Guild Wars 2

it is a weapon Devoted to Combo FIelds
that right there brings a lot of issues specially when the auto attack got nerfed the reasons being:

Field Effects have extremely short duration wich basically makes most of the kit useless as the only worthwhile field effect is condi cleanse

Projectile combo finisher activates when it goes through players not on the projectile impact wich means ontop of your projectile being somewhat slow and predicable you have to aim beyond your actual target wich makes the projectile even harder to land than it is

the kit’s damage is just too low it is meant to be our Elite kit yet its damage is on par with rifle auto attack, and even the Orbital strike is outperformed by rifle turret, rocket turret,throw wrench , launch battering ram skills and thats excluding their effectiveness on SD builds .

if anything it needs a 50% AA damage buff simply because the projectile is so slow and hard to land they are skill shots i dont see why they have to be weaker than ranger’s longbow .

orbital strike should have a 1-2s Daze or 1s knock back per strike 2s if traited as its two strikes, this will make it a fair replacement to the old mortar’s #5 skill

as it stands the mortar is just a giant dissapointing reminder to engineers that grenades got nerfed and ironically grenades are still the superior kit choice

Totally disagree. Here’s why:

It makes engis viable in WvW – Check out Wolfineer’s “mortineer” build for this. It’s all the range from the old grenades with a bigger radius, more combo fields, and faster projectile speed.
It’s a big boost to PvE Dps – this is mainly due to the toolkit ability, which hits like a truck. Sure, the AA got nerfed, so spamming 1 isn’t instant mega dps, but that’s a good thing.

It works well with a lot of PvP builds – the water field and blast finisher are great for sustain and support and it gives a ranged teamfight option, which is really helpful considering how bursty everyone is. Skill 5 also counts as an elixir, making it great for HGH builds. Finally, it gives a strong poison field for downed opponents.

Oh, and comparing a weapon with a huge AoE radius attack to longbow just doesn’t make sense, but the base damage of the mortar AA is higher than the longbow AA and you don’t even have to be at max range.

Wish they made mortar shot projectile finisher apply its effects in an area. I never hit anything with it directly.

Rezzet.3614:

it is a weapon Devoted to Combo FIelds
that right there brings a lot of issues specially when the auto attack got nerfed the reasons being:

Field Effects have extremely short duration wich basically makes most of the kit useless as the only worthwhile field effect is condi cleanse

Are you kidding? It has by and far the longest water field we’ve ever had, and gives us the best sustained blind we’ve ever had as well.

Smoke Bomb’s blinds only lasted three seconds for a four second field duration, whereas Flash Shell’s blind lasts five seconds for a six second field duration with Siege Rounds. It can also be fired from 1500 range, which cannot be overstated.

I also think it cannot be overstated that most engineer builds have access to leaps and blast finishers beyond the Mortar Kit itself, which results in Elixir Shell being effectively our best healing skill.

The only thing it lacks is condition cleanse, which you can get out of Flash Shell.

Rezzet.3614:

Projectile combo finisher activates when it goes through players not on the projectile impact wich means ontop of your projectile being somewhat slow and predicable you have to aim beyond your actual target wich makes the projectile even harder to land than it is

This has already been noted and discussed, and I imagine that ArenaNet is working on a solution with this. I personally think the most elegant solution would be to change its attack from a spammable projectile finisher to a blast, leap, or whirl finisher on a 4-5 second cooldown; projectile finishers have always been the least understood by the majority of the community, and very few engineers especially understand how the condition cleanse works with light fields despite having access to Super Elixir and Throw Wrench since launch.

The kit is still worth taking for the above reasons if team support is your objective.

Rezzet.3614:

the kit’s damage is just too low it is meant to be our Elite kit yet its damage is on par with rifle auto attack, and even the Orbital strike is outperformed by rifle turret, rocket turret,throw wrench , launch battering ram skills and thats excluding their effectiveness on SD builds .

I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare damage values between elite and utility skills. Supply Crate does very little if any damage now that base burning damage is no longer 328 but 131. Supply Crate was generally taken for the stun, immobilize, and blast finisher. Why can’t Mortar Kit be taken for similar supportive/CC reasons with its blind, chill, water field, poison field, and 1-2 blast finisher(s)?

Rezzet.3614:

if anything it needs a 50% AA damage buff simply because the projectile is so slow and hard to land they are skill shots i dont see why they have to be weaker than ranger’s longbow .

It’s about opportunity cost. A ranger has to spec and trait for the longbow to be effective. An engineer can just slot Mortar Kit and have access to 1500 range. And really, unless you’re running conditions, what are you truthfully giving up taking Mortar Kit over Supply Crate or Elixir X?

Rampage is really good, and the new Toss Elixir X effect is really nice, but there are plenty of builds floating around that don’t use Elixir X and are plenty competitive and more than effective; truthfully the choice between Elixir X and Mortar Kit is a question between building for burst or sustain—they’re both viable, and in many respects better than Supply Crate currently for a lot of builds.

Rezzet.3614:

as it stands the mortar is just a giant dissapointing reminder to engineers that grenades got nerfed and ironically grenades are still the superior kit choice.

I think the Grenade Kit is very strong still, but a lot of that is based around the Grenade Barrage and double damage bugs that are inflating its damage values far higher than what is actually intended.

You also have to acknowledge that Grenade Kit builds have always been heavily countered by heavy CC and conditions—both of which got significantly buffed in this patch. It’s in a worse place than it was pre-patch, and that’s not even talking about the 900 range nerf or the “loss” of Incendiary Powder.

I spent most of this weekend trying out a lot of different builds, many of which had nothing to do with the Grenade Kit or had a single point in Explosives. Teldo’s condition bombs build is extremely effective, and I’ve also found that FT/EG HGH is probably the best Celestial spec on the table right now.

I think given time you’ll see that the Mortar Kit is plenty viable if desiring a sustain/bunker build, and will be more commonly used after they fix the projectile finisher. Its damage is irrelevant.

I think that all of the QQing about Mortars is making a few faulty assumptions:

1. I’m supposed to be able to do optimal dps camped in this kit.
2. The fields are supposed to be super long!
3. It sucks because it’s hard to hit moving targets with ground targeting
4. Elite means better
5. Better means more dps

Look, don’t camp in Mortar. I’ve been running a full Explosions Condition Engineer (Dire/Rabid, P/S, Med Kit, Bomb Kit, Slick Shoes, Mortar), and Mortar has been really, really nice. I hop into Mortar when enemies are at range, drop some fields (helpful at pressuring WvW zergs to stay back), switch to Grenades when fields are on CD and proc a ton of bleeds and burning, switch to Bombs when I’m in melee, and rotate kits accordingly.

The multiple hit explosions proc bleeds, burning, and vuln, provide combo fields I can blast, give me a valuable ranged support option when I see people that need my help but are unreachable, and gives me a guaranteed projectile finisher on the 1 skill (which is not an auto attack).

So please, don’t whine that the weapon is underpowered because it doesn’t do what you personally want it to do. It’s incredibly powerful in it’s niche.

the fields themselves are great i admit, what i hate is tht the mortar kit is built upon spamming projectile finisher auto attack with said fields but most of those finisher effects only last 1-2 seconds except regen wich lasts 3 seconds i think so as far as finishers go the only useful projectile finisher is the condi cleanse and probably glue gunk confusion

what exactly justtifies the 28% damage nerf to begin with
as well as rifle not getting 1200 range baseline

welp i guess i ll dump my remaining gold in serker gear and find out .

Rezzet.3614:

the fields themselves are great i admit, what i hate is tht the mortar kit is built upon spamming projectile finisher auto attack with said fields but most of those finisher effects only last 1-2 seconds except regen wich lasts 3 seconds i think so as far as finishers go the only useful projectile finisher is the condi cleanse and probably glue gunk confusion

what exactly justtifies the 28% damage nerf to begin with
as well as rifle not getting 1200 range baseline

welp i guess i ll dump my remaining gold in serker gear and find out .

You can’t really judge the worthiness of a kit by its auto attack, though. The Tool Kit has probably the worst auto-attack in the entire game. It swings like a mace but without the weakness or symbol that warrior and guardian have, and with its final hit being single-target.

It’s still a commonly taken utility skill in PvP and WvW given what Pry Bar, Gear Shield, Box of Nails, and Magnet provide. You have to look at Mortar Kit similarly. You have to look at every kit similarly. Kit engineer builds have always been balanced around a hybrid, “greater than the sum of its parts” mindset, which is why I’ve been baffled that the community has taken this Mortar Kit vs. Grenade Kit stance when you can obviously just use both of them.

And if it’s a matter of getting away from the Grenade Kit, paired with the FT/EG and its two blast finishers, or the Bomb Kit and its blast finisher and fire field, it is absolutely worth using, and slots really well into general rotations. But it has to be used as a
sustain/support kit and not a DPS kit. Burst builds are probably better off running Elixir X with Rampage—especially if you’re slotted into Tools and Alchemy and maximizing that Moa.

But when you begin to look at things that way, the Mortar Shot is really kind of irrelevant, and should be used primarily for gap pressure, or if only that. I don’t think the Mortar Kit was ever intended to be camped. Realistically, only the Grenade Kit and Flamethrower have ever been designed to be camped.

well upon further testing it seems the only fix mortar needs is for its projectiles to apply finishers on impact

That and for Explosives Powder to actually work (outside of the tooltip)!