Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

Gern.2978:

I want to know how much the #1 attack hits for. That is the deciding factor of whether this is a good kit or not. If the #1 attack hits like a wet noodle, then this kit will be next to useless for a power build.

According to napkin math, mortar #1 hits about 47% harder than rifle 1.

You promised me Josh Davis, you promised me, got my hopes up, and then dashed them to pieces. I don’t think I can trust the devs anymore.

Gern.2978:

Josh Davis.6015:

Gern.2978:

I want to know how much the #1 attack hits for. That is the deciding factor of whether this is a good kit or not. If the #1 attack hits like a wet noodle, then this kit will be next to useless for a power build.

According to napkin math, mortar #1 hits about 47% harder than rifle 1.

You promised me Josh Davis, you promised me, got my hopes up, and then dashed them to pieces. I don’t think I can trust the devs anymore.

Your “wet noodle” comment doused his napkin. All bets are off when one of those fragile little things are dampened. I blame you for this! >:(

Mortar kits looks more and more like a support kit.

I can understand a nerf for a 1500 range weapon. If only it was coherent with the other classes. And the fact that it’s a elite kit.

Also, shampoo for engineers.

Here’s an idea, what if we gave the mortar the same treatment Mesmers and Rangers get: Damage increase at max range?

So the point blank mortar would do around 60% it’s current damage at point blank (So it’d ONLY be useful for fields at that range, but it’s still handy to blast those within range of yourself) and around its previous damage if you max the range out? (Which would further be balanced by the fact that it’s easy to avoid at that range)

Bam, Engineers have an effective longrange tool, it’s enforced as a long range tool and doesn’t step on bombs or grenades as the shorter range options.

Gern.2978:

Josh Davis.6015:

Gern.2978:

I want to know how much the #1 attack hits for. That is the deciding factor of whether this is a good kit or not. If the #1 attack hits like a wet noodle, then this kit will be next to useless for a power build.

According to napkin math, mortar #1 hits about 47% harder than rifle 1.

You promised me Josh Davis, you promised me, got my hopes up, and then dashed them to pieces. I don’t think I can trust the devs anymore.

While I am very disappointed in Anet’s seemingly knee-jerk reaction to heavily nerf mortar shot, I do have to say that technically, he didn’t lie to you. At release, mortar #1 was, for all intents and purposes, about 47% more damage than rifle #1. It was only two days after release that they decided to reduce it by a whooping 28%.

What you really shouldn’t trust is the hype train.

Arioso.8519:

Here’s an idea, what if we gave the mortar the same treatment Mesmers and Rangers get: Damage increase at max range?

So the point blank mortar would do around 60% it’s current damage at point blank (So it’d ONLY be useful for fields at that range, but it’s still handy to blast those within range of yourself) and around its previous damage if you max the range out? (Which would further be balanced by the fact that it’s easy to avoid at that range)

Bam, Engineers have an effective longrange tool, it’s enforced as a long range tool and doesn’t step on bombs or grenades as the shorter range options.

I 100% support this suggestion. Unfortunately the devs won’t, because they have made it ubundantly clear that they don’t want engineer to have competitive damage at any range beyond 900.

robertul.3679:

Some people just want to roleplay their stupid bomb builds so they say mortar nerf is justified.
Also lol at the “strongest fields”. Except water what strong field? Poison strong field? Ice field strong too amirite?? You can blast for frost aura! Light field? Funny.

Strongest fields are water, fire, smoke. The rest are not strong.

Whirl finishers in light fields will become one of the best counters to the creeping presence of condition builds in sPvP and WvW. They require zero traits or utilities to use. Now, we don’t have whirl finishers ourselves outside of Elixir X (and we can’t take both Mortar and X obviously), but hammer is making a comeback for warriors and guardians still sometimes run with the greatsword.

And blasting poison fields for weakness is arguably the best counter against burst builds we have currently. Protection reduces damage by 33%, whereas weakness reduces half the hits you receive into glancing blows (50% effectiveness) and reduces enemy endurance rates by 50%. Most glass cannon builds depend upon dodging to survive. Stack weakness and they’ll die that much faster.

People are welcome to make their own conclusions, but I’ve had a pretty easy time managing my health pool in the current state of PvP, often going without Alchemy and Inventions because I’ve used the Mortar Kit’s fields to greatly reduce direct damage through blinds and weakness.

The thing is that maths is not all.

I don’t think that Mortar “auto” attack is garbage. Especially when it’s going to be fixed, the projectile finisher will be interesting.

But this kit is definitely not conceived as damage kit. The projectile finisher, range, AoE AA and water field are it’s only advantages to me (from a PvE point of view). It’s more a support with it’s range and fields.

Bombs are stronger (can’t deny the logic, as it’s “melee only”), grenades are way better to proc shrapnel and explosives, and flamethrower autoattack is also good to proc things with damages that aren’t bad either (although this kit is already more supportive than the damage oriented bomb and grenade kits).

But compared the the ranger longbow, for example… According to tooltips linked in the chat, a mortar shot is as strong as a 500-1000 range longbow AA.
BUT the longbow also get other attacks. 3 and 4 aren’t damaging, but 2 and 5 are, definitely.

If I think that the nerf isn’t justified, it’s because the mortar take an elite slot. I know that we have to balance it as we can use it whenever we want, but it should still benefit from it’s elite statut.

Gern.2978:

The math that you are referring to was only from one person, and didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know: that yes, saying mortar is completely useless is an exaggeration. But, the nerf was in no way justified. Before the nerf, the base damage of mortar 1 was the same as the base damage of grenade 1, but mortar 1 is a single attack, and thus can only proc a single crit strike, and puts on far fewer conditions than grenade 1. Consequently, the people who are saying it was overpowered and needed nerfed are way overegagerating and being completely ridiculous.

mortar 1 has a short aftercast and you attack much faster than with nades. if it has the same base damage, then you do however much more dps because of the faster attack speed. it seems like 28% is prolly the number needed to match the dps to nades. because anet found a balance point for nades that seemed to work pretty well for a couple years, and maintaining that power level on a 1500 range skill is reasonable.

as for vuln applications @manuhell, it seems odd to me that the fields dont tick vuln from steel packed powder on things because its inconsistent with how bombs work — fire bomb and smoke bomb pulse vuln. i think the mortar fields ought to as well. perhaps its an oversight or a bug. perhaps it isnt. but crying about the nerf when 1) mortar 1 was higher dps than nades 1 due to the short aftercast and 2) its already happened (and anet really really doesnt like reverting things) doesnt seem worth a kitten .

im under the impression that full glass condi builds will get nerfed to sit at around the dps potential of zerker/assassin builds, because the games content is balanced around that stuff already and it would mean that anet wont have to go through every mob in the game in order to achieve some semblance of balance. although its extremely likely that large scale content will need rebalancing anyways once a decent point is found for small scale / solo content. burns specifically are just completely out of whack right now and its hard to gauge the extent to which that is warping things like vinewrath and world bosses compared to how the condi cap removal affected that content. but it seems like they think power damage is and was fine where its at, and mortar was definitely an outlier.

If they never intended for mortar to be a damage kit, but instead a support/utility kit, then they should not have reduced grenades to 900 range, and removed our “rifled barrels” trait, thus reducing rifle to 1000 range (not that rifle’s AA was ever really competative for damage anyways.) No matter what logic is used to justify this change, it amounts to a huge unnecessary nerf to engineers at ranges beyond 900.

insanemaniac.2456:

as for vuln applications @manuhell, it seems odd to me that the fields dont tick vuln from steel packed powder on things because its inconsistent with how bombs work — fire bomb and smoke bomb pulse vuln. i think the mortar fields ought to as well. perhaps its an oversight or a bug.

I am going to test and confirm this. If true, I will add it to the bug thread.

digitalruse.9085:

insanemaniac.2456:

as for vuln applications @manuhell, it seems odd to me that the fields dont tick vuln from steel packed powder on things because its inconsistent with how bombs work — fire bomb and smoke bomb pulse vuln. i think the mortar fields ought to as well. perhaps its an oversight or a bug.

I am going to test and confirm this. If true, I will add it to the bug thread.

5 has no interaction with steel packed, but thats prolly ok cuz its an elixir with 0 damage. 2, 3, and 4 tick vuln on the first hit when they do damage, but do not tick vuln when poison/blind/chill tick. bomb 2/4 each tick vuln in addition to burn/blind.

Gern.2978:

If they never intended for mortar to be a damage kit, but instead a support/utility kit, then they should not have reduced grenades to 900 range, and removed our “rifled barrels” trait, thus reducing rifle to 1000 range (not that rifle’s AA was ever really competative for damage anyways.) No matter what logic is used to justify this change, it amounts to a huge unnecessary nerf to engineers at ranges beyond 900.

You say this like all of these changes were made in relationship to one another, but truthfully the changes made to the Grenade Kit and Mortar Kit were done for different, nearly unrelated reasons.

The Grenade Kit needed to be scaled back. Anyone who has been playing Guild Wars 2 since launch has felt the crushing weight of the Grenade Kit. It offered for a long time both the best damage and the best range, basically crippling build diversity in every facet of the game. PvE? Grenade Kit. PvP? Grenade Kit. WvW? Grenade Kit.

When you looked over all the utility skills engineer had, and knew that none of them matched the Grenade Kit, especially back then when spamming #1 was seriously carpal tunnel-inducing, it was very disheartening.

Even though there are guys like Teldo, Koroshi, and Rozbuska that have put out Bomb Kit builds in the past, the Grenade Kit has always been generally accepted as the best option out there. The only thing I could put together that ever came close to it in functionality was the FT/EG combo, which was rendered useless after Juggernaut and Kit Refinement were nerfed back in 2012. And even despite these nerfs I still did what I could to maintain it because I despised the Grenade Kit’s play style and its crushing weight on build diversity. I thought by maintaining FT builds I could establish the lack of diversity we have as a class. In the end I was wrong, but Tuesday’s patch brings a bit of hope for me and a lot of veteran engineers.

With the overhaul of conditions, where confusion and burning actually dish out a lot more damage reliably, we have lessened dependency on the Grenade Kit for PvP and WvW, and with its 900 range outperformed by the Rifle, it no longer has the farthest range either. Now the Grenade Kit is balanced in line with other kits, and I don’t see very many engineers I actually recognize that have been around this block a few times with ArenaNet complaining about any of these moves.

Kit selection has truthfully never been more balanced, and part of that comes in the form of Mortar Kit. We have been asking for an elite kit since the game came out; a lot of us love the functionality of kits, and found the Supply Crate kind of lacking. Before the patch the Mortar Kit was completely outclassed by the Grenade Kit, by both range and damage. It felt kind of stupid that an elite skill should feel weaker than a utility skill. And while the Grenade Kit still does more damage than the Mortar Kit, it has enhanced functionality (in ways I’ve already established) that warrant its slot on your bar over other elites, an does so from a range that the Grenade Kit can’t compete with.

Tuesday’s patch has addressed a lot of complaints and concerns we have had as a community since August 2012: they gave us back the old Juggernaut, they fixed hobo sacks, they brought the Grenade Kit in line, and they’ve buffed Mortar Kit. It’s a collective bundle of changes, but they weren’t all made in relationship to one another. The Flamethrower has been buffed and nerfed over the past three years completely independent of Grenade Kit changes; you really have to try and see the Mortar Kit similarly.

I think most engineers should be happy where we are at, but again, I think it comes down to lack of exposure for newer engineers to builds beyond the Grenade Kit and poor understanding of deeper mechanics that go into the engineer’s design.

We have the most combo fields of any class in the game, and the Mortar Kit is intended to better push that design to the forefront of how the class is played. Figure it out or don’t. I hear mesmers are looking to become the new flavor of the month.

And……… still no explanation.

EvilZombie.6801:

whoever nerf mortar must be smoking weed …. elite skill ….. back to nades… at least there are 3 chances of proc

hey! i play this whole game stoned and i would never do something like this

Phineas Poe.3018:

Gern.2978:

If they never intended for mortar to be a damage kit, but instead a support/utility kit, then they should not have reduced grenades to 900 range, and removed our “rifled barrels” trait, thus reducing rifle to 1000 range (not that rifle’s AA was ever really competative for damage anyways.) No matter what logic is used to justify this change, it amounts to a huge unnecessary nerf to engineers at ranges beyond 900.

You say this like all of these changes were made in relationship to one another, but truthfully the changes made to the Grenade Kit and Mortar Kit were done for different, nearly unrelated reasons.

The Grenade Kit needed to be scaled back. Anyone who has been playing Guild Wars 2 since launch has felt the crushing weight of the Grenade Kit.

No, dont confuse issues. We needed another option other than just grenade kit. Grenade kit didn’t need “scaled back.” That would, and did, only result in a nerf to our DPS (in the case of the changes they ultimately went with, this nerf is to our damage beyond 900 distance, and it’s a big one.)

Phineas Poe.3018:

It offered for a long time both the best damage and the best range, basically crippling build diversity in every facet of the game. PvE? Grenade Kit. PvP? Grenade Kit. WvW? Grenade Kit.

You say that as if anything has changed? It did, for two days. But now the only change is that we do sub-par damage beyond 900 distance.

Phineas Poe.3018:

When you looked over all the utility skills engineer had, and knew that none of them matched the Grenade Kit, especially back then when spamming #1 was seriously carpal tunnel-inducing, it was very disheartening.

Here we agree. And the mortar kit was a good answer to this problem, until yesterday.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Even though there are guys like Teldo, Koroshi, and Rozbuska that have put out Bomb Kit builds in the past, the Grenade Kit has always been generally accepted as the best option out there.

And it still is. It always will be as long as things stay as they are right now.

Phineas Poe.3018:

The only thing I could put together that ever came close to it in functionality was the FT/EG combo, which was rendered useless after Juggernaut and Kit Refinement were nerfed back in 2012. And even despite these nerfs I still did what I could to maintain it because I despised the Grenade Kit’s play style and its crushing weight on build diversity. I thought by maintaining FT builds I could establish the lack of diversity we have as a class. In the end I was wrong, but Tuesday’s patch brings a bit of hope for me and a lot of veteran engineers.

You are correct, it did. But then they crushed that hope with the mortar nerf.

Phineas Poe.3018:

With the overhaul of conditions, where confusion and burning actually dish out a lot more damage reliably, we have lessened dependency on the Grenade Kit for PvP and WvW, and with its 900 range outperformed by the Rifle, it no longer has the farthest range either.

Um, in no way has rifle been given any kind of a buff to make it a replacement for the grenade kit. In fact, they nerfed rifle by removing the traits that increased it’s range and damage.

Now the Grenade Kit is balanced in line with other kits..
…Kit selection has truthfully never been more balanced, and part of that comes in the form of Mortar Kit.

I…what? I can’t even wrap my mind around the mental gymnasitcs that have brought you to this conclusion. How does nerfing other kits and weapons, that already under-performed when compared to grenade kit, make them more of a viable option than grenade kit? The changes have done the opposite of this. Grenade is more our best option than ever. And that is sad.

I have to make this a 2 parter response, due to limited message length.

Continued:

Phineas Poe.3018:

We have been asking for an elite kit since the game came out; a lot of us love the functionality of kits, and found the Supply Crate kind of lacking. Before the patch the Mortar Kit was completely outclassed by the Grenade Kit, by both range and damage. It felt kind of stupid that an elite skill should feel weaker than a utility skill. And while the Grenade Kit still does more damage than the Mortar Kit, it has enhanced functionality (in ways I’ve already established) that warrant its slot on your bar over other elites, an does so from a range that the Grenade Kit can’t compete with.

Once again, I agree, to an extent. Mortar isn’t completely useless. But, because they nerfed the range of grenade kit, and the damage and range of rifle (even though rifle never really was a viable option for DPS at range) That is the only reason. And this recent nerf to mortar has only served to further lessen our effectiveness at range beyond 900. I am at a loss in trying to understand how you believe these nerfes have brought more diversity to our builds. They have only served to further force us into grenade kit.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Tuesday’s patch has addressed a lot of complaints and concerns we have had as a community since August 2012: they gave us back the old Juggernaut, they fixed hobo sacks, they brought the Grenade Kit in line, and they’ve buffed Mortar Kit. It’s a collective bundle of changes, but they weren’t all made in relationship to one another. The Flamethrower has been buffed and nerfed over the past three years completely independent of Grenade Kit changes; you really have to try and see the Mortar Kit similarly.

Yes, TUESDAY’S PATCH did all of that. I was very happy with tuesday’s patch. But that is not what this thread is about. It’s about the nerf to mortar kit they put out yesterday.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I think most engineers should be happy where we are at, but again, I think it comes down to lack of exposure for newer engineers to builds beyond the Grenade Kit and poor understanding of deeper mechanics that go into the engineer’s design.

I am by no means a new engineer. I have been playing engineer as my main since launch. I have felt the same way you have about us being forced into grenades so heavily, and I have xperimented with other options for 3 years at various times and levels of success. And that is why l am very unhappy about the nerf to mortar #1’s damage.

Phineas Poe.3018:

We have the most combo fields of any class in the game, and the Mortar Kit is intended to better push that design to the forefront of how the class is played. Figure it out or don’t. I hear mesmers are looking to become the new flavor of the month.

This last part serves no constructive purpose it’s simply divisive.

P.S. this thread made me play with mortar more, and its now my standard for all builds.

Siege rounds/Orbital strike is op. (esp with kinetic charge)

you all seem to be arguing as if mortar is supposed to be a primary weapon. its clearly is not. this is like arguing med kit or elixir gun dps is not on par with grenades.

mortar #1 exists to proc combo fields, and provide staple dps at range, should your primary weapon be melee… pistols.. bombs.. hammer.. flamethrower? heck the fire and smoke fields, means it combos with bomb insanely well.
it does that just fine without being the #1 ranged dps engi weapon. and you are all being very silly suggesting it SHOULD have similar dps that bombs do as melee.

Well, it does say ‘Weapon Kit’ on the skill…

Personally I was hoping Mortar Kit would be good enough to shift some importance away from our utility skills, and thus let many of our underused utility skills (and most of them are underused, lets face it) find their places in builds. It doesn’t look like that will be the case right now though.

Casia.4281:

mortar #1 exists to proc combo fields, and provide staple dps at range

Staples do more damage than the nerfed mortar kit.

I’d rather like to see mortar #2-4 damage to be buffed by 100% (damage like grenade #2, #4 and #5), since a strong auto attack was never an engi thing. The mortar feels too weak, indeed. He has no use the way it is right now.

Greez

The other skills aren’t meant to do any damage, they are just there for the combo fields and I’m totally fine with it. Just want an even viable AA so there is just a little damage in this kit. It is just too weak, especially for an elite kit and kits aa always were stronger to compensate our weak weapons….

insanemaniac.2456:

digitalruse.9085:

insanemaniac.2456:

as for vuln applications @manuhell, it seems odd to me that the fields dont tick vuln from steel packed powder on things because its inconsistent with how bombs work — fire bomb and smoke bomb pulse vuln. i think the mortar fields ought to as well. perhaps its an oversight or a bug.

I am going to test and confirm this. If true, I will add it to the bug thread.

5 has no interaction with steel packed, but thats prolly ok cuz its an elixir with 0 damage. 2, 3, and 4 tick vuln on the first hit when they do damage, but do not tick vuln when poison/blind/chill tick. bomb 2/4 each tick vuln in addition to burn/blind.

I did follow up on this and the Mortar 2, 3, and 4 do indeed tick their condition, but not the damage like Bomb Kit does. I have documented it in my bug thread in those forums.

Thanks!

Casia.4281:

you all seem to be arguing as if mortar is supposed to be a primary weapon. its clearly is not. this is like arguing med kit or elixir gun dps is not on

No. People are just salty because we used to have our 1500 range grenades. Anet nerfed them extremely by reducing the range to 900. This huge nerf was justified by the fact that we can take mortar to achieve ranged pressure.

Then when we tried mortar, we saw it’s weaker than grenades used to be. But we said “fine, it still kinda works!”. Now for absolutely no reason they nerfed the damage by 28%, rendering it pretty much a waste of slot.

tl;dr Anet pretty much outright lied to us. Was it a knee jerk reaction? A dumb decision like most of their balance ones? Who knows..

History repeating itself. Every single time it’s the same thing.

Once again, I don’t think any of us know what anything is meant to do with the skill in question and we can only ever theorize the purpose based on what is given to us, what they change, and what we use it for.

Reminder that Rocket Boots used to blast us backwards (and knock us on the floor for half a second) until it was realized that the only people using it hotbinded the “turn backwards” key to something simple so that they can turn a negative into a positive and push themselves forward with it.

The terrible thing is that every time they see an engineer using the mortar kit, they are going to use it as justification for this nerf; “See, plenty of engineers are using it and they are doing just fine!”

No, we are using it because it’s literaly our only long range option now!

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Casia.4281:

it does that just fine without being the #1 ranged dps engi weapon.

It is the only ranged engi weapon above 1000 range. Are you arguing that engi rifle and grenades should be 1200 range?

This is what I think Anet should try for two weeks, and get feedback from that period.
1) Restore Mortar #1 damage to pre-nerf levels.
2) Increase recharge on Mortar #1 from 1/2s to 2/3s.
3) Increase AoE circle of Mortar #1 to match Mortar #2-4 because it is a slow projectile.
4) Add a -33% Mortar #1 damage penalty for ranges under 480.

how does rifle range even figure in? sure rifle(and possibly elixirgun) should be 1200, and pistol 1000.

1. no. its too strong at that.
2. its already .8 a/s. (which is faster then nades, and even rifle pre-trait.)
3. ok.
4. actually a great idea to balance it. a 20% buff over 1000, and a 33% nerf under 480. great idea.

the high damage at max range would be counterable by its slow movement. And in pve, forcing you to either move in and out of the 1000 range, or totally preclude you from swapping bombs/ft/mortar.

on the topic, pulsing vul was mentioned for the aoe skills. It doesn’t. and I was going back and forth on if it should.

Individually, yes it should. 6 stacks of vul, and sharpshooter procs each.. but I do worry what happens when you unload them all. 3 pulsing combo fields. in the end, that would only be 4 stacks/sec with m1 being fired as well, I believe. compared to grenades 3. and it then even has cooldowns. So yes, probably should.

\o/

http://i.imgur.com/9mUVWe2.jpg

Gern.2978:

The terrible thing is that every time they see an engineer using the mortar kit, they are going to use it as justification for this nerf; “See, plenty of engineers are using it and they are doing just fine!”

No, we are using it because it’s literaly our only long range option now!

And there is a much simpler reason for this too: The patch was out 2 days, everyone just wanted to TRY our new toy. XD

Casia.4281:

1. no. its too strong at that.
.

How do people keep believing this? How did they ever believe it? Before the nerf it had THE SAME BASE DAMAGE AS GRENADE #1 but it also is only a single attack, so it procks a single crit strike and thus applies far fewer conditions than greanade #1, so it did less damage than grenade #1 even before the nerf. Add to the fact that its as slow as the old grenade kit, but a much more obvious and easily dodgable/sidestepable attack and you can see that it was most definately not overpowered.

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

1. no. its too strong at that.
.

How do people keep believing this? How did they ever believe it? Before the nerf it had THE SAME BASE DAMAGE AS GRENADE #1 but it also is only a single attack, so it procks a single crit strike and thus applies far fewer conditions than greanade #1, so it did less damage than grenade #1 even before the nerf. Add to the fact that its as slow as the old grenade kit, but a much more obvious and easily dodgable/sidestepable attack and you can see that it was most definately not overpowered.

no it didn’t.

It currently has either a .8 or .75 coeff, with a .8 a/s.
Giving it either a 1, or .93 effective coeff.

Grenades have a .33 × 3 on a 1 a/s speed.
a .99 effective coeff.

everyone seems to be ignoring it was 20% FASTER attack then grenades with an either 1.05 or 1.1 coeff. (if the 28% was correct) giving it an effective 1.3 coeff, or 1.37 coeff.

Bombkit 1 is 1.25coeff, at .84a/s. giving an effective 1.48.

it was closer to BOMBS then it was grenades.

no one has produced a single shred of math to prove otherwise.
Maybe the “-28%” was even wrong.
what was the coeff EXACTLY?
do you even know? Do any of you complaining know what it was?

Casia.4281:

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

1. no. its too strong at that.
.

How do people keep believing this? How did they ever believe it? Before the nerf it had THE SAME BASE DAMAGE AS GRENADE #1 but it also is only a single attack, so it procks a single crit strike and thus applies far fewer conditions than greanade #1, so it did less damage than grenade #1 even before the nerf. Add to the fact that its as slow as the old grenade kit, but a much more obvious and easily dodgable/sidestepable attack and you can see that it was most definately not overpowered.

no it didn’t.

It currently has either a .8 or .75 coeff, with a .8 a/s.
Giving it either a 1, or .93 effective coeff.

Grenades have a .33 × 3 on a 1 a/s speed.
a .99 effective coeff.

everyone seems to be ignoring it was 20% FASTER attack then grenades with an either 1.05 or 1.1 coeff. (if the 28% was correct) giving it an effective 1.3 coeff, or 1.37 coeff.

Bombkit 1 is 1.25coeff, at .84a/s. giving an effective 1.48.

it was closer to BOMBS then it was grenades.

no one has produced a single shred of math to prove otherwise.
Maybe the “-28%” was even wrong.
what was the coeff EXACTLY?
do you even know? Do any of you complaining know what it was?

What are you talking about? Have you actually used the mortar kit? There is no way it’s 20% faster than grenades, even grenades without the grenafier trait. Before the patch it had about 900 base damage in full zerker gear, which is the same as grenades when you add up the damage from all three grenades. And that is not counting all the damage from the conditions that grenades puts out, which mortar can I only apply a 3rd of.

Casia.4281:

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

1. no. its too strong at that.
.

How do people keep believing this? How did they ever believe it? Before the nerf it had THE SAME BASE DAMAGE AS GRENADE #1 but it also is only a single attack, so it procks a single crit strike and thus applies far fewer conditions than greanade #1, so it did less damage than grenade #1 even before the nerf. Add to the fact that its as slow as the old grenade kit, but a much more obvious and easily dodgable/sidestepable attack and you can see that it was most definately not overpowered.

no it didn’t.

It currently has either a .8 or .75 coeff, with a .8 a/s.
Giving it either a 1, or .93 effective coeff.

Grenades have a .33 × 3 on a 1 a/s speed.
a .99 effective coeff.

everyone seems to be ignoring it was 20% FASTER attack then grenades with an either 1.05 or 1.1 coeff. (if the 28% was correct) giving it an effective 1.3 coeff, or 1.37 coeff.

Bombkit 1 is 1.25coeff, at .84a/s. giving an effective 1.48.

it was closer to BOMBS then it was grenades.

no one has produced a single shred of math to prove otherwise.
Maybe the “-28%” was even wrong.
what was the coeff EXACTLY?
do you even know? Do any of you complaining know what it was?

I took a screenshot before and after the change.
The values on the tooltip (which of course may or may not be wrong because magic) shows 705 before and 564 after. 564 is actually the edited value because Mortar Shot was bugged. While ArenaNet said that they fixed a bug that didn’t make it work with Shrapnel, there was also the 10% damage trait that it didn’t function with either. Untraiting from the explosives line gives me a value of 513 (90% of 564).
513/705 = 0.7276
So it’s somewhat safe to assume that the 28% nerf is real. However, Mortar Shot now functions with the rest of explosions. Going into the explosives line gives you a +10% buff which evens the nerf out to being exactly 80% of its former power, which is most likely what they were aiming for.

Tooltips lie. they use the old vanilla 923 ave kit damage, across all weapon teir damage values.

dont ever use tooltips as basis of balance changes.

but yes, trusting you had the same power, we should be able to use it to confirm the shift as while that damage listed is not accurate to how much you actually do. it should be correct in relation to the change.

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

1. no. its too strong at that.
.

How do people keep believing this? How did they ever believe it? Before the nerf it had THE SAME BASE DAMAGE AS GRENADE #1 but it also is only a single attack, so it procks a single crit strike and thus applies far fewer conditions than greanade #1, so it did less damage than grenade #1 even before the nerf. Add to the fact that its as slow as the old grenade kit, but a much more obvious and easily dodgable/sidestepable attack and you can see that it was most definately not overpowered.

no it didn’t.

It currently has either a .8 or .75 coeff, with a .8 a/s.
Giving it either a 1, or .93 effective coeff.

Grenades have a .33 × 3 on a 1 a/s speed.
a .99 effective coeff.

everyone seems to be ignoring it was 20% FASTER attack then grenades with an either 1.05 or 1.1 coeff. (if the 28% was correct) giving it an effective 1.3 coeff, or 1.37 coeff.

Bombkit 1 is 1.25coeff, at .84a/s. giving an effective 1.48.

it was closer to BOMBS then it was grenades.

no one has produced a single shred of math to prove otherwise.
Maybe the “-28%” was even wrong.
what was the coeff EXACTLY?
do you even know? Do any of you complaining know what it was?

What are you talking about? Have you actually used the mortar kit? There is no way it’s 20% faster than grenades, even grenades without the grenafier trait. Before the patch it had about 900 base damage in full zerker gear, which is the same as grenades when you add up the damage from all three grenades. And that is not counting all the damage from the conditions that grenades puts out, which mortar can I only apply a 3rd of.

Break out your stop watch. come back.

Casia.4281:

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

Gern.2978:

Casia.4281:

1. no. its too strong at that.
.

How do people keep believing this? How did they ever believe it? Before the nerf it had THE SAME BASE DAMAGE AS GRENADE #1 but it also is only a single attack, so it procks a single crit strike and thus applies far fewer conditions than greanade #1, so it did less damage than grenade #1 even before the nerf. Add to the fact that its as slow as the old grenade kit, but a much more obvious and easily dodgable/sidestepable attack and you can see that it was most definately not overpowered.

no it didn’t.

It currently has either a .8 or .75 coeff, with a .8 a/s.
Giving it either a 1, or .93 effective coeff.

Grenades have a .33 × 3 on a 1 a/s speed.
a .99 effective coeff.

everyone seems to be ignoring it was 20% FASTER attack then grenades with an either 1.05 or 1.1 coeff. (if the 28% was correct) giving it an effective 1.3 coeff, or 1.37 coeff.

Bombkit 1 is 1.25coeff, at .84a/s. giving an effective 1.48.

it was closer to BOMBS then it was grenades.

no one has produced a single shred of math to prove otherwise.
Maybe the “-28%” was even wrong.
what was the coeff EXACTLY?
do you even know? Do any of you complaining know what it was?

What are you talking about? Have you actually used the mortar kit? There is no way it’s 20% faster than grenades, even grenades without the grenafier trait. Before the patch it had about 900 base damage in full zerker gear, which is the same as grenades when you add up the damage from all three grenades. And that is not counting all the damage from the conditions that grenades puts out, which mortar can I only apply a 3rd of.

Break out your stop watch. come back.

I’m not at home right now. Besides, you are ignoring the fact that you are not going to be able to hit a person at range with 100% of your mortar attacks, you will be lucky if you can hit them with half of them.

Gern.2978:

I’m not at home right now. Besides, you are ignoring the fact that you are not going to be able to hit a person at range with 100% of your mortar attacks, you will be lucky if you can hit them with half of them.

dont move goalposts.

People said that same thing about grenades themselves. especially when the nade nerf when into effect. Made these SAME arguments. yet, everyone is complaining about that range loss as well. So either you can’t hit at 1500, or you can.
And no one is demanding grenades get a 30% damage buff.

I do agree the melee damage penalty would be a good way to allow it to hit hard at range, and factor in missing/proj speed, while not being completely broken spamming in melee range like we do grenades.

Gern.2978:

No, dont confuse issues. We needed another option other than just grenade kit. Grenade kit didn’t need “scaled back.” That would, and did, only result in a nerf to our DPS (in the case of the changes they ultimately went with, this nerf is to our damage beyond 900 distance, and it’s a big one.)

And now we have one. If you want to deal the most condition damage, the Bomb Kit and Tool Kit are significantly better at it now. Burning is now the prime condition for DPS in the game currently, and the Grenade Kit doesn’t have it. And once they fix Incendiary Ammo so that it applies two stacks of burning three times, rather than one stack of burning, I think the Flamethrower is going to get a lot of use as well with its situational defensive advantages.

Given time, I anticipate that the Grenade Kit will be less and less relied upon in PvP and WvW. For PvE it’ll always be BiS because of the vulnerability stacking, but the relative strength of each kit has never been better.

Gern.2978:

Um, in no way has rifle been given any kind of a buff to make it a replacement for the grenade kit. In fact, they nerfed rifle by removing the traits that increased it’s range and damage.

They adjusted baseline skill damage to coincide with the removal of Rifle Mod, just as they adjusted the baseline radius of bombs to coincide with the removal of Forceful Explosives. (It still says 180 but they are 240. Test it by using a mortar shell with 240 radius and drop a Fire Bomb or Smoke Bomb.)

Jump Shot is now considered an “explosion” as well, so if you’re going up the Explosives tree, Jump Shot deals 10% more damage than it did pre-patch. I was running a FOTM 40 earlier this week and combined crits for over 20K damage. This is on level 82 mobs.

The rifle wasn’t nerfed. It was buffed.

Gern.2978:

I…what? I can’t even wrap my mind around the mental gymnasitcs that have brought you to this conclusion. How does nerfing other kits and weapons, that already under-performed when compared to grenade kit, make them more of a viable option than grenade kit? The changes have done the opposite of this. Grenade is more our best option than ever. And that is sad.

But nothing got nerfed. Bombs still have the best auto-attack and burning access, the Flamethrower is even better at fulfilling its decap bunker role, and the Elixir Gun now can convert conditions into boons and stack might with HGH. And with confusion now ticking over time, Pry Bar does even more damage now. Everything literally got elevated, meanwhile grenades have gotten reduced range in favor of increased velocity. It’s a good change, and makes them more reliable in PvP, but the damage is largely the same aside from Poison Grenade.

They may have not all been buffed according to their damage values, especially as far as the Flamethrower is concerned, but build diversity will be a lot broader after the dust settles than it was before Tuesday. That’s simply a fact.

Phineas Poe.3018:

They adjusted baseline skill damage to coincide with the removal of Rifle Mod, just as they adjusted the baseline radius of bombs to coincide with the removal of Forceful Explosives. (It still says 180 but they are 240. Test it by using a mortar shell with 240 radius and drop a Fire Bomb or Smoke Bomb.)

Jump Shot is now considered an “explosion” as well, so if you’re going up the Explosives tree, Jump Shot deals 10% more damage than it did pre-patch. I was running a FOTM 40 earlier this week and combined crits for over 20K damage. This is on level 82 mobs. It wasn’t nerfed. It was buffed.

This never happened. They said they were…. it didnt happen.

Far as I know, rifle skills have the same coeff they did before. And rifle 5 is not an explosion.

You might have more power from stat changes though. My SD rifle build does.
I was 2/6/0/0/6. So I gained like 200 power.

Powerwrench now competes with SD which sucks as ALL SD builds ran toolkit.

I’ve been playtesting p/p since patch admittedly, and can’t really comment on how my SD rifle has really faired. I do need to test that 10% ias trait.
IF it works like quickness and effects overcharged shots kb. great. same with Jumpshots leap speed.
If it does not, its much much weaker then 10% damage rifle mod.

I don’t know what to tell you then. I used to run FOTM 40 and 50 several times a week. I got pretty used to seeing the same damage values and clear times. The one I did this week was quite different.

Similar to the conversation of the Mortar Kit, you’re welcome to make your own conclusions.

yeah. I’ll look into it after work. honestly 20k doesn’t sound that crazy to me… jump shot already hit hard. 25 stacks of vul/might, and the power change. yeah. A number of other profession buffs providing stats.

Should start a rifle thread I suppose. and we can actually discuss its balance changes, promises and lies.

choovanski.5462:

im just so suprised. i really didn’t see it coming. guess 2-3k autos were too much. wonder when life blast will be nerfed.

C’mon, I also play Necro and this is a ridiculous comparison. Mortar 1 is much, much easier to land than life blast. 1500 vs 900 range, 5 target AoE vs piercing, you can sit on Mortar all day vs DS a finite resource, both comparatively slow projectiles.

As a full zerker engie, I enjoyed Mortar 1 as much as the next guy, but anyone who didn’t see a nerf coming was blind. When you heard that many Mortar rounds and saw that many Orbital Strikes going off in WvW, it was logical to expect some balancing.

Mortar is still strong but not OP. Right where it should be, IMHO.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Jump Shot is now considered an “explosion” as well, so if you’re going up the Explosives tree, Jump Shot deals 10% more damage than it did pre-patch. I was running a FOTM 40 earlier this week and combined crits for over 20K damage. This is on level 82 mobs.

The rifle wasn’t nerfed. It was buffed.

Jump Shot was supposed to count as an explosion. But it doesn’t. So either they reverted that decision or it’s part of this patch’s bugs.

And bombs are also bugged as far as range goes. It seems to not really hit as far as the radius goes visually.

And Mokittenoes not profit from the 10% extra damage on explosions trait yet. Definitely a bug.

Boreal.9826:

choovanski.5462:

im just so suprised. i really didn’t see it coming. guess 2-3k autos were too much. wonder when life blast will be nerfed.

C’mon, I also play Necro and this is a ridiculous comparison. Mortar 1 is much, much easier to land than life blast. 1500 vs 900 range, 5 target AoE vs piercing, you can sit on Mortar all day vs DS a finite resource, both comparatively slow projectiles.

As a full zerker engie, I enjoyed Mortar 1 as much as the next guy, but anyone who didn’t see a nerf coming was blind. When you heard that many Mortar rounds and saw that many Orbital Strikes going off in WvW, it was logical to expect some balancing.

Mortar is still strong but not OP. Right where it should be, IMHO.

Mortar wasn’t OP before. You saw that many people using it because it is brand new, and every single engie is trying it out, also because it’s our only long range weapon now

I don’t know why people are complaining about Mortar Kit vs Grenade Kit in PvE. Grenade kit has more hits and procs more vuln so it’s always the better option since all you need to do is stack around a corner.

As for the percent, they just chose a random skill (tool kit auto) and copied it. There was very little reasoning or logic involved.

Bog.5893:

I don’t know why people are complaining about Mortar Kit vs Grenade Kit in PvE. Grenade kit has more hits and procs more vuln so it’s always the better option

This is why people are complaining

mortar is our >Elite< yet its usefulness is less than that of dual pistols on a non condi build

This nerf is a good idea. The range:damage ration was unprecedented.

The overall package is still good though, ESPECIALLY in non-grenade builds.

Anet just needs to give us a reason not to use grenade builds.

I wish them luck because quite frankly, that is very difficult to do without nerfing Grenade Kit into the ground.

I can 100-0 people with one grenade barrage and mortar was nerfed?