Guild Wars 2

well we know it is extremely underwhelming specially it being an Elite skill

so maybe instead of pointing out how its obviously weak we could suggest some ways to improve it maybe constructive criticism will get this fixed

now i for one think mortar should have an extra 500-1000 base range added or 500 and move its range and damage to the turred grandmaster and make it gain an additional 500 range

and/or give it 30% damage added to its auto attack maybe, it has a 2s global cooldown
and its highly avoidable gotta compensate somehow

but yeah i think it mainly just needs range damage-wise might be ok so far as it is more a support fire weapon

anyways i may not have good ideas but im sure theres others who do .

How do you think Mortar can be improved?

i think it should be an elite kit that functions similar to a guardian tome that focuses on 1500 range (untraited) aoe barrages. you know like a mortar. but that would probably be op

We should get ones of these mortar posts in the balance section, chances seem pretty good for getting a reply there now.

In my opinion, the mortar is OK for what it does, it just needs a little polish around the edges. My first two changes below I think need to be addressed. Beyond that, other stuff is optional. The mortar is a situational skill, so no matter what it’s only going to be used when both you are your target are stationary. That limits the skill to fighting the inquest golem, the giant jungle wurm, and using it on WvW fort walls.

1. [Easy – Must Have] Add an attack queue. It’s the only skill I know of that doesn’t have an attack queue.

2. [Moderate – Must Have] Mortar skills should crit, scale with stats (currently it does not get boost from sigils), and apply traits.

3. [Balance – Nice to Have] Maintain 1500 max distance, but do not factor vertical distance in the equation, unless the vertical distance exceeds 1500 (don’t want ppl spamming mortar on cliffs). Or just have vertical distance play a smaller role when calculating the total distance.

4. [Hard – Nice to Have, but Highly Recommended] Replace launch elixir with some sort of temporary iron hide or projectile barrier skill. That’s far more useful. Or, replace the defensive skill with another offensive one like poison field or confusion field.

This is a topic that has been discussed endlessly. Ever since beta we know Mortar is terrible.
A year and a half down the line its still worst then racial elites. Elites designed to purposely be subpar. And without a doubt the worst of the profession Elite’s.

And with Elixir X being a copy-paste rip-off Engineers are poorly represented in the Elite-skill department. Thankfully Supply Crate is pretty good.

Nate.8146:

In my opinion, the mortar is OK for what it does, it just needs a little polish around the edges. My first two changes below I think need to be addressed. Beyond that, other stuff is optional. The mortar is a situational skill, so no matter what it’s only going to be used when both you are your target are stationary. That limits the skill to fighting the inquest golem, the giant jungle wurm, and using it on WvW fort walls.

1. [Easy – Must Have] Add an attack queue. It’s the only skill I know of that doesn’t have an attack queue.

2. [Moderate – Must Have] Mortar skills should crit, scale with stats (currently it does not get boost from sigils), and apply traits.

3. [Balance – Nice to Have] Maintain 1500 max distance, but do not factor vertical distance in the equation, unless the vertical distance exceeds 1500 (don’t want ppl spamming mortar on cliffs). Or just have vertical distance play a smaller role when calculating the total distance.

4. [Hard – Nice to Have, but Highly Recommended] Replace launch elixir with some sort of temporary iron hide or projectile barrier skill. That’s far more useful. Or, replace the defensive skill with another offensive one like poison field or confusion field.

or make the elixir pulse heal and give protection to those in its radius

Indestructible, and reduce its cooldown to 60 or 90 seconds.
Or turn it into a elite projectile launcher kit with the same skills but #1 would hit harder.

Well, first of all some positive things:

• With the inter-shot CD now being set at 2s, it no longer eats shots. You couldn’t fire more than once every 2s before anyhow, so this is a UI fix. But it helps a lot in not accidentally firing normal shots instead of special ones.
• The frost shell and the bleed/cripple shell are still awesome, especially in keep warfare.
• The concussion barrage has its moments.

Now for the bad stuff:

• Immobile is ok, but that fragile? Really? I’d just make it invulnerable. It lasts as long as the CD is, which is long. Chances are that it’ll have to be abandoned, so there’s plenty “loss of Mortar” as is.
• Healing shot doesn’t show healing. And heals for too little.
• Damage is too low for how low the cadence is. I’d not directly increase damage however – we got elites for that. Rather I’d make every shot like the concussion barrage and saturate a very large area with 5 shots, each able to hit 5 targets. Barrage would shoot 25 shots over ~5 seconds. The area-radius should be ~twice the current Barrage radius, so this is really something to fire into an area, not at a specific target.

End result would be an Elite to give to someone for providing AE support from a large distance. It doesn’t kill single targets, it won’t stop single groups, but it applies bleeds, cripples, freeze and damage to 25 targets per round. And it can knock a whole zerg left right and centre.

Carighan.6758:

Well, first of all some positive things:

• With the inter-shot CD now being set at 2s, it no longer eats shots. You couldn’t fire more than once every 2s before anyhow, so this is a UI fix. But it helps a lot in not accidentally firing normal shots instead of special ones.
• The frost shell and the bleed/cripple shell are still awesome, especially in keep warfare.
• The concussion barrage has it’s moments.

Now for the bad stuff:

• Immobile is ok, but that fragile? Really? I’d just make it invulnerable. It lasts as long as the CD is, which is long. Chances are that it’ll have to be abandoned, so there’s plenty “loss of Mortar”, as is.
• Healing shot doesn’t show healing. And heals for too little.
• Damage is too low for how low the cadence is. I’d not directly increase damage however – we got elites for that. Rather I’d make every shot like the concussion barrag,e and saturage a very large area with 5 shots, each able to hit 5 targets. Barrage shoots 25 shots over ~5 seconds. The area-radius should be ~twice the current Barrage radius, so this is really something to fire into an area, not at a specific target.

End result would be an Elite to give to someone to provide AE output from a large distance. It doesn’t kill single targets, it won’t stop single groups, but it applies bleeds, cripples, freeze and damage to 25 targets per round. And it can knock a whole zerg left right and centre.

your suggestion sounds pretty effective for the current risk vs reward

the heal shot is just mehh as it has 0.20 scaling so even full healing power build you ll still not heal enough for it to actually influence fights

I kind of like the idea of a stationary, high output weaponskit with longer recharge and casttimes. A bit like an elite grenadepack so to speak. Something like this:

1. Iron Pellets
Shower a large area with pellets, crippling and breaking the armor of your foes.

2. Bunkerbuster
Fire a highly explosive shell at the target location, dealing concentrated damage and knocking down hit targets.

3. Decontamination Bomb
Create a healing oasis at the target location removing all conditions on impact and more with each pulse.

4. Snapfreeze Bomb
Create a large freezing field at the target location.

5. Deploy Protective Shield
Creates a Shield at the target location blocking all missiles and granting allies improved armor.

With 30-180 sec CD per Skill and 1-3 sec casttimes this would neither be overusable nor all to overpowered, but reliable and not too stationary.

I actually had a couple of suggestions from another thread, I’ll post here, with additional modifications.

Version 1: (Distance)
-50% of Siege Mortar Range
-Add a 2nd, stationary, position for a “spotter,” having a second player spot, lets you view from a higher camera angle so you can actually hit things over walls, embankments, or the two foot high fence in front of you >.<
-Increase direct damage by 10-20%.
-Retains all other current attributes, especially Stability.

Now you actually have a mortar “team” functioning as a mortar team should, setup away from the main fighting, one guy shoots, one guy spots, 2-3 defend the mortar. The zerg clashes, and meanwhile the backliners are firing mortars and spells.

Version 2: (Damage + Toughness)
- Boost Health enough to make it on par with a constructed siege weapon.
- Direct Damage +10%
- Adjust the Trait that currently boosts range, to boost range an additional +30% over current boost and also make basic fire do burn DoT, on impact location for 3-5 seconds.

Now you have a shorter ranger mortar that can actually hurt the zerg in a meaningful way in short order if not destroyed, and can actually take the punishment it’s going to receive once the siege icon pops up.