Bosstone

In the same breath? I didn't say anything about powers in that post. I've been pointing out Cloaking Device, Smoke Grenade, and Targeting Drone, all useful tools, none of which are in Traps. Smoke Grenade reduces an enemy's Perception by 90%. So, true, it can't crash it to 0, you need a stealth power to get that far, but there's still two factors here:

One, stealth's effectiveness is purely a numbers comparison to the enemy's perception. An LT's typical perception is 50 ft and a typical stealth power is 35 ft, which means a stealthed player can get up to 15 ft to an LT before they're spotted. Smoke Grenade hits for 90%, which means an LT's perception drops to 5 ft. This is equivalent to a power that grants 45 ft of stealth. Even snipers, if you could theoretically get within close enough range to smoke them, would drop to 14.9 ft of perception, a difference of about 135 ft. That's pretty powerful.

Two, -perception does differ from +stealth in a very significant way in that it affects the enemy and does not suppress. You can smoke a spawn, drop their collective perception to ~5 ft, and wipe out another spawn standing right next to them without them ever noticing. If all you're using is stealth, you can't do that. Maybe you don't personally care because you like taking on two +2/x8 spawns at once, but it is still a useful tool for those who prefer to divide and conquer.

Soloing speed is a matter of personal preference, but as far as teaming goes, I am not a fan of someone who would insist on slowing down the team to set up Trip Mines or otherwise force the team to work around their Devices usage. Devices is used to mitigate damage; when you're on a team, this isn't really a concern. A /Dev Blaster should be blasting then, possibly using Smoke Grenade for its mild -to-hit component or to blind a nearby spawn so the team doesn't get overwhelmed, using Caltrops to keep a group tied down, and Gun Drone for taking down AVs.

Beyond that, the only two powers I genuinely care about while teaming are Cloaking Device and Targeting Drone, and Cloaking Device isn't strictly necessary. So no, it's not a great teaming secondary, but in a team the sheer damage from the primary should be sufficient.

I also don't consider a good stealther to be a detriment to a team that wants to move quickly. When the team wants to slog through crowds, I'm right there laying down a ton of damage. When the team just wants to complete the mission, I'm skating through spawns to the objective. Devices offers a good deal of versatility.

There is no crunching involved. The numbers are right there for you to look at. Five of the ten Scrapper primaries have slower animation times in their Tier 1 and Tier 2 attacks, and a bunch have slower recharge. (Tier 1 and Tier 2 were the only ones I looked at just now because I didn't want to bother with a full comparison.)

Yes, it can feel slow because of the animations, and to a large extent how you feel about a set determines how good it's going to be for you. But that doesn't mean it actually is. You might as well be saying "I feel the sky is magenta."

Give Power Sink some love. Properly slotted for End Mod, it'll even drain EBs, and Electric Field will keep them drained. AVs aren't affected as much, though.

Well, I have to admit I have no idea what that number's supposed to represent, given that the Regeneration Rate in Combat Attributes caps out at 8.33%/s in-game.

...Yes, that's rather what we've been saying. If you could go out and get the info to prove that a name purge is more beneficial to NCSoft than keeping the names, that's fantastic.

Did you rest the second part of my post? Heck, you quoted it.

The default is not to change, unless there is a good reason with supporting evidence for it. Changing because of hypotheticals leads very quickly to ruin.

Exactly. That reason has way more weight than you're assigning it, especially in a business context.

Even then, it's not so much a matter of "we should do it this way because we've always done it this way," but rather "why should we change what we've been doing? How will it benefit us to change?"

If anything's making me want to fight, it's the double periods. My eyes cannae take much more.

No, I don't want to fight. But Devices is not obsolete. Maybe it doesn't do what you'd like it to do and Traps works better. Great. Traps doesn't do what I want to do; Devices does. And frankly, no other Blaster secondary is appealing. Maybe that means Blasters as a whole need another redesign, but they're far from ineffective.

Great, you don't play the way I do, so Devices doesn't serve your needs. Frankly I find Super Speed to be a huge pain indoors; the stealth on the power is a convenience while traveling. Mental Manipulation.

I started off underwhelmed by it too, but my Kin/WP Scrapper hit the early 20s not long ago and things are really starting to coalesce. It does solid damage, and Burst is like a less powerful Foot Stomp (slightly weaker, only 50% chance for KD instead of 80%), but still quite effective especially after warming it up with Power Siphon.

It should. But experience (usually) leads to better design.

Anyway, Traps and Devices do do different things, if you want to stretch a point. Traps is team buffs/debuffs. Devices has some debuffs, but mostly it's about personal buffs and mobility. Between Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade, you can move through an entire map without aggroing anything, except maybe Snipers. You can have a constant to-hit buff that allows you to casually hit almost anything without effort.

The utility of those abilities compared to Traps is certainly arguable, although recent mission design has allowed for more stealth options, but those are definitely things Traps can't do. (All this of course ignores the fact that no AT allows for a choice of Traps versus Devices, unless you're choosing between a /Dev Blaster or a /Traps Corruptor.)

Bah. I see it every time I Rest.

Sure. That doesn't really make the rest of my post wrong.