How about this for time bomb

So most people would agree that time bomb is a pretty useless power. It routinely shows up in those "worst power ever" threads. It takes forever to detonate, and no team is gonna sit there and wait for you to plant it and wait for it to go off. On top of that, the interrupt time is ridiculous. It's almost impossible to place effectively in advance because by the time aggro is set it's gonna be hard to plant it without getting hit and there's no guarantee that there's gonna be anything close enough or alive enough to hit by the time it finally blows.

My suggestion is to change it to "Remote Explosive." When you take the power you get two powers. Remote Explosive, which plants the bomb, and detonator, which causes the bomb to explode. This would go along with speeding up placement time and drastically cutting the interrupt time.

This would make the power A LOT more fun to use. It would also solve the problem of Time Bomb being a totally redundant and crappier version of Trip Mine that's impossible to use effectively.

The two mine powers would then compliment each other. Trip Mine can be the weaker but faster recharging damager that can be used defensively and Remote Explosive can be the huge boom for when everything needs to be dead right now!

Get yourself stealthed and lay down a line of Trip Mines a ways away from the group of enemies. After that's done, sneak over to the foes and plant a remote explosive. Run back behind your defensive line of traps and mines and press ZE button! BOOOM! Enemies get blown all over the place! The survivors shake themselves off and come running after you only to turn the corner into 3 more trip mines, an acid mortar and a poison trap! Everything is dead and they never even knew what hit em!

Lets face it, traps is not the kind of powerset that will ever play well with the fast and furious play style most people are going with these days. Hell, I can BU, Shield Charge an entire spawn to death by the time a trapper gets his first trap down when I play my scrapper. Personally, I think this suggestion plays perfect with the way traps is designed. It's a more methodical, slower paced, but very powerful set when used to its strengths. It's very much a defensive set, and that's why I think changing Time Bomb in such a way would be awesome.

Ultimately, the problem of the team not waiting for you to set up 10 traps is always gonna exist. That's not gonna change unless they dramatically alter the entire set. This is why it's best to just play to the strengths of traps and give it something unique and less redundant than Time Bomb so at least that way people who enjoy the set can have fun with it.

Two things:

1. You wouldn't necessarily need two powers for this. What you could do is turn Time Bomb into a toggle. When you activate the toggle, the activation animation roots you and animates placing the bomb. The toggle costs no endurance to run. When you deactivate the toggle, the bomb explodes. I'm not sure if this would work from a mechanical perspective, but from a user interface perspective it makes more sense to me.

2. Regarding the speed of Traps in general, Arcanaville has recently been investigating the activation times of various trap powers. It turns out that they appear to be activating more slowly than the numbers for the powers would indicate as the designed time. It may take some time for this to receive developer attention, but Traps may become faster in the future.

Other than that, I agree: Time Bomb is a terrible power as currently implemented, and could be made much more fun and usable as a remote detonated bomb.

Hell yes.

Otherwise, just turn it into Omega Maneuver Mk. 2.

I look hopefully for the day when they change Time Bomb.

i dont mind time bomb as it is now, sure its very hard to use well, but thats why i build my corr with defense so i can lay it during big fights easier (like end of LRSF, mothership raids in RWZ, ect), sure its not the best power, but traps set in general is just full of uber powers, i say if you wanted to change anything get them to change that dang near useless poison trap in the poison secondary (the one with the interruptable cast time and sleeps enemies, not the really good one in the traps set)

changing it into the 0 end toggle that you left running until you wanted to detonate it would be very nice and definitely make the power less situational and more people would be inclined to take it

I'm pretty good with anything to unsuck Time Bomb at this point, so /signed.

I think the best way to do it would be that when you take the power, it gives you a macro button with a fancy picture (like the MM macro buttons). When you plant the bomb, you gain a temporary power with a 10 minute real time duration and one charge. The macro contains a /powexecname command for this temp power, so that a full bar doesn't stop the temp power from showing up s\when you spawn the bomb.

If you click the temp power or macro, the temp goes away, and the bomb blows up. If you don't use the temp, the bomb blows up and the temp power expire simultaneously, 10 minutes later.

Well from an implement standpoint, a ranged dropped pet that goes boom in say 5 seconds after you drop it would be easier to implement since that coding already exists.

Yes, the power is awful as it currently stands, why would someone take it over trip mine?

I'd just be happy with a sticky bomb.

You throw it at a target, it sticks, perhaps a fear for 2-3 seconds, then boom it explodes in a 15ft radius. Simple and efficient.

I suppose they could make it a toggle that either it turns itself off after 15 secs so it acts like a timebomb or you can turn the toggle off yourself so it acts like a detonator before the 15 secs. Being able to do either is best for people who would prefer to do either, one or the other. My forum name is actually my ar/dev and I agree to this idea as it's basically not changing a power on anyone which would force a new playstyle, instead it's only making it more flexible.

I will say tho, after such a change I not sure devices will need looking at again. There's only so much poverty I can plead for any of my blasters and I do believe that they're roughly alright weighed against eachother in pve.

Make Time Bomb ranged (your able to throw it towards the enemy like a demolition satchel charge).

your welcome.

Yeah. I remember back in the first year when CoH was new being in groups with blasters, and it was crazy watching them lay massive minefield of trips and watching it explode all over the place when the pull came in. Fast forward to today: whole packs of enemies are dead before a blaster can even lay one weak widdle trip mine.

Maybe if Trip Mine scattered a handful of bombs in a wide area around a targeting reticle (or point blank) area--and did it quickly, as if you were throwing a handful of small Caltrop bombs or something. And a time bomb with a remote sounds pretty cool. Maybe make a stealthy little Bomber Drone...like, you summon a little Shield Drone pet and can order it to Pet Goto a spot and issue the command to make it go boom.

The only character I've ever gotten ANY use out of Time Bomb was my Sonic/Devices blaster.

Was kind of fun to put a mob to sleep and plant a bomb in the middle of them. I called it the Alarm Clock.

There are two thing that would make me happy with time bomb. Either one works for me.

1. Increase the radius of the explosion and the maximum number of targets to somewhere around 32.

2. Add a 10 second mag 3 stun to the explosion.

Of course if you really wanted to make me happy turn it into a Rocket Drone. Swap its placement in the power list with Gun Drone. Make it so it shoots small (10ft or less) AOE rockets for about 2/3 to 3/4 of the damage that the AT using the power could do with an AOE. Its endurance cost and recharge should be about 25% to 33% more than Gun Drone. And of course to balnce it and give the players something to complain about give it the Fusionette AI.

As a experianced AR/Dev Blaster and Traps/Rad soloist.Id have to say the power isnt as bad as everyone thinks it is.Or atleast its not bad for me.

Iv found it rather easy to buy up a single, cheap Stealth IO and put it in my Sprint and add it to my Cloaking Device's Stealth, and toss that lovingly lovey dovey Smoke Grenade and walk right in the middle of a spawn, plant it, and back up just far enough to spray everything with Full Auto when it goes off.

Not to mention the amazing fun you can have when Teamed with a Stone/** Tanker and it herds 3 or 4 mobs.

I haven't played my fire/dev in ages but I to be pretty good at judging how far time bomb could toss a boss and laying out 4 or 5 trip mines in the spot the boss would land at. Death Mages in Founders feared me. I've had alot of fun with it in the past but if I ever roll another /dev blaster again Time Bomb will be on the short list of powers most likely to be skipped. It will be listed right below Gun Drone.

anything would be better. i understand you have to have sucky situational powers just like you have great ones, but time bomb? really?

I have a better question, if time bomb gets fixed ever any at all, what power immidiately replaces it as the worst in the game given where it is in the scheme of things?