I'd like to hear both from soldiers/x and x/soldiers. I'm an operative/soldier and it's been a great build for me, especially on maps such as the Resort, Security Tower, and the Reactor. I got Satchel Charge because I think it fits my sabatour style. However, I don't find myself using it much. The only time I've used it is to protect my HE Charges from being detonated. I know they're useful to protect command posts, but I mostly just use the soldier class to complete detonate objectives. So, I'd like to hear from people who use it. Do you find it useful? How often do you use it? In what contexts do you use it? How effective is it? Do you think another soldier ability would be more useful to me? I also have Flashbang but it's been difficult for me to tell how effective it is. What do you think about it? I will say that, thinking back, I've blinded myself with the Flashbang (lol) only to look up and see that my team has seriously thinned out the enemy team so that's been nice.

Also, I noticed that on the Reactor map as the resistance that the shortcut door can only be opened by an engineer and that shortcut is super useful to me. There have been some games on that map where it is never opened. Since, as an operative I work to tip the odds against the other team I think it would be fitting to use the Engineer class to tip the odds in favor of my team by building MG nests and opening shortcuts. engineers (and x/engineers), are there many shortcuts or barricades in the maps so that it would be worth investing a point or two from Satchel Charge and/or Flashbang in, say, Light Turret and Extra Landmine to protect/warn myself from/of enemies coming my way while repairing/building? Or, perhaps Gearhead? Or are there so few opportunities to build MG nests and create shortcuts that it's just not worth it? Or, are there just plenty of Engineers that will have the MG nests built and shortcuts open before I can switch anyway? Please note that I intend to stay Operative most of the time. I just would like to make myself more useful/formidable when switching to perform objectives. Thanks for your input!

You can use them to defend doorways, or stick them at certain choke points on defense since it doesn't take pips to detonate them you can have full pips and 3 traps on the ground. I use them to defend planted HE charges the most, but I also plant them on hackboxes on offense. They persist after your death so if you put one on/near the hackbox and everyone dies, you can kill the engineer/s that are taking it off while your team runs back which will give you a huge advantage. You can also use them on defense to protect objectives, if you plant some on a repair objective and all get cleared off of it you can still kill the repairers while you are running back. You can also plant them on the transport objective and when you see someone completing it you can detonate and save your team the loss while you get back there to protect it.

Satchel charges are the most powerful tool in a soldiers arsenal IMO, learn to use them well and you can do some amazing stuff.

damn ive been holding off on working on my soldier cuz i dont realy like his build but you guy make me want to dust off my guy and rain hell

Thanks for the advice! Since I mainly switch to soldier to plant HE charges, I'll have to keep in mind that I don't have to just place the satchel charges under the HE charge to defend it. I'd still like to hear from more soldiers and engineers, though.

Like Horty said, there are a lot of uses for satchel charges. One of my favorites is on shipyard as Resistance, you can place them under the crane controls that need to be repaired, thus an extra safety net is created if Security pushes through your defense and starts repairing it. It does however seem to be most useful while defending. Also keep in mind the flashbang doesn't appear to affect bots at all, and it will blind your team with friendly fire on, so depending what game types you play it may be a little less useful.

As far as spreading more points around into engineer, it really depends if you want to have a generalist or a specialist. Personally I find specialists more enjoyable to play since as a generalist you have points spread around to multiple class specific abilities that can't be utilized all the time. That's probably why I have so many characters though. Most of them are specialists in one class with left over points put into a secondary class to add a little more utility but not sacrifice it's primary potential. But on the reverse a generalist can be used in every situation and you can switch classes as needed for whatever objective you're at without worrying about what class you're more useful as.

I really don't find them useful. Why? Because they LIED to us. They said you would be able to remote denonate ALL charges that are present on the battlefield. And you can't.

Plus, you have to do directly aim at said charge, AND HOLD the X Button (X360), JUST to activate it?! I shouldn't have to look DIRECTLY at my charge to detonate it. Honestly there should be some new button command, or something, that allows you to just say HOLD X wherever you may be and 1-3 charges set will detonate.

IMHO without this mechanic, the Landmine completely just SHADOWS the Satchel Charge in overall versatility. People can't see them (unless they're an Operative), and most people who DO trip a Mine usually don't stay on it and end up being killed by it (IE. Not waiting for an Engineer to stop what they're doing completely JUST to come disarm a Mine off of your tippy-toes...)

I have it in my Soldier build, but now I'm honestly thinking of getting rid of it. I use my Molotov and Flashbangs WAY more then S. Charges.

To me overall Landmine > Satchel Charge.

If you have multiple charges out, select the charge ability on your D-pad and then hit RB to make them all go off at once. It is useful to have the individual detonation if you have charges scattered all over a map and only need to detonate one of them but I tend to only have 2 grouped at a key location so rarely use the individual detonation.

At emeraldkraken:

I definitely am a specialist. I pretty much just switch to soldier if I need to use an HE charge, and having a couple other points helps his effectiveness when a soldier. I was just wondering whether it'd be useful to have a couple of points in engineer in order to do things like build barricades and create shortcuts. The more I think about it, though, the engineer class is a pretty popular class and I do like the operative/soldier build. Maybe I should just practice using satchel charges. Still, I'd like to hear from engineers on the topic of creating shortcuts, building MG nests, etc. Thanks for your imput, though. I also find specialists more fun and I've been rocking this build. I just won sometihng like 4 out of 5 matches.

As a level 20 fully specced Engineer(secondary is medic) I find that building the side objectives are a great source of exp and actually benefit the team.

MG nests- Once you build them on a defense map your AI teammates will begin to use them and really damage the enemy team, I dont know how many times a a light I need to cover an area and am saved from trying to cover my friends with a SMG thanks to the MG.

Shortcuts- The best example of this is the lift elevator in Aquarium(First Mission). I like that shortcut a lot because it allows you to really flank and surprise the enemy and inflict tons of damage. And since as a engineer you can self-damage buff I often find myself using a Dragonov or Rockstedi and picking off enemies from behind.

Turret and Mine Placement are also important for a successful Engineer, I see bad examples of both all the time online so here's a few tips.

1. Mines dont explode when stepped on but when stepped off of, so be sure to place a mine a few feet in front of the objective and not right on top of it. If you plant it directly in front a soldier would still have a chance to plant an HE Charge and only be damaged once he walks away.

2. Set up your turret so that it overlooks an objective but make sure the enemy wont notice it until they start getting shot. When you clump turrets together in the middle of a hallway all you get is a buch of dead turrets and a Molotov wielding soldier with a lot of exp.

3. Giving out damage buffs is the most important thing you can do for your team, but try not to forget to always buff your gun when you spawn.

4. When an objective is about to be completed run up to the next point if the map allows it and set up your defenses, you'll get the jump on any enemy Lights.

5. Never attempt to place a turret/mine while under fire, you will benefit your team much more if you get behind cover and hand out buffs. My biggest pet peeve with friendly engineers is seeing them run out in the open and stare at the ground trying to plant a turret and getting killed over and over, remember engineers have the advantage in one on one exchanges because of the weapon buffs.

6. DEFENSE

Horty's pretty much covered everything I plan to use them for when I get my Soldier to 20.

I know exactly what you mean.

I've been Operative / Soldier, and Soldier / Operative. I imagine we have similar play styles.
I took Satchel Charges for exactly the same reason, but find them too situational. On Attack I hardly ever use them, they take a long time to set up (well, a long time stood still) and the chances of getting a kill out of them are pretty slim because the defenders will probably sit still while the Attacks should be the ones moving through the routes to get to the objective (duh). I use them for Command Posts mostly.

On defense however they're invaluable. No one expects them the first few times you use them and if you keep changing the position they become just as clueless all over again. If the attackers get desperate they also tend to forget about it. Over the 10/15min time period defending Refuel as they bring the Hydro to the plane, I killed 7 people in exactly the same way just by putting charges on the refuel platform. All they would have needed to do was shoot the objective a little before starting.

They aren't fire & forget weapons like Mines but I find them to be just as effective - on defense anyway.

On Attack I think it's better to A ) Go operative B ) save it for my grenades.