Orbital Lance Temp Power

No please, my blaster enjoys the trops/bomb/pull combo.

Do you think you can maybe find some pics or footage of that? With people being so coy with game name references, it's impossible for me to search on my own.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Huh... Yeah, I could ho with that. Shield Defence got Shield Charge. Why shouldn't Devices get something of the sort?

*edit*
Just to explain - this is less of a break of the cottage rule than it seems. Time Bomb can currently only be used on the ground, and it produces a large AoE explosion. Such a summon would also only be used on the ground and produce a large explosion, but for less hassle. I can still see it having a 7-8 second animation time, however, and interruptible, to boot. Just can it with the unreliable, situational bomb.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

In other words, the bomb requires you putting yourself in direct harms way for questionable results.

The Lance would require a sniper time (I'd really reccomend NOT 7-8 seconds, thats somewhat boring) to target and then...BOOM.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

The benefits of Time Bomb are unquestionable, but achieving them is what's highly uncertain, and very cumbersome, to boot. As I see it, there are two ways to use the power: Bomb on Caltrops + pull or Cloaking Device + Smoke Grenade + Toebomb. In both cases, the powers required to achieve the effect are part of the same powerset as Time Bomb, so they don't really represent a powerful build choice, especially considering Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade are largely poor power picks anyway. And while I realise I'm arguing for less complexity and more dumbing down, Time Bomb is simply out of context with the rest of the game. It's a single power that requires three separate power picks to achieve a single function. And that's not power picks to IMPROVE its function. JUST Time Bomb on its own is completely worthless because you can never hit anything with it. Why pick something so elaborate when you can approach the same result with just AoE Blasting with less setup time?

As for warmup time for a possible orbital laser, the current Time Bomb has an animation time of 9 seconds and Long Range Missile Rocket has a cast time of 5.87 seconds, itself. If you're looking for a long-range, high-damage AoE, long windup and a high cost, as well as significant recharge are the prices you should be prepared to pay. In fact, let's compare:

Time Bomb
Cast: 9
Cost: 26
Recharge: 6 minutes
AoE Range: 20 feet
Damage: 278.05

Long Range Missile Rocket
Cast: 5.87
Cost: 22.75
Recharge: 4 minutes
AoE range: 20 feet
Damage: 155.78

Both have the same are of coverage, but Time Bomb deals more damage at the cost of recharging longer, costing more and casting longer. And at the cost of being almost unusable in actual practice and on a team. I'd be willing to see a power in-between those, if not equal to Time Bomb, which is placeable with a reticle, only on the ground, and at a range of about 40 feet (that's the range of the reticle, AoE would still be 20 feet). Even if it's functionally weaker, the ability to use it more often would more than make up for that.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yes, but the trade off for being 'as good as Time Bomb' is wholly pointless if your comparing it to a power that comparitively few people take.
In all my time in game I've seen Time Bomb a grand total of once, and that was when I used it on the test server during a level bump patch. What's the point of doing great damage if next to no one takes a power? The Devs have said in the past they want to avoid powers that people avoid, hence the buffs to certain powers and indeed sets to make them more appetising. Hell, that was the reasoning behind originally removing certain Patron Pool powers, because they wanted to avoid 'no one taking them', the only difference being that people actually were taking them.

Time Bomb? It's next to useless, except maybe solo. I'd trade it for something like the Arachnos Omega Maneuver bomb or an Orbital Lance anyday. It might make me actually consider Devices, rather than remembering every time why I avoid it.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

It'd take more than that to convince me picking Devices was not a mistake, but that's neither here nor there.

I agree with you that Time Bomb is very rarely taken and even more rarely actually used. At 9 seconds of setup and 15 seconds of countdown, that's longer than some entire spawns last, and that's IF you manage to tag enough NPCs with it, which is far from guaranteed. Solo, it works for toe-bombing as a quasi-nuke... Kind of. It still takes two other powers and bloody ages. On a team, no-one in their right mind is going to sit on their hands for 24 seconds when a good Blaster can spawn-kill most things with direct damage. Fire/Fire comes to mind, just off the top of my head, and Ice/Ice doesn't do too bad, either.

Tripmine's design is questionable, but at least it works more often than not. It really doesn't matter what you do to Time Bomb. As long as it remains the boat anchor of the set, people will skip it and people will forget they took it. I love the damn thing and I keep forgetting I have it on anything but AR/Dev. On my Archery/Devices, I'm better off just using Rain of Arrows + Explosive arrow. It does about as much damage for much less hassle.

So, yeah - give me Orbital Lance even if it hits less hard. I know people would complain about the downturn, especially those who do what I do and toe-bomb, but seriously - as situational and slow to recharge that power is, I dare say those would be few indeed.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Would be this power

The version shown in the video is where the player has picked the 'Anvil of Dawn' advantage where it turns into a hot laser beam stream of death, the power when you first pick it up works more like the GDI Ion Cannon from Command and Conquer and delivers a singular blast of massive damage.

It was, if I remember correctly, the most powerful ability in the game. Not only was the initial version the equivilent of a tier 9 nuke in this game (the regular mooks in that game are about as tough as Lts in this game...so it would wipe out half their health in one go) but the advantage meant it delivered enough damage to knock a THIRD off of an 'Elite Boss' grade mob or atleast 10-20% health damage to an AV level mob.

My favorite tactic was to combine it with the 'added effects' powers you got, one acted like buildup and simply added more damage (with an advantage it turned that damage into an AoE effect for even MORE damage, basically "I heard you like AoE, so I put an AoE in your AoE") and one which added a high damage Toxic DoT effect.

I could single handed wipe out a group of what is essentially +2 lts with the initial salvo.

Of course I eventually went insane and added the Rocket Launcher for pure AoE hell.

Since my character was focused purely on having a bucketload of 'endurance' and 'endurance regen' it meant he could fire off the massive build up toxic space laser of death AND the Rocket Launcher one after the other.

I could chain two tier 9 blaster level damage nukes together.

It was the most fun I've ever had...

I must admit. That is quite bad ***.

Alpha loves trip mine. He's got so much defence he just wanders through a mob, setting them up on peoples legs and watching them explode
Not to mentione the cluster-**** that is laying a ton and then pulling an EB/AV into them.

Fire/Fire is quite correct.
BU + Aim + Fireball + Fire Breath + Rain of Fire = I'm having a dying contest! Look, you're winning!
And now that Inferno is triple damage slotted...

That...or Time Bomb?
Sorry, what's being smoked please, I'd like to try some XD

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I must admit, the animation for that looks just like bad ***.
And *** can get quite bad, trust me.

/animation student

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

That right there is sig worth, Tech

That animation, in my eyes, was pretty much a direct rip of the GDI Ion Cannon, only in yellow and on a smaller scale. Hell, it's the same right down to the identical targeting reticle! That doesn't make it bad, it just raises an eyebrow.

The Final Fantasy 7 music helps. A lot

My worry is that it didn't look like it had much range, more Particle Cannon than Ion Cannon, as it were. I'd prefer to see a beam and blast, rather than just a continuous beam. Think the battle satellite from Akira. But I'd still take something like that, ESPECIALLY over Time Bomb, because it does indeed look good in concept.

Speaking of Final Fantasy 7, can someone find or make a decent video of Barret's Satellite Beam? That's less of a single big impact and more of a barrage of beams, which would also work quite well.

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The more I hear about Champions Online's complicated build system, the more glad I am I never bothered.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I found this. Poor wolves. Also, keep it running for Catastrophe, the other beam-based attack.