Guild Wars 2

I used to love playing bomber man as a kid and decided to whip up a build to tribute it and am looking for help whipping it together. To show my dedication for the build, I’ve already bought a full on Apothecary Armor Set and Weapons. My plan is to run dungeons and WvW with this.

Traits- 20/0/30/0/20

Explosions- Bomb radius, Explosion damage
Inventions- Energized armor, Speedy Boots, EIB
Tools- Kit Refinement, Speedy Kits

Weapons – Pistol/Shield with corruption and battle sigils
Utilities- Med Kit, Rocketboots, Bombkit, Tool Kit/Elixir Gun/Grenade Kit

I’m looking for feedback and what to do with my utilities since I’m not sure of it.

Heal- I’m only comfortable with Elixir H but Med Kit will have to do for the Toolbelt Skill and Magnetic Aura. I hate the Turret and don’t want it for the high mobility this build demands, but I can be swayed with good reason.

Rocketboots/Elixir S- I like a stun break for the ‘OH NO!!’ moments

Last utility- Most torn about
Tool Kit- Love the toolbelt skill and an extra confusion from Pry Bar. I get the super speed
Grenade Kit- Nice toolbelt skill, great when I need to stay at range, an extra mine too.
Elixir Gun- Great heal from toolbelt skill, nice condition damage from auto attack and can stay at range. Glue Trail is decent for escaping.

IMPORTANT
EQUIPMENT: I haven’t equipped and hence soulbound the gear yet. Is this fine or should I go for Cleric’s?

Guidly told me that Bomb Kit is rubbish for condition damage, I should get cleric’s but already invested in Apothecary, anyway to salvage this?

Bombs have: Burning. Nice let’s build a guardian too with condition damage – lol

Edit: what i wanted to say: don’t even think about condition dmg if u can’t do mass confusion, or 15+ bleed stacks + poison or/and burning. So, no condition damage on bomb builds imo.

TRAITS
Honestly, I’m not sure Kit Refinement is worth it anymore. In its current state, it mostly punishes players for taking more than one Weapon Kit. Furthermore, its updated skills are rather lack-luster. My opinion there would honestly be to just take out 10 from tools, put 10 into Alchemy and get the Invigorating Speed trait. You can manage your kit for infinite swiftness and vigor which will prove useful if you’re going to often be in the face of your enemies.

By “Speedy Boots” I assume you mean Power Shoes? I’d personally drop that for the 20% reduction to shield cool-downs trait. Having those shield skills available to you more often can really help, and the +90 toughness is pretty nice too.

As for Explosive Powder (the +10% damage to explosions trait), it’s hiiighly debatable whether or not you’d want that or the Short Fuse trait (20% cool-down reduction on bomb and grenade skills). Personally, when you have conditions like burning and confusion along with fire and smoke fields floating around in the Bomb Kit, sacrificing the ability to use those more often for +10% damage to explosions doesn’t seem worth it to me. I’d personally go with Short Fuse.

UTILITIES
Even though I sort of bashed Kit Refinement, don’t let that stop you from running two kits if you want. I personally think that—especially if you’re going for a more support-style character—the Elixir Gun would work well for you. It has some nice healing with Super Elixir and you can really shed your allies’ conditions with Fumigate. However, I think its best quality comes in Acid Bomb. It’s a beautiful escape skill while also doubling as a Blast Finisher. Since you’re going to probably be within Combo Fields all of the time by using bombs, you can easily chain into an Acid Bomb in order to get the most of those fields. It’s also really nice damage to boot.

If you choose not to do multiple kits, then maybe you could bring two stun-breakers. In any case, it’s up to you.

GEAR
Your friend is… sort of correct about Condition Damage being a mediocre partner for bombs. Condition Damage (especially in pvp) really shines when paired with conditions like Burning and Confusion—both of which the Bomb Kit can dish out in spades. However, those aren’t conditions that stay on someone for very long and the Bomb Kit doesn’t have access to any damage-over-time (DoT) conditions like bleeding or poison. Even so, if you decide to stack Condition Damage, your burning and confusion can function as a burst in place of raw damage that a Berserker build might put out with just their damage skills. The beauty of the Engineer is that a balanced spec can sometimes work here whereas most other classes are often isolated to narrow-spec builds.

If I were gearing for something like this, I personally wouldn’t use Apothecary armor, though. Bombs do really lend themselves to more power builds despite the fact that you really expose yourself to damage by using them. I mean, they’re effectively melee weapons. To this effect, I would maybe try to set up some damage on your Chest, Leg and Helmet armor pieces (major slots) while focusing your Condition Damage and Healing Power in your Shoes, Gloves and Shoulder pieces (minor slots) along with maybe some of your accessories.

Maybe a Soldier’s chest, Rampager’s Helmet and Legs with Apothecary’s minor slots would work. You wouldn’t have a lot of raw damage, but you would be pretty tanky and balanced. From there you could decide whether or not to go full condition damage or damage with your accessories or continued on a balanced path there.

Then again, I’m not really the best guy to talk about min-maxing so maybe someone else could step in and give their two cents.

jpnova.4572:

Guidly told me that Bomb Kit is rubbish for condition damage, I should get cleric’s but already invested in Apothecary, anyway to salvage this?

I’d say cleric’s would be better for dungeons but apothecary should be okay-ish in WvW. Confusion is very good in WvW, burn is good everywhere, and the other bombs except for bomb 1 all have good effects.

The real trouble is that to use bombs primarily for healing, you need to spam them constantly. That means using bomb 1 over and over. That kind of works for some dungeons in a power build, but in WvW spamming bombs is not always possible. If you’re careful about the situations you get in and the role you want to fill, you can make it work.

Oh—another option for your Condition Damage dilemma: if you went dual pistols, then it might be worth it to invest in Condition Damage. You would have more burning there that you could stack with your bombs and the immobilizing/cripple #5 skill can help set up areas for bomb attacks.

However, you don’t get a blast finisher with your off-hand pistol like you have with your off-hand shield and you don’t really have any trait points to spare in order to get a cool-down reduction trait for your pistols (which is really good; honestly all cool-down reduction traits are amazing), so in the end I’m not sure that it’d really be worth it.

Thank you for the reply, what I take away from this is I’ll effectively be weakening myself if I go for bombs with condition damage. I’ve put up all my apothecary armor for sale and will invest in cleric’s gear once they’ve been sold. (Which I’m hoping will be soon).

I liked your ideas and traiting recommendations, tested kit refinement and didnt impress me.

From the posts I’ve changed my plans to.

Gear:
Armor-Full Cleric’s with sapphire orbs
Trinkets-Full Soldier’s with Crest of Soldier
Weapon- Cleric’s, one with sigil of battle and the other TBD

Traits- 20/0/30/10/10 – dropping kit refinement

Utilites- Healing Turret, Stun Break, Bomb Kit, Elixir Gun