Guild Wars 2

I have noticed that bombs take just long enough to go off that they can be walked out of in PvP too easily. I know we have CC but I only have so much CC that doesn’t knock back. Even crippled opponents seem to simply walk out of them. It is annoying and it would be wonderful if they lowered the detonation time a smidgen.That is all.

Yep. Been a problem for a long long time now.

It was particularly noticeable when they reduced the AOE range of bombs to well below that of a dagger slash.

Now the same fuse times make it just unreliable for anything other then a toolbelt skill.

They also need to look at how many stacks of vulnerability these bombs stack because grenades stack minimum of 2 each and I noticed today that grenades when traited stack 2 stacks of bleed as well minimum. Also the bombs with special effects like concussion and smoke don’t do any damage unlike that of the grenade kit.

So until they fix these things bomb and toolkit will remain far far behind the grenade kit in damage.

The range of bombs will appear to be lower than a dagger, but that’s because bombs are a circle AoE. In other words, the radius is 120 (in all directions) compared to a range of 130 for melee weapons; so it’s not actually smaller.

It is definitely difficult to get bombs to hit in PvP. One option is to sit on a point and hope the enemy sits in melee range. This will work if you’re fighting a bad team, and then they’ll come to the PvP forum and say bombkit is OP (literally not joking).

I recommend baiting people. If you are fighting a thief/guard/warrior/melee ranger/ele/engi, maybe open the fight with elixir gun auto (seriously—if you’re not using EG in a condi build right now, start using it) and then acid bomb away when they get close—making them think you want to stay at range. Turning your back to an enemy can even be helpful. If you turn your back to a thief, they won’t be able to resist—their instincts will kick in and they will 2 toward you. Dodge, of course. If you have time, prep the area you are baiting with bomb #2 or #3. When they are really close, use BoB followed immediately by glue bomb.

You signed up for the engineer profession—you now must work twice as hard as anyone else to land your damage. But when you get good at landing it, you’ll be near unstoppable.

I don’t have an issue with the bomb fuse on dry land, but have you tried the big old bomb (bomb kit toolbelt skill) underwater? Underwater that bombkit toolbelt skill has strangely long aftercast, probably over 1 second. If you don’t press the toolbelt skill activation button for at least 2 seconds the skill fails. This is happening in WvWvW all the time. Yet, if I try the same skill at Lions Arch it doesn’t have that long aftercast.

I also use BK a lot for burst setups. The kit has a fire and smoke field that you can use, off of our many blast skills. So, drop fire, swap to eg, acid bomb away (4 stacks of might), pop with 1, 3, drop super elixir, switch to P/S, do magnetic shield and push away to keep HoTing ( and get retaliation), etc…

Or, smoke bomb to mag shield to push away and stealth to give you some breathing room.