Any particular reason for Clever alchemist over spinner's? The rudimentary testing I've done on the skeleton dummy shows I hit harder with spinner's, but there are probably other factors i'm not properly taking into account. Any insight is appreciated.

Deadkrau5 wrote: »

Any particular reason for Clever alchemist over spinner's? The rudimentary testing I've done on the skeleton dummy shows I hit harder with spinner's, but there are probably other factors i'm not properly taking into account. Any insight is appreciated.

1) for spinners to hit harder you would need to have some flaws: no light armor pen/ no sharpenend / bad observation of crits. overly high damage prior the other two sets (e.g. not vicious death) or also count something like groth'dar which scales with penetration but not sd. Especially if you also get some form of reg in pvp (mundus, witchbrew food, glyphs?), this shifts the equilibrium more in favor of C/A. With typical builds, I think C/A should come out on top (when proc'd, ofc).

2) the damage against targets with lower resist than the target skel (18k) is quickly spoiled by over penetration: many targets have less spell resist than sharpenend + light armor passive + spinner would penetrate. even more so on CP campaigns because penetration often is usually more appreciated than spellshield (because you only get one penetration passive but have to distribute your def against both, phys and magical). If you add major breach (e.g. form a stam warden), you can be near sure to over penetrate. you even would do so on the target skel.

3) the life on c/a is very useful when running in groups. Sure, the extra max mag on spinner also gives you proper def through your own shields. but getting caught off-guard (especially in a negate), a life pool is more reliable. Of course, the magicka form spinner would be much better for duels / small-scale / sustained 1vX, but that's not what bombers do.

4) C/A is useful when only complete on backbar. i.e. you can run a monster set on a two-staff setup. you can only do this with spinners if you run a DW frontbar.

I'm not saying C/A is sooo much better. I'm just listing some points in favor of it, because you asked. I don't want to engage in the discussion about whatever is BIS.

Vd, grothdat n bsw?

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Liam12548 wrote: »

I run spinners on my bomber, and the top bombers in my guild (some one the best on our server) also run spinners (obviously VD frontbar on dual swords with grothdarr 2 piece, 5/1/1). Personally, I'd only switch to clever for soul tether bombing.

And when you bomb, is it alone or is it multiple bombers hitting a groups back line while your group engages them?

I found I did more damage with spinners but 1 barrier cast was often enough to ensure the bomb failed. I was bombing solo though.

Also, nobody mentioning Kena as an option over groth confuses me. Groth is certainly stronger in no CP, but the burst gained from Kena is insane

I mean today with all the heals going off in open world between the templars and wardens, solo bombing is a new challenge. I do both. For solo bombing, tether can be the better option in many situations because it allows you to put as much damage as possible down right off the bat, which In turn gives you more kill AND escape potential. Destro ult is often a suicide type bomb, because it's duration is longer and requires you to stay in the thick of it. As for the kena thing, often the best and most beneficial bombs you get will be from stealth on a large group piled on a door, breach, resource, etc. Having to throw two light attacks would totally throw off your rotation, and the kena buff wouldn't last long enough for a whole destro bomb. Kena also increases ult cost by 20%, so destro ult will cost 50 ish ult more.

I still prefer clever alchemist + willpower + vicious death.
And i also prefer soul tether over destro ulti.
Its just so much more burst damage, with destro ulti, just one person has to react fast enough, and your bomb fails.

Barrier, healing ult, springs, harness.

I can kill nearly every group with it, if they dont all have 30k+ health

I went from running vd/alchemist/willpower to trying grothdar and don't regret it. Seems to work just as well or better depending on the situation.