Is Potato Mine Useless?

As a mainly TT and TV player I find mines give lots of extra kills. Great for defence when even a good player who sees you in "drone mode" will develop target vision and run over them to get to you.

But also as mentioned here placement is key. Putting them in the zombie "raise a bot" bone piles works well 😂

I LOVE potato mines. They've been one of my favorite things to use since GW1. There are several efficient ways to use them. Have you tried any of the following:

• Putting them in NPC Zombie Spawners. If dropped right into the middle, only the tiny red indicator is visible. Only the most attentive of players will see it, resulting in some free KOs.
• Putting them into the corner of objectives in Turf Takeover. When zombies come to try and capture the point, many players back up into corners without paying close attention. This has the added effect of helping your team clear objectives.
• Placing them around corners or at the top of flights of stairs. They won't be readily visible, so a player blindly charging forward may run right into them.
• Place them into bits of the scenery that provide them cover. This is especially helpful in maps with lots of greenery. Zombie players often use bushes to reduce visibility, and they don't think to check for mines.
• Place them in choke points. If they players are too concerned trading bullets with you, they may run right into them without thinking. This is an especially effective tactic in Turf Takeover to slow down the enemy team. By forcing them to question their advance, a single cactus can hold off a group of 2-3 players.
• Also, and this one should be obvious, but they're great for stopping pursuers. Nothing will ruin Super Brainz's day more than leaping toward a cactus only to land directly on a Potato Mine. And if they have Overhealth, you should be able to deal enough damage to finish them if you're careful.
• Place them onto the corpse of a person you just vanquished if other enemies are nearby. If they go to revive... SPUDOW!

These tactics aren't foolproof, but they do help. In a drawn out match of Turf Takeover, I usually end up getting anywhere from 6-12 vanquishes from Potato Mines alone. Sometimes more.

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@ToastedSarnie wrote:
@chompchomfThey're not completely useless, but I do think their usage suffers from having the red indicator. Your best bet with them as people have said is around corners, really.
Potato mines were far more effective in GW & GW2 because they were more easily camouflaged & didn't require an arming time at all. I haven't used Cactus for a while, so can't remember what the damage is like, but I strongly suspect it's lower than the previous games as well.
I get EA David's point about them being irritating to play against without the indicator, but given that just about every ability in the game is annoying one way or another??? 🤷‍♀️
In the GWs, you just accepted potato mines would be dotted around & learnt to shoot dirt piles from a distance before using them 😂🤣

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This!

In BA, especially if you’re the last person alive on your team, it’s HARD to get potato mine kills.  When someone gets me, I believe I deserve it and think, “Good on them.”

I love potato mines and they make great traps around corners, placed on the zombie summoning locations, and in other spots where the zombies won't expect them. 

In GW2 we had a match that made us lol so much in Discord, it took awhile to recover. A Foot Soldier on our team hit a potato mine and my friend revived him, that solider than immediately ran into a second potato mine and got vanquished again. Those are some of my favorite memories in all 3 games, the weird random potato mine vanquishes.

Edit: I can't be 100% sure but I recall potato mines having an arm time in GW1 and GW2. I apologize if that's incorrect but I'm sure I've seen a brief arm time in both GW games. I can't confirm right now as we're still working currently.

@Iron_Guard8  Yeah, they definitely had an arm time back in GW1 and 2. It wasn't much, but it was a factor. Learned that the hard way in gw2 when trying to backstep away from Super Brains and having him run right over them unharmed, and in GW1 when scientists did the same.