So mortar gives stability now?
Its been that way for a bit now. Probably since BWE3?
BWE3 at least. That is when I swapped to engi and started playtesting them. And it had it then.
not that it means much, the mortar itself dies instantly to anything that would knockyou off it.
Mortar is about as squishy as our turrets.
I was pretty disappointed in pvp.
Asura Engineer
Mortar needs some SERIOUS tuning. The range is only slightly longer than Grenades, it fires slower, it’s immobile, it doesnt count as a seige weapon…
Having been pvping for the past couple of weeks there’s almost no situation that I have been in where a mortar has been more useful than grenades. It’s a terrrrrriiible 30 point skill. Every other 30 point skill is superior in nearly every way. Even supply drop is useful, since they have a net and a heal turret, and you can annoy keep defenders by dropping them on the keep ledges.
It needs to either fire further (possibly even becoming the longest range attack from a profession in the game), hit WAY WAY harder than it does, or, and this would be the best thing (and most broken) be counted as siege.
it has its uses in wvw, and I quite regularly deploy it despite my grenades (but I haven’t levelled enough yet for the grenadier trait); mainly the heal and knockback attacks; when trying to slow down a zerg that is attacking over a bridge you can heal your fellow defenders a bit while being in a relatively safe place yourself, and you can shoot a few people off the bridge. And when assaulting towers, I either set it up in a relatively safe pos for healing people manning the rams, or set it up near a tower and try to knock a few opponents down into the assaulting group. In the latter case it does tend to get shot down quite quickly, but if you treat it as the disposable thing it is that’s not too bad, and you should be able to at least get a few shots off (then go back to spamming grenades).
I do agree that the range should be longer, and it’s probably not worth 30 points; maybe it says something about the other elite skills, but I really only use this and the supply drop in WvW (and IMO supply drop is really not that useful when assaulting for anything more than slightly annoying people). I think it should also be possible to use non-weapon skills while attached to the mortar, and/or ‘detach’ automatically if you move.