Northern Wind bomb seems cool but is there an actual use for them?

[EbonHawk]

Other than the fact that you can use them to lock a few enemies in place, does it actually do anything else? I could see if it reduced the enemies' health a little, even if it were spread out over a short period of time, but just being able to freeze an enemy in place doesn't help all that much.

Am I missing something? do they do any damage to enemies? If I'm fighting a more-than-your-average foe with some of the Northern Wind bombs, it just freezes him in place for a short time. I guess it's only advantage is to just let me have some extra time to land a couple of extra hits.

I would have liked to have it do a small bit of timed damage and maybe slow the enemies down too, for a short while, instead of the way it was implemented. Unless I'm missing something. Are there just certain enemies it's more effective against? I remember seeing some monsters with it listed as one of their vulnerabilities.

[習近平]

You are not missing anything. This bomb is for locking enemies down and used against groups of wolves/bandits/etc. If you want damage there are other bombs such as buckshot/dancing star/dragon's dream. NW is also useful agaist fire elemetals.
And yes, freezing enemy in a place does help much - you can roll behind a freezed troll and lay 3-4 hits from behind for example. If you don't control Geralt & just click attack button against any enemy as 90% of players do no bombs will help.

[Gohenko]

It can be useful when fighting against groups of enemies, just freeze some of them so you don't have to fight all of them at the same time. Against a single enemy the bomb doesn't really help much, in those situations it's usually easier to just use axii instead. Do keep in mind that a hit from behind usually results in critical damage, you could use that to your advantage when fighting stunned or frozen enemies.

[jthq]

It doesn't reduce enemies health, but you can do more damage to them while they are frozen. Other than using it on enemies that attack in groups, I see no other use for this bomb.

I too believe the devs missed some opportunities with this item. Upgrades could have had additional effects like slow down opponents, temporarily reduce health, or even grant the ability to break frozen enemies to pieces if they have low health.

[katzenkrimis]

It's good when you master the bomb tree.

I doubt many players here have sunk all of their points into mastering bombs.

But if you become a bomb fiend, by mastering steady aim, pyrotechnics, efficiency and cluster bombs, then you'll like bombs.

Northern Wind can buy you valuable time.

[EbonHawk]

Ok good to know I didn't miss anything then. I'll probably keep it in reserve for crowd control, or health regen while an enemy is frozen I can heal and buff back up. Thanks.

[Nihilio]

You lock them, run behind them and do a strong attack. Preferably while you have down thunderbolt and archgriffin decoction. Then you watch their health bars go down FAAAAST

[cheeherng]

For the enemy valuable to northern wind (especially most of the necrophages), you can easily one shoot them after throwing the bomb. Some witcher contract bosses such as grave hag and water hag also can be one shoot after throwing northern wind to them, but it is a little bit game breaking.