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You'll notice that Defenders and Corruptors both have 70ft range as well. Masterminds, Corruptors, and Defenders have Traps, while Blasters have Devices. As pointed out, it's also standard practice for Blaster T1 secondaries. There are only 2 Blaster Support T1 powers which are not 50ft range: Power Thrust from Energy Manipulation, which is a melee KB power rather than an immobilize (all of the other T1s have an immob component), and Subdual from Mental Manipulation, which is a psionic power (psi powers frequently have a longer range than their equivalent in other sets).|
Originally Posted by redtornado
Ok then, but, why does the Master Mind's Web Grenade have a 70ft. range?
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Originally Posted by redtornado
The 50ft. range for Immobilizations is not very good in practice. It should be improved. Immobilizing the target directly just as it gets directly in your face is counter-intuitive.
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It's also worth noting that in later levels, an immobilize is usually used to prevent a critter from running away, as opposed to trying to keep him out of melee.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I always thought that Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade were both junk powers that never gave me a compelling reason to take them (and I still took them anyway 
), so any improvement to either would be very welcome.
Personally, I wish Cloaking Device either cost less or did more. Or both. I'm still in favour of adding stealth strikes when cloaked, even if they're not for double damage, just because it would make the cloak ever so slightly more useful.
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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.
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Trip mine shouldn't get targeted AoE damage sets. It's not targeted, it's PBAoE.
No one pays attention to me, cause I listen to the voices in my head.
What the Gun Drone needs is a decrease in its ABSURD activation cost. Getting rid of the interrupt would help, too, and may actually justify the overlong activation time.
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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.
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Why the bloody hell would Targeting Drone offer defence? And why do you keep insisting on 5% defence for everything you suggest when that's so out of scale with what Blasters power do?|
Originally Posted by redtornado
A - It should provide a Constant Defiance Bonus while Toggled, 5% or so.
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Targeting Drone is probably the best power in Devices. No, it's not Build Up, but it's still very strong. I do agree that it could do with a constant damage buff on top of its to-hit buff, though. Trading burst damage for a constant damage increase, as it were.
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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.
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Defiance D e f i a n c e Defiance ty
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Why the bloody hell would Targeting Drone offer defence? And why do you keep insisting on 5% defence for everything you suggest when that's so out of scale with what Blasters power do?
Targeting Drone is probably the best power in Devices. No, it's not Build Up, but it's still very strong. I do agree that it could do with a constant damage buff on top of its to-hit buff, though. Trading burst damage for a constant damage increase, as it were. |
"Character is what you are in the dark"-John Warfin
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We are of the same mind about this. Here's to hope springing eternal. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I always thought that Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade were both junk powers that never gave me a compelling reason to take them (and I still took them anyway
), so any improvement to either would be very welcome.Personally, I wish Cloaking Device either cost less or did more. Or both. I'm still in favour of adding stealth strikes when cloaked, even if they're not for double damage, just because it would make the cloak ever so slightly more useful. |
"Character is what you are in the dark"-John Warfin
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Um... Defiance is out of context here, which is why I misread it. After the Blaster changes, dubbed "Defiance 2.0," the term "defiance" lost any mechanical meaning. Before, it was a percentage damage boost which was calculated off percentage health non-linearly, so it was its own distinct entity. These days, the "defiance" damage buffs are ordinary static run-of-the-mill damage buffs attached to attacks. You can see those in practically every Blaster power's real numbers.|
Originally Posted by redtornado
Defiance D e f i a n c e Defiance ty
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What I'm saying is that if you wanted the power to provide a damage buff, then you should have listed it as a damage buff. And not a 5% one, at that, because 5% is completely meaningless. A basic Enrage inspiration is a 25% damage boost and you can barely feel that. And it lasts for 60 seconds. A 5% damage buff, even on a constant basis, will simply get completely swamped, and just by the common "defiance" buffs on Blaster click powers. Hell, most of them grant 10+% damage buffs which stack with each other.
If we want to sell Targeting Drone as a better power and give it a damage buff, that damage buff needs to be at least on the order of an Enrage, around 25% or so. That would edge over-time performance slightly above two-slotted Build Up in the absence of recharge buffs, serving as a good tradeoff of burst damage for the sake of consistent damage over time. It would, furthermore, still fall behind Build Up when recharge buffs are taken into account, and I'm not talking about just Inventions. Something as simple as Hasten's 70% recharge buff can bring Build Up damage over-time damage contribution to around 33%, still outstripping Targeting Drone at 25% consistent.
For another comparison, let's look at Shield Defence -> Against All Odds for a Scrapper. It grants 12.5% damage buff for ANY targets in range and another 6.875% per target affected, including, I believe the firs tone. This gives you 25% worth of damage buff for between two and three targets, accounting for my misinterpretation of the numbers, an amount of enemies well within the capabilities, and indeed expected performance envelope. A 25% buff is not anywhere outside the norm, especially since a toggle damage buff wouldn't affect Time Bombs, Tripe Mines, the Auto Turret, Caltrops, Rain of Fire, Blizzard, Ignite, the Voltaic Sentinel and so, so many other pets and pseudo pets.
As far as I'm concerned, JUST a flat damage buff if respectable quantity in Targeting Drone has the potential to not only vastly improve the power, but make Devices not suck, to boot. And this is coming from someone which a 50 Devices Blaster, so I'm not speaking theoretically.
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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.
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I agree. I was just soft-selling to certain, reluctant and overly-stingy types, who may or may not read this and may or may not(as has been the case for far too long) do something postive and useful with the idea of improving Targetting Drone and/or /Devices as a whole. You know, if they ever get the time. |
Samuel Tow [Snip](Good Stuff Good Stuff) [/Snip] As far as I'm concerned, JUST a flat damage buff if respectable quantity in Targeting Drone has the potential to not only vastly improve the power, but make Devices not suck, to boot. And this is coming from someone which a 50 Devices Blaster, so I'm not speaking theoretically. |
"Character is what you are in the dark"-John Warfin
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Originally Posted by redtornado
Trip Mines, despite public dislike for their use-
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You're not serious, right?
Trip mine is the least broken power in Devices, and is simply awesome in Traps. My Bots/Traps main, Alpha, will literally walk up and down on your stomped, charred corpses before anyone touches his toe-bombing trip mines.
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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.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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If the duration lasted about twice as long I wouldn't mind the activation time, same goes for Voltaic Sentinel (SP?) from /Electric Manip. Seems like I was summoning them over and over such that I rarely summon them at all now. They're just not worth the time for most fights.
For Cloaking Device, I'd say change the defense to that 5% ranged idea mentioned above and toss in a stealth strike to help make up for Device's lack of Build Up. The rest would either be a bit much and/or out of place in this power and doing all of it would certainly be too much. Yes, even the end cost. If nothing was changed, then the end could go down, but otherwise on top of a stealth strike, lowered end might not be a good idea.
Personally, for TD, I'd just have it boost all the snipes in all the blast sets. Except for the ones lacking a snipe, in which it should go into some appropriate power at a lower value. Not a fan of shoving a damage enhancement into the drone, as I'd rather give build-up compensation to a stealth strike in Cloaking Device. Well, maybe not entirely. It'd take a lot of work since every Blaster power would need to be edited and so would probably never happen, but I'd be fine with TD giving a small chance for critical hits or a weaker version thereof with the reasoning being TD allowing you to aim for vitals much more easily or somesuch.
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There are (as far as I can recall) 6 non-Stalker sets that offer a self stealth power. Of those 6 Cloaking Device is the only one that has the same defense and stealth bonuses as Stealth (none of them have a movement penalty).|
Originally Posted by DMystic
As for Cloaking Device offering benefits over Stealth, it's benefit is no movement penalty. I also think it has a portion of unsuppressed stealth, and IIRC it's about the same as the stealth powers in the Energy and Dark defense sets.
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Energy Aura: Defense is unsupressed (which effectively doubles the bonus since the suppressed defense gives no benefit in combat)
Dark Armor: Defense is unsupressed, plus it provides immobilization protection and a perception bonus
Bane Spider: More stealth, sneak attack and 50% more defense
Widow: More stealth, sneak attack, has more suppressable defense (which isn't hugely useful)
Stalker: More stealth, sneak attack, no endurance cost, has more suppressable defense (which isn't hugely useful)
Illusion Control: Much higher stealth
Cloaking device:
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Those two can be filed under Stalker due to the crits they grant, if I recall correctly.
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Bane Spider: More stealth and 50% more defense Widow: More stealth, also offers more suppressable defnese (which isn't that much use) |
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
Well they're not exactly Stalker, but the idea of Hide and Mask Presence is basically the same.
So we have
Energy Aura
Dark Armor
Illusion
Stealth
Cloaking Device
Stealth IO
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this would also echo the original thinking behind not having Build Up in /dev, which was that TD freed up slots in your attacks for more damage enhancement. Your 'regular' attacks did more damage than other blasters, which made up for losing the 'burst' of Build Up.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
As far as I'm concerned, JUST a flat damage buff if respectable quantity in Targeting Drone has the potential to not only vastly improve the power, but make Devices not suck, to boot. And this is coming from someone which a 50 Devices Blaster, so I'm not speaking theoretically.
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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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The reason I excluded Stalkers was not because of crits but because it's essentially an inherent feature of the AT rather than something in one powerset available to them. It's a good point though, I should have included Stalkers in the list I'll update my post accordingly.
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Originally Posted by Dalantia
Those two can be filed under Stalker due to the crits they grant, if I recall correctly.
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I don't really see how Stalker Hide is valid in this scenario. Heck Compared to any other stealth power Hide will easily outclass them.
But back to the discussion since Stealth Strike isn't an option for CD would some defensive bonuses be enough for it, or seeing how it lags behind the Armor Stealths would bringing CD up to that level be good?
My ideas for /Devices probably aren't in line with popular opinions... but this is what I think could be done to update the set while maintaining the theme and niche it has.
Web Grenade: Maybe an increase in range to compensate for the lack of damage... but that would be it. It doesn't really do anything for the set as it is, but it works...
Caltrops: No change (I wouldn't mind seeing the IOs standardized across all sets, but that's a different issue...)
Taser: Give this damage around the level of a tier 1 blast. /Devices, I feel, desperately needs a way directly add to the player's damage output early on, and this is good place to put it. Give this thing the Clobber treatment, and make its damage low, but worthwhile...
Targeting Drone: Only things I could suggest for this is to either lower the Endurance cost a bit, and/or add a +Range effect to it (the idea being that the Targeting Drone can compensate for environmental factors better than the player can normally, allowing them to push the limits of their range.) Either way, I'd also suggest expanding the Sniper Rifle synergy to include all Sniper attacks.
Smoke Grenade: Ah, here's the next change I want to see... add a placate effect to Smoke Grenade. Still maintain the -Perception, and the low -To Hit... but include a placate effect as well. Since Stealth is obviously one the the ideas behind the /Devices set, a Hate Reducer would work well with the set, allowing the Blaster to successfully retreat when being overwhelmed. Of course, like the -To Hit aspect of the power, the Placate should require a to hit check...
Cloaking Device: I understand that Castle already tried to give this a Stealth Strike power, and couldn't get it to work. So, as I have no idea about the details of what he tried, I don't know if this proposal is viable or not... but if the x2 damage Stealth Strike is out, why not have the Cloaking Devise give something like a +100% Damage boost, that suppresses like the additional defense does? It wouldn't be QUITE the same as a Stealth Strike, but it would still provide a damage boost to the set that everyone wants, and do it in a way that fits with the sets theme.
Trip Mine: While I'd like a lowered cast time... it's fine as is.
Time Bomb: Ah, this stinker... I'm going to stick with my favorite solution to this power - turn it into another proximity mine, but have it generate a large Burn Patch, rather than just another explosion. This will not only make it infinity more useful, it also makes Web Grenade actually have a purpose in the set.
Gun Drone: There's nothing wrong with the pet itself, but since the Pet Recharge nerf, there has been no excuse or purpose to the extreme Endurance cost or Cast time. Reduce the Endurance cost to 26, and the cast time to no more than 3.5 seconds.
That's my idea for /Devices take 2. Just my opinions, of course, but that's my take on the subject.
-This Space Intentionally Left Blank.-
I like the idea of TD giving a +range boost. That would be a way for it to distinguish itself, that wouldn't always matter but might help with some tactics.
Time Bomb is, I am told, actually decent if you have invisibility and also have trip mines, because you can do insane amounts of damage to a spawn with it. That said, it's still sorta lame. My thought for fixing it would be to make it a ranged placement instead of an at-your-feet placement, so even people without full invisibility can use it.
Possible fix for CD: Make it grant, in and of itself, something closer to invisibility, or stealth which suppresses less (possibly which simply doesn't suppress), or a ranged defense bonus.
And yes, lower endurance cost, etc., on Gun Drone.
Heck, simple summary: Recognize that ED changed the game, and update /dev to match the new world, since it's only been a couple of years.
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Turning Smoke Grenade into Smoke Flash actually sounds like a very nifty idea. It would certainly give the power more use than just basic unnecessary utility, so I'm all for that.
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Originally Posted by OneWhoBinds
Smoke Grenade: Ah, here's the next change I want to see... add a placate effect to Smoke Grenade. Still maintain the -Perception, and the low -To Hit... but include a placate effect as well. Since Stealth is obviously one the the ideas behind the /Devices set, a Hate Reducer would work well with the set, allowing the Blaster to successfully retreat when being overwhelmed. Of course, like the -To Hit aspect of the power, the Placate should require a to hit check...
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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.
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We used to be able to do that, yes. In fact, I did that once upon a time. ED put an end to that practice, however, both because Targeting Drone couldn't offer enough to-hit and because you couldn't slot your attacks for more than three damage anyway.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
this would also echo the original thinking behind not having Build Up in /dev, which was that TD freed up slots in your attacks for more damage enhancement. Your 'regular' attacks did more damage than other blasters, which made up for losing the 'burst' of Build Up.
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If anything happens to the power, I want it to be a damage boost. That's on a Blaster, after all.
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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.
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Regarding TD.
- I believe Arcanaville once did an analysis of how much of a damage boost Build Up actually is when averaged over its cycle time, and the result was actually somewhat less than Assault. Now, obviously, there's a fair bit of utility in burst damage that this analysis is eliding, but keep this in mind when discussing giving TD a damage boost.
- A +range boost in TD, on the other hand, would be perhaps more useful than one might think. The reason is cones. Boosting the range of a cone increases its coverage area by the square of the increase, because lengthening the cone also makes it broader at its far end. That can translate into a surprisingly large increase in efficacy. This happens to be especially good news for AR/Dev, since AR has three cones, but I believe every blast set has at least one cone. And then there's the general benefit of just being able to fight from longer range, which also benefits /Dev particularly since it has no powers that require being close to the enemy to use, and in fact has a number of tools to help remain at a distance.
You could also add a -range component to Smoke Grenade, but that might start to get a little cheap...
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs
This power should be normalized(for all iterations) to take Targetted AoE Invention Origin Enhancement Sets. Return the ability. And by the way, please, STOP taking the IO Set Capabilities of powers away! It is becoming intensely annoying(if not already).
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt