Sgt_Sniper

My first 50's an Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster, but I haven't played that character in a long time. Assault Rifle has a great deal of area effect fire power as Pilgrim mentioned, that's what you're waiting for. Flamethrower and Full Auto are both enough for me in most cases. While lacking the power of Aim, Assault Rifle can still inflict decent damage. I think your problem may be with /Devices instead because, while it has pretty utility tools, it lacks the power other secondaries provide. Other sets have strong melee attacks and a potent burst damage boost while this set has mere tricks in small area denial, stealth, situational and slow to use albeit lethal traps and an extremely costly and woefully underpowered floating gun drone compared to heavy-hitting moves afforded at level 38 to other sets. In PvE, most tricks in /Devices do not provide practical benefit in actual combat situations compared to raw, melee damage and buffed burst damage.

I might also stress that your lack of single target attacks restricts you from performing well in that area. However, you can save yourself from the attack of a boss by applying both Taser and Beanbag to stack enough stun magnitude to lock them down. Gun them down at your leisure and reapply your stuns as necessary.

Panzerwaffen also has a point. Your single target damage could be made up for with the hard-hitting melee options in other secondaries. Haven't tried this, though, since I've been playing mostly Masterminds lately.

Not a fourth cone, good, but another area effect. That's Assault Rifle's strength, though, really: casting death in front of the user. One little ignite patch poured out single target damage against a webbed target when I used it and I haven't played in awhile. But I have had my Assault Rifle/Devices almost since day one. While the scatter of multiple patches looks overall harmful to the theme of destroying bunched up mobs since Blasters can't inherently immobilize a group of enemies, this is a nice step up from the current power in writing at least. But a Controller on the team, now, that's just a match made in heaven if what you put forth is implemented. I shouldn't have to say, but group immobilize plus group burn patches sounds like a lot of death and very appropriate to the mass destruction theme.

All that aside, though, I think it's really about time someone just said this: The Cottage Rule can go find a nice, cozy fire to die in. I want my gun, gadgets AND Aim with Build Up. But then again, looking at this from a PvP perspective, I already get stealth, which is invaluable, web grenades and their ridiculous magnitude of -fly that overpowers Hover and a sniper attack, which meshes well with the aforementioned stealth. I'm not all that great in zones, but this just may put me over the top and make /Devices the new zone flavor of the month. Well, not like I wouldn't mind, ofcourse, but the villains getting Aim+Build Up sniped from stealth built in their enemy's power set could turn out to be a very annoying experience, as if I don't harass most Dominators, Corruptors and Widows with their trashed defense enough.

Well, and I don't wanna sound like a downer but, color me skeptical of a nice change our way. At least Flamethrower and Full Auto have been good enough so far in PvE, and stealth sniping hasn't been so terribly underpowered lately in zone PvP (for me atleast, but I'm crazy.) At least I've been doing okay and even seen a good number of other Blasters trying to pick up on the act. I used to be the only sniper ever, now everyone wants in. Go figure.

Okay, if you're still in through my TL;DR, why don't I say something. Cottage Rule, Cottage rule... ugh, well, it may not conform entirely, and it's definitely been put out before, but a 20% critical hit from Cloaking Device or 20% damage buff from targetting drone seems fair enough, whichever. As for Assault Rifle's pseudo-Aim, I'm thinking of boosting the accuracy of attacks to 1.15x like Archery. If you want to hear my over-the-top idea that'll never happen, then just lose Ignite and replace it with Kneel, as in the position in marksmanship. It will... would be a toggle that boosts accuracy and damage by 20%, range defense by 15%, and hurts melee defense by 15% with, like... magnitude >9,000 immobilization to self with a kneeling animation and usable only while on the ground. But not only does this break your silly cottage rule, it'd also need new animations and would probably be hard to code.

Okay, there it is.

Oh, I forgot to think about how users of other power sets with built in stealth like Dark Armor might feel angry and left out if they don't get a critical hit from their stealth power, which they probably don't need. Then again, Bane Spiders also get critical hits from stealth, though it's only on melee attacks. Then again, again, they've been balanced around just that.

@Sgt Sniper in Freedom. I zone PvP almost exclusively when I'm not loitering in Atlas Park listening for screen cap worthy lulz. Problem is only two 50's I got is an Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster and a Mercenaries/Traps Mastermind. I got a 41 Bane if violence is needed from redside, or that Mastermind. But lol Masterminds.