Betty La Bomba is a great addition to Paladins’ line-up of Damage type characters, thanks to a kit full of fun explosive abilities and a matching fiery personality and backstory. Further connecting her lore and playstyle, many of her abilities and cards reference real-life military history; for example, her Bouncing Betty card is named after the infamous S-mines used by German forces in WWII. In this primer guide, we will go over Betty’s abilities and playstyle in Paladins, which are all about area-of-effect damage and area denial.
Overview and abilities
Betty La Bomba is a Paladins Damage champion with 2,100 HP and a projectile basic attack that travels in a heavy arc and has no damage dropoff or headshot multiplier. Her grenade launcher’s projectiles bounce off of surfaces and detonate after a 2-second timer, dealing 510 damage in a small area; if they hit an enemy directly they explode instantly, dealing 550 damage in a slightly bigger Area of Effect (AoE). All of Betty’s abilities revolve around explosions, too.
- Cluster Grenade: Launch a grenade that creates additional secondary explosives based on the number of enemy targets hit. The initial explosion deals 250 damage in an area after 0.4 seconds; secondary explosions deal 500 damage in an area after 3 seconds. The grenade can spawn up to 6 additional explosives.
- Hail of Bombs: Throw out a magazine that sprays out a series of small spark projectiles in random directions around itself. Each spark does 390 damage in a 20 unit radius. It looks like a miniature fireworks show.
- Explosive Personality: Rocket-jump forward and up; the ability can be reactivated up to two more times for additional jumps. Each jump deals 300 damage to enemies directly behind or below you, and knocks them back slightly.
- Long Live the Queen: With her ultimate ability, Betty La Bomba launches forward while riding a giant rocket. She can steer the rocket into enemy champions, dealing 1,700 damage in a large AoE and knocking back any enemies caught in the blast. The ability can be reactivated to dismount and launch the rocket in a straight line forward.
Betty’s Talents are also quite pun-heavy, and help tailor her playstyle further to your preferences:
- Fiery Disposition: Explosive damage sets enemies on fire for 1.5 seconds, and further hits refresh the effect duration. While on fire, enemies take damage equal to 3% of their maximum HP every second.
- Controlled Fury: Reduce Hail of Bombs’ cooldown by 2 seconds, and focus the target area of its explosions into a 50% smaller space.
- Gotta Bounce: Reduce your movement speed by 15%. Explosive Personality’s effectiveness is also reduced, but its cooldown is 6 seconds shorter.
Tips and deck building
Like Dredge and other explosives-based Paladins champions, Betty La Bomba excels at denying space and punishing enemy teams who stick too close to each other. She lacks single-target options but makes up for it with massive AoE damage and good mobility. She can also pick between three highly competitive Talents to optimize her kit for the situation. Controlled Fury is devastating on maps with lots of tight spaces and chokepoints, such as Jaguar Falls, Bazaar, and Brightmarsh. A good card deck for Controlled Fury is Creator’s Claim x5, You Can Run x5, A Lost Realm x3, And You Will Explode x1, and Bouncing Betty x1.
Conversely, Gotta Bounce is more useful on open maps with different levels of elevation. This fun Talent makes Betty use her Explosive Personality jumps constantly, letting her literally dunk on the enemy team as she flanks and out-positions them. It takes some getting used to, but the unpredictability and vertical freedom it grants can make for some wild plays. When using this Talent, your go-to cards should be Creator’s Claim x5, Bouncing Betty x5, and a combination of Queen’s Entrance and Fire From Above.
Finally, the Fiery Disposition Talent is Betty’s best option when facing off double Tank teams in Paladins. The ideal anti-Tank build for Fiery Disposition is Creator’s Claim x5, A Lost Realm x5, Ride the Rocket x3, Eureka Moment x1, You Can Run x1.
