for my suggestion:
Mortar should become a kit, upon using the kit you stop moving and the mortar is placed infront of you(its purely aesthetic), clicking the skill again will “pick up” the mortar and let you move.
there could even be a cast time on activating/deactivating if needed for balance.
the mortar skills will now be tied to the engi rather than an object, so now they will scale with stats and have the ability to crit.
naturally being an elite and immobilizing the user i’d expect the skills to hit harder than with other kits.
share your thoughts and suggestions on how to bring this long forgotten elite back into play!
In my opinion Mortar should change into a full transform.
A mech suit that looks like a mish-mash between dredge and Charr tech.
Or it should become an Elite turret that you can man or automate to fire explosive rounds that take into consideration your explosive traits and your turret traits. Using Mortar destroys all your existing turrets and you cannot place any turrets until Mortar is gone.
I wish Mortar would auto fire skill 1 over my target when I’m not controlling it, like a super AOE-turret. Then either the CD of the skill should be higher or the fire rate should be of 5 seconds instead of 2.
Another suggestion is to be able to either blast it or put it back in the bag and reducing the CD by the remaining time multiplied by the remaining health of the mortar.
Last time I heard them talk about mortar, they thought it was good because it has an ice field. Of course that was probably about a year ago and I really hope now that they have buffed our kits this patch, they got time to look at mortar in the next one.
They should give it the defenses of the traits automatically since they can’t seem to understand that there’s a global weakness with pets and summons across the board on this title.
Secondly, it should be automatic but like a gadget give stability like regen so long as someone is near it and it’s alive it will continue until it dies.
Third, it should automatically fire mortars however they should me much much faster shots than they are now, because enemies shouldn’t be able to simply step to the side as slow as possible and it miss.
And finally, they could actually add a system where more than one is present if a trait is selected for crate supplies to be extra.
All of these things might bring it up to elite status.
2000 range
more responsive
more damage
auto-fires like the deployable mortar kit consumable when no one is controlling it
Definitely this. Far far too situational and underpowered to be viable in many situations. Mortar PvP is suicide.
Mesmers mesmerize the world, Necros bring it back
to life, Warriors fight it, and Guardians protect it.
Engineers? We just want to watch the world burn!
make it a kit for 10 sec with a 30 sec cd and give us a rocket launcher like horrik with actual good skills
Ziggs Ironeye – Engineer | Madame Le Blanc – Mesmer | Mentor (PvE) | EU
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!
Vee Wee posted a few suggestions for Mortar in previous threads! But here are some of Vee Wee’s ideas!
Place Mortar down and target an area! It will bombard the target area at steady intervals for a certain amount of time! What type of projectiles it launches is up for debate! Maybe we could activate the turret again to change the bombardment location and the type of projectile it shoots! Regular attacks could be like once every 3 seconds! You could add in caltrops mortars once every 3 shots! Chill mortars once every 5 shots! etc etc.
Turn it into a pseudo-kit that works similar to a Guardian tome! Once activated it could transform you into a rocket launcher wielding thillybear with powerful attacks! The transformation would last like 10-20 seconds!
Turn it into a full kit! Restrictions would have to be in place so it won’t be overpowered! Vee Wee recommended a charge system! Each skill would have a certain amount of charges! Use of an ability spends one charge and each charge has a 30 second cooldown! Skills can only have a max of x amount of charges and charges can only come off cooldown one at a time!
1) Replace it with the ‘sniper rifle’ tripods the Charr leave open in various parts of Ascalon.
2) For WvW – have ‘Mortar Mastery’ work with the Engi mortar.
To be honest though, I’d prefer any change at this point. It continues to be bugged enough that I’ve never spent the points for it. In fact I’ll usually pull up ‘Take Root’ (Sylvari racial) as an Elite option after Supply Drop.
“The Meta Game does not stop at the game. Ever.” — Me
I like to view MMOs through the lazy eye of a Systems Admin, and the critical eye of a
Project Manager. You’ve been warned. ;-)
My favourite implementation would be a high-area, high-saturation support kit. The elite nature would be reflected in that everyone can use it:
Health increased by 100%.
Mortar ignores all AE damage other than cleave-attacks.
Shots 1 to 4 become a 1500 base range, 600 radius from targeted point area of effect attack. They quickly fire 5 shells of their normal attack, each hitting a random spot in the area. Skill 1 would also need it’s AE radius bumped to the radii of 2-4.
Shot 5 would fire it’s current skill 5 times into an area of 900 units from the targetted point, firing 25 knockback shells in total over ~4 seconds, saturating the area.
The trait would lose all its current effects, instead giving each shot +2 projectiles (10 more for the fifth skill) while also increasing the targeted area by 33%. Which is virtually the same density, only you can now hit an even wider density with the same average per-target damage dealth.
Anyhow, that’d be my version. Would be rather unique in that it’s entirely built to saturate an area, not to engage any specific target.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
I like the general concept of the mortar. It was the one skill I wanted to unlock most of all for WvW because it felt like it was the perfect attack/defense skill at walls. In practice though it feels disappointing.
It should be 2000 range so that it can be set beyond longbow range.
The skills are good support, but the 1 skill is low in damage. I wouldn’t increase damage; rather, I would decrease the recharge rate to 1 second.
There should be no minimum range. This would make it somewhat useable outside of WvW.
Finally, I would have the turret grandmaster traits affect the turret in some sort of elite form. Maybe a larger reflective bubble for fortified turrets and protection from crits for experimental turrets
Apart from what was suggested already, i would only ask it to have an in-built mine field on placing. I wouldnt even mind the minimum range if there was an actual deterrent for enemies just to run right up to you and start hitting.
I’m just waiting for AK-47 elite. Charrs aren’t that far behind Kalasznikov.
Opportunity for it, maybe ?
There are actually already machine guns in the game. Look arround the roads at the southern parts of fireheart rise if you wanna check em out. (edit: found a screenshot on google:)
Sadly they arent interactible… though they do show they name is targeted. Also there are machine gun turrets in the citadel near the smelter. Looking like the very left one on the concept art:
actually i got a cool idea for the mortar: make it permanent stealth the engineer and any turrets when you stop firing for a few seconds but immediately reveal you and the turrets when you fire ofc. (and make the turrets not fire until revealed)
so the engi can set it up, sit and wait in his little camo trench for an unfortunate victim
obviously the mortar would need to stealth too for the full effect
