(edited by Placentalicious.9453)
Feel free to share it in this thread so more people can see it!
Oh you know, nothing really important. Instead of having 20 points in the power trait line, I only put 10 there and the remaining 10 goes into the vitality trait line (for a total of 20 points in that line). The power adept skill I use in bigger AOE on bombs and the master skill I use on vitality is Elixir S at 25% health if zerging and 5% convertion of condition dmg if roaming or 1v1. I also prefer the shield in second hand to deal with stealth thieves (block stun (skill 5) if DD thief goes stealth, reflect projectile (skill 4) if DP thief goes stealth and push thieves out of shadow refuge for any thief (skill 4 reactivated)). I also use Elixir S in the 3rd utility slot, but when roaming, I use net turret.
To your question: I will of cause have to give it a test inside WvW when th paetch hit, but so far I have been testing the build for some time inside sPvP to see how 50% less Confusion damage feels, and even while confusion deals a lot of the damage in the build, it’s mostly vs players not understanding confusion. Good players didn’t take damage from it anyway, and I just used it to lure out condition removal or shut them down for some time!
The build still got pretty much one of the best burning uptime in the game, able to keep it up permanent quite well. So that’s still a major damage dealer right there, and probaly the reason why it’s still working quite well in sPvP at 50% less confusion damage, but it is of cause a major damage nerf. It also means I will have a much harder time to justify picking up bomb kit, instead of grenade kit in WvW, in sPvP bomb kit feels a lot stronger because of the time we fight on the points and it really shine.
But outside in WvW Nade kit is, even before the 50% damage nerf to confusion, nades feels stronger then bomb kit on many points: The Freeze nades beat glue bomb, the bleeding nades beat the burning bomb (the duration on those bleeds a sick!), the smoke bomb is on some points better then the flash grenades, but that can hardly justify picking it over grenade kit.
Concusion bomb is of cause what sells the kit for me, and it’s a lot stronger then the poison grenades (even while those are strong)! I mean 5 stacks confusion in AOE won me a lot of encounters where I was outnumbered because people tend to spam a lot more skills there.
but with a 50% damage nerf? meeeh, I will have to test it, but i’m afraid AoE poison fields will be more solid in the end!he flaw with confusion at the moment is it trigger from a lot of things it should trigger from, the biggest being: Traits that activate a skill, Trait that gives on dodge effects and weapon/kit/attunment swapping.
Thank you for this very detailed response. I do agree that the bomb might be replaceable after the patch. Toolkit will, I think, still be viable since the prybar is still very strong and the magnet is just so fun. Grenades might work as a replacement with the arguments you gave and I also feel replacing the bomb with an elixir R might also be a good thing for condition removal, since we have so few cond removal.
The Elixir S nerf will also hit quite a bit, in my opinion. Being able to use my medkit and bombs while shrunk was very useful, but now we won’t be able to do that anymore.
If the confusion and elixir S nerf hits to hard, I might try the famous HGH build (nade + permanent might stacks).
I also agree that the confusion damage would be OK right now if it only dealt damage upon skill activation rather than ANY ACTION.
