Guild Wars 2

I’m running a build for SPvP using bombs, elixir gun and toolkit. The rest of the build isn’t so important but I was wondering if forceful explosives is actually worth it in pvp. Because if not I could take Shrapnel and apply some pretty powerful bleed stacks. Any suggestions?

I don’t know if it’s vital anymore. You used to need to pinpoint people and combo with bombs untraited to actually hit anything. Now they’re enormous even without.

I should probably mention that shrapnel is pretty ineffective without grenade kit. Bombs hit once, grenades three times, and the chance of a shrapnel proc (while good when it happens) is pretty low so you want to maximize the amount of chances. The might on heal trait is alright though.

It’ll be very hard to hit a decent player without forceful explosives.

At least, that is my experience playing against/using bombs.

I think in pvp Shrapnel is better in almost every situation. Only if you run berserker or valkyrie forceful explosives may be better.
Even if you have no condition damage, Shrapnel will add an average 100 damage to all your bombs which is a very decent increase of your damage.

I would consider shrapnel to be a very, very small damage gain to spend an entire trait on—long bleeds are almost always cleansed, because cleansing prioritizes the last condition added or the last stack updated. Since bleeds are very common, they are almost always the first thing to go.

It also depends on whether your build is tanky or not. I assume that with bombs, elixir gun, and toolkit, you’re pretty much a full tank. In that case, I’d say you should take forceful explosives because you can afford to sit on a point dumping bombs for a bit.

tl;dr Incendiary powder is better for dps builds; forceful explosives is better for bunkers. I advise against shrapnel.

I see, I didn’t think about the cleansing factor. I was only theorizing the damage and testing on golems/npc classes so the cleansing never came up. I think I will stick with forceful explosives for now. It is definitely nice for glue and fire bomb at least.

Personally I love shrapnel in bomb builds. It gives condition damage value to bomb auto attack. And if it gets cleansed, I will apply another one very soon . A profession can have all 3 utilities with a cleanse on them, and I will still get 500-700 damage between cool downs for them to remove it, and that is under optimal condition removal situations for them.

I am arguing from a different perspective though. Mine is not a choice of either/or, as I run a 30/30/0/0/10 build. Using forceful explosives, shrapnel, and short fuse for my bombs.