Is it really that bad to run bombs in IOC?
We had Hangar. The other team’s gate was around 15%.
I, uh, definitely didn’t have fun parachuting into the enemy’s base and relocating some explosive ordnance.
Thoughts?
4 or 5 dedicated bomb runners can eek out 10%+ over the course of a game. The problem becomes when there are more than that in the enemy base, basically just idling after having jumped in. A common recipe to lose is to take hangar, have 10+ people hop into the enemy base, and then have them basically be dead on arrival since there’s nothing for them to do unless they LEAVE the enemy base to be useful elsewhere. Couple that with how long bombs take to pick up, run to the gate, place, burn out, then explode, then respawn, with each bomb doing 0.2%~ gate damage per bomb.
When your team has hangar, there are several things you can be doing to help your team win and generally running bombs will do less to help your team win than the others on the list:
Kill Glaives
Guard Hangar
Secure Refinery/Quarry
Take or Guard Workshop
Run Bombs
So really, unless your team controls everything, there’s probably something more useful than running bombs you could be doing.
Yes. Bombs arent really that helpful.
The issue isn’t really that bombs are low-damage, it’s more that the bombs are “noob bait” and cause losses indirectly
Even if you start off winning, the win can slip away when an excessive # of pugs (say, 15+) decide to jump in to run bombs. Then you factor out the usual 4-5 afkers back home and you’re down to a 20-man team of pugs still playing (basically half a team)
Once like half the team is inside the other base running bombs (excessive/waste of manpower), becomes that much harder to defend bases, kill glaives, etc
If other team decides to do a mid-game/surprise hangar push with a “full” 25-35 man group, you can lose hangar since you’ll only have like 20 total players on the map… that scenario has played out multiple times when too many pugs jumped in to run bombs
If it’s premade vs pug it doesn’t really matter since premaders can recover/make a comeback, but running bombs can throw the game in pugs vs pugs
Bombs only help if you need that last 1-2% and the hangar has to reset for another pass. Teammates in the enemy base can accomplish more by controlling the tower canons so if you have Workshop the demo’s and siege engine can fire on the gate.
Good news then! You can usually ignore workshop in most IOC games because half the people regardless of faction who take it use the siege as a battering ram instead of as a giant cogwheel of death for the enemy team. You can win the game with just hangar and stealthies spinning quarry/refinery as long as you have a dedicated team to deal with glaives.
Dear Holycow,
Could you message me in private on the name of that player who said “there is a punch waiting for your throat if u run a bomb”?
I can’t stop laughing and would like to tell the player what he or she said is really funny!!! 
Yeah. The game had stabilized. The other team’s gate was nearly down.
We had 0 people running bombs, so I thought it might help us bring down the gate a little more quickly.
Absolutely not.
I ran bombs.
I don’t want to get punched.
I’ve won games with a team of bomb runners and lost hard to a horde team that had a SWAT team of bomb runners. The wall was coming down at a consistent rate, the “bombs are nerfed” comments are outdated.
I always watch for the misinformation ministers comments before the gates open.
There’s instances where it’s helped but that’s the exception rather than the rule.
Bomb running is generally a waste of time. There’s always something more useful you can be doing.
The other thing to know about bombs is there are only 6 that spawn. I have seen half of the pugs inside their base once in awhile. Sometimes the only way to get em to move and help defend points is to say if you’re running bombs or sitting mid while there’s a demo firing on it from hangar you’re afk to us…suddenly they are contributing.