Devices: Behind the times?

I guess I should weigh in, because I'm sure everyone wants to hear another guy's feelings on the subject.

Web Grenade is fine. A lot of people underestimate 50% recharge debuff, but I like Webnade better than other blaster tier-1 immobs. I guess I've just never felt that as a blaster I had a shortage of single-target ranged attacks or that I wanted one that did extremely slow DOT.

Taser is fine. It has the same numbers as Energy Manipulation's Stun with a longer range and a faster animation. It's not an exciting power, but it's fine at what it does, and what it does is useful.

Smoke Grenade is mostly fine. The issue with Smoke Grenade is that it's a perfectly good power for what it is, but what it does is something specialized that most people don't care about. Targeting Drone and Cloaking Device both have the problem of being essentially marginal improvements on pool powers with little to distinguish them. Any one of them, in a more attractive set, would be considered "not bad, but skippable", but three such powers in one set is too many. TD and CD both need to be given an interesting and useful distinguishing feature. I don't think a damage boost from hiding on CD would be out of line; someone said it steps on stalkers' toes, but I don't feel it sufficiently intrudes on the stalker's niche to be a concern.

Trip Mine is fine. It is somewhat specialized, but can be worked with and usefully applied (and no, I don't mean "spend four minutes laying down a minefield before every fight" - one in the right spot can be a tremendous advantage.) It's not everyone's bag, but not every power has to be.

Time Bomb is bad. I love Devices, I want to like Time Bomb, but as stands it is essentially useless and not worth taking on any character. I hate saying that about any power, but as much as I've tried to justify Time Bomb, I have encountered one situation in the entire game where it has a practical function that Trip Mine does not duplicate and supercede, and even in that one situation it does not do very well. The "remote detonator" idea to trigger it early is a good one if it's technically feasible. "Stick the bomb to an enemy" is not a good one.

Gun Drone is a decent power but having an automatically-attacking pet is contrary to the playstyle encouraged by Cloaking Device, Smoke Grenade, and Trip Mine. It's not a bad power, I just don't like it.

Caltrops are great. Nobody has any complaints about Caltrops, or if they do they don't know what they're talking about.

tl,dr: CD and TD need to have something to distinguish them from glorified pool powers, Time Bomb needs serious work. With this done, the set will be fine, although leaning towards a play style not all blasters enjoy.

Edit: More thoughts about CD and Smoke Grenade. One thing that would make CD more appealing is simply to make it stealth radius 55 or greater and hence a proper invisibility power. Cloaking Device is presently the only non-pool non-temp stealth power that does not grant either proper invisibility, crits from concealment, or an AoE buff. An AoE buff is inappropriate to the power's theme, while crits from concealment are apparently a coding nightmare to add after the fact.
It could be said that if this is done, nobody will take Smoke Grenade. However, the fact is that people already don't take Smoke Grenade if they just want to sneak around with their Cloaking Device, since super-speed or a stealth IO does the job with much less hassle. Smoke Grenade is taken by people who want the to-hit debuff or want the unique niche benefits of -perception (sneaking past Rikti drones, clicking glowies without aggroing enemies, making room to Recall Allies in crowded areas on task forces). I wouldn't complain about a small boost to the to-hit debuff, but in general I don't think making Cloaking Device proper invisibility would have a major impact on the utility of Smoke Grenade.

I am a long-time AR/Dev blaster. I have respeced this character about three or four times as powers have changed over the years. Feride was originally an I4 creation, so there's been a lot of stuff to work around in that time. I took Munitions Mastery as my Epic Pool, and with the revamp of that pool a couple issues ago, it has really increased the synergy with Devices. I am using Munitions and Dev in conjunction as control powers, and it's a new aspect to the character I never had before. I love it.

Web Grenade--Required, but something I have only recently begun using regularly(-ish). Was able to get it to stick on Ghost Widow on the STF, if I remember right, so I was pretty thrilled about that. Been using it on AVs and big bosses since. Not slotted that great, but I still have a couple in there, so it does stick on occasion.

Caltrops--Got this one or two slotted for slow, which is fun when I need to run. Wish I didn't have to click on the location, because that stops me using it so often (I'm bad with the mouse in this game), but kinda can't get around that. Otherwise, I like this power. Fun to turn around and use it on the Knives of Artemis.

Taser--The only Dev power I've never had. No comment.

Targeting Drone--Had this as long as I've been able. A bonus to my IO sets, in my opinion. Slotted it for both end reduction and to hit bonus. For those who don't use IOs, it is a nice way to toggle-boost accuracy without having to resort to a second-tier pool power. I only have IOs on my AR/Dev, and I do miss the long-term benefits of this power (including both accuracy and +perception) on my other toons.

Smoke Grenade--Just picked this up in my last respec. Not slotted real well, but still love it. Part of the control powers I pull out, and this is a quick thing, so I use it often. Especially if a group or an AV is beating up on the melee folks. Every little bit helps, in the end.

Cloaking Device--Had this for ages too. I've got it slotted for defense, which helps me with survivability. I saw a difference from the first moment I had this power, even before I slotted it. I love watching shots go right past my character. It's fun. Not good enough to stealth a mission, though. I've never been able to do that with this power.

Trip Mine--I team a lot, so I don't often get to set up a field of these. Plus, when I'm soloing, I don't have the patience to do that very much. But if there's a pause before heading into a group, it's nice to drop one of these at my feet as a defense if someone starts coming after me. "Oh, you're going to attack me. Here, take this mine to the face first." It's especially nice if I can set up near a corner or something, so I can ensure the enemy will set it off.

Time Bomb--I had this for ages, and I don't know why, because I never, ever used it. It takes forever to get down, uninterruptible. And once it counts down, either the mob isn't where it needs to be, or they're all dead already. I set this off more by accident in WW than on purpose in a mission. Gone a respec or two ago. (An option to "Click to Detonate" would make this power much better.)

Gun Drone--This used to be an awesome power. I loved this when I first got it, somewhere I8 or I9. It didn't move like it does now, but it did pretty decent damage and was often a decent distraction. Now, it takes much much longer to set up (again, uninterruptible), and it only lasts 30 seconds - unlike the Malta ones that last for-EVAR.

I use Smoke Grenade, Web Grenade, Caltrops, and Trip Mine in conjunction with Cryo Freeze Ray and Surveillance from Munitions Mastery. I discovered a few months ago the debuff abilities in all this, and they are used often against AVs and EBs, but also on hard to kill mobs. I run a lot of TFs, so I get to do this a lot. I still pour out a lot of damage and chain attacks, but I can break up the damage to help my teammates. Maybe a different use for this power set, but I saw some synergy with Munitions that I couldn't ignore. It may not work for everyone, but I have a lot of fun with it.

Suggestions for Devices, hrm...

Web Grenade - this one is fine as it is. About the most it might need is a range increase from 50ft, but some other sets have a short range immobolise too.

Caltrops - this one is probably fine as it is. You can't really improve this one too much without changing it a lot (maybe have Knives of Artemis-style recharge? I dunno)

Taser - this one was actually already buffed a number of issues back (melee ranged changed into 20ft range). Maybe bump the range up a bit more to 40ft or change it into a hold instead? Taser Dart from tech origin power has a chance to hold, Taser could be a full powered version of that in concept.

Targeting Drone - Fine as it is.

Smoke Grenade - copy the Night Widow's Smoke Grenade to remove the need for accuracy when hurling.

Cloaking Device - How about copying the stealth attacks from the PPD Ghosts? First hit would be a critical attack (barring AoEs maybe). This would be an interesting alternative to Build Up.

Trip Mine - decrease the animation time to 4 seconds (interrupt 3 seconds).

Time Bomb - UGH. I don't know how to fix this without changing it completely. Maybe just replace it entirely with something useful from Traps powerset, or a battle version of Trip Mine which you can use in combat with no interrupt time? How about something called Mine Field - you lob a bunch of small bombs around yourself which do a twin 50% chance for mag3 stun/50% chance for knockback along with moderate damage?

Gun Drone - this was already buffed so that it could fly. How about copying the Malta one a bit more? Shorten animation time to 3 seconds, remove interrupt time, allow Gun Drone to remain alive if Blaster is defeated before self destruct (after 90 seconds) kicks in. Having it remain alive can mean Blaster is able to get back up with awaken while Gun Drone is distracting whatever killed him.

I pretty much agree with many of the things said here, as I pretty much made a similar post several months back.

Devices is a set that used to be powerful, maybe too powerful. And then it was neutered. Sadly they went to such extremes that the use / popularity of the set went down. So no one was complaining or not that many anymore compared to some other sets. People just jumped onto other toons because the game was still new and fresh. It is similar to why you do not see many earth trollers. Many would complain that the effects would mess up their graphic cards or grouping with one would. So why run an AT that no one will pick up because you cause them to crash or lag out. Sadly this set has sat like this for almost 6 years with minimal improvements. Even going from Gun Turret to Gun Drone hurt the ability to Toe bomb. At least back then you would toe bomb and then jump back to where your Turret was.

Cloaking Device at one time was going to have a damage component to it. But they couldn't get it working to their satisfaction before going live so the canned it but left the language in the description. I think it took them almost a year to remove the wording from the description because people who where new kept complaining that they did not see this added damage mentioned.

Traps is what Device should have been. They simply removed the weak components from Devices and replaced it with better powers to make traps.

Unfortunately squeaky wheel gets the grease and the squeak coming from Device isn't loud enough to hear for the devs.

I am not going to waste anyone's time posting up my idea's as they have been mentioned already by someone here or in the dozens of other threads on these forums in the past regarding this issue.

Again I would take any updates to this aging set.

@Fer:

I read your whole post...but there are only two real things that bugged me about it:

1) you said TD was fine if you didnt want to use IO's. Sure, thats all well and good..but almost everyone does nowadays, and TD is rendered obsolete by both them, and by tactics which is a superior POOL POWER.

2) how on earth did you notice a diff insurvival with Clocking Device un-slotted when it comes to defence? It gives you like 3% tops, which would lower your "get hit" rate from 50 -> 47%....which is of course an epic difference considering you state you use no IO's >.>

not to come off as mean, but nowadays we need to look at these things with IOs in mind, even if they were "balanced" around SO's, the prevalence of them really affects this set in a bad way.

I think if the +damage ideas for the "stealth strike" and the +dmg of targeting drone were added i'd be 100% into this set..
I just can't justify making a /dev when I don't have that build up feature..
So a sustained buildup would be awesome

a couple of ideas for time bomb, garnered from a round of Modern Warfare 2 before bed:


1: make it a sticky semtex grenade. You chuck it at an enemy, if it hits it sticks to them and starts a timer, at the end of the timer it delivers its aoe payload.

2: C4. Plant it like a time bomb, but make the detonation player controlled.


I'd prefer it just get junked for something else since it's largely redundant with trip mine, but these ideas would at least make it more fun to use.

odd, I almost allways see *some* IOing at the least on everyone I play with (past lvl 30ish.... <.>
and with that it almost allways includes +acc seeing as that is so common in sets

I habitually check the info displays of people I team with. First, because I like reading bios if they have them, and two to see what their builds look like. It helps me get a handle on how the team is likely to play if I can see what powerset combo they are, whether they've skipped critical powers, etc.

Doing this, my personal experience is that at least 50% (and probably more like 70%) of the people I play with have no set bonuses whatsoever. From that, I conclude that they're using SOs/commons, since even if you frankenslot and don't intentionally go for a single bonus, you're likely to end up with one or two anyway simply by accident.

Of the rest, they're about evenly split between people with extremely minimal bonuses (a single -kb or other unique, a couple of incidental frankenslotting bonuses, a few recovery bonuses, etc) and people with larger amounts of bonuses (ranging from moderate frankenslotting/cheap set bonus grabbing builds like I make all the way though to purpled out).

I think it's the best not to discuss TD from the perspective of IO. Because if you say that IO bonus can over-shadow TD, then you get people saying that they don't use IO. While this does not void the argument that IO bonus can do partly what TD can do, this triggers discussion that doesn't relate to TD at all.

Devices doesn't have build up. In the past without ED, people regarded TD vs build up as a difference between stable DPS vs burst damage. This is because people could 6-slot an attack with only damage if they had TD. With ED, such advantage of having TD is lost. I think this is a better point of view because we can compare the design of power sets instead of comparing TD with IO.

ok, lets look at it from a design view then?

what is attractive to a player for picking Devces over any other secondary?


-does it have control?

kinda, it has caltrops and taser..but thats about it as smoke 'nade isnt realy control

-does it have + dam or other buffs?

do mines count for damage? >.> And it has crap defenses and some +tohit

-does it offer more attacks?

yes, but you have to wait for them when any othe rblaster can hop in and do more damage in 1/9001th the time


:S

I would say that Devices has three powers that are useful and make the set stand out:
1. Web Grenade - This trades the minor damage of other T1 immobs for a very nice debuff (and at level 50 is pretty much the most useful one)
2. Caltrops - A very nice area denial power
3. Targeting Drone - Offiers a very good to hit bonus (although as discussed above a Blaster with the leadership pool can take tactics ror a similar bonus)

As for the others:
Taser is a solid power but Energy and Ice both have equivilent powers so it doesn't really make the set stand out
Smoke Grenade is a unique power for Blasters but it's not the sort of power that makes you excited
Cloaking Device is a glorified pool power
Trip Mine, Time Bomb and Gun Drone are all damage powers but the long, interruptable, cast times and the issues with controlling them mean that they are a lot less convienient to use than the regular melee attacks in other sets and don't really offer enough extra damage to compensate.