Worst designed kit? Has to be bomb kit.

So much lost potential. In terms of concept and design, to separate this from grenades and mortars, this should have been a kit that was based around tactical decision making to lay traps or do demolitions work. It should have required more intelligence and planning than just throwing grenades at the enemy wildly, but it should have had more potential payoff. Especially bringing unique tools to PvP/WvW, like being able to do more damage to siege engines or walls if you can get close enough and set enough charges, blowing them from a distance once you're clear. Or doing more damage to enemy ships and structures in PvE, as well as being able to set AoE traps for large groups or set up a massive hit against a boss.

Instead, what we got may as well be called the suicide bomber kit. It's little more than a grenade kit that you throw from melee range.And it comes complete with a squatting animation that looks, as you repeatedly drop bombs, that looks like you're trying to do a counterstrike teabagging on slain minions.The entire concept is completely nonsensical that you would have a battle tactic designed around repeatedly dropping bombs at your feet to kill enemies around you, all while doing no damage to yourself.

There's nothing about this kit that looks or feels right, or makes sense conceptually.

@Rise.8259 said:So much lost potential. In terms of concept and design, to separate this from grenades and mortars, this should have been a kit that was based around tactical decision making to lay traps or do demolitions work. It should have required more intelligence and planning than just throwing grenades at the enemy wildly, but it should have had more potential payoff. Especially bringing unique tools to PvP/WvW.

Instead, what we got may as well be called the suicide bomber kit. It's little more than a grenade kit that you throw from melee range.And it comes complete with a squatting animation that looks, as you repeatedly drop bombs, that looks like you're either doing a counterstrike teabagging on slain minions.

There's nothing about this kit that looks or feels right, or makes sense conceptually.

Bomb kit is good in PvE if you're playing core condition engineer. When it comes to PvP/WvW, it is indeed a suicidal kit due to it being a melee range focused kit whereas the grenade kit is both ranged and you can throw the grenades at your feet, plus they explode faster because you don't have to wait for them to explode.

Not to mention that ArenaNet nerfed the Bomb auto attack by 4% and Concussion Bomb doesn't create an Ethereal field, yet mesmer's Null Field does create an Ethereal field. They may have made Smoke Bomb and Glue Bomb benefit from Explosives traits, but they should've done this ages ago and it does nothing to make it viable whatsoever. Also they nerfed core engineer with Thermal Vision, proving just how much ArenaNet hates core engineer.

@Hoodie.1045 said:Bomb kit is good in PvE if you're playing core condition engineer. When it comes to PvP/WvW, it is indeed a suicidal kit due to it being a melee range focused kit whereas the grenade kit is both ranged and you can throw the grenades at your feet, plus they explode faster because you don't have to wait for them to explode.

You missed the point entirely.

Whether or not it's effective in game is irrelevent to the fact that it's poorly designed and a bad concept.It's called suicidal, not because you die in PvE, but because the way it's designed forces you to operate as though you were a suicide bomber - running right into the enemy then exploding with a flurry of bombs. Made even worse by the fact that you remain unharmed during this process, so your battle tactic consists of running from one group to another and throwing yourself into them to start exploding all over them. Grenades might have that capability, but you aren't forced by the design to do that in order to use them effectively. That makes the bomb kit's design even more nonsensical that they would expect you to operate this way from the start.

This is conceptual nonsense, bad/lazy design. Worse is that from a game standpoint it brings little to the table other than merely being a more powerful but melee form of grenades/mortar. There's so much missed potential to do something unique and more conceptually fitting with this kit.

A kit that you have to manually set off yourself would make for a better idea design wise compared to what we have now. Kind of wish we still had mine kit, which was tossed out for a reason for what we still have, kits that perform the same function as others (Grenades and Mortar).

hmmmm for my engi/scrapper, my favorite thing has to be her flamethrower. oh man. but yeah... that bomb kit. i pretty much never use it. i even use my wrench kit over that

@"Rise.8259" said:It's called suicidal, not because you die in PvE, but because the way it's designed forces you to operate as though you were a suicide bomber - running right into the enemy then exploding with a flurry of bombs. Made even worse by the fact that you remain unharmed during this process, so your battle tactic consists of running from one group to another and throwing yourself into them to start exploding all over them.

Name a single skill in the game in which the primary damaging effect hurts the player or even any allies. All point-blank-area-of-effect and cleave skills affect foes and foes alone, including Meteor Shower and 100-Blades. In Tyria, every skill includes a bit (or a lot) of magic and so doesn't work in exact parallel to how the equivalent would work in our world. It's a conceptual mistake to require congruence.

Frankly, I think it's a lot of fun to "[run] right into the enemy then [explode] with a flurry of bombs," just as it's fun to face-tank with a chronomancer, go face-to-face with a big boss as a double-dagger elementalist, or up-close-and-personal with a "ranger".

The animation is a little dorky (although it's super funny on an asura and I kind of like it). That seems minor, especially since there are a lot of dorky animations in the game.

Dorky animations I could forgive, as long as they are not the same all the time.Frankly, I'm with Rise and Graceangel on this: bomb kit has a terrible design. It doesn't involve positioning, planning, movement, timing or anything by itself. It is super similar to Grenades and Mortar, it doesn't look good, it doesn't do anything interesting. Its just so boring. Yet it somehow has become mandatory in meta so many times.I avoid it like the plague.

Edited as I've added another comment on page 2 about bomb kit.

Like others mentioned bomb kit is effective in PvE but in PvP and WvW it's not that great. It used to be decent way back in the day before all the power creep but now with elite specs having so much going for them bomb kits effects are lacking.

Core engineer needs some work. Kits may be our greatest asset but they definitely need updating. Notably Bomb, Tool and FT cause all of those right now are pretty lame. It's always been like that though since kits give access to 5 skills each they're afraid to over tune them. Plus all kits are trying to serve multi purpose within themselves which just makes it harder. No kit besides Med Kit solely has one purpose, all other kits have both power and condi application or defence and support etc.

If I was to see a core engineer rework I'd like to see more specialized skills come from trait modifiers like they've done small scale before, most recent example being Necro scepter with the 3 skill. Take explosives grenadier to make grenades do strictly power damage and be able to throw them farther, take modified grenades (made up trait for example) to give grenades condition application but less power, etc. Just an idea.

@Ardid.7203 said:I'm with Rise and Graceangel

That sounds like the title of an awesome TV show about a private eye firm founded by an agent of heaven and one from hell.(I apologize for the digression; it was just too good by accident, as many excellent names are.)

Ma'am, I'm with Rise & Graceangel; we'd like to ask you a few questions about what you think you saw.

If you know the meaning of Ardid on spanish...

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Rise.8259" said:It's called suicidal, not because you die in PvE, but because the way it's designed forces you to operate as though you were a suicide bomber - running right into the enemy then exploding with a flurry of bombs. Made even worse by the fact that you remain unharmed during this process, so your battle tactic consists of running from one group to another and throwing yourself into them to start exploding all over them.

You must not have read the post you quoted, or comprehended it properly, because your attempted point is already shot down in what you quoted:

"You missed the point entirely."

"It's called suicidal, not because you die in PvE, but because the way it's designed forces you to operate as though you were a suicide bomber - running right into the enemy then exploding with a flurry of bombs. Made even worse by the fact that you remain unharmed during this process, so your battle tactic consists of running from one group to another and throwing yourself into them to start exploding all over them. Grenades might have that capability, but you aren't forced by the design to do that in order to use them effectively. That makes the bomb kit's design even more nonsensical that they would expect you to operate this way from the start."

"This is conceptual nonsense, bad/lazy design. Worse is that from a game standpoint it brings little to the table other than merely being a more powerful but melee form of grenades/mortar. There's so much missed potential to do something unique and more conceptually fitting with this kit."

It ceases to look and feel like a suicide bomber concept if you just press the W key and use the Bomb Kit skills at the same time.. I think it was envisioned to be on enemies giving chase to you.. think the Banana Peel from Mario Kart

@Rise.8259 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Rise.8259 said:It's called suicidal, not because you die in PvE, but because the way it's designed forces you to operate as though you were a suicide bomber - running right into the enemy then exploding with a flurry of bombs. Made even worse by the fact that you remain unharmed during this process, so your battle tactic consists of running from one group to another and throwing yourself into them to start exploding all over them.

Of course that won't make sense to those who impose our world's physics on Tyria.

I don't know, I abused the hell out of the bomb kit levelling an engi to the cap before going Holo. I thought it was a ton of fun.I found the rotation and payoff with the combos to be potent and entertaining. I thought it fit thematically just fine.I have two engi's at 80 fully geared and I don't use Bomb kit on either of them any more. The gameplay of both Holo and Scrapper doesn't play well with the kits.I wouldn't call it a bad or wasted kit at all. I used it extensively to level.It's not perfect by any means, and really gets invalidated by elite specs, but I can think of a lot of skill lines across the classes that aren't worth using at all, let alone as beneficial during 1-80 as bomb kit is.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:You must not have read the post you pulled my quote from. In Tyria, things work differently. It's not suicidal to drop "bombs" on things because the explosions caused by the bomber won't affect the bomber.

That's a lie.There are storylines that have references to characters planting explosives and telling you that everyone needs to get out of the way of the explosion.There is nothing about the conceptual logic of the world of Guild Wars 2 that says people are immune from their own technology based explosions.

The fact that players are is merely a concession to gameplay.It's a concession that doesn't bother people when the grenade kits are intended to be thrown from range, but it becomes stupidly absurd when they have actually designed a kit where you're intended to drop explosives barrels at the enemy's feet repeatedly while you remain in point blank range. At least with the grenade and mortar you can say that logically it would be used from range, but can be used point blank for gameplay reasons. The bomb kit has no logical basis as a starting point. You would never do anything like this to begin with.

I'd say toolkit. Given how you pretty much place the turret, overcharge it, then either pick it up or detonate it. Auto doesn't do much damage aside from cripple, and drop nails has a small AOE. The pry bar has a long tell, making it hard to land. The shield doesn't block for very long with a long cooldown. The magnet's pull has a very long tell, and doesn't always pull them all the way to you.

I'd love a trait called long fuse which increases bomb fuse by around 10 seconds. Imagine placing all those bombs then having enemy zerg run over them.

Hehe, or anti-tamper device. Turning all bomb into mines that remove 1 boon when they detonate :)

@"Rise.8259" said:The entire concept is completely nonsensical that you would have a battle tactic designed around repeatedly dropping bombs at your feet to kill enemies around you, all while doing no damage to yourself.

On that basis half the game is "nonsensical".

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Name a single skill in the game in which the primary damaging effect hurts the player or even any allies.Well, there is that overheat trait that lets you damage foes by overheating. It's pretty much a skill in my opinion since you should overheat intentionally and well-timed if you run that trait.

bomb kit usage

I like the bomb kit.It's nice for kiting melee based opponents and has good CC capabilities.In PvP it's hard to land any of it#s skills, but in WvW while in melee, most skills hit something. Especially crippling and blindness ticking is nice here. 1 has decent damage, e.g. if you run holo with heat at 149%... if you run explosives in a yolo build, ticking crippling with theauto bomb is also nice...In open world PvE, you can kite mos enemies by running in a circle and pressing 1.

bomb kit design

Well, F, 4 and 5 are nice tactical fields with 1 adding some direct damage. It won't hit anything that has time or mind to avoid it, but in zerg fights or PvE mobs it's a nice addition.Auto-attack removing boons is overkill (1 bomb per 0.5s = 10 boons per second).Elixir infused bombs were too much already, so I guess we stay with our 1/2 bombs that do good damage, vulnerability, cripple and bleeding when traited...Making 2-5 remote-triggerable might be nice, but only, if the minimum delay time is not increased.

@Sylosi.6503 said:

@"Rise.8259" said:The entire concept is completely nonsensical that you would have a battle tactic designed around repeatedly dropping bombs at your feet to kill enemies around you, all while doing no damage to yourself.

Wrong.Nothing else in game fits the combined characteristics of the absurdity of the bomb kit's concept and poor execution of design.Certainly not half the game.

At last a funny topic.

Wikipedia writes about the term bomb: A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy.

Now taking a look on our bomb kit everything is a 100 % match. The bombs of our kit resemble the ones which were used in ancient China (see History). All of our bombs have a fuse, which turns a few of your arguments already ad absurdum. That is because there is only one way to get our bombs to detonate = when the fuse runs out. Tactical use as traps, which would require a contact-detonator, is mostly impossible. The condition/combo-fields which simulate some sort of after-effect can be utilized in e. g. condition builds, but not the actual detonation. You can also have a closer look into combos. That is also a very tactical use, as you have an eye on the delayed detonation and when to trigger which finisher. If you want something like a trap, you are looking for a

Land mine: A land mine is an explosive device concealed under or on the ground and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets, ranging from combatants to vehicles and tanks, as they pass over or near it.

Again the first sentence leaves no questions unanswered. We actually do have a skill which meets all of these conditions, it is called Throw Mine. It is one of the more underrated gadget-skills of the engineer. But it works exactly as the land mine described by Wikipedia.

What else was on your list? The squatting-animation upon deployment. As I wrote above we are using the great great grandfather of the bombs in this game. The Chinese versions were not like a compact block, more like a package of different layers all hold together by either cord, glue or just pure gravity. So if you wanted to deploy any of these explosives you had to be extremely cautious. If you droped them too fast or were even stupid enough to throw them, there was a good chance of either breaking the fuse or messing up the mixture inside the vessel turning the bomb into a lottery. Ask your local pyrotechnist, or someone with a chemistry-related job. Back then the core ingredients to create explosives were still quite expensive, so breaking a bomb by wrong utilization was an absolute no-go. You had to drop them carefully on the ground. So the squatting-animation is as close to the reality as possible. Ofcourse it does look ridiculous if you do that like 2-3 times per second, but the animation does make sense.

@Rise.8259 said:There are storylines that have references to characters planting explosives and telling you that everyone needs to get out of the way of the explosion.There is nothing about the conceptual logic of the world of Guild Wars 2 that says people are immune from their own technology based explosions.Almost all of Canach's explosives never caused any direct harm to us. We almost got steamrolled from falling debris. Another thing is, you are a little late. Years ago the engineering kits (all of them) indicated that the character equips special gear. We had our backpacks, suitable for each kit. So we can assume there would also be some protectors/heatshields. The toolkit for example comes with a fully functional shield, which is stowed invisible and cannot be seen until drawn. The big problem with the kits was, that GW2 is a lot about fashion and you cannot just hide the entire armor of a character, just because it is more accurate to reality. The tradeoff were the backpacks. Your equipment changes, as your skills do. However the community soon realized that the engineer-backpacks were mostly ugly and non-esthetically, so they were removed. Nowadays we equip our kits and only see our weapons. Currently there are people wishing the old backpacks back. Maybe they change it again.

@Rise.8259 said:The fact that players are is merely a concession to game-play.

Back in the days when I grew up, we had no fancy graphics, amazing soundtrack or other shiny things. If the game-play was good, the game was good. With the improvement of the hardware of the the years, people began to focus a lot more on what a game looks and details. But even today, no game generates money because of the looks. If the game-play is garbage no one will play it.

Ultimately, Bomb kit is the result of the long-time problem anet has with engi. They don't really seem to know what role THEY want engi to fill - whether because it's a bit of an odd profession, or because they have much experience playing it themselves. Bomb kit has seen tweaks and twerks and nerfs (ie. removing bomb healing), and lots of inconsistencies - it's a BOMB kit, yet not all skills are treated as explosives (might have been changed recently?). In WvW, bomb kit is...marginally useful at best. Sure, it has some condis, but the condis aren't much compared to other professions. The damage tends to also be very little. Maybe if you're roaming against a sub-optimal class?

Ultimately, anet needs to take a real long hard look at Engineer. Then actually write out what role they want the profession to fill. The problem with a "Jack of all trades, master of none" profession is that if you're profession is suboptimal at a lot of things, it tends to not be optimal at anything, unless it can literally do all at once. I love engi, and mostly play scrapper now. However, it's still a bit of an effort. A lot of the engi trait lines are still kinda funky, and the kits/tools need a lot of love.

Use to love them before they added the comical held bomb. Now I hate them.

I have seen a lot of comments about projectile hate and wanting a ground targeted AoE which is exactly what bomb kit is. I have never tried it personally, how well does kiting someone around a capture point and dropping bombs work? I personally feel bomb kit would be "the bomb" if all the attacks except the auto attack had an evasion frame , would roll out of blast radius when placing them. I am not sure what to do with the auto attack to make it rational and useful.