Guild Wars 2

I’m getting a little exhausted of grenade spam and I’m looking for a new build, even if it’s not the absolute greatest of all possible builds at retrieving loot bags, etc. So I was thinking that a bombing offensive/healing build might be fun, and very useful for guilds that portal bomb a lot, as mine does.

So, an Elixir-Infused Bombs spec, something like this:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VV70;2sP-9-46;0Fx0;9;4T-T9-267;107A3;36;5ecX9ecX9B

(You’ll have to cut and paste that link, I assume.)

Basically, get through the portal, drop a smoke bomb for 5 seconds of area blindness. Drop a supply crate (large area stun) on top of that smoke combo field for 1 second of area stealth. Chill them with a quick swap to healing kit due to Rune of Grenth. And after that, Confuse them, bleed them, sticky them, and BoB them, with the rest of the delightfully useful bomb kit. All the while healing everyone and dropping Vulnerability on the enemy from Steel-Packed Powder. Oh, plus slick shoes to trip them up. Plus I was thinking final utility slot would actually be my Asura racial, Technobabble, for the Confusion AoE utility belt skill, just to be cute. Basically, if you can get in their center mass, you should be able eff em up. Especially if your Guardian buddy will GS pull them all in for you. When Self-Regulating Defenses kick in, that’s your cue to exit. If you didn’t take Technobabble, then a Tool Kit #2 and #4 or an Elixir S or an Elixir R should hopefully get you out.

CONS:
Engineers seems to lack the ability to grant themselves Stability, which could be a problem, because you need movement. And their only gap closers are really rifle 5, which doesn’t really do the job, and pure speed in the form of Super Speed and Power Shoes, all of which I’m taking. Also, the runes I chose are brutally expensive — Runes of Grenth (252,000 karma). Can you disenchant karma gear? Regardless, the Grenth set itself might be fun to wear — but you’d probably want to grab some more vitality, toughness, and power in some form in your accessories. But that 3 second chill (4 with your Explosives Trait line Condition Duration bonus) every 10 seconds might be OP for a bomber — hard to say until actually trying it. Alternate it with Glue Bomb to really ruin their day.

You’d feel pretty useless when not portalling and stuck in a long-distance standoff, but you can convert this to a lazy man’s grenade build by just turning on Grenade Kit and Grenadier. And probably you could find something useful in Inventions for your Grenades.

This is still very much theory-crafting, but I’d love to hear your thoughts, because I may pay the 252k karma and try it soon. How powerful are those bomb heals, anyway?

The best gap closer we get is [magnet] imo on the toolkit, of course it can be dodged/outranged/nullified by stability, but when it lands you have your target laying right at your feet ready to eat bombs.
If you time it well with glue bomb it could be fairly lethal I imagine.

I’d consider going 10 in tools for kit refinement instead of alchemy though; you get an extra bomb and lower cooldown on your heal and BoB.

I haven’t done any extensive testing on [Elixir Infused Bombs] or anything, but I think it healed for around 200 per explosion.
A little bonus if you’re turtled up and hitting a lot of friendlies, but not worth building for specifically imo.

Elaborate what you mean portaling?

Kain Francois.4328:

Elaborate what you mean portaling?

WvW mesmer portals.

The bombs scale with + healing of which you get at least 300 by going for the trait itself.

If you want to test them: go to Heart of the Mists, use equivalent pvp gear, and go fight an npc.
Once you start taking damage, you’ll see the numbers of the bomb heals pop up.
For me that was about 230 per explosion if I remember correctly.

Bonus: the bombs heal you even if they don’t hit anything, they’re aoe mechanic after all.

Snafoo.2869:

The best gap closer we get is [magnet] imo on the toolkit, of course it can be dodged/outranged/nullified by stability, but when it lands you have your target laying right at your feet ready to eat bombs.
If you time it well with glue bomb it could be fairly lethal I imagine.

I use magnet pull all the time, and one basic rule you should prepare for:

the moment you pull them, they dodge.

Putting down a glue bomb in time seems rather unlikely.

What I find to work better is: throw nail and pull them into it.
Or drop glue bomb, and pull immediatley as the bomb is going of.
Pulling first and than swapping to bombs will never hit them.

Once you pulled, they dodge, they run.
So I only pull if an ally is next to me, or if I have some cripple or immobilize in the spot already.

If not one of those, you mostly slowed them, not stopped them. Which is better than not slowing them of course

For pulling one of the wall, ignore this. Just don’t stand next to their entrance and they’ll never make it back…

Finally someone writing out what I have been thinking about for quite a while now!
I would probably change rifle to pistol shield though, mainly since you get another blast finisher for your wonderful combos from shield #1

Mhm.. Im really tempted to try this out now
If you happen to test this build first, please let me know how it worked out for you!

Thanks for all your thoughts, everyone. I’ve got an updated version here with some of your ideas:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VVRw;2sP-9-463UFx0;9;4T-T-9267;107A;12;0aV0;3ecX9ecX9;0Fq

I switched it to pistol / shield (partially just because it’s been so long since I’ve used either.) You give up a lot of control, obviously. But blast finishers are hard to come by for Engineers, and very powerful with Bomb Kit’s combo fields. And the point of this build is area of effect, not single target control. In the portal bomb scenario, I would combo it off your initial Smoke Bomb in addition to the Supply Crate blast, to give an additional second of Mass Stealth, which we all know is extremely powerful.

It seems like Tool Kit might be the way to go for the third utility. You get #5 for gap closing, #2 and #4 for escaping, and #3 for 1v1 confusion. And #2’s point blank area of effect (PBAoE) is consistent with the general theory of this build.

With some hesitation, I’ve dropped the 10 Alchemy for 10 Tools. I have it as Speedy Gadgets right now for that into-the-breech portal bomb moment. But while roaming the map, I’d definitely switch this over to Speedy Kits for chasing and movement speed. It hurts to drop the emergency Elixir S from Self-Regulating Defenses, but Speedy Kits is so useful, that it’s probably essential, especially with a build that relies so much on movement.

Anyone ever play Amumu in League of Legend? If you can just get in the middle of the enemy with Amumu, especially if you’ve bought a Sunfire Cape, you can melt them all. That’s the idea with this build. If you can just get in there, you’re going to be trouble with all that PBAoE. To me, the question is going to be how long you can stay upright versus how long they can stay upright, but I guess that’s the question with every build…

You know what this build also shines at?

Treb destroying with a bunch of melee and such balling up on the sieges.

Lots of aoe, the healing, the area control with knockback and combo’s.

As for blast finishers on portal bombs: I would keep the supply crate for at the Lord. You’ll waste the healing and such if using it for initial stealth only.
Matter of opinion of course, and it’ll change from attack to attack. But I wouldn’t drop a supply crate at the entering portal myself. People move away from that point too fast.
Unless there is a mass defense waiting for you that at very spot of course, than the 2 second stun alone is worth it.

I like this build but still can’t decide between healing bombs and my flamethrower for WvW.
Aside one of these I use Tool Kit and Elixir Gun. And I want to keep both of these either way.

Well I fooled around with this in the Mysts for a while today, using Kit Refinement in the Tools line. My suspicion is that this build doesn’t really work. All those conditions just don’t make a big enough of a difference. Guardians can outtank you. You wind up landing a lot of bombs, but mainly against bunker builds — glass cannon classes all have their outs, even when chilled. The damage isn’t high enough. The heal really isn’t high enough. Not sure whether this is worth the 252k karma investment to test it in WvW, where it was designed for.

There’s a little issue concerning the whole ‘healing’ bombs idea, that bothers me every time I give it a go:

the best way to plant bombs, is to run around leaving a trail of bombs behind you.
You dodge, you run, you basically never stop.
Enemies must chase you but are forced to eat your bombs when doing so.

Now I fear that a lot of the heals of these bombs, are wasted on you. Simply because you might outrange them by the time they explode.

To stand still, when under attack, and just spam bombs for heals and damage, will most of the times get you killed.

It’s a simple playstyle issue, but for me it weakens this type of builds a lot.
In fact: it’s the reason I am still doubting to specc into this.

Bombheals really shine if you are in a situation that requires your (ideally very large) group to be piled up in a ball for an extended period of time. I’ve used them to great effect on Stonemist sieges/defenses (people piled up on the gate or in the lord room). Other classes get bigger AoE heals, but they have bigger cooldowns too. Bombers can send up a cloud of green numbers and do it all day long, once per second.

So if you’re running with a zerg and smashing up some pretty resilient targets, bombheals are great. If you’re running solo/small group guerilla operations, bombheals aren’t so great. Either way, don’t worry about stacking healing power. Healing power doesn’t affect your supply crate’s heals, and you get a whopping 0.08 points increased heal from a bomb per point healing power invested on your gear. If you want to be a “healer,” you’re better off rocking an elixir gun. For a bombheal build, I usually go 30/0/30/0/10, spec for grenadier, and slot bombs, grenades, and throw mine for an extra handy knockback and a couple of blast finishers to take advantage of all the combo fields you can set down.

Also, Superior Runes of Grenth are currently about 8s on the trading post. You don’t have to grind a full set of Karma gear if you just want to try out the runes.

My advice: The cooldown reduction and 10% bomb (but ONLY for bomb) damage isn’t worth 20 traits, especially when it sacrifices a invincibility-button like Self-RD.

You are already using BoB and Tool Kit. Do you know what their toolbelt skills have in common? They are relatively-low CD skills that reliably hit with static discharge… and that would bump your damage by a lot more than 10% more bomb.

So, take out 20 from explosives… you’ll still get heals from bombing, you’ll just lose 10% damage from them. Get your SRD with 10 points, and get Static with the other 10 points.

Then lose the shoes. You’ll make up for it with the selfRD. Get rifle turret for the 9 second toolkit skill. The rifle itself is only useful to drop on a fire field and immediately blow up for 3 free stacks of might and some trifling AoE damage.