DP/Devices build advice

I'm looking to make a DP/dev blaster to play in a permanent group with a grav/kin controller, but I haven't played a Blaster before, so I don't know how to plan my build. Do anyone have some guides to this combination, or perhaps a sample build I could look at?

Really in all seriousness do not make a Device toon with DP. Just look at all the AR Device issues and gripes and how guys are just trying to put purple sets into AR Device to make on par with another lesser costing build..

Make a Traps AR Defender and you will be at full positional defense cap and loving it..

All you need is a Traps defense cap build, becuase your other at will have no bearing in getting to defense cap. You can just slot up Traps and other powers like Maneuvers get defesne cap and then slot the rest into DP. You can make up for the lacking DP by going Damage Defense debuff in the incarnate system..

IF you hear they are going to update Device then I would wait.. But they are not and will not so go with TRAP and be happy. BTW you can go Corruptor also and just go good.

Honestly, while I love traps, and I love it a lot, there are times when I'd rather play a /dev blaster than a /traps corruptor.

Yeah, /dev is probably a bit weak, but it's a fun set, you can do things with it you can't do with any other blaster "secondary", and if it fits the theme of the character, go with it.

(That said, traps/dp corruptor would be a pretty close match, but it's not gonna be quite the same.)

Not it's damage, or damage type. The animations got shortened a bit though. And after that suddenly everyone was going "Look at that, archery actually does do good damage". Of course, it did the same damage before the changes. They just made a few powers animate faster, such as blazing arrow. Granted, now the archery snipe animates fast enough I've gotten it off while red caps were meleeing me. Without having to stun them first.

The problem as I see it is DP is in your face attacks. Where as Archery and AR have more range. Further it is going to be in a perma group with a Grav Kin. Nutshell for Grav is 2 holds and 2 immobilize. Further Kinetics works on targets within range of the mobs.

I sort of image this as either he is dual boxing or 2 friends or whatever.

So if you have one player with holds and buffs. The 2nd player who is going to be a DP which has short range attacks compared to other arch types. Now combine that with Devices. Its gonna be tough. Look at Nethergoat thread about revamping his AR Device. Ar or DP and Device really take a lot of work to make it fit right when other duos do not need that much messing around.

Further, the best this player might be able to do is get Ranged at defense cap with a lot messing around. So now your forced into melee range to get a heal, which is a good heal as well from your Kin. Which now puts you in a weaker position. This issue also leads itself with Fulcrum Shift and Transference. Basically all your big Kinetic powers are forcing you into melee range with mobs in which you will have limited melee defense or typed defense.

So as I mentioned it would be best if the OP made a DP traps defender or corruptor if they were more inclined for higher DPS. But honestly I would go with the safer Defender for higher defense numbers and pick up Musculature from incarnate for the damage increase.

This way now the DP Traps can initiate the attacks and the grav kin can then follow up with a AOE hold or heal as needed. Further once triage beacon is down both will benefit from the regen. I would suggest the Grav Kin to build for some defense. I would further suggest that the Grav Kin position himself behind the DP Traps and not up close with him this way they benefit as well from the Triage beacon and FFG bubble but possibly out of AOE ranges and Cones. 3 slotted with LOTG or Red Fortune your getting 20% defense bonus. I do not think it would be hard for the the Grav Kin to pick up another 25% in defenses.

With Speed boost I dare say that even Time Bomb looks promising since speed boost gives you a 50% recharge increase.. You can get Time bomb down to maybe 60 or 70 seconds when its all said and done..

With DP Traps at full positional defense cap. You can walk into a group of 10 fire off Hail of bullets, they fall down.. You drop a trip mine.. Everyone is dead. Regardless mobs are fleeing atm. I would use bullet Rain to pull the next group of mobs and begin to lay down Time bomb. Those that were running will come back by this time killing them off. End result you do not need to chase after them.. They come back..

The whole key element here is the Grav Kin has to be patient to wait for the groups to come around the DP Traps. Once they are all there holds and heals and debuffs can be placed. Otherwise you will have mobs being held all scattered about, which defeats the whole purpose of the mass aoe attack style.

Another great thing about DP traps is if the Grav Kin should fall, the DP Traps doesn't have to sweat too much because the defenses should keep him alive. All he needs to do is move away from the dead Grav Kin bringing the aggro with him so the Grav kin can ress back up. A perfect time to ress up would be during Hail of bullets.

And finally I reiterate you cannot do all of this with Devices.. It is simply not possible. Like the song goes Anything Devices does Traps can do better. You cannot compare Taser, Target Drone, Smoke Grenade and Gun Drone to what Traps has as a replacement.

Target Drone, already proven that set bonuses nullifies this advantage.

Taser single Mag 3 hold. I have poison traps with lockdown and have double holds on all minions. And guess what the lockdown and poison trap stack which holds a boss. Plus I'm at defense cap. a boss hits me once every 10 swings. My Regen with Triage Beacon will heal that up before he gets through again.

Gun Drone, as nice as it is. I would take FFG 20% defense increase to all type and positional attacks and to boot I can add a LOTG+recharge in it.

Smoke Grenade requires at hit to perform its hit debuff, so it can miss and mobs and bosses loose nothing. The most your gonna get out of it is -7% to hit. Perception wise, Super Speed with stealth IO covers that issue.

Compared to Acid Mortar which without speed boost you can put 2 out, with speed boost you can probably put out 3 with a few seconds to spare.

I say forget about theme and go for the HOLY COW we can handle anything this game tosses at us.. Lets try to duo ITF.

I'm not trying to beat anyone down with this.. A part of me just hopes that some dev will come here read the thread and say " You know that Plainguy is a jerk, his grammar sucks along with his use of punctuations. But he really does make a point that Devices need to be upgraded." I really do hope I am here to see the day that Devices gets upgraded to the current state of the game. Or they should create a classic server before ED was implemented. Heck I would take no Invention sets either. At least then Devices would shine and find some greater use again.

I seem to recall that TD gives some to-hit debuff resistance.

Ultimately... Yeah, Traps can do some amazing things. But /dev might fit a character's theme better. Theme is more important than power. I have a traps/dp and a dp/dev, and they are very different characters... and thus far, the dp/dev is probably more fun.

Yeah, set bonuses can nullify the advantage of targeting drone. When will you be starting on those sets? TIll then, targeting drone gives you the ability to hit 95% of the time on even con enemies, even without accuracy slotting. To me caltrops is really meh. Smoke bomb, okish I guess. But I find /devices extremely fun. Especially once you get powers like trip mine. Even if most of the set is meh or skippable, it's fun to use. And if ya want a blaster... let's face it, blasters don't get /traps.

Given that at level 34 my archery/devices blaster is constantly having issues with "Gee, it'd be nice if one of my attacks was recharged"... Granted, I'm still slotting them and will probably add recharge enhancements. But my level 37 TA/A defender has the same problems, with recharge enhancements. Archery attacks I find animate so fast, you quickly run out of recharged powers. Your experiences may very of course.

Well it doesn't look like anyone offered any actual build advice so I'll give a quick run-down of my opinions on power choices:

Dual Pistols you want to definetly take: Dual Wield, Swap Ammo, Bullet Rain, Executioner's Shot, Piercing Rounds and Hail of Bullets

The other powers:
Pistols: Some people skip this because of the low damage I like the T1 blasts on a blaster since you can fire it while mezzed but YMMV.
Empty Clip: This has a horrible animation time for the damage it deals. On the other hand you are teamed with a Kin so between the recharge and damage bonuses the extra AoE is useful. On the gripping hand it's a 40ft, 30 degree cone so lining it up effectively requires quite a bit of practice
Suppressive Fire: Not a bad mez for a Blaster primary, but if you're teaming with a Controller you might want to skip it and let them handle the mezzing.


Devices:

The primary powers to take are Caltrops and Targeting Drone (well if you take Tactics you could skip TD I guess). Other than that it depends on your personal preferences. It's generally recommend taking at least Smoke Grenade and Gun Drone as well.

Couple other thoughts:

Empty Clips is a defense debuff if you don't have any ammo swapped. Suppressive Fire, with ammo swapped, changes from a stun to a hold. If you're teamed with a controller that you can stack holds with, that lets you lock down bosses more easily and/or reliably. There's also the detail that you can 4-slot it with Basilisk's Gaze for a 7.5% global recharge.

Swap Ammo is pretty much a must for Blasters, and with rare exceptions, you will never want to do anything but leave it up on Incendiary Rounds. Yes, even against things that are vulnerable to cold and resistant to fire.

Piercing Rounds is really best treated as a single-target attack, but it does decent damage, and you can occasionally get a second or third target with it. Decent opener, when you have time to line up. Executioner's Shot is okay. Both provide a -res debuff when you have no ammo up.

I also recommend Trip Mines strongly. Optionally, depending on play style, cloaking device and time bomb -- with a stealth IO, you can then toe-bomb with a time bomb, making the power sort of useful. Basically, Trip Mines lets you animate a bunch of attacks in advance before the fight, then have them all go off. You can wipe out an x5 spawn without taking a single attack, let alone a single point of damage, using trip mines and time bomb. (But it's not fast, so you may not always want to...)

Also, if you're with a grav/kin... Speed Boost lets you overcome one of the key weaknesses of trip mines (the longish recharge), and Wormhole lets you overcome another, which is getting a lot of targets dropped precisely onto your mines.

This is what I'm currently working with....

I didn't put in any invention slots, but am using Single Origin slots, just as a guidance as to what I should be looking for....

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Milo: Level 50 Natural Blaster
Primary Power Set: Dual Pistols
Secondary Power Set: Devices
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Munitions Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Dual Wield -- Acc(A), EndRdx(3), RechRdx(5), Dmg(13), Dmg(31), Dmg(40)
Level 1: Web Grenade -- RechRdx(A)
Level 2: Empty Clips -- Acc(A), EndRdx(3), RechRdx(7), Dmg(17), Dmg(34), Dmg(40)
Level 4: Pistols -- Acc(A), EndRdx(5), RechRdx(7), Dmg(13), Dmg(34), Dmg(43)
Level 6: Swap Ammo
Level 8: Bullet Rain -- Acc(A), EndRdx(9), RechRdx(9), Dmg(17), Dmg(34), Dmg(43)
Level 10: Targeting Drone -- EndRdx(A), ToHit(11), ToHit(15)
Level 12: Suppressive Fire -- Acc(A), EndRdx(19), RechRdx(21)
Level 14: Fly -- Flight(A)
Level 16: Caltrops -- Slow(A)
Level 18: Executioner's Shot -- Acc(A), EndRdx(19), RechRdx(21), Dmg(37), Dmg(37)
Level 20: Cloaking Device -- EndRdx(A)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- EndRdx(A), DefBuff(23), DefBuff(23)
Level 24: Tactics -- EndRdx(A), ToHit(25), ToHit(25)
Level 26: Piercing Rounds -- Acc(A), EndRdx(27), RechRdx(27), Dmg(31), Dmg(31), Dmg(42)
Level 28: Trip Mine -- Acc(A), Dmg(29), Dmg(29), Dmg(43)
Level 30: Assault -- EndRdx(A)
Level 32: Hail of Bullets -- Acc(A), EndRdx(33), RechRdx(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(37), Dmg(45)
Level 35: Time Bomb -- Acc(A), RechRdx(36), Dmg(36), Dmg(36), Dmg(46)
Level 38: Gun Drone -- Acc(A), EndRdx(39), RechRdx(39), Dmg(39), Dmg(40)
Level 41: Body Armor -- ResDam(A), ResDam(42), ResDam(42)
Level 44: Surveillance -- Acc(A), EndRdx(45), DefDeb(45), DefDeb(46)
Level 47: LRM Rocket -- Acc(A), EndRdx(48), RechRdx(48), Dmg(48), Dmg(50)
Level 49: Vengeance -- ToHit(A), DefBuff(50), Heal(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Acc(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx(A)
Level 1: Defiance
Level 6: Cryo Ammunition
Level 6: Incendiary Ammunition
Level 6: Chemical Ammunition
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Flight(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal(A), Heal(46)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(11), EndMod(15)

Thanks a lot for all the responses! I think I'll play a traps/DP defender instead, thematically it's pretty much the same, and if /dev is THAT bad, I'd rather just get rid of it. This might not be the best place to ask, but do anyone have a sample build for a traps/DP defender?

Try asking in the Defender forum. I don't have one avaialble but I can probably offer advice and tweaking help.