Why take Devices as a secondary?

Back in 2007 liking numbers, I crunched every primary and secondary of the blaster set into excel (did tankies and scrappies prior) even secondary effects got included. The upshot is that each set does something better than another but that's something which nobody needs numbers to tell them that. Different themes and their different flexibilities will suit different people just because fun is subjective. If one doesn't like or get something then its just not for them. I don't get curling. I don't bother trying to change the sport. The only change I'd like to see happen to /Dev apparently can't be done.

Why take Devices as a secondary?

Because I enjoy it.

I couldn't give a crap less that another set is "better". I will play and enjoy any power set I find fun, regardless of other people's opinions of it.

Does it have flaws? Of course it does, EVERY set has flaws. But I haven't found those flaws to take any of the enjoyment away for me.

I enjoy playing /Devices, and that is reason enough to play it.

It's fun. Now at lev 47, IO set slotting on my Archery/Devices (themed tune, a high tech bow hunter) has been more fun for me than on other Blaster primary/ secondaries which kind of follow the same (and more expensive, from my experience) formula that gets old. Some of the powers in Devices took some sets I have not tried as often that I found nifty. Love Trops proc'ed up. Anyway.

Leveling up I remember all the Arachnos missions and my team being blinded by Night Widows with no yellow pills to take, but with Targeting Drone (and Tactics, overkill, but my guy's bio says he never misses) I just kept flinging sticks. Once a Night Widow EB/AV (that Vanguard mission on a Rogue Isle city map forget the EB/AV name) finally aggroed on little ole pissy damage me and my arrows because I am the only one that can still see her to attack her.
Thats ok I spent the whole fight dropping Trip Mines at my feet everytime it recharged. (shoot, shoot, shoot, drop mine, repeat) Before 4 minutes goes by and the first mine detonates you get a good pile of 12 mines or so at your feet. Everyone still alive is blinded but me, scrapper down, fender down, another blaster down, tank down, chat bubble from tank's dirt says "Run" me still shooting, here she comes, hop away, big boom. Dead or close enough for me to finish her FUN! Team thinks I am special just for a few seconds or so, but we move on and soon forget about my specialness. I am again just that guy with Archery and Devices, making a splash here and there with a caltrops, rain of arrows, fistful show on a spawn, but the other blaster usually outshines me on most of the spawns. Oh well I had my moment. FUN!
Last guy standing against Envoy of Shadow, early in the 40's, one of those fights where AV is almost dead and suddenly the team dies, so he finally noticed me, but killed himself by running at my mine pile at my feet. On teams any long EB/ AV fight just drop a mine whenever you can, it happens alot that they will come over and boom themselves on the foot pile. Depending on when this happens, ideally later in fight; they just might die or be close enough to dead for whats left of the team to finsh them. Devices, a different set of tricks that can be fun, that you need to find as much use for as possible. Team steam rolling? Get ahead of them and set some **** up. When they ask what your doing, just say, "Having fun!"

Running my Energy/Energy Blaster solo, with knb, stuns and massive blaps in my secondary, I've had a lot of trouble with some bosses (Arachnos, for one particularly nasty example, with their defense debuffs, stuns, knockback, holds, and massive 800-point attacks). Those guys just do not go down fast enough for safety and they shrug off my controls. Multiple "awakens" ensue.

My Archery/Devices Blaster might have had the same trouble the first time I tried to take one of those bad boys down solo. But then I would have made a pile of mines, a caltrop patch, and a safety mine or two behind that, and tried again. And won.

I haven't had much experience on Blasters. Admittedly I may be "doing it wrong," but in that situation, Devices seems better than the very popular /Energy.

the beauty of devices is that you can have different setups depending on what kinda baddies and what kinda team your on. its a very survivable set for blasters. makes ya think b4 you mash buttons. (proud owner of a 50 fire/dev and a 50 AR/dev)

devices are great if you are running a theme based character...caltrops will keep a room full of critters in a room and will do damage to anything that steps on them...pums, wolves, and a few other critters are not slowed, however, they still take damage, i kept pacing of the turtle, i had tried posi's blast...however i never got to see the proc go off...web grenades are cool..they come in the handiest when soloing, much like mines which i no longer use...cloaking device is far superior to stealth from the pools, and unlike hide...you don't unstealth when interacting with an object...sixslot it with luck of the gambler and with freebird on hover...you are well defended...time bomb is kinda useless...smoke grenade sixslotted with darkwatcher pretty much blind anything...what can i say...i like devices "D

I enjoy devices and use them w/o any problem. I use all but Taser (couldn't it do more damage since it's not an inherent power?), Smoke Grenade (A confuse effect would've been better) and Cloaking Device (Stealth is so much more helpful).

I like to use my Phase Shift + Stealth and either Time Bomb/Trip Mine a lot. I go in hidden, plant 1 or 2 trip mines or 1 time bomb then I'm either teleported back or I run like hell to my team. Unphase and boom, it goes off.

Web Grenade and Caltrops I've maxed out with IOs and have enjoyed a very stream of success. Gun Drone,well.. that speaks for itself. With some good enh. for recharge, I can have 2 at once. Perfect for when I solo bosses

Devices rocks. Sorry for the people who don't like it. Taser is kinda blah. Gun Drone, I think could use some help. Time Bomb would be better if there was someway you could remotely detonate it. Other than that I love the set.

@AF

Just go away please if all you have to add is more of your brainless 5th grade insults and nothing relevant to the discussion. Dignifying you with any further response is a waste of oxygen.

Oh speaking of.

Quote:

Originally Posted by plainguy Dragonkat You are selectively cutting out statements I made to spin them in a negative light for your own gain. Nutshell you think device is great and can do more then traps and I should see you in action. Okay I take that offer. Here are the rules. 1. You pick the AE mission. 2. Difficulty setting bosses, no AVs for simplicity. 3. Difficultly setting of 0/7-8 4. No inspirations 5. Full map clear We then see who died the most and how long it took to clear. Seems simple and fair enough. If I loose you can come back here and tell everyone. Post here and I would welcome anyone who is interested to come watch up to the number of difficulty setting Dragonkat wants. We can get at least 5 or 6 observant as impartial witnesses to the event. You called me out and I must accept the challenge. But for sure this will either prove or disprove your thoughts and statements about how much more Device has over Traps.

*yawns* ah nothing like a melted hard drive and a windows reinstall to keep me out of the loop for a few days, I see I haven't missed much so asides from an invitation to a meaningless challenge. Called you out? seriously? Here let me go find my ruler we can settle this like real men!

Though I do love you putting more words in my mouth plainguy. As I don't recall saying anywhere I mow things down with devices before mobs can blink like I'm some uber gadget god. Though I do recall saying my ice/dev is damn good at what she does. Or for that matter I never specifically mentioned or "called out" traps alone, last time I checked the question I asked (which you still seem incapable of answering) was name me any powerset that does what dev can do, all the more so when paired with a blaster primary.

While we're at it I have yet to see you or AF for that matter define what is this magic prep time that makes devices so much slower. Seriously if you can't even try to answer questions posed to you, and instead blather on about this challenge of yours, then it really is pointless at times to continue the discussion.

As for claiming to cut snippits, well you're the one who said them not me. =p

Annnyway I'm game if demo record is ok? (Fraps hates my computer) Just because it's something to do if nothing else. All the same your challenge still is meaningless because you only seem interested in one criteria, and that's complete time.

You aren't taking into account things such as damage taken (though I do guess this could count as downtime) Mob types, map layouts, or heck even primary related to secondary issues. My ice/dev and energy/dev have slightly different styles of doing things. So if you really wanted to get scientific about it we'd need to test every primary with dev or traps, and even I aint rolling that many alts.

Irregardless this is hitting the same point as the why a blaster thread did, niether side is gonna convince the other, and in a nod to Claws he makes the most sense out of anyone as no challenge or number crunching can measure fun, conecpt builds, or enjoyment.

And in double nod to him from his general forum thread, measuring by time shows one other little detail to me. You're measuring by a reward driven mentality, how fast can I complete maps for most XP? See that's not why I play CoH so I'm already at a loss to you in that regard, being such a silly casual and all, not a mindless number crunching powergamer. Or would you prefer brainless button masher since your uber defense build apprently is so godlike, oops or is that me putting words in your mouth now, I can't tell. [/snark]

And while we're at it, can your defense build or your challenge teach aggro mangement, how to dodge alphas, corner and door pulling, target prioritizing, learning how to support a team, stealth pulling bosses from a smoked pack, proper insp use, defiance buffing your attack chain, learning how to mez/stun before it happens to you, differences between mob types, when it's best to range or blap, or AKA everything blasters had to know and learn for how many years of coh before we got IO's? And before apparently defense sets became your magic bullet to everything? Not that they are, just off the top of my head for those relying only on defense over actually knowing how to play a blaster.

slot S/L? The rikti and carnies would love a word with you.
slot ranged? Devouring and knives would eat you for lunch.
slot for melee? Hi nemesis and malta how are you today?

Or are we only playing in easy mode against things like freaks and council on a x8 farm map?

Let me pose one other little question again even if it's off topic to devices, as I finally figured out what's been bugging me while the comp was down. Calling you elitist was wrong, what the issue is when you talk about defense builds and how it's seeming to become de-facto must have for blasters (the same way fitness and hasten have been) do you not see the problem here? Rather then IO's becoming a means to an end, they've become the be all end all.

Doing so means you aren't shaping IO's around your build, you're shaping a build around what IO sets can be fit into it.

To put it another way it seems (at least to me) that we've gone from a point where to far too many players have a mentality where it's not the player anymore that dictates the skill and ability of the build, but the amount of "phat lewtz" said build is equipped with. Hence my SO tangent that AF missed in his usual moronic manner. And a place i do NOT want to see CoH hit, if I wanted that I have far too many other mmo's I could pick from.

You've taken a purely optional part of the game and turned it into a metric for trying to measure performance and game balance when it's anything but. Specially to people such as myself who just don't give a damn and are perfectly fine slotting toons with 50 generic IO's. As trying to play the market gives me a headache, is a waste of time when I could be out fighting mobs or helping others, and quite frankly is another blight on CoH, same as loot being added. May be in a minority but I still think it was a horrible idea.

Just look at this as the worst example. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=251335 I'm sorry to Jak, but what /energy blaster in his right mind is going to take powers to try and get some defense over the energy melee blaps?

To be as rude as possible let me sum it up like this. If you want defense three words, play a tank. And while you're at it gtfo out of the blaster forum.

Regardless i'll try to get some demo records done during my day off, just for the hell of it. Like I said, something to do.

@Dragonkat

Not even gonna quote. Go back and read you pumping out damage on page 6

Remark number 2 which I already quoted in a previous thread about you numbering what Device can do and other sets can partially do.

No the challenge at this time was pretty much you showing me how device is so much better then traps. I explained why someone should take device in today's game. You vehemently disagree to the point of cursing at people ( which I find humorous that someone in a thread could invoke some feelings like that ). But again your blindly talking about the set without admitting many of its lack luster powers.

I offered you to pick the mission in AH because its static for the most part nothing more, nothing less.

*gives another yawn*

You do know at this point I'm not taking you seriously in the slightest right?

That and I thought for a minute about making another, well, longer response to you PG, but really at this point there's no real reason. As I said before if you can't even be bothered to try to respond to questions asked of you, and instead decided to respond with more attempts to inflate your own little ego and forum status by being more right then me (for various definitions of right) Then it's a waste of time to do so. Doubly so as I honestly don't give a flip what anyone on the forums really does think of me, I'm a cranky casual playing self admitted borderline forum troll, along with a rampant blaster fan who will think to the day I die tactics, competent players, and a smart build are greater then loot and proud of it.

But I think I'll just pick one sentence that stands out.

@Dragonkat

I' glad you can admit that Device is lacking.

Please refer to Scientist quote for my feelings about the Device set today.

I do feel that IOs did screw up the game a bit. They made some AT less needed. Back in the day everyone wanted a stone tank and a empath. If you had any one of those you were sure to get a team. Today you hardly see empaths. I have run missions in which my Kin was the healer.

Again I mentioned some suggestions for Device in this thread that I feel will bring them a bit up to snuff with the rest of the sets.

We clearly cannot say that power X is better then Power Y because each has there own tactic or strategy. Example Boost Range from EM. When used I can kill mobs before they can actually reach me or get into range to strike back with there own range attacks. So even if you fired off your biggest AOE attack from ice, mobs still get a chance to hit back, it's just the way the game works. So end result is you could kill the whole spawn and in turn get killed yourself. But with Boost Range that rule no longer holds true. The one issue is you need to have the room to distance yourself away from the mobs to attempt that. Sometimes mobs are right around the corner and boost range is useless in this instance. But when I do have the range which is about 9 time out of 10 I can kill the whole spawn before a Device player even tries to use any of there powers. You wouldn't have a chance to place a trip mine or you would be placing it after the fact.

Trip mine is interpretable and causes you to loose endurance even if you fail. So end result is the only time your placing any Trip mines is before a fight. Because once you start any hit ranged, melee or aoe will cause you to fail. Where as my defense cap Trap Defender can place them any time. In the beginning, middle and end.

End result you have to look at the whole thing today not just the AT because IOs do make a difference regardless if the game is balanced around SOs. This is why a Dominator is soloing Master TFs.

Devices regardless of the IOs still cannot compare because no matter what the IO is offering because the power is lacking. Smoke grenade perception is auto hit and the -ToHit debuff component requires a hit check. It only last 60 seconds. Compared to Traps FFG which can give a team 20 to 25 % Defense increase along with hold and other resistances. On top have you ever seen mobs try to kill a FFG ? It takes a bunch of mobs before that thing goes down. I use it sometimes just to take aggro and I walk in and just resummon another so I have the steady flow of defenses. The down side it is a bit slow to react to your movements. So if your rush in you will loose some defense for several seconds.

All these AT have there ups and downs, beyond the fun factor persay of device it has too many downs compared to other sets.