Guild Wars 2

So, we discussed a lot about how 1400 range was too low on the mortar range. Now we had our Turret increased range to work on it, and it’s omg, 1500 range!!

Anyone else feels like “meh”?

i dont see it changing the dmg, also the mortar will be better i think when turret barrels and elite supplies both add its range up

I honestly doubt mortar will ever be allowed to go past 1500. My money is on:
A) Elite Supplies being reworded to not mention mortar at all.
B) Mortar Getting a 10% damage buff from Elite Supplies
C) Mortar getting a 20% reduction to its cooldowns.

There are several reasons for this, most of them pertaining to WvW. First, you begin to conflict with arrowcart, at no supply cost. Second, a mortar that can hit at 1600 (the lowest possible increment for elite suplies) would, if properly positioned, allow it to damage siege in certain currently un-touchable by non-siege locations. This wouldn’t be useful in general combat, but could be used by smaller teams to neutralize siege before and after combat.

Both of the above become increasingly problematic as you increase mortars range to 1700 as well.

TL;DR: Adjusting mortar’s range past 1500 might make mortar useful, at least in wvw. I don’t think Arenanet wants that.

a useful elite skill on engineer that bad to ask for?

PotatoOverdose.6583:

There are several reasons for this, most of them pertaining to WvW. First, you begin to conflict with arrowcart, at no supply cost. Second, a mortar that can hit at 1600 (the lowest possible increment for elite suplies) would, if properly positioned, allow it to damage siege in certain currently un-touchable by non-siege locations. This wouldn’t be useful in general combat, but could be used by smaller teams to neutralize siege before and after combat.

Both of the above become increasingly problematic as you increase mortars range to 1700 as well.

TL;DR: Adjusting mortar’s range past 1500 might make mortar useful, at least in wvw. I don’t think Arenanet wants that.

Every ranged siege weapons have more range than Mortar (lowest being the arrow cart at 2500) people drop them closer because nothing threatens it other than other siege/wall weapons and suicide rushes, so even if they increased Mortar’s range to 2000, it wouldn’t upset the balance of siege weapons much. People would just need to use the range of their siege weapon instead of sticking right behind their group.

If Anet wanted mortar to be useful, it would have been very, very easy to do. Same goes for a lot of our skills (like throw mine, for example).

i dont see a 2k range mortar being a problem when currently grenades have 1500 range and do damage better than mortar.

Neither do I, but I’m not the one you have to convince. It’s Anet that made mortar have a default range of 1400. If they wanted mortar to be a ‘mortar’, they would have given it a higher base range. Furthermore, traits that affect it would give +300 range (like grenadier does for grenades).

Like I said, not going to happen. It’s gonna stay at 1500.

Be nice if we had a developers opinion on their stance on the mortar currently.

ACtually nothing is fixed.

Rifled Barrels changes it from 1400 to 1500 but ELITE SUPPLIES still does not change range of mortar even though it says so.

Either way 1400/1500 range is pathetic for immobile weapon that has dead zone in which skills can’t be used, weapon which skills often bug and don’t go out at all and weapon that has CD on #1…. LOL

Khezekiah Bellamy.5016:

i dont see a 2k range mortar being a problem when currently grenades have 1500 range and do damage better than mortar.

I wouldn’t see it being a problem even with 2500.

Immobile, has dead zone, only useful in wvwvw, has CD on #1

Mjust be some crap mortar if i can throw grenades or shoot bow just as far ;p

mortar useless.
no more comments needed.

Why do people talk about it as if range is its only problem?

Have you seen its horrendous damage? And since its a turret, it completely ignores your stats.

So…
Immobile
Dead Zone
Destructible
Poor Damage, when compared to grenades
Worse range than grenades

They need to make it either scale to your stats, or REALLY buff up the damage. Because even if they buffed up the range, grenades, a utility slot item, would be better than an elite slot item.

personally, i think it would be better if Mortar was a kit.

we already have a turret elite (supply drop) and an elixir elite (elixir X)
Mortar becoming an elite kit would be more great and would see more use outside of WvW.

What they should do is cut the duration to 25% and make it work like the siege mortars that you have to aim by holding down the buttons…but do ridiculous damage.

Lyuben.2613:

Why do people talk about it as if range is its only problem?

Have you seen its horrendous damage? And since its a turret, it completely ignores your stats.

So…
Immobile
Dead Zone
Destructible
Poor Damage, when compared to grenades
Worse range than grenades

They need to make it either scale to your stats, or REALLY buff up the damage. Because even if they buffed up the range, grenades, a utility slot item, would be better than an elite slot item.

Horrendous? A single 5th skill shot could take out 1/3-1/2 of enemy hp AND knocks them (sometimes out of a wall). 3rd skill heals for a fair amount and 4th also slows rather well. 2nd is so-so but it covers a large area.

A well placed mortar could buy your world 30-60 seconds from those gate knockers.

The reason that its range won’t go past 1500 is because it’s relatively the farthest range achieved without siege engines (grenadiers and longbow rangers). Having the mortar to shoot farther than 1500 would make it very very difficult for enemy to retaliate against mortars.

How does skill 3 heal for a fair amount of it doesn’t scale with +healing?

And the 5th skill is long cooldown, and extremely unreliable for single target damage. It spreads out VERY wide.

So, if you want to heal, take elixir gun.
If you want AoE 1500 range damage, take a grenade kit.

If you want a useless elite, take a mortar.

So…. If I can go pay the Seige Merchant 6 silver for an arrow cart that takes no time to build and has more to offer in both damage and range, why would I consider using my Mortar elite skill?

When I first saw the mortar skill, I thought ‘Oh cool! It’s like a grenade kit…. I have to stay in one place, but it has much further range to compensate for making me a stationary target!’ It doesn’t sound like that’s what it’s intentions are.

Skills 1, 2, and 4 are repetitive skills from the grenade kit. Skill 3 is okay, but nothing to write home about, in my opinion. As someone else said, might as well use an elixir gun, med kit, or healing turret, though I do concede that the heal from this skill is better… not sure if that would hold true with some +healing. Skill 5 is really the only skill that’s unique, but it’s effectiveness is situational (if your team is trying to aoe focus fire a certain area, it’s not a good idea to knock the enemy out of that area).

In my experience, to setup the mortar, you have to be in the hot zone (even at 1500 or even 1600 range)… either being hit by other siege or pummeled by player fire. You have to have line of sight with your ground target for the skills, so you can’t hide in the back or over a hill and fire away. I’m usually lucky if the the mortar lasts long enough to get off 2 rounds of skill 5 before it’s destroyed.

I play around with the mortar during Keep/Tower defenses/attacks in WvW, but that’s it. Mortar is a one trick pony and has very few uses outside of WvW (I’ve tried using it in PvE… fun, but not the best use of your skills). It seems very lackluster for an elite skill that has limited applications.

If the engineer community feels that the mortar’s usefulness is on par with other elite skills, I’m okay with that. I’ll just have to lower my expectations for the skill. Personally, if this is how Anet plans on implementing it, I’d rather see them replace the skill with an AoE concussion grenade (like the 5 skill on the mortar) on a 90 second cooldown. That would at least open up the situations that it could be used in.

You can actually knock people down from walls in WvW,with #5….however it is really hard to do, requires positioning and a lot of luck.

I say,supply crate is your friend!

The changes had nothing to do with elite supplies.

It is important to remember that mortar is considered a turret.

So the change to the rifled turret barrels is overall a really nice fix. It now increases the range on all turrets by 100, except healing, and it increases the damage of thumper, rifle, rocket, mortar by 15%.

With a fix to elite supplies the range could easily go from 1500 to 1600 we’ll have to wait and see.

My hope is we get better turret stats / stat sharing / or perhaps the ability to increase turrets stats via spec’ing into inventions.

All it would take to make mortar extremely viable, and deal more damage / equal damage to grenades is stat contribution.

But it is important to keep in mind that grenade may be to strong.

When you compare the dps it provides with our other kits / weapons, and those of other professions.

Even for a GTAOE it provides much more dps from range than most weapons in the game.

It’s hard to compete with a 1500 GTAOE #1 skill that can do 3k. The only other skills that come close are melee weapons like hammer and sword.

You can make the argument that grenade kit is a melee weapon, and I agree with that with the exception of PvE and WvW keeps / tower sieges.

So we’ll have to see what the dev’s decide to do. It might be we get a stat sharing buff ((I really think this will happen, turrets are very underused atm)) which will increase the mortars damage a bit, and maybe a slight nerf to grenade kit ((the damage without the 30 point trait is still fairly good, so maybe the trait just needs a tweak))

Thanks for this thread – I just tested things, and yes, elite supplies is bugged (or mislabeled), and the range increase from rifled turrets is very small.

What can mortar+GM trait do that grenade+GM trait do? I understand that the mortar GM trait also buffs regular turrets, but I really see more advantage to grenades at this point.

Mortar is much better at control than the grenade kit is. If all you look at is damage than sure the grenade kit wins hand down, but when you look at control and support the mortar is far better imo.

You have two large radius long duration slows. The chill field + the cripple field. You also have an AoE KB.

For support you have a good duration water field that will heal for an okay amount, and can be used to trigger healing combos. You also have the above mentioned chill field which can be used to trigger projectiles for added chill duration.

So in defensive situations keeps / towers when your trying to slow an enemy pushing into a gate it can be offer something completely different from grenade kit.

Karast.1927:

The changes had nothing to do with elite supplies.

It is important to remember that mortar is considered a turret.

So the change to the rifled turret barrels is overall a really nice fix. It now increases the range on all turrets by 100, except healing, and it increases the damage of thumper, rifle, rocket, mortar by 15%.

With a fix to elite supplies the range could easily go from 1500 to 1600 we’ll have to wait and see.

My hope is we get better turret stats / stat sharing / or perhaps the ability to increase turrets stats via spec’ing into inventions.

All it would take to make mortar extremely viable, and deal more damage / equal damage to grenades is stat contribution.

But it is important to keep in mind that grenade may be to strong.

When you compare the dps it provides with our other kits / weapons, and those of other professions.

Even for a GTAOE it provides much more dps from range than most weapons in the game.

It’s hard to compete with a 1500 GTAOE #1 skill that can do 3k. The only other skills that come close are melee weapons like hammer and sword.

You can make the argument that grenade kit is a melee weapon, and I agree with that with the exception of PvE and WvW keeps / tower sieges.

So we’ll have to see what the dev’s decide to do. It might be we get a stat sharing buff ((I really think this will happen, turrets are very underused atm)) which will increase the mortars damage a bit, and maybe a slight nerf to grenade kit ((the damage without the 30 point trait is still fairly good, so maybe the trait just needs a tweak))

Mortar is a piece of crap everywhere except wvw on keep tower defense. 3k Damage at 1500 is not a lot. Grenade 1, with decent perception, power, and +crit damage can hit for as much every 4th or 5th grenade toss. You only need 2/3 grenades to crit to match those numbers, not hard given that we can achieve 30-50% crit fairly easily.

Furthermore, mortar’s useful range is much lower than 1500. Why? You need to be at least 150-200 away from the edge of the keep walls, otherwise the first 2 AoE’s to hit your mortar will kill it. As a grenadier, or any other AoE class, I am mobile and can move out of aoe along the edge of the walls, giving me a useful range of 1500 (for keep/tower defense). Mortar has a useful range of 1300, effectivley.

Tbh, I don’t know why you suggest a nerf to grenade kit. It’s the only form of damage we have (aside from toolbelt burst) that’s actually competitive atm, and its difficult enough to get all 3 grenades to hit at range to apply said damage (except in keep/tower scenarios). Most of the time only 1 or 2 nades hit, if any.

The ONLY redeeming feature going for mortar is that it doesn’t require line of sight. But given it’s reduced effective range….meh.

PotatoOverdose.6583:

3k Damage at 1500 is not a lot.

When you read it by itself, it seems as if it has really got to be one of the most backwards things I have seen you post.

When you compare it to grenades, it makes sense though. The mortar needs some type of distinct advantage that would give players a good reason to use it over grenades.

The lack of LoS requirements, seems like it would be an advantage, but it certainly is not. Any minimal advantage that may give, is countered by an absolute lack of mobility. Particularly when you factor in the fact that the mortar itself, can be easily destroyed.

coglin.1496:

PotatoOverdose.6583:

3k Damage at 1500 is not a lot.

When you read it by itself, it seems as if it has really got to be one of the most backwards things I have seen you post.

When you compare it to grenades, it makes sense though. The mortar needs some type of distinct advantage that would give players a good reason to use it over grenades.

The lack of LoS requirements, seems like it would be an advantage, but it certainly is not. Any minimal advantage that may give, is countered by an absolute lack of mobility. Particularly when you factor in the fact that the mortar itself, can be easily destroyed.

Well, first of 3k damage at 1500 isn’t alot. You have to put it in context. Specifically, consider rate of fire. A ranger can shoot several times faster with a longbow (range: 1500) than a mortar fires. A ranger can crit for over a thousand, so in the same time interval as a mortar fires, and preps to fire again a ranger with decent crit gear can easily do more than 1500 just by attacking. That’s ignoring any burst in the form of quickness buffs and the like. Ranger’s can’t aoe as well as we can, but it’s the best point of comparison from another class.

Also, consider that grenades, mortar, and longbow (the 3 things that can do “decent” damage at 1500) are also incredibly easy to dodge at 1500. As long as your target is moving in any way other than a straight line, most of your attacks will miss at extreme range. In fact ballista, a siege engine, has the same exact problem at extreme range. So when I say 3k at 1500 is not a lot, I mean exactly that. And 3k really isn’t the upper limit for grenades or a longbow burst, which is still not a lot.

As for line of sight, I agree it isn’t a particularly huge advantage, but it is the only advantage mortar has. The line of sight advantage would be extremely useful if mortar could hit to, for example, 2000. but that isn’t going to happen. The max range for a player skill, across multiple classes is 1500. Rangers, engineers, and necros can reach that limit. Of those classes, necros can’t really do anything meaningful at 1500, they get one spell iirc that can hit that far.

I personally think that no class is supposed to be able to hit past 1500, judging from all of the current mechanics. At best elite supplies will be changed to give a tiny damage or cooldown buff to mortar. At worst, it will be reworded to not mention mortar at all.

WvW blah blah, solo pvp blah blah. Is that all you people think? Many, many times I’ve found Mortar to be excellent in certain rooms of dungeons, both explorable and story mode. Sure, not every situation, but what elite skill do you use in every situation? If you have a good team, they can keep the enemy at your optimal distance, so that you can keep the mortar up constantly and provide all that AoE support and damage. When you find the right time to use it, it outdoes the other engineer elites by far. Wouldn’t mind seeing it buffed, though…

You can use supply crate in every situation. AoE stun, Aoe Heal from healing turret, med kits and antidotes dropped on the ground, flame turret and net turret deployed to location.

Also, you do realize you would do MORE damage with grenades in all situations, right? Especially for dungeons. All the more so because mortar doesn’t scale with power, crit, or condition damage.

Well to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t compare Grenadier grenades to anything, as that thing is blatantly overpowered and could use a nerf. Also, while mortar might do less damage than grenades, it supplies extensive support, while not requiring you to spec for it – leaving you free to have any kind of build for situations more chaotic.

Oh, and while you can use Supply Crate in any situation, Mortar has larger impact when deployed successfully. You can’t keep Supply Crate up constantly through a long battle, either, like you can with a mortar in an optimal case.

It isn’t the range from the mortar that’s bothered me about the skill. It’s the fact that it’s an immovable object. Once it’s placed, it’s placed for good, I don’t know how many situations I’ve been in where I’ve placed a mortar down but could only use it briefly because either the enemy fell back or I had to retreat. If I could bring it with me then I wouldn’t have issue with the range.

I don’t know it’d work but it could be like pressing your interact key to deploy and use while holding your interact key to carry it.

Mortar has larger impact when deployed successfully

And here’s the core of the problem – it has not enough range to be “successfull deployed” very often. You can deploy it in:

1. Siege, but then mortar can be easily taken down by any kind of damage (it has funny HP pool, 2-3 AoEs and it’s down, not to even mention direct hits). And since it’s static you cannot simply dodge incoming hits like you can do it with grenades kit. And you have to place it in the AoE range since it has… range problem. Moreover, you actually need the LoS to use your ground targeting. BTW it not only makes the idea of this high-curve high delay explosive rifle “interesting”, but mortar is practicaly useless in siege attack, since it can be layed only at the wall’s edge. Yet can be targeted, and so on…

2. In field when you have anyone to stop the enemy get close to you. But if you do, that means situation will be changing quite fast, battlefield will move one or the other way rather quickly and you cannot swiftly reposition because of CD. If your group is loosing, you will have to abandon your mortar and run, due to it’s dead-range. If your group is winning, you will have to abandon your mortar and pursue, to not be left behind. There are only few areas when you can use some cliff to cover your position and to be in an actual range to use this skill. Not worth it – you can be more usefull and effective with the elixir gun/ elixir S or R toolbelt and grenades running in the zerg itself.

3. To push people off the cliff. Sometimes I have an impression that the mortar is a one trick pony, designed for this task. Get on the back of your enemy standing by the cliff, use 5, move on. Not really something I would expect from an elite skill

As much for the W3. I did not checked it in PvE, yet I see no use to it anyway so I dont think I will ever try

You are talking about big WvW situations. In situations like that, damage flies everywhere in any case, so nothing with a small health pool (illusions, turrets) stays alive. Me, I was talking about it’s use in dungeons. Dungeons often have ledges and long pathways that allow relatively safe turret placement, provided your party knows how to keep a line. The time fights take in dungeons also make deploying a mortar in some of the rooms with massive amount of enemies worthwhile.

Nozaku

Mortar becoming an elite kit would be more great and would see more use outside of WvW.

I personally love that idea, but given how difficult and how long it took for them to fix kits to the degree they have now, coding an elite kit wouldn’t be simple at all. But kitten does that sound nice.

It’d be just like in GW1 where some elites were near spammable abilities, and not always the token ability with a large cooldown.

GIVE ME ELITE MORTAR KIT!

Tuomir.1830:

You are talking about big WvW situations. In situations like that, damage flies everywhere in any case, so nothing with a small health pool (illusions, turrets) stays alive. Me, I was talking about it’s use in dungeons. Dungeons often have ledges and long pathways that allow relatively safe turret placement, provided your party knows how to keep a line. The time fights take in dungeons also make deploying a mortar in some of the rooms with massive amount of enemies worthwhile.

You can still do more with the grenades or elixir gun, you don’t need underpowered mortar to deal significant AoE, or healing. Moreover that your grenades can damage along ledges and long pathways just like your mortar, but allows you to jump in if needed, toss few elixirs/med kits/healing turret/SUPPLY CRATE and evade back to the safe spamming position. So even in dungeons you described I see mortar vastly useless in comparison to other skills given to engis.

I don’t agree that you can (do more) with grenades or elixir gun. You can do “more damage” or “more condition removal” but everyone seems to overlook the great support / cc features of the mortar.

Sure it doesn’t spam off 3k a skill (I don’t count the 5k hits, hitting up ranked lowbies lets anyone hit like a truck) But you have 2 long duration low cool down massive AoE slows off the 2 and 4 abilities, as well as an large radius AoE knock back for control.

When used at choke points, gates, ramps, the effect can be devastating.

Now the mortar does have it’s issues.

It’s a turret

It has low damage / hp

It has a dead zone

But when it comes to control grenade / elixir gun, elixir x, and supply crate don’t compare. (unless if you get rampage)

Keep in mind though that as they fix turrets, and in the short term turret traits ((like the did last patch)) Mortar will get better.

Even though mortar is counted as a turret the turret traits are not all functioning with it (just like with other turrets)

Picture mortar with a 30% damage deduction, place-able, with base healing regen, and having it explode with an AoE KB on death.

Without any changes to the mortar itself and just fixing the traits mortar could become a lot better.

Add in a bit of stat scaling, and or stats via the inventions trait line, and mortar could become fantastic for more than just slows / knock backs and the water combo field.

1400 is good enough without trait the most important thing is reduce the cooldown so engineers can redeploy on the battlefield, mortar is not going to kill anyone with that damage it’s only going to hurt a little which is fine and good enough

specially skill 5 good for knockback i only use mortar for that purpose
other then that …… meh !!!! hahahaha

therefore reducing cooldown is important

1500 is still extremely low. Why even bother with the mortar when you can use the grenade kit and get the same range, plus more damage?

The range should be increase to 1600 or 1700.

It needs to have 2500 range.
It needs to function like a cannon, 3 skills maximum, with 1 and 5 being buttons that moves it left or right for aiming purposes. Hold down the skill button of choice to fire – longer hold = shoots further.
It needs to do AoE siege damage.
It needs to do at least 70% of the damage of a ballista.

Mysticforce.5096:

It needs to have 2500 range.
It needs to function like a cannon, 3 skills maximum, with 1 and 5 being buttons that moves it left or right for aiming purposes. Hold down the skill button of choice to fire – longer hold = shoots further.
It needs to do AoE siege damage.
It needs to do at least 70% of the damage of a ballista.

Yes, Anet is going to give us a siege engine that can do 70% of the damage of ballista. Why not just ask them to give us a super AoE deathray that kills all hostiles on the current map.

Mortar Kit
Equip a mortar on your back.
While equipped your movement is slowed.

Heh heh
I really just want an Elite Kit.

WE NEED to be able to build megazoid !!!!!
agree turn mortar into elite kit good idea

what on gods green earth ikittenazoid?

Mortar should be a kit. If in doubt, compare it with the Grenade kit which is 100% portable with no CD.

to be honest mortar would be pretty good with lower cooldowns and maybe 1700-1800 range . 1400 range simply makes gate attacking players targetable no more no less specially when you consider terrain elevation .

Mortar can be useful if you are not running a grenade build but you need to lay out some aoe across the top of a wall or destroy enemy siege. Very very situational, but it does have a small amount of use.

Mortar is almost entirely terrible in spvp because you have to be on it to use it, and its damage doesnt scale with your abilities.

Mortar would be awesome if it was a high life indepdent turret. But its not.

you know what’s silly too: even if ALL turret related traits would work on mortar, you would have to spend so many traits just to make your elite ‘decent’.
Supply crate is great even without the traits…

And let’s say you are a turret engineer, so you woiuld spend all those points on turrets anyhow.
Than why on earth wouldn’t you use the supply crate which drops a bunch of turrets?

If a turret engineer becomes viable indeed next patch, I would assume that turret engineer would use the supply crate.

Mortar needs to be improved, without a single trait being necessary.

Mortar weaknesses that I woul like to see fixed:

- the range, as discussed over and over

- the deadzone: if a melee gets to your mortar, you need the self heal and the knockback ON YOURSELF.
Those 2 at least should have zero deadzone

- the cooldowns. The skills take too long, you can’t pressure anyone who is mobile and has a brain.
The only use is for zergs at the door, or npc’s acting stupid.
Grenades have this issue too, but at least you can move and adapt.
Lower cooldowns would increase the damage too. At least a trait should get this done.

- too low hp. It is stationary, and you are stuck inside of it. It can’t die as fast as it does now.
To be honest: since you take damage anyhow, it shouldn’t be destroyed at all unless the engineer dies.