Guild Wars 2

After stealth gyro nerfs I looked at the other elites for engineer and the damage associated with them.

While the supply crate has a stun and med pack on tool belt, the mortar has no such utilities until you pop the kit.

According to GW2skills the damage on a full zerk ascended Engineer with the Mortar kit is less than 1500 damage from the toolbelt skill , possibly because it’s balanced with Siege Rounds’ extra hit in mind as well as vulnerability from explosives.

The damage on the auto is only about 730 tooltip untraited (675 with 2375 power , 583 with 2050 power) and requires aiming ; the other skills don’t do appreciable damage so you’d rely on criticals for burn/bleed (provided you run firearms traitline and possibly Pinpoint Distribution so that you don’t need spec so much in condi). It seems very underpowered compared to Charrzooka (for WvW purposes) although Charrzooka does have the number of charges issue.

Because it’s projectile and not particularly quick & requires aiming, any target past 900 or so range walking around will not be hit by it reliably.

Also because traits such as Aim-Assisted Rocket (which you need to weigh against +7% damage from Shaped Charge) and Takedown Round both have 10 recharge, it wouldn’t be too broken to ask for an upgrade on this auto (on an elite skill, no less) IMO.

I think a power-scaling multiplier increase from 0.80 to 0.85 or 0.90 would be about fair as a starting buff for this “auto” attack, it’s about +6% to +12% on top of the +10% from Explosive Powder and +7% from Shaped Charge.

I agree that the toolbelt skill is lackluster.

I disagree that the auto-attack should be upgraded since the hit area is huge, the range is ridiculous, the speed actually does what it says on the tin, it creates fields and is a combo starter weapon, and it is made essentially to keep you either out of the fray or to harass those who want to be outside of the fray in WvW on castle walls.

While it isn’t terribly “deadly” I would say that it wasn’t really meant to be in this sense.

The hit area on the auto is no bigger than fireball on Ele staff 1 (180 radius , not 240 radius for combo fields on mortar 2-5). It’s 1500 range which is not ridiculous considering that Rangers have 1500 range longbows.

Skills like Puncture shot (DH longbow 1) , Long range shot (Ranger Longbow 1 with trait) , Hammer Bolt (rev hammer 1) all have higher multipliers and pierce.

I also sometimes feel that Flash Shell could have a bit more offensive capability (i.e. 1.0 multiplier or 1 stack 5s bleed or 5s 5 stacks vulnerability or 2 stacks 3s confusion) given the cooldown (light field isn’t that spectacular), but the 4 pulses of blind has me torn about that. The closest skills are Well of Darkness or Smoke Bomb : Signet of Shadows , Signet of Air , Signet of Midnight , Lightning surge only blind once.

increase projectile speed

a simple fix would be to add 30% damage to mortar skills on Siege Rounds trait

or 30% + increase radius to 240 on auto only on said trait

maybe shave the orbital strike activation to 1/4 because as it is its unreasoable having 3/4 activation to then have 2s delay before the skill actually goes off

(i ll be back after im out of college and test if quickness affects delay if so then toolbelt is good)

Imho, its effectiveness already depends far too much on Siege Rounds.
The whole weapon is essentially balanced over using that trait, and it is barely mediocre without it. Essentially just another “grenadier” situation yet again.
And it doesn’t even do much for condition users anyway. Just some stacks of poison.
If they want to make mortar good enough only via traits (again, a terrible idea, but still better than nothing) they could just change its interaction with Shrapnel (again, another trait essentially based over the best case – grenades – and mostly useless in any other situation).
As in, change Shrapnel to have different effects based on the explosive used, with a fairly good one on the mortar.

Mortal projectiles should move a lot faster to their destination at least,
to help you hit targets more reliably
and a dmg increase would be welcome too.

Why do mortar kit buff threads keep coming up? Am I the only one that thinks mortar kit is already really good?

1.) 1200 range guaranteed projectile finisher, large aoe
2.) 1200 range poison field, large aoe
3.) 1200 range ice field, chills, large aoe
4.) 1200 range light field, blinds, large aoe
5.) 1200 range water field, large aoe
toolbelt: blast finisher, huge aoe, deals decent damage

If you removed the on-hit damage from every mortar kit skill I would still use it.

Honestly the only reason it isn’t a total bs skill is that the autoattack projectile finisher doesn’t work the same as other proj finishers (or else it is just bugged). There are certainly classes in this game with garbage elite skills, but engineer is not one of them.

Increase projectile speed or blast radius.

How does the mortar work with sigils that talk about when the elite skill is used?

Dinosaurs.8674:

Why do mortar kit buff threads keep coming up? Am I the only one that thinks mortar kit is already really good?

1.) 1200 range guaranteed projectile finisher, large aoe
2.) 1200 range poison field, large aoe
3.) 1200 range ice field, chills, large aoe
4.) 1200 range light field, blinds, large aoe
5.) 1200 range water field, large aoe
toolbelt: blast finisher, huge aoe, deals decent damage

If you removed the on-hit damage from every mortar kit skill I would still use it.

Honestly the only reason it isn’t a total bs skill is that the autoattack projectile finisher doesn’t work the same as other proj finishers (or else it is just bugged). There are certainly classes in this game with garbage elite skills, but engineer is not one of them.

Mortar has 1500 range though.

I use mortar in WvW regularly without siege rounds but much more for the fields rather than to attack; it works very nicely with rocket charge.

The AA is fine. Maybe the other skills need a slight damage buff. I honestly don’t see why you’d camp on an autoattack as an engineer anyways.

However, the projectile itself is absolutely trash. It moves too slow thus it can never hit anything at 1500 range that moves faster than a snail and also it seems to be very random if it can hit something on the top of a roof. This also makes it easy to reflect.

I always thought a neat gimmick would be to make this projectile finisher affect all targets in the AoE (honoring the 5 max of course) rather than those just hit by the projectile itself. Might have to reduce the trigger to be 75% or 50% to avoid abuse, but it would be effective and thematic to the kit without playing the simple raw power creep game.

I asked Grouch about this when the kit was released, and either I asked it wrong, or his explanation was confusing cause I thought that would be the intended behavior.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/What-s-the-deal-with-Mortar/first#post5165482

Regardless, it was nice to ditch the old Mortar in favor of this one (aside from looking like a blunderbuss), but I think a another look at it couldn’t hurt.

I feel like the AA could use a small buff but on my full zerk Engi it does between 3 and 4k a hit which is pretty decent. Orbital Strike between 4 and 5k.

Mortar Kit is more of a utility kit IMO, not a damage kit. The cooldowns are too long for it to be something you should be using for damage.

I think they made orbital strike activation long on purpose, so you have time to drop a fire/smoke bomb for boon stacking before it goes off.

I’m also under the impression that it’s not a damage, but a utility kit. And boy does it do that role well

did they ever fix the finisher from shooting through target to AoE effect?
because otherwise it doesnt offer neither utility nor damage

Utility only when traited so fields last 6 seconds actually damage too on orbital strike

if nothin’s changed its still just bad projectiles are too slow and weak for a 1500 range manual aimed weapon

Rezzet, you might want to try blasting into the mortar combo fields, that’s where the real utility is hidden ;D

Blasts
1: Weakness (5s): -50% Endurance Regeneration, 50% Fumble (Unrestricted)
2: Chill foes that strike you (only once per second for each attacker); incoming damage is reduced by 10%.
3: Retaliation (3s): Reflect incoming damage back to its source.
4: Healing: 1,320 (0.2)

The shells themselves
1: Poison (2½s): 84 Damage, -33% Healing Effectiveness
2: Chilled (1s): -66% Skill Recharge Rate, -66% Movement Speed
3: Blind (5s): Next outgoing attack misses.
4: AOE HOT.

Yeah, totally useless for utility..

Rezzet.3614:

did they ever fix the finisher from shooting through target to AoE effect?
because otherwise it doesnt offer neither utility nor damage

Utility only when traited so fields last 6 seconds actually damage too on orbital strike

if nothin’s changed its still just bad projectiles are too slow and weak for a 1500 range manual aimed weapon

You still need to hit the enemy target with mortar #1, to cleanse with it in our blind lightfield for example.

And at times, even when you do it still doesnt work (or the radius isnt 240 as it should be).

It doesnt make sense imo, because you dont need an enemy target, to heal with leap in water field either. A cleanse or a heal that affects you and allies, shouldnt need an enemy target.

Maybe support this thread?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Mortar-cleanse-does-not-work-properly/first#post5983404

Tiilimon.6094:

Rezzet, you might want to try blasting into the mortar combo fields, that’s where the real utility is hidden ;D

Blasts
1: Weakness (5s): -50% Endurance Regeneration, 50% Fumble (Unrestricted)
2: Chill foes that strike you (only once per second for each attacker); incoming damage is reduced by 10%.
3: Retaliation (3s): Reflect incoming damage back to its source.
4: Healing: 1,320 (0.2)

The shells themselves
1: Poison (2½s): 84 Damage, -33% Healing Effectiveness
2: Chilled (1s): -66% Skill Recharge Rate, -66% Movement Speed
3: Blind (5s): Next outgoing attack misses.
4: AOE HOT.

Yeah, totally useless for utility..

12
20
25
30s cooldowns
makes the standalone rounds barely useful asides from blind and poison and the healing field if y ou combine it with elixir gun and healing turret or heal gyro

blast finishers are also the same only poison and chill fields are worth blasting

wich leads to the biggest flaw Siege Rounds the biggest problem was the mortar was designed around the trait and not the other way around
without it fields lose 50% duration and 1 blast finisher and thanks to it existing mortar kit lost 30% base damage