Old Story - Same Gripe - Assault Rifle coupled with Devices Just no Ummph

All I am saying is after 5 years it would really be nice if AR when coupled with Device could be a viable spec. Regardless of what the numbers show, the whole set combined is just not group friendly.

Too many Knockbacks. The sad reality that there is no Build Up of any sort. No one will wait for you to put down 10 trip mines even if that's all it would take to take down an AV. Let alone one trip mine. The only way to have any use out of trip mine in a group setting is if your running ahead of the team and you hope that even after you lay down some trip mines that the tank will bring the mobs over them instead of charging in and just fighting where the group originally was. Which of course ends up making the mines look like some nice glowy disco lights on the floor since they are not going to be used on mobs anytime soon.

I can almost sense/feel the hesitation when someone asks for level 50 players for some team and I am on my AR Device toon. Smart enough that I am, I always list or mention I have other level 50 toons. MANY times I get asked to get something else or if I can bring out my Archery EM 50 toon.

At the rate the game is going and how toons are speced with IO's, the big things players are looking for is DPS, Debuffs, Heals, and Defense.

AR / Device cannot bring much of any of that to the table when compared to other specs. Even with IO's

As much as I would just like a full overhaul of the spec or a chance to respec out of either AR or Device. I know that is not possible.

It would be nice if they somehow just gave AR Device players an over all boost the way they did with Target Drone and Sniper Rifle. Just a simple If you have these 2 specs you get X bonus.

Again I go back to the comment of getting picked up by a team. It is just very apparent when you announce LFT or when you respond to someone asking for members, when you say our AR Device. I can just see the other player looking around and waiting for someone else to send them a tell, hoping to fill the spot.

Whereas when I play many of my other specs. I just do not see this issue at all. Again this is not something I just perceived over night, it's something I noticed when I occasionally bring out my AR Device toon. I recall when they changed I believe war mace to Knock up instead of Knock back because many complained.

Again just a simple these 2 sets give X bonus and call it a day, at least for now.

I personally believe that AR should have been what DP is today.

Simple solution: Solo. Or be a better player when on teams.

Web Grenade on Bosses or tough LTs or a Radiation Emissioner's anchor (assuming, of course, the idiots in the group don't see the green glow and decide that means the anchor has to die ASAP) to ruin their recharge rate.

Caltrops to distract foes that the Tanker/Brute hasn't got time for and who you don't really want in the battle yet.

Smoke Grenade to get everyone past a spawn that you don't want to take time to kill, for whatever reason or to keep a nearby spawn out of the battle 'til the team's ready for it.

As for AR's knockback, well, choose your targets better - don't target directly around the Tanker/Brute with Buckshot & M30 Grenade, or Slug if you're targetting through a melee type. Unless, of course, you've got a Controller or Dominator with you who's got most of the spawn locked down with one of the good immobilizes that have -knockback, then go wild.

Use Beanbag a lot. There are many Lieutenants you might like to keep out of the action, after all. Stack it with Taser for Bosses if you're the type who doesn't mind being in melee range at times.

Flamethrower and Full Auto are, of course, always welcome by just about everyone. Snipe is good, too, especially if you're playing with other Blasters that are willing to coordinate their sniper attacks to take out a Boss before the spawn even knows you're there.

I don't play AR and I won't play Dev, but there are a couple of giant holes in your arguments.

One is Talen's comment, with which I agree. If you don't find the numbers support your argument, you have to reconsider either how you are using the numbers, or your argument.

The other is what you're describing when you look for teams. First, you're claiming to read minds through the internet. There's no body language, there's no tone of voice, you're interpreting a pause as "looking for someone else" instead of, oh, I dunno, "cat ran across the keyboard" or "replied in local" or "sneezing fit." I can't tell if you're right or wrong in your interpretation. But I don't know if you can either.

Second, I'll bring a good friend, or a known good player, onto my team even if they're playing AR/DEV, or Storm/Energy, or... I don't even know what my bottom-of-the-barrel powersets are right now. Just show up and don't suck and I'll find room for you. Cherrypicking powersets is kind of a new-kid trick.

LOL you don't want to be what DP is today. It isn't all that great, but it sure is pretty!

I just wanted to reply to reply atm.. I will go back to an older AV Dev thread to see where the numbers are.. I know there is a chart out in the wild showing AR vs Archery I believe.

I am not the Amazing Kreskin or anything. I can only go by what I see. You either have to take my comments about being asked to get another toon as fact or Just call me a liar. What lying would get me I have no clue.. I get no brownie or rep points for exaggerating the truth.

Again you clearly have to believe that I understand the consequences of KB and that I am using the KB powers at the best possible times.. E.G. I know that the KB attack of M30 will probably kill the remaining mobs. Or there is a solo mob I might take on doing kb attacks on.

But the reality in today's game play. Your running ITF speed runs. Your running Rikti TF speed runs. Or your running some sort of farm, with the occasional regular mission group. The standard IO'ed AR Device player just does not have the time to do the fancy layout of trip mines and Caltrops pits, when the Energy player is just gonna run seconds after the tank and Nova everyone to dust. That player just did in seconds what it would have taken me minutes to set up.

Personally I believe Build up is the culprit. The recent last run I did with my AR Device the Archery EM ( Which I have myself ) in the group was pretty much clearing house with me running clean up.

Now should I cry that Archery EM is OVER POWERED ? No of course not. But I do believe many of the gadgets you get from Device are outdated for this game play and do not compare when another spec can just clear out a spawn out right with little or no retaliation.

I think the game has exceeded AR Device capabilities. I do believe several years back it played a bigger part when IO's where not around as it held a lot of utility that players could utilize to a groups advantage. But today with tanks and scrappers exceeding the Hit Defense cap and Solo players taking on AVs. I think it is becoming an old horse.

@Fulmens, even you commented about AR Device and Storm Energy as if you see an issue with them but you would bring them along anyways. I know your saying you don't know what the bottom of the barrel is. But your pretty good at picking yet another set which many have issue with, that being Storm. Again because of all the knock back. Again I'm not saying, I'm Just saying..

Some mentioned Ar with EM, well of course AR with EM is good. you have build up. Look at Archery it does the same type of damage AR does, but coupled with BU and Boost Range I'm dropping ROA and Explosive arrow followed by fist full on anyone that is left. I am killing Orange con mobs out right with ROA BU and one small red or the use of the power Aim. I am killing Red cons with all 3 powers.

The other night with my AR Device I was just that other players fistful or small red inspiration.

I will go through my build and throw it up in this thread to be reviewed..

Maybe I am doing something wrong. My Accuracy and / or Damage are in the red as per Mids Hero Builder. I have some stuff Frankenslotted for maximum potential, but again I could have just missed the boat and been off my mark. I consider myself a decent Online gamer, I try to understand the game concepts and methods.

Edited for link
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=207553
Above link is to the forum with the data for AR vs Archery vs Fire - Another Fan is the poster

I played AR on a Corrupter and loved it. Lots of AoEs and Ignite more than making up for the lack of a third heavy hitter. My only gripe was that it has 5 Targetted AoE's, which is generally the worse type of power to IO for.

I reckon Devices needs a bit of help, though.

Its one of those weird sets with a niche thats hard to define. Its definitely not best-suited for the standard "charge and destroy" tactics that cover over 90% of PvE teaming. Soloing high level enemies with Trip Mine will get kind of old quickly, and probably doesn't provide stellar XP anyway due to setup times.

Its received a number of blows without changing at all over the years.
Traps has come along, and been more effective for a similar concept.
IOs have given everyone the potential to get free stealth if they save up for it, making Cloaking Device less attractive.
IOs with global accuracy bonuses make Targetting Drone even more redundant. Thunderstrikes and Posi's and Crushing Impacts mean most Blasters I make rack up a good +30% accuracy at least without even thinking.

I apologize for an unnecessarily lawyerly post above. Basically I do think that Dev is a flawed set. (Notice my phrasing- I DON'T play AR and I WON'T Play dev.) It has advantages, but they don't seem to be advantages that I like. I have a friend with bad shoulders who likes */dev because he doesn't have to hit a lot of buttons and do a lot of mousing to be effective. Set tripmine, wait 10 seconds, set tripmine... that's pretty much opposite of a steamroller team.

Best I can come up with is to fill your friend list with other AR/Dev (or just /Dev) blasters. Two tripmines is something a team can wait 4 seconds for. Not 14 seconds, 4. And two Full Autos is a grand thing (speaking as a guy who plays a lot of forcefield defenders.)

"Regardless of what the numbers show, Devices is not team friendly"

This made sense to me.
Some powersets you can get a rough idea of how they'll do by looking at the numbers (eg Red Tomax). Others, you can't quite figure out until you play them.

eg
How much mitigation does Invulnerability provide for a Tanker? Why, 90% vs S/L, sir, if you take Fighting and slot accordingly. I can work that out without ever playing the set.

contrast with:
How much mitigation does the knockback in Energy Blast provide? Er....

Devices is a bit hard to figure out just from the numbers. Trip Mine shows some seductively big numbers. But how much of a pain is it to set up? How often will you waste your time dropping a mine in the wrong place compared to Explosive Blast, say, which does much less damage but always hits where you tell it to.

How much mitigation does Caltrops provide?

Devices isn't easy to figure out from just looking at data, and once you took it into the field you found it disappointing? Is that what you were saying, plainguy?

Talen: what combos are worse than Ar/Dev in your opinion?

I see the forum ate my first post. Le sigh.

An AR/Dev complaint comes up every couple of weeks in this board. You need only throw a stone a few feet and you'll hit one, so this is all going to sound very cut and paste. In fact, I might sit down one day and make a more thought out pro AR/Dev argument one day and save myself some time.

Understand that many of these are niche tactics. They aren't going to work unless you've built yourself for them, but then, that's part of making a character in the first place.

First and foremost, there's a general misunderstanding, I feel, about how to use Trip Mine effectively. You do not need to set up an elaborate trap and solo the entire spawn while you are in a group. While you are entirely capable of that, nobody is asking you to do so, and more than this, nobody wants to wait on you to do so. What you *can* do is be proactive about your mine usage.

For example, one of my favorite tactics is "Toe Bombing". Essentially, you combine Cloaking Device, a Travel Power (preferably SS for it's stealth) and/or another stealth power. Once you have achieved these things, run ahead of your group and set up the bomb at the enemies feet. As soon as you hear the 'beep beep' noise, run away from the enemies, usually backwards, and jump. While in the air, but still in range, fire off an AOE, typically Full Auto. If you were ever impressed by an Assassin's Strike from the Stalker Archetype, this should knock your socks off.

This quasi-nuke can be done in relative safety as the KB from the Trip Mine will typically keep enemies on their backs long enough for you to get out of range. It's more difficult to pull off in a tight space, but between the beeping and the knockdown you usually have plenty of time to 'Joust' away from the enemies. If timed correctly, you're team should usually be showing up as your bounding down the corridor away from the mess you just made. If they are not, throw down some caltrops, or, recharge permitting, another Trip Mine.

There's no reason you can't use Trip Mine during combat as well. It does a lot of damage after all, so you should be looking for any opportunity you can to throw one down. Do not simply scatter them about mindlessly unless you *know* that a group of enemies will be passing over it. Instead, think of them as a sort of long animation melee attack. Do not be afraid to use them because they can be interrupted, and do not beat yourself up if they do.

Usually you can look for the tank to have a nice group of enemies around him which you can toe-bomb, but you need to be aware of what your fighting, as many groups have AOE's that can make such a task difficult. Controllers and their group holds also make good candidates for their use.

As you approach 41 I urge you to take the Ice Mastery Epic Pool and Flash Freeze, a very powerful AOE sleep power. With proper slotting for recharge and sleep duration, you can keep an entire group of enemies, save the bosses, slept, which allows you to deal with the bosses without all the pesky minions bothering you.

Furthermore, you can toebomb+joust a group, sleep them, and then do it again shortly after, team or otherwise.

Caltrops are very useful as a sort of melee-mitigation tool. While you can scatter them about around the tank, I typically find them more useful reserved for myself; The Tanker will be fine without you. Due to how the AI works, once they are entering melee range they typically want to use melee attacks, but the caltrops prevent them from doing so as they become addled with the complication of attacking the blaster, and getting out of the caltrop patch. The amount of mitigation this offers is impossible to put into words, as it's not something easily measured. We'll just say it's "quite a bit". You can use this tactic for anyone else in trouble as well.


Smoke Grenade is often considered underpowered in light of what it used to be, but in the age of IO's and defense building I feel it's making a comeback. With 3 slots of to-hit debuff you can reduce accuracy by 7.7%, but I'd probably just stick to two slots and 7.3% reduced accuracy. Toss in Maneuvers from the Leadership pool, slot it up some, and you and your team can now be sitting on 10% defense to all types. Furthermore, Smoke Grenade gives a very hefty bonus to your defiance, and draws no aggro for it's use, so there's little reason not to be using it. Assuming you took my advice and got Ice Mastery, you should also pick up Ice Armor, which will add another 16% defense to S/L. All of this combined gives you 26% defense to S/L without ever touching IO bonuses. Add in Cloaking Device and perhaps Combat Jumping and you should be at, or just shy of 30% S/L defense, which should improve your survivability substantially.

Targeting Drone should also be slotted up for Guassin's Synchronized Fire-Control for the defense bonus the set offers and for the Build-Up IO. At very least the Build-Up IO, which will help take the sting out of not having Build-Up or Aim in your primary or secondary. That said, it's only a 5% chance every 10 seconds, and it only lasts a little over 5 seconds, but you will definitely be aware of when it has activated.

What else.... stack Taser and Beanbag on bosses... Don't ever use Time Bomb... I think that's about it for now.

Most importantly don't forget that you are part of a team. At some point, when enough blasters gather together it's far better to just concentrate on AOE damage to move through groups quickly than it is to try and show off your secondary. For some reason, AR/Dev's look at their group quickly obliterating enemies and feel discouraged because they can't set up a bomb, when they really should be excited about layering AOE's on with the rest of their friends. Between Flamethrower, Buckshot, M30 Grenade, and Full Auto, AR is at no loss for AOE attacks, and you should not be ashamed to use them over your secondary.

In fact, I feel Full Auto deserves some sort of special mention. We'll compare it to Nova since one of your posts mentioned it previously. Nova is very impressive doing 305 points of combined Smashing and Energy damage, but it's on a 360 second recast, drains the endurance of it's user, and requires that you waltz into melee range to pull it off. You must either do this at the start of the fight and leave yourself open to attack, or in the middle where it's effect would be wasted on enemies already half defeated. Full Auto on the other hand, is doing 178.6 points of Lethal damage every 60s, for about 15 endurance, at a range. While is is true that Lethal is more resisted than energy, bear in mind that Full Auto is doing 1071.6 (totally not factoring in animation time, it's a bit less than this actually.) points of lethal damage in the same time nova has done 305 points of Smashing/Energy damage. If you are combining it with a Trip Mine every time you use it the numbers get even more ridiculously skewed in AR's favor.

In short, I don't think AR/Dev deserves half the crap it gets. I think a lot, if not most, of it's negative review is due to players not really understanding how to use it, and getting hung up on it's little details. It's a set that really requires the user to know not only itself, but the enemies it is engaged with and the capability of it's team members. You must combine finesse, knowledge, and blaster aggression to use AR/Dev properly.

AR/Dev A combo I really want to like, its a shame that it just underperforms.


To the OP, you hit the nail on the head with the big failing of the combination. No Aim, No Buildup gimps you. There is very little you can do to work around this and unfortunately its just the beginning.

After you get past the lack of Aim and Buildup, you then hit weapon redraw, after you get past weapon redraw, you hit the fact that AR has too many AOEs that you don't need and no ST chain to speak of. After you get past that you hit the fact that everything in devices is slowing you down.


If you look at the time lines its just ugly and if you look at where things are dieing it shows just how irrelevant the extra AOE and powers from devices are

Fire/Ice blaster
Aim
1s
Buildup
2s
Fire breath
5s
Fire Ball
6s --- Minions gone Lts almost gone
Rain Of fire
8s --- Lts in the rain soon dead
Or Blaze --- boss nearly dead

AR/DEV
Runup to toe bomb
2s
Plant Trip Mine
7s
Run back to position for Full Auto (weapon redraw during run)
8s
Full Auto Minions gone if they were hit by both the FA and Mine
12 s Some minions gone Lts if skillfully done badly hurt.

You wind up much better off simply avoiding the entire trip mine/time bomb/Gun Drone

AR
Caltrops
1s
Full Auto (Weapon Redraw inc)
6S -Minions not yet dead but damn likely to be targeting you
M30
8S Minions Gone if you got them with both the full auto and the M30
At this point you need to either run in for the short range AOEs or use ST attacks. If yo


The other elephant in the room here, is that Full auto is DOT that aggros from the moment you pull the trigger and the targets can and will respond while you are stuck in the animation.