Guild Wars 2

With IP having a 10 second ICD is it only better in 1v1 situations?
Shrapnel seems to add a lot of bleeds.

When creating a WvW (solo, small, big) character, which is better and why?

Assume rabid based p/s with bomb/nade/e-gun so only room for one of the two skills as giving up forceful explosions really limits bombs.

IP is better nearly all the time. Shrapnel is better in PvE (or for soloing camps). Even in a zerg, IP is better because it will nearly always do more damage than shrapnel will before it’s removed. Burning will occasionally be wasted on an already-burning target, but not often enough to outweigh its effectiveness. IP will pretty much always proc on your first grenade throw. For solo/small group roaming, IP is miles ahead of shrapnel because it adds a huge amount of damage to our attrition attacks, like the elixir gun auto.

In some situations, shrapnel might be better than forceful explosions. You will likely never hit a longbow ranger or a necro with a bomb in a 1v1. Warriors will stand in your bombs no matter what size they are.

IP will proc 100% on a crit once every ten seconds on one target.
Shrapnel has a 15% chance to proc on hit from any explosion without cooldown.

IP is useful for:

• small scale fights
• builds withouth grenades
• builds without other access to burning

Shrapnel works great with grenades and not too bad with bombs. It is useful for:

• large scale fights
• builds with plenty access to burning

If you can connect all 15 hits from one grenade throw (a minimum of 5 targets is necessary) the chance to proc at least one Shrapnel bleed is 91%. In zerg fights Shrapnel will net much more damage than IP.

But looking at overall damage, Short Fuse might be the best option out of the three for your build.

i toke both in a recent build, had a few lucky situations where iv stacked 3 bleeds and a burn off a freeze nade at the start of a fight, im running bombs with this build to, i don’t find forceful explosions that handy in wvw since your opponent is either on you or there not and having a bit of a larger radius isn’t genna help with that much, unlike spvp where that extra radius will consume a whole point.

anyway wvw, 70% condition duration with shrapnel and nades and ip is rather effective, open with rifle combo to get close swap to nades to get shrapnel nade, and that nets me 10+ bleeds, burning and some vulnerability naturally my opponent spams some condition removal and i follow with net shot poison nade, freeze nade, nade barrage, and just like that ive got on average 5-8 stacks of bleeds poison freeze vulnerability and ip is off cd by the end of that combo giving them burning, so the ability to re stack that many conditions in the time of 10 seconds is a very powerful factor i think.

i am using celestial rifle with geomancy and the rest is rabid 30/20/0/10/10 so naturally the 5 point firearms trait is procing alot along side shrapnel, but i think in wvw the condition pressure you can easily stack up is a fair price to pay for smaller bomb radius.

anyway that’s my experience and hopefully an alternative for you to look at

firebomb and pistol 4 are enough burning that ip wont be much use

Well, I don’t take a second pistol because that shield is amazing with a blast, knockback and daze/stun/block.

And I don’t take a rifle because that pistol has a great bounce confusion stack and extra conditions are a good thing with rabid gear and perplex runes.

Short fuse is interesting especially on bombs.

Mixing up the traits to see what works best but I greatly appreciate all the thoughts and opinions. I just can’t tell what is better even having tried it out!

if you run grenades, get both except when also running bombs in which case swap shrapnel out for forceful explosives.

Ip only for roaming.

Sharpnel is much better in largescale.

And don’t do bombs+nades in large scale, choose one to go and bring your stats to that.

Bombs+nades can be ok for roaming but in large scale it’s a waste to use both.

At least on our server, you tend to get a mix of sizes of battles so you want a spec which can swap traits/kits but not gear/spec.

As such I tend to be almost always on (save my apothecary support spec which is just for fun heal bombing) a Yoshis 30/10/0/20/10 build with

a. Pistol and Shield (I like the shield a lot)
b. Grenades/E-Gun and typically bombs
c. Rabid Gear (I have 6+ ranger sets and only 2 engie. When I get full ascended trinkets at least, I will move off Rabid and build up the next).

As such, in large scale, I at least think nades/bombs works well because it is just a question of when in the fight do I need which. Initially, I tend to nade. Then later it becomes bombs OR if the enemy gets close. Plus, you have to love Big Ole Bomb.

Questions Based on Above

1) Bombs or Grenades for Large Scale?

2) What would you replace the one you are NOT taking with?

3) Do you play with Both?

4) Any reason in the World you would not play with the E-Gun?

Not looking for a power build answer or a HGH answer. But on a kit condition basis for larger scale what works?

I think I am comfortable with the roaming Yoshis build 30/10/0/20/10 with bigger explosions, IP, grenadier. . . Hair trigger. . . .Vigor and BR. . . Swift Kits. If there are tweaks post-patch to make this even more effective let me know.

Bombsaway.7198:

4) Any reason in the World you would not play with the E-Gun?

yeah
*grenades doesnt leave my bar
*rocket boots doesnt either
*toolkit is handier imo

if i were to do a non-grenades build, eg’s utility would be worth it when i spec condi gear.
when im underwater, i have eg instead of rocket boots… cuz… anet.