Guild Wars 2

“Let the bombs be bombs” they said…
Yes. Let’s.

The devs did a really good job of splitting up the identity of the newly reworked mortar and the grenade kit to give them different strengths and weaknesses and give reasons to chose one over the other or use them both together.

But now they both pretty much tread on the bomb kit. Elixir infused bombs gave bombs a unique use, which is gone now, and the range is also worse. As the point-blank explosive, dropping grenades or even mortar shells right on your feet is pretty much just as good, if not better.

Bombs have two fields that the mortar kit does not, but pretty much the only unique benefit offered by the bomb kit is a smoke field for blasting stealth,. (Trying to use the flame turret for this is tricky) and maybe AOE confuse.

Basically, Grenades and Mortar have kind of taken away the bomb kit’s identity, in my opinion.

So, for bombs to keep a proper place in the game with a unique use, they need the same treatment as grenades and the mortar in the form of a heavy rework.

Here’s what I’m thinking.
Grenades= Highly spamable multiple weak explosions
Mortar= Highly spamable projectile explosions

So to differentiate the bomb kit, how about we make it less spammy? Perhaps Short Fuse is actually the wrong direction to be going in, trait wise?

What if we instead increased the base fuse time on a bomb to something like 3-4 seconds, maybe even with a short CD on the AA, but bring up the range to about 300 and crank up the damage? And in exchange for that speed nerf, make the standard bomb a blast finisher (Possibly traited)

Basically, while grenades and Mortar are spam-able, the bomb could instead be a slow use, high yield explosive. Powerful single hits.

Explosives Engineer is a very “death by a thousand paper cuts” sort of fighting style with very few large power hits, so a change like this would give bombs a more unique play-style.

So, it’d be impossible to hit another player with a bomb that slow, right?

Here’s the thing, it’d make the entire bomb kit a bit like Big ‘Ol ’Bomb. It’s super telegraphed and obvious, but it’s a great area denial tool. Anyone who sees it is either going to have to move out of the way, ready some damage mitigation tools, or eat the damage. If you rotate intelligently you could combo the explosions from dropped bombs with other kits. It’s telegraphed like any other big wind-up attack, but since the windup is on the bomb rather than on you, you’re free to do whatever it is you want with your other tools while the fuse is running making it open to both intelligent use from the engie and counterplay from the opponent.

On the other hand, it’d be a great high power weapon to use against objects.

I’m sure there’s a lot holes and design kinks that’d need to be worked out but the basic idea is “Maybe bombs would be a more interesting tool if they were slow and powerful to further differentiate themselves from the spamming done by other explosives”

Feel free to offer your own possibilities for bomb kit changes since there’s probably better ideas out there, But I really think something needs to be done to the kit to make it stand out again.

The problem i have with Bombkit is the Radius. Fighting somebody whos Kiting in terms of Moving/strafing the bombs don’t hit. Even when traited for 1sec Detonation, 1 second is more then enough time for them to get out the bombs. We used to have a trait to increase explosive radius which made bombkit more viable for roaming.

I hope bombkit does get worked, especially in terms of radius.

Okay – How about we work the bombs like reverted Longbow #1 skill for Ranger? Ergo: The damage is downscaling the further You are from the bombs? Let’s give them radius of lets say 600 but from 600 to 300 you deal 1/3 of basic damage, between 300 and 200 2/3 and under 150 units You deal 100% damage?

Let’s up it’s damage by let’s say 20% – so on Ascended Berserker with Scholar Runes single bomb under 150 units deals around 1,2k dmg witch critical chance for 2,4k. This way anyone outside of 600 units range is safe, the bombs are easily avoidable (as they were before) but make for viable and powerful defensive weapons. YES – this will make killing someone with autoattack within 10 seconds possible, but within 150 units from the engineer – so basicly hugging the poor sod. On the other hand at the range of 600 You would get like 400 dmg…

This way bombs get damage on pair with sword/sword warrior. And each class has ability to use weapons exceeding the range of 600. The only character very, very prone to this tactic would be mediocre thief with two daggers who does not knot how to dodge. And with d/d / d/d at that. A class that engineers are counter to anyway.

Nades:
Hybrid / condi
Fast paced attacks
chill, blind, poison, bleed
Weak AA / hard hitting #2/#4 (in comparison to mortar & bombs)
No direct Synergy with traits from other traitlines
Effective on Point-blank to mid range (600-900 if traited, else 300-600)

Mortar:
Power / Hybrid
Regular Paced attacks
Chill / Blind / Poison / Healing
Powerful AA / weak #2-5 (compared to other explosives)
Direct Synergy with HgH from Alchemy
Effective for placing fields: 0-1500 / The AA starts to loose reliability beyond 600 range

Bombs:
Power / Condi / Hybrid
Burning, Blind, confusion, cripple, Immob
Powerful AA / weak #2-5(compared to other explosives)
No direct Synergy with traits from other trait lines
Effective on Point-blank to minus 300-600, if enemies are dumb enough (AI / Scrubs) to chase directly

The above described is my observation from the past hours of testing.
We have a explosives-kit for all ranges.
Nades are the odd-ball in terms of weak AA and lack of combo-fields & finishers, but bring a well balanced setup of dmg & condi-control/pressure. In case a stun-lock is called out, they can quickly response with grenade-barrage.
Bombs are our go-to kit for offensive utility in melee combat, since they bring fire & smoke-fields, therefore offering group stealth & might, while messing with the mobility of melee enemies. BoB allows for areal-denial (big “kitten off” sign for enemies), corpse-deplacement, and 1 or 2 blasts, depending on the traits chosen. Sticking to allies and spamming 1 while the lock-on trait is slotted is usually the best way to kitten up thieves, if there are any close-by.
Mortar is our long-range solution for direct support & soft-cc’s. If traited, the double-blast finisher in a previously dropped frost-field is perfect for giving allies a significant advantage on the point, the AA is perfect to harass camping staff-eles and rangers, and still performs awesome in PB-range, and the long-lasting waterfield eases up our healing-combos, such as shield #4, BoB and jumpshot. If traited with HgH, it also contributes to might-stacking, hence opening up kit-builds that take Elixir H, Mortar and Elixir Gun, without the need of additional elixirs (toolkit & nades or toolkit & bombs are both reasonable setups).

I’d say bombs are fine where they are, if used in the proper moment & backed up by mortar (nades + bombs can work, but would take up the slot of either a stunbreak or toolkit for the cc&block).
Given that mortar gets a proper polish-update, I don’t see any issues with bombs.