well, in point of fact psi manipulation has proven that the devs are not ENTIRELY averse to the idea of aoe ranged attacks in a blaster secondary.
'Time bomb' is a perfect avenue for address. it could so easily resemble a 'satchel charge' and have it's activation and animation reduced to a fraction of what it has currently. because the recharge time would still be 'through the roof' it should still have quite acceptable damage, but this particular power has been roundly despised since...well... since the game was brand new.
Admittedly there are a few more changes that could be made, but a satchel charge that does decent damage would certainly go a long way towards making up for the lack of buildup. And it wouldn't change the 'feel' of the set or 'completely change' the power either.
And it would almost certainly be easier than changing time bomb so that you can 'trigger' it (what most people would love) or giving it the 'oil slick' treatment (oil slick STILL has errors!)
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As far as it's duration goes it's the same as all most all other stuns. As Frostweaver mentioned Castle just recently did some shredding of Energy Manipulation and Melee. He said that there are too many stuns in the game and it is too easy to stack them (both for teams and solo players). He also mentioned that the over abundance of stuns in the game is also one of the reasons that the duration of most stuns is shorter than that of most holds and he doesn't have any plans to change them any time soon. If he does it most likely won't be a buff.
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The duration isn't necessarily the problem. Its the really long recharge compared to it that hurts the powers the most. The duration could remain just fine as long as they decreased that horrid 20 second recharge on the stuns.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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Having played only to L10 on my Nrg/Dev Blaster, I can't say much, but so far I'm very disappointed. The Web Grenade has appalling accuracy. The Taser has such a short range that I'm actually in melee to many foes and it has about a 3 second disorient, making it useless. Targeting drone is handy, but I don't notice much difference yet.
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There is something called beginner's luck. You get +15% to-hit bonus at level 1, and the bonus diminishes with increasing level, and finally disappears at level 20. Since you're level 10, you might not notice a difference with targeting drone owing to the bonus.
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As far as it's duration goes it's the same as all most all other stuns. As Frostweaver mentioned Castle just recently did some shredding of Energy Manipulation and Melee. He said that there are too many stuns in the game and it is too easy to stack them (both for teams and solo players). He also mentioned that the over abundance of stuns in the game is also one of the reasons that the duration of most stuns is shorter than that of most holds and he doesn't have any plans to change them any time soon. If he does it most likely won't be a buff.
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The duration isn't necessarily the problem. Its the really long recharge compared to it that hurts the powers the most. The duration could remain just fine as long as they decreased that horrid 20 second recharge on the stuns.
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heh. It kind of resembles clobber, only without cvlobber's duration, massive damage, or..basically...anything that makes clobber a good power ...now?
erf. maybe we can get a 'war mace' treatment for devices.
As others have said, Assault Rifle / Devices isn't the best synergy. / Devices itself is fairly unique; like Trick Arrow on Defenders, it's arranged and plays fundamentally differently than other sets.
My opinion (from an Archery / Devices perspective) is that Devices allows you to do a lot of things that other people have problems with, partly by operating differently and partly by having some odd powers. This is great for soloing, OK to good in ordinary teams, and not so helpful in random PuGs.
For instance, the 30%-55% To-Hit Debuff Resistance in Targeting Drone helps *significantly* against Dark attackers, such as undead. 60% Perception Debuff Resistance also makes mobs with Smoke Grenade a lot less irritating. Before the MA, most non-Devices players simply avoided those sorts of enemies, so being one of the few sets that didn't have problems wasn't helpful except soloing.
I find also that / Devices helps a lot more in difficult situations. If you're mainly planning on mowing through a lot of fairly easy content, you may not be happy with it. If you want to have a lot of interesting and useful tools to deal with difficult situations given some thought and time, it's a good choice. It seems particularly useful in these times of far less predictable custom MA enemies.
I do believe that it's a bit underpowered in certain situations; the long interrupt time of Gun Drone makes it very difficult to use in 360 degree combat situations such as Rikti ship raids, for instance, and the recent removal of recharge reduction follow-through from the ranged damage sets it takes was a significant nerf, far less justified than some of the other powers that were hit.
Devices is not the "Easy Button". It's rarely the "Awesome Button" in what most people consider everyday group play. However, if you're the sort of player that rather than giving up on an unusual / tough problem, figure that if you're smart enough, determined enough, and have the right tools you should be able to win, it's the set for you.
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Just because I'm feeling bored and love throwing out random ideas, what if timebomb, or trip mine for that matter acted like the bombs the cim engineers have? Chuck it for a boom and a burn patch? Like an oil slick arrow without the whole needing to set it off error issues.
That or we could just replace it with poison gas trap, i'm game either way. 
Poison Gas Trap would be like a dream! That would be way too awesome for a blaster secondary. Since we're throwing stuff out there, how about something like an oil grenade? Toss it and breaks open to make a small, ice-patch-sized oil slick that mobs slip and fall down on, like Ice Patch? For flavor, it can be made ignitable, like a mini version of the defender one. That could be fun.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
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As far as it's duration goes it's the same as all most all other stuns. As Frostweaver mentioned Castle just recently did some shredding of Energy Manipulation and Melee. He said that there are too many stuns in the game and it is too easy to stack them (both for teams and solo players). He also mentioned that the over abundance of stuns in the game is also one of the reasons that the duration of most stuns is shorter than that of most holds and he doesn't have any plans to change them any time soon. If he does it most likely won't be a buff.
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The duration isn't necessarily the problem. Its the really long recharge compared to it that hurts the powers the most. The duration could remain just fine as long as they decreased that horrid 20 second recharge on the stuns.
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heh. It kind of resembles clobber, only without cvlobber's duration, massive damage, or..basically...anything that makes clobber a good power ...now?
erf. maybe we can get a 'war mace' treatment for devices.
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That could be possible. But i don't want that for taser, i just want it to be more effective than it is and all ST stuns are in their current state.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
My Dream Devices;
[u]Web Grenade[u] -> [u]Shock Web[u]:
Added Energy DoT
[u]Trip Mine[u]:
Reduced animation time
New animation: Toss
Removed Interruptibility
Changed PBAoE -> Location AoE
Increased range; 8ft.
Increased Recharge; 20s -> 60s
[u]Time Bomb[u] -> [u]Sticky Bomb[u]:
Reduced animation time
New animation; Overhand toss (Under Combat Tactics, Middle Clip)
Removed Interruptibility
Changed PBAoE -> Targeted AoE
Increased Range; 20ft
Reduced delay before damage; 15s -> 5s
Added 2s Fear (Mag 3) on target
Added 3s Afraid (Mag 3) on target after 2s delay
Lowered AoE Radius; 20ft -> 15ft
Lowered Recharge; 6m -> 4m
[u]Gun Drone[u]:
Reduced animation time
New animation; Force Field Generator Summon Animation
Removed Interruptibility
Reduced ability to have more than 1 out at a time
Added Attack; Tracer Rounds
- Same Damage (65.40), Accuracy (1.20), Activation Time (1s) as Gatling Gun
- 5-10s Recharge (Gatling Gun -> 5s Recharge)
- Added 20s Defensive Debuff (-10%)
- New animation; Tracer Rounds
*edit* Removed cloaking device, smoke grenade, trivial ideas.
what if they made targeting drone also buff damage? sort of how rage does only without THAT much of a buff and without a crash? If rage is what... 40%? make TD like... I dunno... 25%?
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I still like the idea of CD providing a hide stance, like stalkers and banes, and having the snipe do more damage. Maybe let the other powers have a small crit from hide.
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THIS... is pretty imaginative. I like it
I would like to see them give TD a small damage buff, maybe 10%, but only when paired with AR though. If it's mixed with anything of the other primaries it's already getting AIM at least. What I'd like to see is TD give a small damage buff, say 10-15%, but only to AR's lethal damage abilities and just to pull AR up a little closer in damage to the other primaries.
Also the cast time of TM/TB/GD I think all need to be lowered but that's not even a big deal to me. It would definitely make them more group friendly though.
I love the set personally. It could use some small tweaks but I'd hate to see it change too much though. AR/Devices may not be the most powerful set out there, but it's still my favorite.
It would be easier to just buff AR's damage to make up for missing out on Aim. Something similar should happen to /Dev to make up for missing out on build up.
They both need more work. Except for animation changes on AR nothing has really been done to either to balance out changes that were made to the game globally in I5.
Post I9 many /Dev powers can be duplicated without sacrificing anything simply by slotting set IOs. If those IOs are correctly balanced for the game that tells me the powers that are worse than or nearly equivalent to the IOs are NOT correctly balanced for the game.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
Well buffing it all would be just fine too 
They've already coded it into TD to give snipe extra damage if TD is active. I just think it should cover all of AR's lethal because it's so resisted plus the fact if you're AR/devices you lack aim/buildup. So the only incentive beyond concept to play this combo is an extra bit of damage on snipe? I think at 36 I get about 50 extra damage. All of the other primaries get at least AIM or buildup depending on which one you pair with AR/devices, and they are pretty strong. It's just kinda sad that the 2 mated primary and secondary would be weaker if actually played together.
If they never change it it's no big deal to me. I think it's still a lot of fun even though it's lower damage than pretty much everything else out there. I don't even know how far behind other blasters we are, but it's hard to believe we'd be too far. I still feel like I do a lot of damage. Maybe I'll see things differently the higher level I get though. Only 14 more levels to go 
Web grenade has standard accuracy just like all the blasts in the Energy primary. You will want to slot it with accuracy the same as your tier 1 and 2 primary since you can fire them while mezzed (Targetting drone is supressed while you are mezzed).
Taser's range is actually longer than it was a year or so ago. It used to be a melee attack (range 5).
As far as it's duration goes it's the same as all most all other stuns. As Frostweaver mentioned Castle just recently did some shredding of Energy Manipulation and Melee. He said that there are too many stuns in the game and it is too easy to stack them (both for teams and solo players). He also mentioned that the over abundance of stuns in the game is also one of the reasons that the duration of most stuns is shorter than that of most holds and he doesn't have any plans to change them any time soon. If he does it most likely won't be a buff.
I'm with Frostweaver. I definately feel that the interrupt durations should count toward defiance buffing for /Devices. The timer on time bomb is a bit much to hope for but there isn't any reason that interrupt time shouldn't be figured into the defiance buff. That would at least make up for the lack of build up in the set.
The other thing that's a problem is that psuedo pets copy the self buffs that you have on you at the time they are cast. TD's self buff ticks every .5 seconds and lasts .75 seconds and does not stack. IMO the way to improve TD's synergy with itself and all the primaries is to increase the tick duration. This would have several benficial effects.
If say TD tick duration was 10 seconds you could toe bomb and not have to worry about accuracy slotting. You would also benefit from TD's last pulse for 10 seconds after you were mezzed. Problem here of course is for Time Bomb to benefit the tick duration would have to be 24 seconds which is verging on the ridiculous.
I agree that the set needs a buff but at the same time I hope that any buff doesn't homogenize the set. Devices is unique in the realm of blaster secondaries. MM is also unique but functions well solo or teamed.
I feel the devs need to boost Devices in such a way that it is more team friendly, while not eliminating its usefulness when soloing, or it's uniqueness in either situation.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson