Guild Wars 2

I see alot of builds use the personal battering ram but not the land mine skill. Which I find odd because I always use the mine over the ram.

Granted Iv only played PvE thus far and that might be the deciding factor here.

To me the cooldown on the ram is just far too long, I think like 45 sec (untraited) Where the mine has an 18sec cooldown (untraited).
But maybe its the toolbelt ability people use the ram for, it does cripple at a good distance. Saddly the minefield power isnt very impressive.

Is the Throw Mine power an overlooked gem, or is the ram push back + cripple better despite the longer cooldown?

Ram has the advantage of being completely unseen. Mines can be avoided and even tricked to you detonating them prematurely. Not only that, but the radius AND blast radius are tiny.

Not to say it’s bad, it’s just not better in my opinion. The only way I would pick mine over PBR is if they changed the mines to be unseen by enemies. The noise could become audibly louder as you got closer, but the visual is a complete give away, saying, “WALK AROUND ME.”

Also, the landing animation is slow.

The actual gadget Mine is unseen and quite good really. It also has a knockback and removes boons so there’s that. Minefield isn’t all that great but in chaotic battles they do just fine, and besides in PvE it doesn’t matter that they are visible and making a sound enemies will still stomp all over them.

I use the PBR. I like the tool belt launch battering ram because it gives me another ranged option that adds a cripple and does solid damage. The ram itself does damage and clears out an enemy that gets too close. For me, it is a matter of added survivability and battle management.

I had that conflict actually when I was running another build for my dungeon, I was running med kit, tool kit, utility goggles and either mine or battering ram.

In the end, battering ram was much more reliable and better at what it did.

Plus it had a useful toolbelt.

I think that the battering ram gets used a lot by power rifle guys cause it adds a large amount to their burst damage.