I’ve played around with 2 Mortar Trap builds, both of them are “Elemental” based with conversion etc. I still feel the damage output end-game is not high enough.
Generally speaking on both builds the damage output from standard Mortar shells is around 12,000-15,000 crit damage, without any resist reduction modifiers etc. “The Big One” will usually crit for around 20,000-25,000 again without resist reduction modifiers.
Let’s look at my sorcerer. I have “The Big One” at 18/12 and “Annihilation” relic equipped. The granted skill Meteor on that build will crit for around 40,000 again without modifiers. I feel “The Big One” should be equal or higher in damage output to this particular item granted skill. When “The Big One” lands it doesn’t feel satisfying most of the time.
Suggestions
Add the bonuses from Ulzuin’s Chosen to Mortar Trap or
Slightly increase the damage output and add +% crit damage to “The Big One”
Lastly have the Mortar Trap’s attack speed be increased by your character’s cast/attack speed.
I understand some people will say that you can have 2-3 Mortar Traps at once. But let’s face it, this is against bosses only and generally bosses tend to have an AoE attack that decimates your Mortar’s negating the damage increase. Sharzul is a great example.
My BWC and Grenado builds do double to triple damage so for a skill with such large investment I’m just looking to get my point’s worth.
I haven’t made a physical focused Mortar build yet, but am not expecting the damage to be much higher. I’ll look into that next.
You can go further and just make the Ulzuin’s Choosen affect all skills associated with explosions and grenades (i.e. other than those to which he now influences add Molotov cocktails and mortar trap).
I made a post here mentioning this before and I will +1 yours
+1
I really like the idea of the skill it just doesn’t do a whole lot given the point investment even with huge conversion, resist reduction etc. I also dislike that Grenado requires a pretty massive point investment (as well as decent OA) to do any damage
Few points:
-Mortar shots show 2 numbers, one for your base number of the Mortar and the other for Heavy Ordinance, of course “The Big One” would be a separate skill that the Mortar uses
-3 Mortars means triple the damage while also meaning triple the chance for procs to go off
-Thermite Mines work perfectly well with a Mortar build what with the -% resistant reduction.
-Mortars cannot die, not sure why you would say that - otherwise myself I haven’t seen that instance occur
-Mortar + Stormcaller’s Pact + Lightning Conversion is quite effective, more so with Storm Totems
-Mortars can sometimes disrupt pathing of enemies (as well as Storm Totems)
-Flashbang obviously helps with getting crits and slowing enemies making Mortars more effective
Numbers (complete estimates since it’s difficult to get consistant numbers):
-Normal Mortar Shots seem to deal around 11-16k base adding both Mortar and Heavy Ordinance numbers together
-Flashbang Mortar Crit Shots I’ve seen get up to around 18k damage. Adding both damage numbers would probably bring that up to over 20k damage easily.
-Thermite Mines + Flashbang I’ve seen crits go up to 26k damage for base Mortar Shots (again even more damage with the second damage number added so perhaps up to 30k total with crit/2nd number), difficult to see the base damage number with out crits since Thermite Mines also are hitting for damage
-Thermite Mines + Flashbang + Elemental Storm I’ve seen crits of around 30-31k damage so probably a total of 35k damage with the 2nd damage number
Now that is just some really estimated damage numbers and I still use Storm Totems so having 3 of each you can probably see how the damage numbers can sky rocket quite fast.
“The Big One” is harder to test as it doesn’t seem to be used against target dummies but since it’s like 14/12 I don’t expect too much in the damage department. I would agree that for a skill that isn’t used too often it’s damage numbers could be increased - for the base Mortar skill perhaps a bump in damage as it isn’t effected by attack/cast speed (that I’m aware of since it’s no longer a pet) though having 3 out possibly is still a counter argument against that.
Also for the example of Sharzul I’m quite sure he’s resistant against the damage types that Mortar would use + since he’s in Bastion of Chaos his level would be a lot higher as well.
I’ll see about doing a BoC run in the future for a resfresher on how effective my build is for that run. Also do a few other runs as well for diversity.
edit: Sharzul took under 2 minutes to kill - getting through BoC probably took 20ish minutes maybe less as I wasn’t entirely paying attention to the timing. Didn’t kill everything and as for safety there were a few times where I dropped quite a bit in health but having Turtle Shell Devotion Skill negated that danger.
This is not true, Mortar Trap can die like Thermite Mine, especially when there’s a lot of ground AoE going on they’ll die in no time (you can test with fighting boss with a lot of AoE), this apply to most summons that scale with player except Wind Devil/Storm Totem and maybe Blade Spirit(not sure). I don’t know why Devs left the other vincible. Why havene’t they change all summons that scale with player invincible already. There’s no point in buffing them if they gonna die in major fights all the time. It’s not like you can buff their survivability like getting % pet health and their HP seem to not scale with their level at all.
I just want to point out one the most important issues these summons have.
So before we talk about buffing anything, please makes them all invincible!!
Let them live!!!
Keep in mind this video is from last build not the current build. But I don’t believe the mechanics have changed.
In this vid at 25:16 you’ll see my character drop a Mortar Trap.
At 25:22 that Mortar Trap has already been decimated by Sharzul’s flame.
It happens to Thermite Mine’s as well.
At 2:07 Thermite Mine’s are up and running.
At 2:20 The four mines closest to Fabius have been destroyed.
It’s hard to tell from the vids, but I swear I’ve seen it happen too many times for it to just be coincidence.
I tried to avoid listing damage augmentation abilities because there’s just too many variables. In general most builds will have 1 flat resist reduction ability and 2 %resist reduction abilities.
My current Elementalist at level 83 has
OA at 2809 (2959 under the effects of Savagery)
Crit modifier + 115%
Lightning Modifier +1376% (+1502% under the effects of Savagery)
Fire +729%
60% physical to lightning conversion.
It has Elemental Storm, Thermite Mine’s, Flashbang, Arcane Bomb, Eldritch Fire for resist reductions.
The damage output is decent but I guess I was expecting more. I mean realistically I feel “The Big One” is one of those “Just you wait mate” nukes. But sometimes it’s damage just seems under-whelming. If I compared it to just Meteor as mentioned in my first post. The damage from Meteor without any modifiers is a lot higher. I still like the skill and will continue to use it, but it definitely feels like it’s lagging behind.
I personally find Mortar Trap to be in a weird spot.
It costs many points and is high in the demo tree => a build using it is probably very demo centric.
It’s essentially a glorified (and fun) dot with very backloaded damage => perfect for a tanky, reliable and steady build.
Demolitionist is focused around frontloaded damage (except mines and mortar) and crowd control.
These 3 statements can’t really work together that well. If I wanted to make Mortar Trap valuable ‘as is’, I would put it very early in the tree (mastery lvl 1 or 5) and built in the big one in the base skill. Maybe add a chaos conversion transmuter. In my mind, this would make the skill interesting for two builds:
-: tanky soldier looking for a bit of sustained damage.
-: tanky occultist looking for a different chaos/vitality approach than the conjurer.
I can’t bring myself to use it as something other than a ‘1-3 point wonder’ in a heavy demo build.
Also, mines are stupid ! Think about it. Is any monster really going to willingly step in a geyser of flames on its own volition ?
I know this could be said for every ground effect. But mines are actually slowly thrown, then deployed, then activated. It’s ridiculous
whole tech skills are stupid, boring and not willing to use. i really hate bombing things and not using them even useful flashbang. when i consider to doing a build i always eleminate demo.
What ? But… I love demolitionist ! It’s my favorite !
I mean, you have a ‘street art’ specialization focusing on tagging the ground with pink and green goo, Smurf specialization, Mowgli specialization, Stabby specialization and ‘put a kettle on your head and call it a helmet’ specialization. Demolitionists are way better than these !
Well now Mortars and Thermite Mines dying is something I obviously didn’t pay attention to.
Most likely I just keep resumming the 2 skills for positioning purpose so they don’t live long enough to die. That or Heart of the Wild’s % Life Bonus effects their hidden life pool so they can survive a bit longer.
I can definitely see a need for buffs or changes since a Mortar that dies before making use of The Big One doesn’t sound really good for obvious reasons.
I’m slowly leveling a sorcerer with a static group meeting once a week and am only at 68. My first thought was that it’s kind of an apples to oranges comparison with Mortar Trap being a fire and forget skill, aside from it dying I guess. It does the bulk of my damage while I manually fire off other skills. However, I like your suggestions. As our group levels and I increase damage on my other skills, I find more and more that the mortar is hitting targets that are already dead, so some boosts to The Big One and a way to increase attack speed are maybe warranted.
I’m thinking that my previous suggestion in another thread may suffice.
Just adding Internal Trauma to both Mortar Trap and The Big One will automatically increase it’s damage output as well as synergise with existing DoT builds. Internal Trauma can then be converted to Burn/Electrocute etc.
The idea is that if the initial blast doesn’t finish them off, the latter will (or at least continue to damage the enemy whilst you seek cover).
