Guild Wars 2

i noticed when you “detonate cluster” it no longer class as a blast finisher. is this a bug or ? is the skill meant to work this way?

It’s meant to work that way. Detonating the cluster increases the overall damage output, and gives 3 stacks of bleed as opposed to only 1.

As far as I’m aware it was never a blast finisher in the first place.

Yep intended, you loose your blast finisher for the increased direct damage and 2 additional bleeds AND the increased AoE size

I tested CB extensively in the Mists, and because of that, I never
detonate it. Compare the damage to groups of people with and
without a detonate. The single bomb does over double the damage
to up to 5 targets in the area.

When you detonate it, at any level, its too easy to miss targets completely.
Better yet, at melee range, you can spam CB.

well against a single target if you time the detonate right you will do more damage detonating than not (unless a decent combo field) against a group it comes down to a few factors.

If the area your shooting at only has 5 people then detonating the last second will do more damage, if it has more people it has a chance to do less damage to each person but hit more people as each of the detonations counts as a seperate AoE, if your firing at a zerg detonating it midair can spread a small amount of damage across the entire zerg and such.

That is not true based on what I tested. The detonation goes into
3 seperate bombs that are not AOE, and do much less than a single CB.
I went to the Mists and tested this on the most densely packed golems for over an hour.

The single CB still outdamaged the group of 5 over any detonation,
at any height.

the three separate ones are still aoe and in total should always add up to both more direct damage and more bleed damage in total barring crits and weapon damage deviation.

Its the simple mathematics of a 1.45 hit compared to a 1.5 hit on a single target and the different between 5 people hit and 9-15 people hit.

Sure non detonated will always give you bigger numbers because its a straight up 1.45 hit but 3 little hits from detonated ones will add up to more.

I will double check it, but I didnt see AOE on the smaller ones when
I tested it. Half the times, they missed target completely.

they definitely do, albeit smaller, but against the big patch of golems in the mists you can get at least 8-9 of them with detonated ones.

if you detonate it just before it hits the floor your also guaranteed all 3 hits on the same target (against the big cluster of golems this can hit at least 5 as well)

Thunderbrew.7034:

I will double check it, but I didnt see AOE on the smaller ones when
I tested it. Half the times, they missed target completely.

They do have AoE.

It’s just that it’s a smaller radius than the big one.

I know that when I’m using Cluster Bomb I find it much more reliable to keep it as the single bomb for most AoE situations. I tend to split it for single targets and tagging more targets in events.

Raw damage between the exploded cluster vs. non exploded cluster is dependent on the crit chance between each two. Since an exploded cluster splits into 3 separate bombs, each bomb has a separate chance to crit. The way i see the dmg output is like this.

Crit proc:
Non-exploded dmg > 0 bomb crits dmg
Non-exploded dmg > 1 bomb crit dmg
Non-exploded dmg > 2 bomb crits dmg
Non-exploded dmg < 3 bomb crits dmg

Also, take into account that a non-exploded cluster has the chance to NOT crit. Which would make exploded clusters having potential bomb crits 1 or greater provide higher raw damage output.

There are other variables that need to be considered like the bleed stacks that are provided and fire sigils.

Non-exploded only gives 1 bleed stack while exploded gives the potential of 3 stacks. More bleed stacks is obviously better if you are condi, or you are partnered with a necro in which you help him stack up those bleeds.

Fire sigil proc is based on crit chance, so an exploded cluster having 3 separate crit chances has a greater likelihood of providing the fire sigil proc.

Non-detonated cluster bomb can hit up to FIVE people.
Detonated cluster bomb can hit up to THREE people.
Detonated damage > Non-detonated

Against a single enemy detonating is the way, if you can make every smaller bombs hit. In a zerg fight, don’t detonate, ever.

It’s like having a dagger or a sword: dagger damage is higher, but the sword is more useful in a zerg fight, as it can deal less damage to MORE targets.

detonated cluster bomb can hit upto at least 9 people, if I get a chance I’ll see if its hard capped to 3 per small explosion or wether the golems in the mist just happen to be spaced out like that.