Mortar needs a rework.
Make it fire on its own when not in use, make it be invulnerable or be able to take more hits, at least.
I can see a very niche use for the mortar if it becomes more tanky, you’d essentially have a reactionary stability anytime you needed it if you saw an incoming CC.
There are just so many problems with this elite. Immobility, minimum range to fire at, outclassed by grenades, low damage, can’t crit which means extremely poor scaling, squishy environmental weapon that takes away all of your kitswap and MH weapons when in use, you can’t even fire it and then switch back to your weapons since if the mortar lands a hit when nobody is operating it, it’s as if the projectile never existed and it does nothing.
I use it actively, but only in specific situations. I can use it to give players a 1500 range ranged attack for things like Claw P1 or WvW defence.
I think it’s issues are mostly with bugs:
- No critical hits.
- Range seems fixed, but still reports wrong in tooltips. I’d also argue it should be bumped to 1500 without any trait, and 1650-1700 with the Elite Supplies trait.
- Shots tend to lag out, “congest” the tube and then block other shots from firing, until eventually 8-10 shots go off in rapid succession. To be fair, if someone gets hit by that hailstorm it is actually really dangerous, I’d prefer it in unbugged though.
Further, I think #1 should be enemy-targeted, not ground-targeted.
In general I think the skill isn’t bad. I’d much rather have it as a very specialized support skill than a pure damage ability, and it’s not thaaaaaat far off from that. Tad more range, fixing the bugs, fixing the bugs, and remove the bugs. Maybe bump damage ~15% on #1.
I would swap out mortar for an elite turret any day. If it fired on it’s own, it might be interesting.
I love how posts like this always come up. I posted one myself awhile ago after trying mortar a bit. Maybe with enough posts, Anet will finally fix it.
I also love how these wxp mastery skills seem to either have what mortar needs or does something similar to mortar, like the latest AoE heal on treb mastery. Wouldn’t it be nice if our AoE mortar heal had a water field? Or what about oil mastery that gives some protections to the person on the oil? What is the deal with giving stuff to wxp mastery skills that the engineer elite should be doing?! Way to cheapen the mortar elite even more.
Add among things that need changing: greatly increase the radius of mortar #1. Either buff the range or buff the turret’s base toughness and hp so it doesn’t die under 1-hit AoE.
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast
Handheld-mortar kit. anyone?
We have a handheld mortar kit already. It’s called Grenades + Grenadier.
I just can’t see a reason to run Mortar in WvW.
Yak’s Bend
Ir Regardless – Engineer
The wvw mortar is getting a nice buff, its too bad devs have forgotten we have an obslete mortar too :/
And btw devs, reducing cooldown on skills does not make it more viable if you are planning on doing that again, that was furthest from the thing we have asked for; it needs to get its jam fixed and a damage,range or mortar velocity incease.
I’ll say it again, the wxp mastery skills continue to cheapen the engineer mortar elite. It’s like they take all the good ideas and fixes that mortar needs and stick them into a mastery skill. UGH!
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast
Just get rid of it and have a rocket firing monkey, imo.
JQ-80: Mes/Eng/Ele/Thief/Guard/Rang/Nec/War
Just get rid of it and have a rocket firing monkey, imo.
But then we would have to feed the monkey and take care of its hospital bills…. Too much overhead.
Just get rid of it and have a rocket firing monkey, imo.
But then we would have to feed the monkey and take care of its hospital bills…. Too much overhead.
I’d be willing to foot those costs for a monkey. It’s a monkey.
All classes, level 80
Dropbear Massacre, Necro Main
It is just a low-powered road flare. Might be good to signal when a Dolyak breaks down in the roadway or something. Pretty sure it is built by Estes.
Corsair Vengeance 8Gb @ 1866Mhz | ASUS GTX 970 | Kingston 240 GB SSD