Artillery Turret is extremely awkward to use and much less fun than it should be. | Forums

[Aetrion]

I picked this up on a holiday sale, so I'm pretty new to the game. I went through the first 30 levels and finally unlocked my specialization. I picked Demolitionist because I really liked the idea of having a mortar turret that can rain down explosives on my enemies, but the ability is kind of a disappointment, because it's riddled with issues.

The biggest problem is that it's extremely awkward to use. If you don't have an elevated position where you have a good view of the floor it's a complete mess to actually try to lob mortar shells over the enemies cover. When you're on the ground and you're trying to target the floor a specific distance away you're basically working with mere pixels of difference between dropping the shell short or arcing it over the enemies head. The aim indicators for explosives are luckily very good in The Division 2, so you can kind of finagle it into place most of the time, but it's much more awkward than it should be and certainly not fun to use.

The shell is also extremely slow and enemies dodge out of the way of it, which means the further away the target the less likely you are to actually score a hit, because it will just have the time to leisurely stroll out of the impact radius.

On top of that you basically can't use this ability if you're in any location with low ceilings unless you order it to just drop the shell on the ground right next to itself.

These three factors combined completely undermine the role of this turret. It's a mortar, but it's a power house up close, and basically unusable at long range. Between not being able to effectively target the floor if you're aiming at a shallow angle, slow shells that never hit if you're bombarding an area too far away, and many indoor settings preventing long range shots entirely it's basically relegated to a short range weapon.

Then there is the fact that in this game if you're hiding behind a cardboard box and a mortar round hits the front of that cardboard box you're completely unharmed. Explosions are kind of a joke in this game. I'd much rather have the mortar use fire or oxidizer because those spread in their full radius through cover, so you can hit enemies by shooting the front of their cover. That would make it infinitely easier to actually hit with this freaking thing because you'd be able to target something vertical, as opposed to having to target the floor about 2 meters behind the enemy cover to actually get any effect.

Enemy bosses also seem to have very significant immunity or resistance to the mortar, so even dropping a dozen shells on an enemy tank mob just doesn't seem to do anything, doesn't damage their weak spots, just generally feels pointless.

The ability to fire a lot of shots is also really not that useful because it usually takes longer to find a useful aim spot than it does for the mortar to reload. Especially if you have it upgraded to have 15 rounds in it you'd think you can unleash a massive bombardment, but you're mostly just slowly scanning around for the pixel where the shell might actually hit, provided the enemy doesn't simply leave.

It doesn't even seem to do significantly more damage than a seeker mine given how infinitely harder it is to actually hit anything with the mortar.



So basically you have a signature skill for a class that should be an automated mortar system that allows you to bombard the enemy with heavy ordnance during a fight, which seems like it should be a total blast to use (no pun intended), but the way the ability works restricts its effective usage to very short range, is awkward to aim with, and frequently ineffective due to factors you can't control. It's great when you're sitting on top of a building and basically nuking enemies from orbit, but that's less than one percent of the fights you'll get in in this game.



So what could be done to make this better?

Give the mortar some kind of meaningful targeting mode. Having it simply follow your aim around is a joke, there is no way for you to effectively line up shots while at the same time spotting for the mortar anyways. Maybe double tapping the ability button puts you in the mortar, so you can at least control it the same way that you can shoot your grenade launcher, which is a lot easier. Maybe allow people to dial in the distance without having to aim at the floor, like using the mouse wheel to increase or decrease range so you still have fine control even when you're aiming at something that's far away.

If the targeting can't possibly be improved, change the grenades to something that can go through cover, like oxidizer or fire, then at least you don't have to be pinpoint precise to actually hit enemies. I like the idea of a bombardment ability where shot placement matters, but I have to be able to actually place shots for that to be fun. If aiming can't be done well then it should require less aiming to be effective with this ability.

Allow the player to switch to firing on a flat trajectory, so you don't get completely screwed by indoor spaces.

Make the projectiles a bit faster, they are ridiculously slow. Maybe make them glow less, too. It seems like they are meant to be dodged, and it's not fun to be stuck with an ability that lets your opponents counter it 100% even if your aim is perfect.

Make enemies less aware of mortar fire the further away they are from the mortar. Long range fire should be the most effective, not the least effective. It's short range fire that enemies should readily dodge.

Maybe give it some kind of synergy with abilities that mark enemies, like the surveillance drone or pulse, since any artillery system relies on targeting information to be effective, and not being able to accurately aim from where you are is usually the biggest problem with the mortar. Abilities that specifically exist to feed you information about where enemies are should help with this somehow, even though the biggest problem with the mortar is usually simply fighting with the controls to actually aim it where you want it to land.

[Aetrion]

I had another thought on this. Anthem had a bunch of mortars in it that at first glance worked very similarly, You'd see an arc, you'd see an impact zone, and you'd be able to aim them that way, but there was a big difference: You didn't aim at the point on the ground you wanted to hit, but you aimed up and down to change the elevation of your mortar, and could track where the impact would occur through the arc and marker as a result. That was a much better system, because it doesn't suffer the problem of perspective smooshing every bit of ground you can see from between about 10 meters away and the horizon into a single inch of your screen, or not being able to aim somewhere because you couldn't see the ground behind a bunch of cover. You'd simply be able to regulate the range smoothly by moving the mouse up and down while looking at the impact marker.

[bioblaze10656]

Ur not wrong i recently made an explosice build with mortar and firefly the mortar it does have its limited use one thing they could do is add a double tap so you can see if the spot is gonna hit or not

[Agent_Ares]

The shell is also extremely slow and enemies dodge out of the way of it, which means the further away the target the less likely you are to actually score a hit, because it will just have the time to leisurely stroll out of the impact radius.

That is because most people use it wrong. You need to equip the right tools for the mission and not just expect any tool to work anywhere.
Mortar is meant to be used outside first of all.

2nd. The Mortar rounds works like a Grenade mechanics which means enemies will dodge it based on awareness and rank

Unaware - Will not Dodge
Red Bar Enemies - Will dodge if moving, will not dodge in cover
Purple Bar \ Yellow Bar \ Unique - Will dodge in Cover

To have Mortar work against Purple \ Yellow \ Unique you either have to stun them.
With a Debuff like Electricity \ Fire \ Shooting a Weakpoint ( Shooting Ammo Belt on Machine Gun users stuns them for 3s while the bullets explode )

Or by Suppressing them by using LMG and shooting at them. When Supresed enemies do not dodge grenades.

Other Abilities that can Stun
Firefly Blind
Hive Stinger
Chem Launcher Fire
Flashbang Grenade
Firewall Grenade
Survivor Grenade
Seeker Airburst
Pulse Electronics
Firefly Weakpoint ( based on the type of weakpoint )
EMP Gernades

Certain Weapons that can apply Debuffs such as applying Burn \ Electricity

So ya.- It is all about learning to play the game to most effectively use the ability at hand.

[Aetrion]

So ya.- It is all about learning to play the game to most effectively use the ability at hand.

Right, why didn't I have to learn the game when I used the deathballs that simply automatically hit everything in the room for more damage? Or the machine gun turret that just starts killing things entirely on its own initiative no matter where you deploy it?

Sorry, but this "It's not broken, you're just using it wrong" rhetoric is BS, because that simply doesn't apply to all abilities. Most of them are extremely easy to use in any and all situations while being just as if not more effective, on top of not being a class exclusive. It's perfectly reasonable to call for an overhaul or better balance in cases like that.

[brun0f53]

this is quite simple to summarize, all skills should target an enemy and not a place

[Aetrion]

this is quite simple to summarize, all skills should target an enemy and not a place

I actually don't think it's that simple, because there are situations where if you're aiming directly at the person the explosive will just hit their cover, but if you could aim just slightly behind them it would blow them up. There are also situations where aiming at a person would hit that one person, but placing the impact between two or three people would hit all of them.

[Kurzak006]

I like the way it is. It takes a certain level of finesse. I'm currently rocking Heroics with it and likely will move on to Legendary soon. Aim around the cover at the ground, or if you're elevated you can aim on the top of lower cover. Seek higher ground when possible. It takes practice, but eventually you can constantly lob mortars, while queuing up other skills and firing in between. My only real issue with the skill is there is this thing where the mortar locks on a location sometimes and I haven't figured out how to unlock that location without cancelling the turret. I'm not sure if it is an intended feature or a bug, it can be quite frustrating. It always seem to happen when I'm spamming the fire key, so to try and avoid the 'lock-up' I try to fire more methodical with proper timing between shots. Hope this helps.

[Agent_Ares]

They should just change artillery into sniper turrettt but using a trajectory.