Guild Wars 2

Please pardon my zeal!

I love to play Engineer in WvW (with guardian a close second). However, when I am in a guild group of 10-30 people I wish I could contribute more to the support of my allies as an Engineer. The lower the number in the group, the more it counts. After watching the recent Ready Up, it struck me that the new changes could provide a real supportive and potentially nuker role comparative to a staff Elementalist (which is one of the four highly desired classes for WvW raiding to date).

Engineers won’t replace Elementalists, but they can offer support similar to what Ele already does with these proposed traits and potentially do so with an explosive flair.

This speculation is based on looking on the Explosives and Inventions line as the backbone, and is dependent on how the current stationary Mortar elite is retooled into Mortar Kit. There are a handful of traits that have not been determined yet, so I am working on current information only as of the 4/25/15 Ready Up.

Explosives Traitline:

Grandmaster
- Mortar Fields Last longer + 5 skill is barrage OR skill 1 becomes a blast finisher
or
- Evasive Powder Keg, which creates a bomb on dodge, becomes a blast finisher

Inventions Traitline:

Minor traits
- Using a heal skill removes damaging conditions from allies
- When removing a condition you grant regen to yourself and allies
- Healing power increased when with a regen boon
Adept
- Using a heal skill triggers a blast finisher on self
Master
- “HEAL-SPLOSION” blast finishers heal
Grandmaster
- Incoming heals on self will also heal allies for a % of that heal

Mortar Recap

The current Mortar is an Elite Skill for engineer that renders the operator stationary to interact with it. It is not a popular elite. The proposed Mortar Kit will remake the elite as a mobile, ranged AoE nuking machine. This kit will replace Grenades as the long ranged kit and also free up a skill slot that was previously used by the kit for another utility skill.

Current Mortar elite skills:

1. Mortar Shot- 2 cd – Standard long range mortar shot
2. Caltrop Mortar – 12 cd – AoE field bleeds 12.5 sec, 2.5 sec cripple per pulse, 6 sec duration
3. Elixer -15 cd – AoE heal, 5 sec pulse (not a combo field)
4. Ice Mortar – 20 cd – AoE Ice field, pulses 2.5 sec chill, 10 sec duration
5. Concussion Barrage – 30 cd – barrage of rounds knock back enemies

Mortar Kit Caveats

Presently the Mortar elite has 1,400 range. While not specified, it’s expected the Mortar kit will have at least 1,200 range, as they reduced Grenade kit max range to 900.

Combined with the new Elite in Explosives, the Mortar AA can become a blast finisher. That’s yet to be determined. What’s great about this, and I support it whole-heartedly, is that you can blast your own mortar fields which are already at range and complete your own combos.

The devs are going to tweak the velocity/speed of mortar when they make it a kit, and they are to change one of the skills.

As far as the current mortar skills… Ideally, they will keep the Ice Mortar even if the devs reduce the duration. Currently it is a 10 second ice field, but even if it was reduced to 6 seconds there is plenty of opportunity to blast it for that handy Frost Aura. I would be ok with and potentially have to pinch myself if Elixer mortar was made into a water field #healingoasis (anything but a light field!).

The mortar barrage as it is has potential; in WvW it can help strip the stability a large enemy group that has stacked upon each other, but just one stack. If it’s decided to make the mortar AA a blast and remove the 5 barrage… (insert starry eyed gaze) another skill becomes a combination of caltrops+napalm, a fire nuke similar to a molotov kittentail—bleeding, burning, cripple all in one—with an apocalyptic hail of cinder and flames. Any of these, you know. Make Michael Bay proud.

tldr version;
- large aoe attacks at range, potentially long duration aoe fields
- mortar AA becomes a blast finisher = heals and damage
- self heals => auto-blast, allies get healed % of + damaging condis removed + regen

Needless to say, I am super excited on how the Mortar Kit and Inventions changes will impact Engineer in group WvW play, and how the new (yet undisclosed) Elite Specialization can be incorporated into a Healsplode Engi.

+1 for Michael Bay VFX. I need my ’splosions.

I am rather sad about the range reduction on grenades, however it HAS been a point of conflict with a lot of people being 1500 range on something you throw by hand versus a gun that only shoots 1200. So I understand. The new and improved Mortar Elite I really hope will give us that 1500 range attack back. The potential for mortar and the healing kinda reduces the sting on the grenade nerf. Needless to say, the first spec I make will focus on these healing explosions. I am very excited.

I’m most looking forward to what that f5 on mortar can do. Looks like it would be easy to avoid in a small fight but in a large scale fight it could be devastating. I’m pretty sure engi will replace ele considering the massive nerfs to core ele skills.

I just hope mortar can crit I want it to at least be a bit scary for zerk builds

Nikkinella.8254:

I’m most looking forward to what that f5 on mortar can do. Looks like it would be easy to avoid in a small fight but in a large scale fight it could be devastating. I’m pretty sure engi will replace ele considering the massive nerfs to core ele skills.

Engy will maybe move alongside eles as support but the core ele wvw skills arent really changing,

Nikkinella.8254:

I’m most looking forward to what that f5 on mortar can do. Looks like it would be easy to avoid in a small fight but in a large scale fight it could be devastating.

Oh yeah, Nukes and Support combined!

Frightlight.3796:

I just hope mortar can crit I want it to at least be a bit scary for zerk builds

It’s kit now. Every kit can critical hit.
But don’t expect from mortal dps compare’able to granades.

Mortar should be a fileds kit so I dont expect some ridiculous dps. I am more curious about what fields we get there. Now engi bit suffer from quite short fields but with longer ones like smoke, fire, water can mortar be really gamechanging with all those new blasts

Rozbuska.5263:

Mortar should be a fileds kit so I dont expect some ridiculous dps. I am more curious about what fields we get there. Now engi bit suffer from quite short fields but with longer ones like smoke, fire, water can mortar be really gamechanging with all those new blasts

Personally, I hope we’ll have rather nice dmg with it since the devs said it will be our ranged choice instead of ‘nades. Ofc it will have a focus on fields but I’d prefer a spamable #1 skill rather than a cd and blast finisher.

morrolan.9608:

Nikkinella.8254:

I’m most looking forward to what that f5 on mortar can do. Looks like it would be easy to avoid in a small fight but in a large scale fight it could be devastating. I’m pretty sure engi will replace ele considering the massive nerfs to core ele skills.

Engy will maybe move alongside eles as support but the core ele wvw skills arent really changing,

As someone who mains ele, i’m gonna tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong. Ele’s survival and damage is going in the crapper. Engi absolutely will replace ele, theres no doubt about that. A few will remain that don’t mind being mindless field generating bots. But on a competitive level, ele will be a liability to have with you like it was before cele was introduced. With just zerging, it probably wont make much of a difference, but as far as gvg or anything like that goes, engi will be the far better choice.

Nikkinella.8254:

As someone who mains ele, i’m gonna tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong. Ele’s survival and damage is going in the crapper. Engi absolutely will replace ele, theres no doubt about that. A few will remain that don’t mind being mindless field generating bots. But on a competitive level, ele will be a liability to have with you like it was before cele was introduced. With just zerging, it probably wont make much of a difference, but as far as gvg or anything like that goes, engi will be the far better choice.

The thread is specifically about WvW raiding, I also main a staff ele in WvW and my role won’t change that much from what I can see.