Devices: Gun Drone

For a while now I've been rolling a Dual Pistols blaster with Devices as its Secondary. Now obviously when I get given the choice for a new power that from past experiences did not live up to my expectations I tend to just skip the power, as you would do.

I hit level 38 with my blaster and at the moment it's the furthest I've ever managed to progress with Devices. So naturally, I chose Gun Drone at the first opportunity thinking it would be amazing and thus be of a great asset to my build. To my sheer disappointment I find that it is incredibly weak for a Tier 9 pet. Not only that, but after a bit of research on Intensive Pets I find that it is the ONLY pet in the entire game that comes with an Interruption time. Not only that, but 6 seconds to summon a rather rubbish gun drone that does not do very much damage and only lives for 1 minute and 30 seconds has made me want to respec out of it.

This respec will come in due time, but I have to ask why Gun Drone has not had its Interrupt time removed yet and possibly given a small damage or duration increase? It's the only pet of its kind and it would seem only fair to balance the pet out with every other one in this game. Thoughts, anyone?

It needs to be changed to be as fast, durable, and effective as the ones Malta can summon. Until then, I'll never take it again. Not worth it.

The devs hate /devs. It's a self-deprecating condition that arises from having to get up and go to work on mondays. They even tried a workaround once, changing the name /devs into /gadgets, but unfortunately it didn't stick, so there's no hope of you ever seing a buff to gun drone.

Cheer up, though, you can always just remake your DP as /traps, which doesn't suffer from monday morning alias syndrome

Gun Drone isn't as bad as you might think.

Part of the problem is that it is both part of the substitution for Build Up (Targeting Drone for Acc, Gun Drone for Dmg) and the only pet available in Blaster secondaries. Making it a potentially always-on substitute means it gets watered down a bit. Making it a unique option means it gets watered down a bit more.

Still, when you slot up the drone, you can get pretty decent add-on damage. It also has a HUGE Defiance buff (39.6% for 15s). Reactive should help it out, too. Looking at numbers, a Fire/Fire can get +100% base damage for 10s with BU. A Fire/Dev gets ~120dmg every 2s for up to 90s (+60dps) and +39.6% base damage for 15s.

Gun Drone is single-target only, so BU has a pretty clear advantage when trying to wipe out large spawns full of minions. It'll still help, but not quite as much. Not that it'll be that hard to wipe out a spawn full of minions with a Blaster, but easier is easier.

Gun Drone isn't great, but I always seem to find a use for it, most often when soloing, but occasionally when teaming. The players I usually roll with move very quickly and so if I kneel down to cast Gun Drone (or bombs), by the time I'm standing up again, I'm all alone in a hallway with fading corpses. It is handy in boss battles for the extra damage. Soloing, I think I use it most to take the alpha from a mob, watch it go boom and then finish them off.

Does the drone ultimately do enough dpe including defiance buffing to warrant the cast time and endurance cost? If not can the drone be used to take mezzes and damage for you? Effectively doubling up as a shield.

I thought the last buff to the drone (allowing it to move with you) was more than enough to balance the set.

the reasons i dislike gun drone is due to the MASSIVE end cost (nearly 40 end cost unenhanced) and the massive interrupt time and very short life span

if the pet stayed around until destroyed then i could see it keeping the end cost and interrupt time, but with the short life span the end cost and interrupt time are just way too much and need to be looked at as gun drone is not that effective

the 2 times ive gotten devices toons high enough to use gun drone, ive always ended up deleting those toons because gun drone is a huge let down

Devices overall is an ancient set that has been Nerfed to the Ground (tm).

Sadly, it's not until late that you really begin to notice how deficient the entire secondary is compared to just about every single other one. I had a long time 45 fire/devices blaster I finally deleted and rerolled as fire/fire, leveled to 50 in a couple weeks, and I've never looked back (now my main toon).

It's not just the awful gun drone which does realatively nothing for you in combat. Look at Caltops, the weakened cousin of most rain effects. Targeting drone which gives slightly more to hit (not to be confused with accuracy) at the expense of far too much end and means you will never have aim or any clickable buff power which are all vastly better. Stealth well... you have stealth power pool which is just better and offers more versitility.

The reason this whole set was hit so hard way back when was because between stealth and smoke grenade you had total invisibility. You could set a series of trip mines in about 10 seconds, stand way back and toss a fireball. It was the ultimate solo blaster method for clearing out groups with the effect of about 5-6 novas. People immediately screamed and cried for nerfs, and ol' States loved to nerf just about anyone and everything as fast and hard as possible. It wasn't just those power combinations that were unbalanced that took a hit, the whole set was flat out levelled. It hasn't been changed since.

how you describe it, it sounds almost usable and comparable to most current blaster secondaries

it might have needed tweaking, but i think they went a little overboard on it

Gun Drone used to be Auto Turret. A stationary pet. It was changed when enough people complained that a stationary pet was worthless. It wasn't, but whatever.

They made it move.

It wasn't enough of a buff for some people, obviously.

I used it when it was stationary and I use it when its mobile.

Its not meant to be a permanent pet. It doesn't help your stealth to have a pet out all the time. Ask any stalker.

Its a situational power. Find the situations when its useful and use it. Or don't, your loss.

I wouldn't mind the interuption and activation times lowered. I also wouldnt mind if it shot a targetted AoE cone instead of ST. But it would have to be done right. Like DP, when you choose what type of ammo you use for the next foe.

my main fire/devices blaster I love devices cause its a methodical way to play solo with the trip mines and stuff but gun drone uggggghhhhh. The end cost sucks, the innterupt/cast time is even worse, it can't be buffed by hasten and set bonuses and recharge buffs any more. The only thing it has going for it is with enough recharge you can have 2 out at once.

I don't like it and want it changed and this is someone whos gone through at least a dozen respecs trying to make it work to finally say screw it, it just aint worth it.

Please fix this devs I think it could be a really cool power.

The only device blaster I have that still have Gun Drone is elec/dev/mace. And that's only for the novelty of sparkey/drone/spiders. It's funny having a little army following around a non-mastermind, but it really needs some uber endurance investment to keep them out and still attack.

After participating in the Retrofitting AR Device thread a while back that Nethergoat started. I went through several respecs until I ended up with my final build which is posted there. With all my Incarnates slotted it really has given me new life to my AR Device toon. I had to spec for Cardiac for the endurance, where many are probably slotted for Musculature. So I am still on the bottom end persay on the DPS pool compared to other blasters.

But what Gun Drone did was help me out with getting Range defense cap which really, really helped out tons. Further because I have hover in addition which also increases my defenses even further when I turn it on and now I have a weapon that can fly around with me.

The one cool thing is if you have enough recharge you can get up 2 gun drones. With my current build I can have up 2 gun drones for 20 or 30 seconds. Having a Speed Boost is really cool.

I would go over to the retro AR Device thread and look around. It might help you get some ideas to get this working a bit better for you.

I do find that Traps works much better then Device with DP because of DP inherit short range and Traps works much better with Trip mine since it has more tools that allow you to place a trip mine at a mobs feet without being harassed ( that being poison trap with lockdown proc and being fully positional defense cap of course ).

Overall as was stated Device is a old set and personally I have just given up on trying to complaining why Device was never updated. As time goes by I end up accepting this game for what it is and what it is not. It is 7 years old with a limited game engine. On top they have imposed build constraints when it comes to old sets. It seems to make it much easier for them to just make a new set then try to rework an old set. This keeps new and old players happy and preserves the "cottage rule". So if your looking to do what fire/fire does persay then you need to play a fire/fire toon and not try to have those same results with a DP Device as an example ( not that your saying that, just using it as an example ). I think that is one of the problems with these ATs. Everyone wants to have their set in the same AT do what the other person is doing and that is just not going to happen. As much as I agree it sucks, there is really not much we can do about it.

It would be nice if all blasters did the same damage and the only difference was the cosmetics. Or play around with the numbers to make attacks equivalent. EG quicker recharge less dps, more recharge more dps. End result a energy type blasters would be just that. You just pick what your want your effect to be. So you want that cosmic energy effect I want fire. But both are nukes are exactly the same. Just your does energy and looks like energy and my looks like fire and does fire damage.

So now that DP or AR toon can say I want a plasma gun or an energy rifle. So instead of doing that Lethal damage that is so much resisted he can do something that is less resisted like other toons of the same AT. But as you can see they were smart and allowed for a mechanism in DP to do exactly that. They seen the inherit issues with AR and fixed those with DP. They did the same with Device and Traps.

It is gonna take a bit more work with your DP Device to make it acceptable but it is possible with the assistance of Incarnates. Again without a doubt today my AR Device (which is comparable and in some situations less potent then DP because DP has the swap ammo ) can truly handle some (3/4)/8 settings and not go nuts trying to stay alive. Which was clearly an issue in the past for me. I'm not a dps king but I am sure if someone took the time to look at my toon in a team they would be impressed and agree he is a participating member of the team instead of lying on his back after every alpha strike. Again it took Incarnates though to help me out.

While I do use Gun Drone, I can't help but think that the time it takes to set up is time I'd be better spending on using other powers. Maybe if it had a much longer duration I'd view it more favourably, but as it is the long interruptible cast doesn't seem commensurate with the benefit of using the power (especially for normal spawns).

I just want to be able to buy my gun drones from the same weapons store that Malta get theirs from. The Malta version is what gun drone for the players should be. It's time for an update.

Maybe make Gun drone a mini version of a AR blaster 2 types of ST attacks a quick burst 2 to 3 shots and a longer 5 to 6 shots and 2 cones flame thrower and full auto not as strong as a real AR blaster but more damage value of a corr without scourge ofcourse.

Or

Revamp it to more like Spiderlings (drones) summon 3 pets that start to shoot on anything they see and they BOOM like a tripmine when they die would be pretty awesome ^^ AI more they want to shoot at point blank crazy drones would be a nice T9 skill

I've thought about dropping Gun Drone on my dp/devices but after having it a few weeks and getting fully IO'd I changed my mind. Not because I really think its that good all the time but there are times when it can be really useful. Its good for extra damage on a hard mob and on enemy groups that toss a bunch of mezs or debuffs. For example on a recent carnie mission I got chain held (ran out of break frees). The drones damage plus ability to take some aggro with my two starter attacks was just enough to survive the two illusionist.

IMO Gun Drone can use a few buffs to make it useful more of time. Now it seems most people use it to soak up some aggro which I am pretty sure it wasn't intended for. If anything I would rather it be more like a controller pet. drop the short duration or get rid of the interupt time and lower the end cost. Either would go a long way to making this power more acceptable to the masses.