What do you think of Grenade and Mortar kit?

Right now in terms of functionality, Grenade kit and Mortar kit fulfill incredibly similar roles as ranged attack kits. Grenade has four main perks over Mortar, 3x hits for traits, better damage coefficients on cooldown abilities, 1 dedicated Bleed ability, and Grenade Barrage. Mortar kit has higher range, applies fields, is worse at applying conditions with the exception of Flash Shell which blows Flash Grenade completely out of the water, has a healing ability, and a blast finisher toolbelt. It's like this because Mortar wasn't designed as a kit in the first place, but now that it is, it could be time to change either it or Grenade kit.

Let's say that Grenade kit is replaced by a Bazooka kit that fills the ranged niche. Mortar kit cooldown abilities are buffed to Grenade kit levels and Bazooka gets Rocket Barrage instead of Grenade Barrage. Engineer now has one kit that fires arcing projectiles and one kit that fires straight projectiles. Would anyone feel a particular loss for Grenade kit in general?

Let's flip that around. We have a Bazooka or Portable Cannon kit as an elite kit. How important are the fields/projectile finishers from Mortar kit? Or is it alright that Mortar is so similar to Grenade kit?

i think they'd better update mortar kit since out of the 2 mortar is the least fun to use.

Grenades are useless without the speed trait, and not particularly great with it. They used to be good/decent aoe damage, but power creep has left them behind. They're just mediocre damage now while requiring precise aiming and hitting you for 3-6x the retaliation damage.

• grenade speed trait should be baseline
• maybe add bleeds to the autoattack or grenade barrage, so grenades are like the condi/hybrid version of Mortar? The kit already has 2 strong condi skills. No point in having 2 kits doing ranged aoe power circles.

Mortar is in a pretty good spot after its buff IMO .. but the radius is still too small to make it useful in WvW where you want to be aoe-ing walls and hitting arrow carts that are far back from the edge. This task still exclusively falls to Meteor Shower eles. I feel like Mortar should also be able to hit that far for at least 1 skill.

@derd.6413 said:i think they'd better update mortar kit since out of the 2 mortar is the least fun to use.

I think it does its job - which should be long-ranged, slow, powerful aoe damage. If you want to be doing close-ranged damage, it should be bomb kit. Mid-range should be grenades.

I think a bazooka kit would be much more appropriate in the place of mortar kit, given how unwieldy mortar kit is. Up the damage and make it put a unique speed debuff on us while wielding it (-25% movement speed), and I think it would be fair. It would give core engineer a better place in WvW as well.

Grenade kit needs better flight times, larger radius, and the ability to autoattack with some consistency. The ground targeting is painful (sometimes literally, carpal tunnel) and irritating to use.

How to fix grenades: Revamp "toolbelt skills"

• Core engineer has access to 3 kits.

• Any elite spec has access to 2 kits (since they cannot use 3 core traitlines)

• An engineer using explosives gets access to grenade kit as toolbelt skill.

• An engineer using firearms gets access to flamethrower kit as toolbelt skill.

• An engineer using inventions gets access to bomb kit as toolbelt skill.

• An engineer using alchemy gets access to elixir gun kit as toolbelt skill.

• An engineer using tools gets access to tool kit as toolbelt skill.

• Med Kit sucks who cares.

• Everyone gets access to mortar kit as an elite.

This is where the problem comes into play, though...

• All current "toolbelt skills" are removed or changed/added to existing skills

Example: Elixir S now also stealths as well as granting invulnerability and stunbreak.

Just a thought.

Grenade + Mortar = Grenade Launcher.Make it a normal kit skill so it doesn't competes with other elite skills.Take the best stuff from grenades and from mortar.Put a field on every attack, and some condi too, with a very noticeable scaling from condi dmg attribute. Make some skills go power too, but always keep the condi relevant. Keep the high range from mortar and multiple projectiles from grenade.Add exponential scattering by range: at close range, the kit launches a concentrated attack in a mid sized zone. At long range, the grenades fall separated covering much more area and targets.

Now make Gyros and Photon Forge an elite kit skill, and give the next Elite Spec a Blaster Cannon kit (not projectiles, just beams).

It's funny cause Grenade launcher would basically revert Grenades back to launch where they caused field effects.

@Atmaweapon.7345 said:It's funny cause Grenade launcher would basically revert Grenades back to launch where they caused field effects.

I just want mortar kit to actually feel like an elite skill... it is in our elite slot, right?

An amazing Elite Kit would actually do wonders for Engineer without buffing Holosmith too much, though we probably wouldn't want it to be a forced pick.

I'll start with the Mortar Kit.

It's a neat idea to have a kit as an elite, but in it's current state it's really weak. Even with the recent damage increase, it's still not worth taking because of one reason: the projectile velocity. That is the main reason why the kit is not very good because the projectiles travel very slow. The fields it creates can be helpful, but it's not worth to use the kit all the time, if not ever.

When it comes to the Grenade Kit, I'm happy to say that the it's still a viable kit to use. I recommend you bind the auto attack on a key that's easy to use, like F or C instead of pressing 1. It definitely needs some practice when it comes to predicting movement, at least in PvP but in PvE it shouldn't be a problem. But that doesn't mean it's perfect. My biggest issue with the Grenade Kit is that you must run the Explosives trait Grenadier. As someone who's been playing GW2 since 2013, I'd much rather have the old Grenadier trait back. If you don't remember, the old Grenadier worked like this: throw an additional grenade and have increased range to 1500. It's bizarre when you think about it, but I really want to have that version of Grenadier to be brought back, just change it so that it reduces grenade skills cooldown and increases the range to 1200.

About your idea for the supposed Bazooka Kit, I think you are talking about a better version of the Mortar Kit. If the damage and projectile velocity was increased by a lot, as well as having a toolbelt skill called "Rocket Barrage" I think it would be really neat to see that happen.

Ideally, the Bazooka kit would combine a tweaked version two Charr racial elites, Charrzooka for the kit, and Artillery Barrage for the toolbelt. Artillery Barrage is basically Meteor Shower and having a reasonably powerful Meteor Shower as a toolbelt skill would basically shoot up Core Engi and Tools traitline dps without touching Holosmith at all (since Elite Toolbelts are replaced by Photon Forge.)

Grenade kit really needs to have more upmh. In WvWvW grenade kit has always been a huge viability because of the retaliation. Tossing grenades at enemy zerg can easily cause your health drop by 15k or more in just few seconds (and the problem is that you get the retaliation dmg only after the grenades hit, so you must guess in advance whether targets will have it or not).

I would say give grenades 1200 range. 900 range is way too short in WvWvW setting (my main mode). Grenadier trait should also make some of the skills unblockable (currently poison grenade is unblockable, untraited or not) e.g. make flash grenade unblockable. It is anyways a very weak skill.

Mortar would be good for self-comboing, only if the auto attack could trigger combos more often. Now it happens too rarely. An easy fix would be to make mortar auto attack 240 radius when traited with the orbital command GM trait. Currently this trait is rather weak considering it is GM trait.

grenade - make it only throw 1 nade at a time, reduce cds, buff shrapnelmortar - speed up all the skills, buff the toolbelt skill and trait

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:grenade - make it only throw 1 nade at a time, reduce cds, buff shrapnel

Lol, give grenade kit the phantasms treatment -- Reduce it to 1 nade each, but multiply the damage by 1000%

Both kits--but particularly the grenade kit--should be left to rot and the class should be updated in literally any other way.

The grenade kit has had a disproportionate impact on the class since day one and it being less good means maybe some the issues with the class can be addressed properly.

@lorddarkflare.9186 said:Both kits--but particularly the grenade kit--should be left to rot and the class should be updated in literally any other way.

The grenade kit has had a disproportionate impact on the class since day one and it being less good means maybe some the issues with the class can be addressed properly.

Nerfing grenade kit without anything specific to replace it with is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's one of the most important damage kits/weapon sets for engineer currently, and its presence is in every single PvE build.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to not have to run it, would be great for my fingers. But there needs to be something to replace its damage, or you're just hurting core engineer even more.

make mortar kit unblockable, add minimum range if unbalanced

To me, Grenade kit would benefit most from a shift away from ground targeting. It's clunky. Keeping the throwing animation, keeping the ballistic arc/flight, but treating them as a normal ranged weapons for the sake of sending them at a target or to where the player is looking give essentially the same functionality without making them such a chore to use. Give each grenade, 1-5, on the kit the ability to be exploded in transit, functioning as Flame blast on the Flamethrower kit does presently. If a player plays without target snapping turned on then the aiming/splash damage aspect of grenades would become more simplified and see use similar to how certain staff skills Elementalist function as when using Fireball for small area damage or Water Blast small area healing.

For Mortar kit, rather than a ground target circle I'd have a translucent line in the sky drawn from the player to the mortar shell's destination -similar to the target assist you acquire in Fallout Four when heavily investing into Explosives Expert. Give mortar shells a significantly stronger drop than ordinary ballistically-arcing projectiles(Stronger than arrows or certain Ele staff autos.) Using the camera look, much the way we use it now to target practice when firing ranged skills without a selected target. This would let you fire straight up whilst keeping a ballistic trajectory in order to hit the tops of walls or over them to the inside of a defending tower/keep in WvW. You'd be firing blindly much of the time but at least there would be a way to contribute to the fight once the obvious wall defences(cannons, NPCs etc.) were down. The hope for all this being that with a little indirect fire we'd have more of a place as a counter to excessive arrow carting from behind the walls.