Standard Mortar Strategies - does it need a buff?

After a year of accumulating, very, very, slowly, 10 Legendary pieces I finally got to combine them... into a Standard Mortar. That was literally the last weapon on my want list for 6 simple reasons:

1. Mortars are unused in end game since ships all outrun them.
2. LRM has longer range, Ballpark and Big Berta have same range
3. Ballpark and Big Berta have larger AoE
4. Big Berta issues more damage.
5. Projectile speed is no better.
6. LRM and Ballpark have same cool down. Training tree offers 10% reduction, but that only saves 1 second, whereas (the primary advantage Standard Canon has over all other canons is substantially less cool down).

In other words Standard Mortar has no advantage over any other mortar that makes it useful, and as a result it's at the bottom of the weapon usage stats. Did the designers forget about this one?

For lack of any ideas I equipped it with 3 freeze damage perks giving it a 22% boost. Maybe it has use on an Enforcer with a Frost Blaster or Frost Canon, but outside of that I'm at a loss. How do you guys use it?

 

No one besides us unlucky guys use it. .

 

Im sorry to hear that, almost makes my Tri Torp look good ;(

Standard Mortar is good for 1 thing, guild quests! Probably not a bad idea to build an Enfo with aoe freeze+ mortar(s). Your guild will love you!

 

Its name should be changed to (fast mortar) and then devs should make it the fastest mortar even faster or equalled to LRM ( or it should be equalled to LRM speed and then LRM speed should become slower , because it is long range mortar and not fast &long range mortar)

 

What about turning it into this?

 

I used to equip my enforcer with frost launcher, double sniper and standard mortar, it was really fun because of its cooldown but frost launcher is not a good option anymore

 

I think the standard mortar should have the fastest projectile speed. I believe it already has the fastest reload due to Mortimer’s talent tree.

LRM should have the same speed, less dmg, more range, and slightly longer reload.

Ballpark should have less speed, bigger AOE, same dmg, and slightly longer reload.

Big Berta should have longer range, more dmg, bigger AOE, longer reload(since its a 2pt weapon)

 

Frost/mortar enforcers are still good. Got to 1100 infamy with it

 

I've been playing with Std Mortar for a few days now, and my opinion remains the same. It is without question outclassed by every other mortar, and that is why it's not used. IMO, and based on all the usage stats (least used of all weapons I think), it's definitely deserving of a buff the most of any weapon in this game.

It needs something to distinguish it from the other mortars. If we follow the Std Canon model, both the projectile speed and the reload should be improved. AoE is small, range is small, speed is no better than any other mortar, and damage is mediocre. Training only drops reload time by 10%. I could also argue damage needs to be higher as well.

What does logic tell you would have higher damage, Grenade or Std Mortar? Think about it.. a Grenade is a hand held explosive you carry on your belt and a Mortar requires a launching tube, In BB though, Grenade deals substantially more damage:
Rare Grenade Damage Max 915.
Rare Std Mortar Damage Max 779.

But wait, there's more!

The Grenade has special crit fire perks, allowing you to catch an enemy on fire, with the ability to deal almost 50% more damage than Std Mortar.

LRM with significantly longer range than Std Mortar and less damage... but the damage decrease is only 10%.... not the 50% decrease between Std Mortar and Grenade.

So many things...

 

scrap it ?

 

BMortar is a hell lot easier to land
BBerta deals almost the same damage no matter where the enemy is as long as they're in the radius

 

Considering it's only worth 1 legendary piece, 1 legendary cell, and 30 legendary parts, and I'm lucky to see 1 piece per month and will never have dups to evolve, that's a bunch of worthless crap.

At least it's semi-useful for Guild Quests.... and not so coincidentally we have one on the board now. I didn't actually want a Legendary of something I use because it wouldn't replace any of my T5 Rares on the boat anyhow (Legendary is just a shortcut to a T5 Rare without needing to build it). Unfortunately this Std Mortar has the range of my Rare Canons and deals only a fraction of the damage, so I can't wait to get it off my boat when this quest is completed.

 

I have another Standard Mortar guild quest so I brought it out again, and it's still painful to use this weapon. I added a range perk this time, and while feels just a little better, let's face it, it's still out-classed in every stat by other mortars. It would be nice if we could donate an item to the guild and let others "check it out" for quests. Is there anyone that uses this thing successfully?

 

no need buffing, its low CD meant to use as crowd controling, spamming, luring to mine, torp n choke point...

 

Lower than what? LRM and Ballpark have the same cooldown. LRM reaches farther, and Ballpark has a larger radius. Standard Mortar is outclassed by everything else.

 

Isn't standard mortar has 8 secs cooldown?

 

Standard/LRM/Ballpark are all 10s cool down. BB is 15.6s.

Also to be clear, there are a couple of 10% cool downs available for Standard Mortar that would get it closer to 8s, but it's not like Standard Canon that is already the shortest cool down of all Canons at 5.6s vs 11.1 (BC/Sniper) and ExC @14.4... because it also has even more 10% cool down trainings available (3 of them).

 

Maybe it needs one more cd talent. Would you use a 7 secs cd standard mortar? It has smaller radius than ballpark but still has high damage than ballpark and lrm.

 

While Std Canon has 12% more damage, I can easily make 25% more shots with an LRM...and to be frank, it's more like 100% more hits for me. Standard Canon needs a lot to bring it up to par with the rest of the mortars... some combination of lower cooldown, higher range, larger AoE, faster projectile, more damage.