Guild Wars 2

I’ finding it hard the point out exactly what feels different about Cluster Bomb since the patch but something has definitely changed.

1. The cluster bomb seems to fly where your mouse pointer is at the beginning of the cast-time, rather than at the end of the 1 second cast-time.

2. Damage is now significantly higher if you don’t manually detonate the round. I’m pretty sure it used the be the exact opposite in that the Cluster Bomb would deal more damage if you detonated it manually

3. Did they change something about the cast-time? Was it really always that long? It feels longer and less “snappy” than usual. Looking at old footage I’m sure the Cluster Bomb used to launch faster.

Am I the only one seeing this? I’ve found it especially noticeable while farming Events in Orr.

same feeling here.
maybe a dev will answer you with another “good catch”. lol.
are they afraid that thieves will rise in riot if they actually write down all the changes they did ?
Or maybe it was just lag …

I want to add to this that I’m hitting people for over 5500 in WvW when not manually detonating. And I don’t even have such great gear. I assume with full Berserker’s you could easily surpass 6000 Crits.

There has definitely been some changes made to this ability because I certainly wasn’t hitting for that much before.

Cluster Bomb

1 large explosion: 487
detonate in mid-air for 3x: 168 (=504)

“The bomb can be detonated anytime mid-flight, dropping three bombs in a triangular pattern. The spread of the smaller bombs depends on the height when detonated, making it possible to hit one target with all three bombs.”

Maybe you were timing/aiming the detonate in mid-air differently than before? If you don’t get the timing and aim just right, you won’t hit them with all 3 and will do less damage than 1 big hit.

I hit 4-8k on Cluster Bomb in WvW. It really makes it tough to play my ranger after I rolled a thief with Cluster Bomb. When I started reading about the thief, I could of sworn I read somewhere it was more beneficial to detonate it in midair. When I started playing my thief a week ago, I’ve seen no reason to detonate it. It’s easier to not detonate it, seems to do more damage, and costs less initiative I think.

Lol, initiative cost for MIRVing it for 3.5% more damage? Keke. Even if the scaling is kitten, you may be looking at 5-10% more damage, still not worth the Init, especially when it no longer counts as a blast finisher when you split it, IIRC (not 100% positive though).

Dunno about all that, but it feels the same to me…Single bolts always have done more dmg than manually detonating them. Still is one of our best skills in WvW.

You guys are all paranoid now!

I agree that “stealth nerfs” are an issue for any class, but to Daendur’s point, I think they are trying to save themselves the time and effort of cleaning up many posts which will contain nothing but “I’m leaving” and the gruesome brutalization of kittens.

Edit: Oh and on-topic, lmao, I haven’t noticed a difference while getting hit with Cluster Bomb at least.

You get 3 bleeds for splitting, and a tiny bit more damage. Also 3 chances to proc hits/crits (SoM, Init on crit, etc).

But, you get the risk of not hitting with a split shot because the spread is pretty large unless your timing is perfect

Is it confirmed to cost init to split? I can’t get in game, but the builder shows a 1s cooldown, not a 1 init cost