Why take Devices as a secondary?

Of course Traps is better. It's newer. That's not always a guarantee, but a lot of learning happened between one and the other.

I'm satisfied with my Fire/Devices Blaster. /Devices hasn't hampered Fire/ from putting out ridiculous amounts of damage from long range, and /Devices lets me do things the other Blaster sets can't.

Concept, lack of information, or the desire to be a unique slowflake in a game that has long since evolved beyond the scope of the set.

It's sad, because updating the set while paying respect to the infamous cottage rule doesn't seem like it would be difficult to do at all.

It's an outdated set, but it's not yet obsolete, and it certainly isn't ineffective. It's an old '92 pickup that lacks modern features like power steering and automatic transmission, but it still gets the job done. You're not crazy if you prefer the new hotness, but neither are you crazy if you decide Devices does what you need/want to do.

When /MM first came out, I had it paired with fire/, on the advice of, oh roughly a thousand people . After giving it every chance to really be something remarkable, I finally called it quits. I was sick of doing that "Fire Blaster Shimmy" trying to get away from whatever was targetting me, that always seemed out of the tanks' taunt range. I died a lot, which is boring, and the powers were just... blah. That toon has now been sitting at lvl 45 for so long that... well, it still has base salvage on it. I finally puzzled it out and realized that /MM doesn't do anything to augment fire primary - it's just sort of more of the same thing. It doesn't mitigate (though I did get some good jokes off about WoC, saying I'd been caught in a horrible accident at a bubble gum factory). These are the two things I want from a secondary for a really powerful primary like fire/ - I want the secondary to make fire/ more survivable, and, if possible, to make the fire blasts work even better.

Some time later, I wanted to try fire/ again, checked the secondaries once more, and came up with /devices. Surprise, surprise, It is AWESOME. The sheer joy of Caltrops + RoF is a thing of beauty which cannot be described in mere words! I have a fire/dark corr., but this is even better, because the fire damage is so much better on a blaster.

I took the Taser, which is helpful for anything that isn't effected by slows, like council wolves. Also took the Cloak and the Targeting Drone, though am not certain if they are still needed at 50. However, they are both toggles, which means I set them and leave them alone, and they do their things while I do mine.

Have tried most of the other powers in the set during various respecs, but have ended up dropping them all as being far too fiddly for my playstyle. I can, and have seen, the benefit of using the bombs, but I just can't stand the fiddly. Smoke? Well, it works really well on Night Widows, but never did notice it do anything particularly for me, even fully slotted. Also, see: fiddly.

Thus I have all of 4 powers (plus the web you have to take) all of which augment fire/ while giving me much, MUCH more survivability. This allowed me to take everything in the primary - something I have can only rarely achieve on other toons, and all the power pool selections I really wanted. Unheard of!

I hear your complaints about the set, I really do. I would not take it or recommend it for something like Psi or Sonic, which have their own mitigation. For those, I'd likely suggest a high damage secondary. Fire/ doesn't need a high damage secondary, it just needs a few little things that make it function better and help you survive. Devices has those things.

OH! Mental. Yeah, give me 20 minutes, and I can figure out anything.

I prefer cloaking device to super speed for most purposes -- better control.

I am not aware of anything in blast sets or elsewhere that does what Time Bomb does, which is let me kill most of a spawn without allowing anything in the spawn to attack me. Time bomb, couple trip mines, and me around a corner = no hassle, just shoot the stragglers.

Most blasters I've made I've either deleted or abandoned for a number of reasons. My DP/Dev is the only blaster of mine that has broken level 30, and I like it for both sets. DP needs some buffs, yes, but it's a fun set and is good for both ST and AoE, but that's not the point of this topic.

Dev I find is great for the Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenades. Sure a Traps defender MIGHT be able to use a Stealth IO and Super Speed or a Concealment power to set up bombs and traps, but what if you just want to grab a glowie or shoot an object surrounded by baddies? Smoke Grenade works wonders.

Trip Mine stacked a few times over is great for pesky hard targets, a tought looking group or if you know for a fact an ambush is coming.

Targeting Drone has a lower end cost (Not that much lower, but worth mentioning) and almost double the to hit bonus than Tactics. Sure you don't share it with the team, but that's life.

At the end of the day I do have to admit Dev offers little defense and Smoke Grenades's to hit debuff can't match FFG's defense bonus, but that just means Dev isn't perfect.

Also Dev is a BLASTER only power choice while Traps is avalable to Defenders, Corruptors and Masterminds and all three of them are more about buffs and debuffs. A Blaster is about doing damage, damage and more damage. You have Targeting Drone to make sure your attacks always hit, Trip Mine to lure foes into and Caltrops to keep them out of melee. Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade offers some defense, but it's all about damage. Defenders cannot do the kind of damage a blaster can, a Mastermind needs his or her minions for damage and a Corruptor can't do Blaster level damage until Scourge kicks in.

So I have a bit of an alt stable right now as the redone sig shows.

My two favorite blasters though? My 50 Ice/dev and the 25 energy/dev.

If I had to pick a way of explaining it? It would be because devices let my blasters do what no other set can. Control the battlefield, control aggro, and as Seebs puts it, it's alpha strike dodging damage dealing with trip mine and time bomb. As the archery combo may do approx or greater damage, but you gotta be standing there the whole time taking hits. and toe bombing into the middle of a fight is a huge blast of aoe damage. Trip mine's damage is also on par with all three crashless nukes, lacks the HoB "standing there like an idiot" hit check everyone seems to enjoy complaining about, and is a lot faster in terms of recharge.

Devices isn't for everyone I'll grant that, and I'll grant you the set could use a few improvements starting with time bomb. If I was gonna pick two off the top of my head, make it's setup time a lot less, and make it ignitable like oil slick arrow. Or able to be set off by a trip mine, imagine the toe bombs then! =p

I'd add to that list gun drone activating as fast as FFG too.

Other blaster sets have a few neat tricks like ice slick, boost range and cones, or drain psyche, but most just boil down to more damage.

But with /ice being the exception not one is gonna let me do something like lay caltrops right on the circle spawns during Posi 1 as they storm out of city hall into a kill zone. Or bunch up spawns for aoe carnage. and /ice can't blind mobs to keep close groups from aggroing, not to mention be able with smoke and cloak to single pull mobs out of a spawn (see again battle control)

It's a blaster set that requires a bit of planning and a bit of thinking to fully leverage, and on a steam roller team yeah I'm mostly limited to smoke and caltrops, along with taser to control my own aggro, throw in the odd mid fight trip mine. But by no means it's an underpowered or lacking set to the point where people shouldn't take it. Specially newer players pushed away from it.

It's like a lot of AT or powerset bias and mostly a matter of taste too. I love the set but I'm not gonna jump down someones throat and yell PLAY IT NOW! Just give it a chance, and if you don't like it that's fine, just don't go bashing it senselessly.