Guild Wars 2

I think I have a solution to retain the essence of the Elixir Infused Bombs playstyle without full on returning or recreating the trait. It is a compromise which would require minimum changes to the developers upcoming plans, but which I believe would satisfy fans of the original EIB builds.

Simply change bunker down by removing its critical hit requirement.

EX: Bunker Down – When you strike an opponent, you have a 50% chance to create a med pack and a mine at your location, on a 2 second internal cooldown.

EX 2: Bunker Down – When you strike an opponent, you have a 50% chance to create a med pack at your location, in addition to a mine on critical hits, on a 2 second internal cooldown.

By removing the critical hit requirement for the medpack you open this up to be a real support option. And moreover, a support option which, much like EIF, would reward you for the manic in-your-face playstyle many people have always love about the bomb kit, but don’t see as an option any longer since EIFs removal.

With the critical hit requirement on the other hand, it will never be a true support option, because the investment in precision will just never be worth it to a support build. Either there would have to be a lot more options for support driven critical hit procs added alongside bunker down, or its critical hit proc would have to be increased to make the investment worth it. Given those two options, removing the critical hit requirement seems like the best route.

Addendum: Not sure how the ‘new’ med packs are going to scale, or what uptime a 50% proc would give the trait, so I can’t say for sure any of the numbers I’ve given would be balanced. However the idea itself can definitely be balanced, since if needed to, they have the option to make the trait drop ‘mini’ med-packs as compared to the med kit, similar to how the current bunker down drops miniature mines as compared to the mine gadget.

Josh Davis.6015:

Depends on how you look at it. I read this post, crafted a build in about 5 mins on our dev branch in PvP (clerics, monk runes, etc), and it does pretty well. The skill pulses the heal 3x in one channel. I was doing 159 ticks with no boons on my target, which is 477 healing in one channel. I applied 5 boons to my target, and that turns into 243 ticks (729 over one channel).

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Josh Davis.6015:

Depends on how you look at it. I read this post, crafted a build in about 5 mins on our dev branch in PvP (clerics, monk runes, etc), and it does pretty well. The skill pulses the heal 3x in one channel. I was doing 159 ticks with no boons on my target, which is 477 healing in one channel. I applied 5 boons to my target, and that turns into 243 ticks (729 over one channel).

John is talking about the new med kit healing blast skill, a completely non-damaging heal skill on a non-damaging kit which is the redesign of an existing heal skill on an existing kit, which has no interaction whatsoever with EIF or the bomb kit, nor will have any such interaction after its redesign.

That skill does not retain nor even remotely resemble the manic aggressive support playstyle you get from running EIF and the bomb kit, honestly so obviously so that your post isn’t even on topic with the thread. I’m not sure if you posted without reading the OP, don’t know what EIF is, or you are just a pretentious jerk for kicks and giggles, but in any case your post is contributing nothing for or against my suggestion, so please elaborate with your own thoughts that are actually on topic with the thread subject or remove your post.

The critical hit requirement is something of a balancing measure though. You need to have a heavy investment in crit to make good use of it, meaning it eats up one of your primary stats. Depending on how much the bandages heal and scale with Healing Power, it might be very overpowered to have full tank stats and full bunker down procs. Having to give up one of the three defense stats might be the intended trade-off.

Elixer infused bomb was never a “full” support build anyways, IMO. The beauty of the skill is simultaneous healing and attacking so you need power to get the most out of it, so cleric is a pretty good stat for heal bomb bunkering.

The new Bunker down is still pretty much in the spirit of healing and attacking at the same time, but now it favors Magi stats over cleric ones. The lack of power damage is still a nerf over crit procs though, so you’d need a build fully centered around crit procs in order to still have any kind of decent damage, but a crit prov build favors condi damge for all the on crit bleeds and such. It winds up favoring grenades over the bomb kit now, and If you take Magi, you’d probably need to run an HGH build to keep your damage up to par with your healing.

That said, isn’t the heal on blast finisher trait more of the successor to elixer infused bombs than bunker down is? It lets you heal with explosions and requires no crit procs or anything. It’s less spamable, but works just fine in a similar “in your face” playstyle. And you can use both those traits and keep up a pretty steady stream of heals and attacks.

Overall, I’m thinking the most optimal recreation of an Elixer Infused Bomb type build (Keep in mind I’m mostly thinking from a PvP perspective for this one) would be Celestial Explosions+Inventions (Plus whatever 3rd suits you) with the blast on dodge, heal on blast and blast on heals traits, bunker down; bomb kit, grenades or both acording to preference; and with the heal turret as a heal. Fill in the rest acording to personal preference while aiming to get the most possible blast finishers.

Alternately, Juggernaught and flamethrower might be surprisingly good for an elixer bomb replacement in combination with the inventions line traits. A blast every 5 seconds, might for days, and the 10-hit AA makes it easy to get a bunker down proc even with a lower crit rate, and if you want to be supporty, that stability is very handy for making sure you get your heals off and helps make rezzing and stomping easier.