Ability Overview

In my view, BK’s most crucial abilities - his primary fire is a massive part of his kit and brings him well into viability. If you want to master Bomb King, arguably the most important skill you need to learn is your primary fire - practice sticking bombs in shooting range as the strange trajectory can really throw off your aim, you’ll also want to master learning the correct timing for detonating so that you do not blow bombs up too close or too far from the target. You can deal up to 900 damage per sticky bomb and can be thrown every 0.7s - a very fast fire rate that gives BK an insane DPS score, with a maximum of six out at once which means you can bring out possibly the largest burst in the entire game if you are prepared to set up for it - keep in mind that shooting bombs that are stuck to walls can destroy them, so a trap setup can easily be thwarted by a careful enemy. As you all seem to like knowing, you gain 3.5-4% ultimate charge per bomb that deals full damage, with decreasing percentage as the bombs explode further away from players. Out of all the blaster weapons, sticky bomb has an incredibly large blast radius which means that sometimes accuracy is not so key on Bomb King - for example, many a time I have finished an enemy champion across the map by throwing a crudely aimed bomb and doing ~100 damage or so, so when not in direct 1v1’s etc., do not be afraid to chuck some more inaccurate bombs round corners and the like in an attempt to finish kills and continue applying pressure.Another thing to always keep in mind when playing Bomb King is that you should always aim to do damage to multiple enemies if possible. His high blast radius, high damage bombs mean you can easily punish grouped up enemies - which is what his kit excels in as a whole - so when playing BK try and focus on shutting down chokepoints and congested areas by destroying clumped up enemies. To add, when attacking tanks or other shield characters eg. Khan, Vivian, you can explode bombs above their shields/heads (or to the sides/below) and easily kill them when they attempt to shield on low health - a very useful tool to busting tanks even more easily. One question people seem to have a lot: ‘Should I detonate my bombs individually or stack them on a target then detonate?’; unless running chain reaction I would always recommend detonating individually as it maximizes your chances of doing as much damage as possible - this is because of the loadout you will most likely be using (more info in the loadouts section), as well as the fact that CC Immunity & Reduction can greatly decrease the time bombs stick to enemy targets. Finally, although high ground is important, it is not as important as many other blasters due to the nature of BK’s projectiles.Another very powerful tool for Bomb King - the grumpy bomb. In high-level games, this ability rarely serves its true purpose of stunning, but is an incredibly effective ‘crowd-control’ ability, in the way that it completely denies certain areas. If you want to be an amazing Bomb King, you’ll want to learn how to position your grumpy bomb in a way that it is the most effective - otherwise it can be a fairly lackluster ability (I am still working on perfecting this myself), this can mean denying flank routes or placing the bomb in an obscure position around the point. Having said that, if an enemy is unfortunate to be stunned you can easily stick them with a few bombs and easily deal incredible amounts of damage, often netting you a free kill on a squishy. Finally, it’s important to remember that being an effective grumpy bomb user can force the enemies (particularly the tanks) into buying resilience, which takes away from their survivability and means they miss out on something else, such as rejuvenate.When playing any damage champion, it is important to master positioning - BK being no exception. When using Poppy Bomb I like to face backward to the direction I want to travel and pressing F twice very quickly, which will send you flying in that direction, however many good Bomb King’s also like to throw it on the floor and detonate it for more controlled movement - it is up to you to choose your preferred method by trying out both. Poppy Bomb is very useful; it can allow you to quite quickly reposition, including giving vertical mobility which is crucial on many maps to control important and congested areas. It is also very useful in doing an incredibly aggressive rush into the enemy - often times an effective Bomb King will find an opening in the enemy lines and quickly jump in using poppy bomb, often times taking out multiple members of the enemy team and giving quick multikills as the enemies fail to realize you are there before they are blown to pieces. This can be combined with Bomb King’s ultimate - you can achieve this by throwing a non-Jolt sticky bomb on the floor behind you, then ulting, detonating it as the power-up time comes to a close.It wouldn’t be a BK guide if we didn’t mention the fact that Bomb King can easily displace enemies from their positions using Poppy Bomb - surprisingly a very controllable CC mechanism that when paired with the right maps and certain cards (eg. Jolt), can send enemies flying off the map if you learn the direction it sends people. This feature of Bomb King can be especially effective when playing against characters like Ash, where you can quite easily boop her out of her ultimate and kill her.Bomb King’s ultimate can be quite weak if used improperly, and can often end up getting you killed. This is because it has a very long windup time of two seconds, which coincidentally is the same as being stunned by it - so keep this in mind when thinking about going for an ultimate: sometimes you can do just as much with your normal sticky bombs. Keeping this in mind, it is very important to ult in a good position where you are kept relatively covered and will not be killed during the ult-windup, but can also quickly reach enemies without getting caught on corners due to the odd turning mechanics (you will get stuck sometimes, it’s part of learning how to use this ultimate). Apart from the tip in the poppy bomb section, there is another incredibly important idea to keep in mind when ulting as Bomb King, speed effects will last the duration of King Bomb and will make you go FAST. I implore you to try Bomb King Ult combined with Grohk Ult, it is arguably one of the most fun things you can do in Paladins, and will allow you to reach the enemy very quickly and thus stopping them from escaping or using abilities to turn invulnerable. Furthermore, an extremely important tip is that you can press the ultimate key again to detonate King Bomb early, which is very useful as sometimes hitting enemies directly can be hard and end up with you too far into their backline, try detonating when near to stun them and thus stop you from dying as you roll. Also, you are CC immune during King Bomb and cannot receive Knock Back’s, slows, etc. Finally, a quick but useful fact is that BK Ultimate will win in a direct collision against a Drogoz ultimate, so keep this in mind.