Guild Wars 2

So I decided to create an ele and compare it to the healing bombs after buffing the crap out of healing. After near max on healing, I only got a hair less than 450 healing. The ele on the other hand underleveled was healing for 353 with absolutely no points inside of the healing chart. Not asking for much of a buff, but at least another 150 hp if Im going to put stuff into my healing. Base healing for healing bombs with no points in healing heals about 200 hp. So you are paying for only an extra 250 hp if you max healing bombs while that ele gets that over 300 healing to begin with? Not trying to turn engi into ele, but give us a break.

You’re right, this trait is too weak as it is. It’s a shame, because that would be great for a support build, something like shoutbow warrior or cleric ranger/elementalist.

What ability were you using as a comparison for on the ele? The staff water auto-attack? It’s too difficult to understand the comparison without specifying the actual ability/abilities being used for the ele.

As far as elixir-infused bombs go, it has very poor scaling with healing power. If you want to rely on it as a sole source of healing, it won’t work out very well. Do note, however, that engineer can have fairly potent AoE healing capabilities with high healing power, so the potential for those kinds of builds are still there.

As for why elixir-infused bombs has such poor healing power scaling, I imagine it has to do with the fact that the bomb kit still has the rest of it’s functionality intact. That is, it can still be a potent source of direct and condition AoE damage (unlike the ele water staff, which has piddly damage). I believe it also applies to the auto-bomb on dodge, though I haven’t tested that. I believe they want to ensure that the trait doesn’t provide too much healing, especially since it will work in conjunction with backpack regenerator, the regeneration boon, and things like super elixir.

The other main issue with the trait is that it’s a grandmaster in the inventions line, which is a difficult line to invest in for most builds. The engineer has to sacrifice a lot in order to take it, and the payoff for doing so is questionable. I think the only true use in it is in very specialized builds that use the extra sustain to accomplish very specific things. Even something like a node-holder build, which the trait seems tailored towards, has a hard time fitting elixir-infused bombs in the build with all the other traits that are often necessary.

So perhaps the correct answer isn’t to make it stronger, but to make it more accessible. That could mean either swapping it out of grandmaster tier, or maybe combining it with some other trait while introducing a new one.

it’s nice with backpack rgn

Needs to be moved to the Explosives line as a Master trait, which would allow you to take Forceful Explosives, Elixir Infused Bombs, and Grenadier for a nice bomb/grenade condition+healing build.

Been playing with this trait today too. It can certain use a buff for a GM trait. I’d say at minimum it needs a 25% increase in base. Scaling I’m uncertain of as I haven’t pushed it that far yet.

Well, depends how you use it. As others have stated, it works nicely with backpack regenerator, regen boon and super elixer, and the bombs still do good damage on a tanky healy sorta build as long as either power or condi is reasonable. On it’s own it might be weak, but in conjunction with other traits and abilities it would be too strong if it were buffed.

On it’s own on my cele build it heals for around 250 per bomb, and the auto has a cast time of half a second. That’s 500 hp per second by spamming an autoattack, and you get that regardless of whether or not it hits something. My invigorating precision thief is jelly.

I’ll copy and paste what i have posted in other topic some time ago.

Tha game have been designed around dpsing only. Thus the mobs have to deal damage which is small enough to make a team of unexperienced players survive to kill them. The general rule of thumb here is that the less HP the mobs have the higher the dps they deliver. That being said You still have to remember that these kittens have to NOT kill warriors with around 25k hp within couple of seconds. Let’s do the math.

The basic and the earliest source of hp for You will be Healing Turret. In the build i have posted in the basic passive system it heals you for 292 hps (311 hps when overcharged) + another 3k worth of hp each 15 seconds with active usage (it also cleans 2 conditions) thus making total of: 508 hps when in range of healing turret. It is already more than any other class in the game, but wait – there is more.

You can also notice the Elixir Gun kit in Your first utility skill bracket. This babe has some decent abilities up to number 5 (the whole kit replaces Your usual weapon) which provides you with aditional total of 465 hps (and heals ONE condition) the kitten thing stays in place for 10 seconds and has 20 seconds cooldown so we can round the average hps it provides to 232.

Thats 232 + 508 = 740 hit points per second. Of course there is more.

In Your traits You will notice two different Trait Lines which were finished. One of them contains Backpack Regenerator trait – providing You with aditional 189 hps IF you have weapon kit equipped (which you will have equipped at all times) the other notable mention is Elixir Infused Bombs which is a cherry on top of our murder cake. Each bomb kit explosion You cause will hill everyone in range for 363 hp. Bombs have 0.5s cast time and no cooldown (the basic ones) thus effectively doubling the hps the bombs provide making it 726 hps.

To sum it up You will have 726 hps (from bombs) + 189 hps (from BP regenerator) + 740 hps (from other aforementioned sources) = 1655 hit points per second. So You will be a decent healer giving away 1466 hps to allies. (since only one of those sources affects ONLY You.) Oh, did I mention that You can also eat up food for some passive HPS regen? You can – I do not remember exact numbers but it is around 80 so let’s just say You will heal Yourself for around 1730 hit points per second.

You will also have two other skills derived from both Your Healing skill (#6) and whichever utility slot the Elixir Gun occupies – both of them provide You with some regen (which is nice to elongate the effects of Healing Turret) but the real deal is that the first one creates water field (great for planting Big Ol’ Bomb inside to make a healing combo with) and the other is Your stunbreak.

2.2 The Kiter

You see i decieved You a little bit – You won’t be able to tank and spank everything. You will kite them. How can You kite enemies? Why with constant Swiftness of course. Since the build is using Magi gear (only half of it can be ascended) which is cheap as dirt You will quickly have 49% critical chance which combined with two bombs a second and Infused Precision from Firearms tree will provide You with Swiftness every second.

“But it will make me leave the bomb explosion radius thus cuting my heals in half” you say.

Indeed. Thats why this build can be also called Crab build – strafing doesn’t allow you to move at full speed, just like moving backwards. But whats the point of having constant swiftness then? Simple: Invigorating Speed from Alchemy skilltree which will provide You with 6 seconds of Vigor (+100% endurance regeneration) thus allowing You to enjoy constat evading.

It seems complicated right? Don’t worry – the build is very forgiving. Why? Did You notice the yellow elixir in Your utility skills? Elixir S? That’s the “F***-everything-and-run” button. It makes You virtually indestructible for 3 seconds. Great when things do not go Your way. Oh, and it is automated too – thanks to Self Regulating Defenses trait from Alchemy skilltree. So when You accidentally get Yourself in trouble and drop to 25% of Your hp You shrink, break from stun and run like hell. After that You still get to use Elixir S from Your utility skill. Making it “F.E.A.R” button active each 30 s.

2.3 The weak spots

Well. You are prone to three things. Enemies that can somewhat competently heal themselves, condition damage and stun. Stun cuts Your hps in half thus making this build very prone to hambow warriors in pvp. You also have only one stun breaker – which does not help. Your demise will be certain after You meet certain types of pvp classes focused on condition damage – perticularly Necros and Mesmers are nasty. The guardians will be fun since they can’t kill You just as You can’t kill them, other warrior builds too seems to be uneffective. So basicly this is not good sPVP build (or at least i can’t utilize it correctly), but it is marvellous for PVE.

You guys must have made certain mistakes when it comes to how you play this build… otherwise it’s golden!

So to sum it up. As for now You have 1730 hit points per second, +100% stamina regeneration, constant regen, two “kitten-buttons” and invisibility each 60 seconds. You can give away1400 hit points to everyone standing within the bomb radius.

Moving the elixir infused bombs would make this build overpowered since You would heal as much as you would deal damage to others which would be disgustingly op. As for now you can easily swap one of the traits for “each elixir gives might” and using the “each-crit-gives-might” signet stack that kitten sky high. What else do You want?

I run a 2/6/6 Healing Bomb build with Elixir Gun in PvE and occasionally in WvW. A combination of Healing Turret, Elixir Infused Bombs and Elixir Gun can heal for quite a significant amount even when not going for any healing power at all (mostly Zerker + Pack Runes).

When it comes to Elixir Infused Bombs I think that the placement is all right. It’s the healing line and considering that it adds an area heal to your bombs the amount healed feels reasonable, too. The coefficient could indeed be higher so that investing into healing power acutally makes sense. The baseline however should definitely not be increased. It would be too powerful. Healing Signet is a prime example for skills with a way too high baseline effect.

My biggest issue with this trait is the lack of synergies within the traitline. There are no other healing related or other supportive traits on the Adept and Master level. That is why Elixir Infused Bombs might seem somewhat out of place.

With just celestial gear, elixir infused bombs + Backpack regenerator while in bomb kit, heals more then warrior healing signet on ones self, plus maintaining a 250-275 AoE heal per second, so I wouldn’t particularly say it needs a buff, just my opinion.

One nice thing about the Inventions trait line is that it also has:

• Energized Armor: 7% of Toughness converted to Power.
• Performance Enhancement: 10% of Healing Power converted to Power.

This works well with Cleric (and Forsaken if we ever get it) gear as you’re dipping into all three stats in order to get more power which bomb kits enjoys since its AA is direct damage.

Comparing Healing Bombs to Signet of Restoration is silly! The signet is the Elementalist’s heal and they cannot burst heal at all unlike Engineers and Healing Turret! The trait is actually not too bad if you were to spam bombs! The healing combined with Backpack Regenerator and the regeneration boon amounts to a nice bit of sustain! But here are the issues! You’d have to dedicate 30 points into the Inventions tree! The Inventions tree is by far the worst trait line that the Engineer has! Putting even a single point into that tree weakens any offensive build that you try to make! Alchemy is a way better defensive tree! And if you try to get Healing Bombs AND Backpack Regenerator, you’re left with a mere 4 points to craft some offense and only 2 points if you decide to get the Speedy Kits/Invigorating Speed combo (which you’d be crazy not to in such a defense oriented build like Healing Bombs)!

Plus the Bomb Kit requires you to be in melee range! Engineers should never be anywhere near the point because you’ll just eat a million damage in cleave! Positioning is pretty key for an Engineer! That sustain won’t help you against focus fire because you’re out of position trying to place a Fire Bomb at the bad guy’s feet! Also in order for your teammates to receive any kind of AoE healing, they’d have to be near you! That’s just more cleave damage that the bad guys can do to you!

Well you might be asking, “Well why don’t you just make a purely defensive bunker build with healing bombs that can contest the point!” I wish that were a possibility! Unfortunately the Engineer is too weak to conditions and with the insane popularity of celestial hybrid condition builds out there, well it’s a bad decision to try to bunk as an Engi! The lack of stability also doesn’t help things much!

A cool change I’d like to see is to swap the Elixir Infused Bombs and Experimental Turrets traits! I think healing bombs would see play if it was a grandmaster Alchemy trait! It removes the negative aspects of going deep into a useless tree like Inventions and since basically every good Engi build will run some points into Alchemy, it wouldn’t be a big deal to commit some extra points in there to get healing bombs! And it makes sense for ELIXIR infused bombs to be in the tree that deals with elixirs and for a turret trait to be in the tree with the other turret traits! It would also nerf the cancerous turret Engi builds that plague us so!

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents! Wahoo! Bye frands!

ArrDee.2573:

A cool change I’d like to see is to swap the Elixir Infused Bombs and Experimental Turrets traits! I think healing bombs would see play if it was a grandmaster Alchemy trait! It removes the negative aspects of going deep into a useless tree like Inventions and since basically every good Engi build will run some points into Alchemy, it wouldn’t be a big deal to commit some extra points in there to get healing bombs! And it makes sense for ELIXIR infused bombs to be in the tree that deals with elixirs and for a turret trait to be in the tree with the other turret traits! It would also nerf the cancerous turret Engi builds that plague us so!

However, Inventions already got a turret GM and Experimental Turrets is based on boons which happen to be a core theme of Alchemy.

I stand by it: The biggest issue is that Inventions has a way too high focus on self-enhancements (although being pretty crappy at it when compared to Alchemy) and turrets while totally neglecting anything healing or support related.

The use I see for something like a healing bomb build is for those times in fractals where your group needs to stack up … like in collosus … though you could argue that simply making good use of blinds and “more DPS” could be just as good :-p

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWrlcxPLseNiaBF6bsxAI6Qmlk8pIA-TJRHwAFeAAAuAAk2f4YZAA

take this build, push far solo decap/kill enemys, unkillable 1v1 and once i actually won a 3v1 with it(the old we have 3 no need to try tactic wins again).

but this is very much a solo que build that can take huge advantage of uncoordinated players.