Guild Wars 2

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Whats that? Supply Crate can overcharge now? The overcharge includes a water field? It can then be detonated for a blast finisher?

A 3-second Water Field that activates on a delay, and a detonation Blast Finisher that then leaves you without the effects of your Elite Skill for the next 60-120 seconds. :P

Meanwhile, Mortar can be whipped out at any time, gives fairly-rapid guaranteed Projectile finishers (once it’s fixed, of course), provides a high uptime on Poison/area-denial and Weakness if you’re in a situation that calls for it, decent uptime on Chill/area-denial and Frost Aura if you’re in a situation that calls for it, 4-6 seconds of perpetual Blind in an area as well as condition removal or Retaliation if the situation calls for it, and some acceptable healing every once in a while with a pretty. Oh, as well as 1-2 Blast Finishers when needed.

Of course, Supply Crate gives 1-2 Blast Finishers, too, depending on whether you want to keep the turrets around or not. It also provides perpetual healing, damage, Burning, and Vulnerability in an area, as well as a small burst of healing, removal of two conditions, and a smokescreen when desired. All of that with a Stun upon its initial placement, as well as a very nice bunch of medkits via its toolbelt ability, with the overall tradeoff being that it all becomes unavailable for a relatively long period of time after it’s used.

Is Mortar better than Supply Crate? Certainly not. Is Supply Crate better than Mortar? Again, certainly not. They each have their uses, and it’s up to the Engineer to determine which one better suits their needs, and to use each to their fullest potential. Just because they each share a few of their many functions with each other doesn’t mean one makes the other obsolete, even if a couple of those shared functions are better on one or the other. :P

BlackBeard.2873:

It is a 100% projectile finisher…It isn’t meant to be doing damage.

See: ele staff earth auto-attack.

Use it for what it is meant for: stacking chills (ice), poison (poison), and removing condis (light). Also, poke damage from forever away.

If you want damage, use nades. They are super-duper strong now.

Completely not true. They nerfed grenade range because mortar kit is supposed to be our long range weapon now. How can mortar be our long range weapon if it’s not supposed to do damage?

Elixir X is funner anyway. Get rekt Lich Form

It should still do very decent damage.

To compare, it used to do roughly the equivalent of a superior arrow cart on up to 5 people. So basically, an engineer was a walking superior arrow cart that hit 5 instead of 50. Literally walking artillery.

With the nerf, I estimate it will drop down to regular arrow cart levels. It should still be much more reliable range attack than the old grenades, which had a tendency to spread out the damage the farther away an enemy was due to the arc of the grenades. It was also prone to killing you due to retal x3.

Not to say that I support the nerf however, but if it will really be this way, mortar will still be usable, especially in large group situations.

PistolWhip.2697:

Elixir X is funner anyway. Get rekt Lich Form

But it is kinda sad that Toss Elixir X isn’t useful in PvE, because most of the enemies are getting STRONGER while transmuted to moas. XD

Mortar was really fun for PvE and WvW. =(

Can anyone link me to the nerfs?

Pride.1734:

Can anyone link me to the nerfs?

There was literally only one, the mortar 28% nerf.

BlackBeard.2873:

It is a 100% projectile finisher…It isn’t meant to be doing damage.

See: ele staff earth auto-attack.

Use it for what it is meant for: stacking chills (ice), poison (poison), and removing condis (light). Also, poke damage from forever away.

If you want damage, use nades. They are super-duper strong now.

A note on this: the projectile finisher is very poor.

For something like stoning that the ele has, it’s relatively simply to use because the projectile is targeted towards the enemy.

For the mortar, the actual projectile has to touch the enemy once it combos with the field. Simply being in the AoE explosion radius does not apply the finisher effects.

So it’s like having to manually target your ele staff auto attack, and line up the projectile just right so that it hits the enemy directly.

As such, it’s actually much better at just dealing raw AoE damage since the combo potential is too inconvenient. Maybe if they let the combo finisher apply in the AoE it would serve the purpose you describe, but it’s just not there at the moment.

Gern.2978:

Pride.1734:

Can anyone link me to the nerfs?

There was literally only one, the mortar 28% nerf.

Still. There weare narfs to other classes as well and i would like to check out all of them.

Pride.1734:

Gern.2978:

Pride.1734:

Can anyone link me to the nerfs?

There was literally only one, the mortar 28% nerf.

Still. There weare narfs to other classes as well and i would like to check out all of them.

Check the game release notes section of the forums.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-23-2015/first#post5206468

here you go

Yamsandjams.3267:

A note on this: the projectile finisher is very poor.

For something like stoning that the ele has, it’s relatively simply to use because the projectile is targeted towards the enemy.

For the mortar, the actual projectile has to touch the enemy once it combos with the field. Simply being in the AoE explosion radius does not apply the finisher effects.

So it’s like having to manually target your ele staff auto attack, and line up the projectile just right so that it hits the enemy directly.

As such, it’s actually much better at just dealing raw AoE damage since the combo potential is too inconvenient. Maybe if they let the combo finisher apply in the AoE it would serve the purpose you describe, but it’s just not there at the moment.

It’s also bugged. See Josh’s post on how it is supposed to be working:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/What-s-the-deal-with-Mortar/5165482

When it is an AoE projectile finisher like it is supposed to be, it will be much more interesting.

Pride.1734:

Gern.2978:

Pride.1734:

Can anyone link me to the nerfs?

There was literally only one, the mortar 28% nerf.

Still. There weare narfs to other classes as well and i would like to check out all of them.

I don’t use the term “literally” improperly:

“Engineer
Shrapnel: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from functioning properly with all of the Elite Mortar Kit skills.
Streamlined Kits: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait’s recharge from triggering properly when equipping Elite Mortar Kit.
Mortar Shot: Reduced the damage by 28%.
Automated Medical Response: This trait now correctly recharges Med Kit’s Bandage Self skill.

Guardian
Inner Fire: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to trigger only at 3 stacks instead of 3 or more stacks.
Mesmer
Chaotic Dampening: Reduced the recharge reduction percent of staff skills per pulse of chaos armor from 5% to 2%.
Power Block: Reduced the damage on interrupt by 17%.

Necromancer
Vampiric Presence: Fixed this trait to use the necromancer as the source of the life steal.

Ranger
Quick Draw: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from working properly with Swoop.
Two-Handed Training: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from working properly with Swoop.
Water Spirit—Aqua Surge: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly recharging when used.
Sun Spirit—Solar Flare: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly recharging when used.
Stone Spirit—Quicksand: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly recharging when used.
Frost Spirit—Cold Snap: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly recharging when used.
Storm Spirit—Call Lightning: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly recharging when used.
Spirit of Nature—Nature’s Renewal: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly recharging when used.

Thief
Hidden Thief: This trait now applies 3 seconds of stealth rather than firing blinding powder"

Here is the link, scroll to the bottom.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-23-2015/first#post5206468

digitalruse.9085:

Yamsandjams.3267:

A note on this: the projectile finisher is very poor.

For something like stoning that the ele has, it’s relatively simply to use because the projectile is targeted towards the enemy.

For the mortar, the actual projectile has to touch the enemy once it combos with the field. Simply being in the AoE explosion radius does not apply the finisher effects.

So it’s like having to manually target your ele staff auto attack, and line up the projectile just right so that it hits the enemy directly.

As such, it’s actually much better at just dealing raw AoE damage since the combo potential is too inconvenient. Maybe if they let the combo finisher apply in the AoE it would serve the purpose you describe, but it’s just not there at the moment.

It’s also bugged. See Josh’s post on how it is supposed to be working:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/What-s-the-deal-with-Mortar/5165482

When it is an AoE projectile finisher like it is supposed to be, it will be much more interesting.

All I can see in that thread is Grouch stating the following:

“As long as the projectile lands in the field or goes through it will give the combo pop-up – it doesn’t have to hit the target.”

All this states is that the conditions for the combo pop-up is that the mokitten has to travel through or land in the field.

It does not state that a projectile finisher will apply it’s effect in the AoE the projectile causes.

I agree that the context of that statement would appear to imply that the combo effect is supposed to occur in the AoE, but it is not explicitly stated in his post. For all we know, it is actually working as intended.

I imagine this may be the same case for similar skills, such as explosive shot (I haven’t tried to test it), but it makes sense in that case since it’s a targeted projectile finisher. This is the only projectile finisher in the game that is ground targeted, so it is treading new water. They perhaps intended for this to be the case, but they forgot to account for the special case the mokitten presents, but we can’t be 100% sure yet.

So anyone actually test the numbers? I remember dropping 4k crits on squishies in WvW. Not at home so I can’t test, but according to the nerf, it should drop down to around 2.9-3k or so.

Thanks for the quick answers guys Much appreciated.

I suppose its still a pretty good kit even though it got nerfed. I feel that 28% is a bit much but its too early to tell.

Yamsandjams.3267:

All this states is that the conditions for the combo pop-up is that the mokitten has to travel through or land in the field.

It does not state that a projectile finisher will apply it’s effect in the AoE the projectile causes.

I agree that the context of that statement would appear to imply that the combo effect is supposed to occur in the AoE, but it is not explicitly stated in his post. For all we know, it is actually working as intended.

If that popup appears, I think it is reasonable for the the effect to actually fire. It’s a bug either way. My hope is the bug errs in the favor of being a unique behavior for the skill.

digitalruse.9085:

Yamsandjams.3267:

All this states is that the conditions for the combo pop-up is that the mokitten has to travel through or land in the field.

It does not state that a projectile finisher will apply it’s effect in the AoE the projectile causes.

I agree that the context of that statement would appear to imply that the combo effect is supposed to occur in the AoE, but it is not explicitly stated in his post. For all we know, it is actually working as intended.

If that popup appears, I think it is reasonable for the the effect to actually fire. It’s a bug either way. My hope is the bug errs in the favor of being a unique behavior for the skill.

Well, if they treat it the same as healing “turret’s” overcharge not scaling from healing power, then your wish will likely come true.

Seems like Explosive Powder is working now as intended. But still huge damage nerf.

Kodama.6453:

Seems like Explosive Powder is working now as intended. But still huge damage nerf.

What was your damage prenerf and postnerf?

On heavy armor golems prenerf: 2,3k
on heavy armor golems postnerf: 1,9k

0 might, zerker pvp stats
traits:
tools: 222
firearms: 212
explosives: 321

Hmm, so roughly an 18% damage nerf, which is in line with the stated 28% plus the 10% increase from explosive powder.

Sure why have a usefull wvw weapon…
But please leave permanent quickness and burning lol.
Cant believe their priorities. Was too good to be true and be cool in wvw for 2 days.

Pride.1734:

Gern.2978:

Pride.1734:

Can anyone link me to the nerfs?

There was literally only one, the mortar 28% nerf.

Still. There weare narfs to other classes as well and i would like to check out all of them.

The only other significant one is the nerf to MtD on mesmer AFAIK.

Where’s Josh Davis? He likes engi why hasn’t he provided an explanation?

wellp guys lets all go back to supply crate spam whos with me?!

Kodama.6453:

Seems like Explosive Powder is working now as intended. But still huge damage nerf.

Tooltip updates. Damage stays the same as far as I can tell.

EDIT: Okay… weird… the golems in PvP show it, but the training dummies in SW don’t…

i hope you guys realize mortar 1 has a much lower aftercast than nades

insanemaniac.2456:

i hope you guys realize mortar 1 has a much lower aftercast than nades

Yeah, for some reason, it felt much more spammable despite having the same travelling speed, then I realized that engineers “gathered” after throwing a grenade, while the mortar keeps on firing without interruption.

Btw, I’m not sure if skilled marksman is effecting mortar. I know this wouldn’t be intended, but I’m really curious about that. Feels like it is shooting little bit faster, but maybe it is just me. Is there a way to find out about this?

I thought the aidea of mortar was that the fields do less damage than the #1? Because there’s not a lot of that difference left. Pretty much none.

But hey, moar thief buffs and stronger burns plz? Moar ele buffs too! Nerfing our mortar kit a by what, 15% I’d have accepted. But putting it down to rifle level?

Edit:

I tried the mortar changes out a bit and they are not -quite- as unreasonable as one might think. Especially if the bugs get fixed it could still be very strong. As people pointed out: It hits a bit faster than grenades. And rifle is a single target at that. That and the fields are still very strong -and- do damage on being applied. Still, an extra 5% couldn’t hurt? Maybe? Bargaining! Whee!

Anet seem to know what they’re doing on this one. Let’s just hope for bugfixes.

An elite kit that’s worse than pretty much all non-elite kits. GG.

After the patch we are AS ALWAYS the most bugged class in the game. Every core specialization has at least 3/5 bugs… And another 3/4 bus are on the skills…. And the first thing you do is nerfing our only ranged/slow/gound target attack by 28%….
Why you’re priority is not to correct the insane ammount of bugs this patch brought to engineer?

Ederyn.3107:

After the patch we are AS ALWAYS the most bugged class in the game. Every core specialization has at least 3/5 bugs… And another 3/4 bus are on the skills…. And the first thing you do is nerfing our only ranged/slow/gound target attack by 28%….
Why you’re priority is not to correct the insane ammount of bugs this patch brought to engineer?

A general semblance of spvp balance is very important for the game to run semi smoothly while the bugs are being ironed out. Overfocusing either issue is not good.

The thing is:

• Mortar attacks -faster- than grenades due to the low aftercast. They probably did not factor that in with their initial formulas and now mortar kit is surprisingly close to grenade kit in actual practice when comparing #1 only.
• The fields on mortar kit are VERY strong.
• The fields on mortar kit do damage when first applied.
• The Projectile finisher will be fixed to work on hits in the field rather than needing to pass through an enemy eventually.

See it positively. A nerf was going to happen in SOME aspect. Now we got it behind us. Mesmers don’t have it easy right now either. And other classes still have the nerf hammer in front of them.

ANET WHY!?

The kit was already slow, it took a fair degree of skill and prediction to use properly, and even when I was hitting a lot, I wasn’t dealing cheap amounts of damage. I disagree with a nerf entirely, but 0-15% may have been acceptable. BUT 28?!?!?! PLEASE PUT IT BACK.

You’re cornering us into using Grenade Kits again, I’m tired of that kitten, I wan’t more diversity.

Really kittened off by this, just brought my engi back to wvw after a 1 year break, just preordered hot. 28%??? no other class gets nerfs like that. its almost as bad as the 30% grenade nerf back on the old days. guess I will just wait for an icebow if I want to be effective in wvw from ranged now right? of course, this was an esports nerf because a player in zerker who cant dodge was getting crit for 3k in pvp, the rest of the game is irrelevant.

Logged in and felt the change hard way…
Not the fan of it. So long range dmg got heavily nerfed (even compared to pre-patch nades).

I wouldn’t say fields are strong. Can be useful, but not strong (especially since it is only projectile finisher). Especialy since they don’t provide anything after they are on ground (except ice field).

It looks like they want to return to nades only usefull explosive weapon. Nades have the best dmg (they have lot of condi dmg), they are best on stacking vunerabilities, are better in using aim asisting rocket, and are only weapon that can use shrapnel effectivly. Not to mention their traits don’t compete against each other.

First think they should do is repair broken conditions (and lag on word bosses).

If it supposed to be “field gun” then call it WATER GUN remove any dmg, and only make provide LONG lasting fields → 4 seconds are laughtably short (and don’t telll me to trait it to make it any use, because EVERYTHING should have use even without useing traits).

I find this nerf sickening when people in tanky gear are getting 2 shot by some classes. and burning hasnt been nerfed, looool

They don’t provide anything on the ground and are -just- projectile finishers?

The poison field makes you apply more poison with every hit. Orbital Strike applies weakness twice that way. Poison pulses.

The chill field pulses its effect. High duration beginning chill. Decent damage. Large radius. Every projectile finisher applies more chill. Blasting ice fields for frost armor is not really worth it much.

Flash shell: Pulsing blindness, decent damage on first hit. Remove a condition with every #1 that passes through an enemy. Soon for every #1 that hits an enemy with an explosion via fixes. Some classes would -kill- for a ranged aoe blind pulse that does damage on top.

Water field: It’s a -water field-. And it lasts a lot longer than the healing turret one.

#1: Still a lot more damage than rifle and definitely surprisingly close to grenades due to the low aftercast time. Projectile finisher (100%). Can be used with other fields that are not on the mortar itself too. How about them 5 confusion stacks from your gunk? How about perma-blind with some other fields?

Mortar is about creativity > pure damage. Grenades are stronger, yes, but not a -ton- and making them weaker than mortar would have been odd too considering their arc, slow travel speed and requirement for a trait to fix at least one of the latter, non?

Btw: Anet are aware burn is broken currently. But applying a fix to the entire formula might be a bit more complicated than we think. Putting down some mesmer and mortar numbers was not as much a biggie.

10% would have been ok… but 28% kitten

looks like the balance team aren’t coping, I’d call this kneejerk except it seems completely random. where were all the posts complaining about mortar 1? seriously

Testing this in silverwastes I regularly just ditched actual rotations for mortar 1 spam because it hit so hard… It was a bit too good! With the fixes people are discussing (projectile finisher, damage trait) it still seems like it will be fine.

Hitting harder than a normal kit autoattack is exactly what i should expect from an elite kit autoattack. Especially if that autoattack is the only proper offensive skill of the kit, outside of the toolbelt at least.

I wonder why they even bothered to put that kit if they just wanted to ditch any offensive capabilities we had at long range.

Yamsandjams.3267:

The grenade kit was nerfed even harder than this back in the day, and it’s still here, years later.

Just sayin’. This thread is nothing new.

The grenadekit has Shrapnel as a good damaging skill and the AA was still pretty good even after the nerf. Quickly stacking vulnerability, high probability of proccing runes/traits/sigils.
And even after all the nerfs i’d probably still would’ve rated the grenadekit better than the mortar kit.
The mortarkit had 1 damaging ability (the poison stacking is peanuts), and that was the AA and it just got a massive nerf.

So there we are folks. We lost the Grenadekit because it was sacrificed to make the Mortarkit appear better than it really was, and now the Mortarkit (already kinda meh) took a big nerf.
We also lost range on rifle, pistols and the elixirgun. Apparently we need to Always be close to the danger, but than we don’t inherently get a large healthpool, amazing healing, evades out of the whazoo, a kittenton of stealth, good mobility or high armor. Go figure.

And what of the proposed positive changes that already got reverted quietly during development of this patch. For example, what happend to “Get excited guys! Pistol 1 now counts as an explosive!” or “We’re making Coated Bullets baseline”?

Ow sure the stability is nice if you use a Flamethrower, but it did come at a price. No more bonus toughness, no more deadly mixtures and i do believe the -20% cd is also bye-bye.

Really seems like Anet is trying to push engineers in close combat. Maybe they want to prepare things for the new melee oriented elite spec? We got several traits with very small radius or some triggering when standing really close to the enemy.

Revert the nerf or make it 10% instead of 28%.

Don’t let this thread die until anet listens for once…

Seems I was right not to pre-purchase HoT yet…
kitten you anet
nerf for no reason

Fun while it lasted it was a little too good to be true, with the amount of node pressure it offered in spvp. I don’t personally agree with the nerf, granted I haven’t logged in to check just how bad it is. That said, if it’s warranted this much anger, I suppose it’s back to Burn Spam before that gets axed too lmao. Btw, I find the Burning thing a far more egregious mode of play than someone spamming Mortar 1 on the node. I can kitten near insta-gib people once I know they have no Condi-Removal.

So many OP builds since patch and this is what they nerf? 10% would’ve been fine but 28% just seems like they want people to stop using it.

Kodama.6453:

Really seems like Anet is trying to push engineers in close combat. Maybe they want to prepare things for the new melee oriented elite spec? We got several traits with very small radius or some triggering when standing really close to the enemy.

Engis were always somewhere between melee and mid range, just because you could throw nades from afar didn’t mean you were supposed to play that way.
Mortar is still your super long range option if you ever need that range, they should even give it a deadzone of like 500 so that it doesn’t compete with kits that are made for close and mid range.