Guild Wars 2

Sorry about the title type, pasting messed up :P

I was thinking about my engineer and our primary most used kits, I like bombs and grenades a lot, Grenades are easy to use but don’t have the knockback perks of a bomb but bombs have to be timed properly to be effective and have a tiny range which for a mostly ranged class isn’t that useful..

I was thinking about the possibility of a Satchel kit which is somewhere in-between grenades and bombs. They would be similar to the thief shortbow 2 skill which has the option to detonate mid air for a different effect. Although the Satchel would have longer cooldowns of 15+ seconds per use they would back up one of the other kits nicely.

The Satchel would be like a grenade, a thrown bag which has the range of the players grenade primary skill so gets the benefit from the trait buff. You can either detonate it, let it expire after a minute and it detonates itself or pick it up and get a 5 second cooldown on reuse.

Skills 1-5 are Place Satchel skills and tookkit skill Detonates the Satchels.
Pressing one of the 1-5 skills once places that Satchel and pressing that key again detonates it.

The 1 skill would be a basic C4 like attack which is the only real damage dealing satchel while 2-5 would be boon/condition based such as Cripple, vulnerability, Knockback and blindness since they aren’t aimed at doing direct damage, they are there to support the engineers other skills by slowing the enemy or dealing a number of effects to them after tricking them into walking into the satchel range.

Each 2-4 skill has a opposite Boon for any allies in the area too since engineers don’t really have much in aoe Boon giving the satchels can give boons to allies.

Damage= might
Cripple= Swiftness
Vulnerability= Protection
Knockback= Stability
Blindness= fury

The engineer can detonate the all at once using the toolkit skill or 1 at a time by clicking the relevant Satchel key.

Why Satchels?

They open up a lot of options for engineers that other kits can’t, they benefit every range of build as melee engineers can use them to buff and cripple enemies close to them and ranged engineers can use them to slow down players trying to get into range.

Pvp/WvW uses
Engineers can stick Satchels down on key paths and areas such as just behind gates or onto walls to use them to tactically attack areas,

Your keeps gate is going down? place all 5 Satchels down and set them off the moment the zerg run in.

Attacking a keep? Pesky rangers on the walls destroying your rams again? Throw satchels along the wall and detonate them as soon as they poke there head over the walls.

Want to confuse your enemy? throw a few onto the wall of an enemy tower and detonate them when your zerg is about to attack elsewhere. The enemy will see the white swords and go and investigate while you are long gone.

Getting chased? Throw a few down around a corner and detonate them just as that pesky thief tries to follow you, i can guarantee he will think twice about trying to perma stealth near a engineer again.

Why do we need them?
Engineers are supposed to be designed around Area control yet our skills are either very short lasting or we have little control over them. Turrets are still very weak and immobile and we dont have much adaptability since using more kits means less skill slots.

Satchels give engineers area control, we can focus an area with Satchels and use them strategically and tactically to support any of our other builds, grenadiers can use them to slow the enemy groups or keep them away from spots while flamers/toolkit players can use them to buff allies in aoe and have powers that other classes can use from the start such as aoe pushbacks and guardian like support shouts.

They also give engineers something they really need to be useful in team play, AOE buffs, Elixirs are great… but they only really buff the one engineer using it which in a team based game isn’t a good thing when most other classes have buffs for allies.

Why engineers would love them?
They require a lot of skill to use properly, we all know engineers are currently one of the more tactical classes due to kits, this new kit would add a whole new style of gameplay and benefits the current kits we have without changing our primary weapons

Key element is that Satchels have a larger cooldown than bombs and grenades, 15+ seconds per skill cooldown after detonating or automatic detonation after 60 seconds if the engineer doesn’t pick up the satchel.

While it’s a cool idea, it’s also very similar to the kits we already have and is basically an improved version of throw mine but with 5 mines and different effects. It’s a cool idea but I wouldn’t really use it compared to nades I think. Maybe of it replaced throw mine as a kit.

I was thinking it was a better replacement for mines, which are terrible. Although triggered by the user and not when the enemy rolls over it.

Its designed to pretty much support any of the other kits you use, throw down some satchels on yourself and you buffed your group, throw them down on a spot and detonate when your enemy gets close and you can be doing more damage for longer with your grenades due to the cripples and vulnerability you just threw down.

A key difference is the user has to trigger the explosion while mines are fire and forget.

I would totally use mines if they didn’t show up as red circles…..you know…..like mines……

Mines are just so underwhelming, they should turn into a kit like my idea here or get some sort of buff because ive never seen anyone use mines, they are pretty much useless with a tiny aoe and damage :/

Interestingly before the final Beta Weekend Event we actually had a Mine Kit (http://youtu.be/S7NdSY10WQQ?t=12m35s). It worked in pretty much the exact way you’re describing it except for 1-5 were identical skills rather than having different boons on them.

It didn’t receive much love at the time as people found it too similar to the grenade and bomb kits. It’d be interesting to see if the Mine Kit could make a return in a similar manner to what you described but with a slight addition of targeted boon stripping.

e.g. 2 = Provides Might, Strips Might; 5 = Provides Protection, Strips Protection etc.

I think this satchel design I came up with is a much better design than the old mine kit which was 5 of the same skill.

Since all of my 5 satchels are different and have different jobs I think it makes it pretty useful compared to the old kit.

I think of it as a replacement support kit, I would easily swap this kit for my current bomb kit.

I think the current mine kit could serve as this, if the main skill had knockdown instead of knockback (hate to see that tight mob group go flying all over the place) and the toolbelt skill came with a tighter grouping (half the mines end up behind me with not enough blast radius to reach the mobs in front of me!).

That way it could serve as a proper alternative to bomb and grenade kits.

Btw, the thrown mine has a blast finisher built in. So if nothing else it can be tossed into a field.