Time bomb

I've been playing around with a traps /dp defender lately,i took a shot at time bomb but sofar i'm finding it to be a little...unwhieldy.

the power itself is great,you put down explosives and they go boom in an aproperiatly grand fashion but the mechanics bother me a bit,the placing seems to take ages and after that its sheer guess work and a little luck to pull it off propperly.

Now it has been suggested to me that i should take stealth to be able to place it near enough to do some damage but if i have to take another power to make this work i'd rather it came included with the package,that when you take time bomb you get the actual bomb power and a remote detonator that whould be grayed out unthil the package is on the ground,when its in place you flip the switch when you deem it to be most effective.

They could still make it so the bomb automaticaly detonates if you attempt to put a second one down,like force field gen does ,and while annoying i can live with the activation time since it is in essence a second nuke power,i just whould love to have a little more controll over this thing besides putting it down and hoping that in a fiew seconds eather i or the tank can herd enough people there for it to do its job ^^

Thoughts anyone ?

They really, really need to take a look a Time Bomb and give it some fixes. It's been on the 'this power pretty much blows' list for a while now.

Just about the ONLY way you can get any use out of Time Bomb is on a character with an AoE sleep (or similar power that prevents an entire spawn from moving or acting)

My Sonic/Devices blaster had loads of fun with his Time Bomb, but it recharged way too slow to really be useful aside from "Wanna see something cool?" moments. I respecced out of it ages ago and haven't missed it.

With a Traps Defender you could get some mileage out of it if you take Mass Hypnosis from the Psychic Epic pool, otherwise you'll find it's pretty much useless.

Don't even try to use it on a team, you'll just be wasting your time.

well the mass shutdown powers dont match the concept ,but still my complaints about having to take another power to cover weaknesses in the one your trying to use stand

i have used it effectively in teams since toebombing comes as a second nature,its my second traps char,just that last time i dident take time bomb becouse the bots coudletn herd ,well they can but then they knock em back away so its kind of a mute point

its indeed just a "look at this" power atm,but its one i like,altho might respec out of it unthil any changes are made,just wanted to start discussion (again prolly) to see if we couldent spark any dev into action on fixing this ^^

Everything I was going to say has been said.

Except, Cloak and Smoke are also in that powerset. Footbomb them.

edited to add: doh, traps not dev.

I have had time bomb on one of my characters for 5 years+ which is a long time. I like the power. There was another thread on this which asked for a change too which involved timebomb being a toggle type power that say detoggles self after the 15 secs so it can act in the same way, but after the interrupt time you could detoggle it yourself so you effectively detonate it right away. I thought that was a good idea as it's a good change that is highly unlikely to upset anyone.

posta my char is a def ,i get neather smoke nor cloak

I like to think of it as the hero's version of a stalker assassin strike, except it's an AOE. Just troublesome that you've got to take your own stealth powers for the Defs.

I've been thinking of doing the whole stealth set, Concealment, Invis Other, then Ethereal for mine, and then using Invis Other on my Force Field Device. Do you think I will get any benefit out of that?

well using invis other on th ff gen is a interesting idea,i dont know if they whould actualy pass it up but on the other hand it whould at least provide it with additional defence ^^

/agree to just about any changes to this awful power. Tier 9 power should not be pure garbage like this when teams roll over much of the content at that level.

Sadly, this is a power that's in need of a way to use it. While I can think of some cool ways to use it in mission design (blow up the ebil supercomputer without getting blown up youselves), I *don't* foresee how you could make use of it in such a way without it then becoming a mission requirement. That, I expect, would be only slightly less popular than simultaneous-click missions. :P

Well look at it this way. The rest of Traps (with the possible exception of Trip Mine) is pure awesome. So Time Bomb is just the devs' way of telling you "this is the power you should skip to make room for any pool powers you wanted).

i took mine and tp foe ,sheer gold

The one use I've found for Time Bomb that you can't do better with the other tools at your disposal is using stealth to place it on an enemy who doesn't move around much, getting out of line of sight, and letting it blow up to get some damage without aggro. It's a niche use, and I can count the times this was useful on one hand, but if you're dying to have an excuse to keep the power, that's the best I've found.

I ended up respecing out of it on my arch/dev anyway. Pretty much anything else you would do with Time Bomb can be done better with Trip Mine or just shooting people.

Just out of curiosity, when toe bombing, could you first lay down a time bomb, then lay a trip mine, and have the trip mine trip the toe bomb?

i tried that buy putting down mine,then time bomb and tping a foe onto the mine,i think its only set off by enemy aoe's

I don't know. Maybe I'm just very good at reading and avoiding aggro. I'll cozy right up next to the tank and use whatever interruptibles I want. Time Bomb is an excellent first strike if you're confident that battle will last long enough for it to go off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Megumi_EU i tried that buy putting down mine,then time bomb and tping a foe onto the mine,i think its only set off by enemy aoe's

Maybe you should try putting the bomb in the middle of some caltrops. Then they probably can't get away in time.

Ive found fun use as a pulling power......setup an acid mortar on one large, could take a few moments group.....run over drop time bomb on the second group......run back, around a corner......Traps is a puzzle with all the pieces.....just gotta hammer them sometimes.

Make Time Bomb throwable or even just dropable, drop the damage base if you must. Throw it, forget about it, 9 seconds later it explodes. People will then actually take and use it, unlike the very small niche circumstances as it is now.

Trip Mine needs needs lub too.

Gun Drone is ultra weak. You can't port it now either, which had it's uses, btw.

Smoke sucks sucktastic suckiness now.

Alternately, just make Cloaking Device more stealthy and solve a lot of problems.

DEVICES NEEDS MOAR LOVE, and yes my first character ever was/is an Ar/Dev and I took him to 50 back in the day. So I have used and/or devised every conceivable and sometimes crack-brained uses for the secondary. It's a pale shadow of it's former self.