile short distance fighting then you go for grenade kit.

I’d rather have them remove all restrictions now and see how it goes, with the option to nerf / rebalance the kit later, instead of doing it the other way around, since A-net takes ages to go back to already implemented concepts to buff them up, but will respond in reasonable time if the QQ gets loud enough.

Honestly, I could see it being a pretty unique (but viable) skill if it were to keep the Stability and self-rooting, but where you automatically Use it and stow it away when pressing the button again, with no cooldown on putting it right back down. That, alongside improving the skills themselves, of course. Would basically end up being a Combo-based Kit that locks you firmly in place while in use, for better or worse. Would be a pretty neat way to utilize Stability; detrimental if you try to abuse it due to the rooting, but very potent if you’re adept at prediction and timing in that you can potentially trigger it RIGHT when you need it and no longer than that, trading a considerable knockback, Fear, or bouncy-trampoline-tumble for a short self-immobilization.

Of course, it is indeed all theory and hope at this point. XD We have no idea what it’ll end up bein’.

- I hope they icnrease the dmg/make it able to critically hit
- if I’m correct they said they’d have to tweak velocity and stuff like that
- regarding the stability, im cool if we lose it, theres no need for it at a longer range in my experience, and compared to I.E the flame thrower which is a short range weapon

I imagine a mortar would be quite heavy to carry around, i wonder if it’ll have a time limit on how long you can use it for then a rest period in between.

What i want it to be? A heavy hitting, 1500 range kit with a somewhat slower attack speed with decent fields that makes commanders shout “MORTAR ENGIES ON THE WALLS!” when they see it. I want that kit to be lethal, heavy and menacing looking, i want it to resemble the charr concept art in the attachment and i want to feel like i use a heavy weapon once i equip it…and not a dinky little (elite skill) charzooka that you hold like a rifle or some puny nades (nades are powerfull but dont look as powerfull as they should imo, so dont come to me explaining how awesome they are, im fully aware of that ). I want it to rain doomsday on enemy zergs and abolish enemies in pvp aswell mobs in pve, a kit that strikes fear into the hearts of my foes. I also want it to work like a regular kit with swapping back and forth like i please…and not with ammo or charges that run out..or a timer, reasonable longer cooldowns on 2 to 5 are acceptable to me though, i want it to be my reliable ranged option once HoT hits cause my firearms gonna be most likely replaced with the hammer and i also want it to have no minimum range to be useable to blast a combofield right below my feet or deploy one.

Eh..i can dream i guess