Traps, Devices and the "out of combat" concept
Aside from the "Stop 30 Fir Bolg" mission, we almost never have to defend a location, and even when we do, it's almost never easy to tell where your enemies will come from.
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The Malta ambush hero tip mission.
The Nictus ambush in the first ITF mission.
The prisoner escape sequence in BAF (though I've yet to play that with my Traps char).
Bag-of-HP AVs.
That's pretty much just nitpicking though, since it's so few situations. You basically have to know where the ambush will happen and when in order to prepare correctly for it. Mainly I've just resigned myself to the fact that Traps and Devices are best used solo, and when teaming as Traps you're just going to run with FFG and throw down Acid Mortar and Poison Trap every so often.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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But there should still be tools for the minority that enjoys doing things 'the hard way' or 'the long way'.
The entire point of a powerset named Traps is that you set up traps for your enemy to blunder into. Although Bear Trap melee would be a fun powerset, that's a different powerset from Traps ![]() |
I mentioned something about Titan Weapons, recently, and it seems relevant here: This is the first set that I recall where having a gimmick made the set STRONGER. In every set previously, a gimmick was valued far higher than it was worth, and the set was balanced low because of it. Titan Weapons is the first time I can recall where a set's gimmick did not hurt it, but rather allowed it to be stronger than if it were balanced conventionally.
This is precisely how I see "out of combat" power - they are valued at FAR higher than they're actually worth, and as a result, they are given far more severe limitations than they deserve, making a lot of these powers just not worth the bother and a few of these powers just basically useless. You cite these powers like their being situational is a perk to them, and I'm sure that's what was originally intended. The thing is, in this day and age, that's a massive liability, and VERY few powers can live up to that liability. As far as I'm concerned, "proper" nukes are about the only class of powers that even approaches that level on a consistent basis.
No argument from me on that.
However, if one wanted to address that, there are a number of different ways it could be approached. Making the powers just work faster is fine, although it's kind of against the point. One could also make them stronger or make more content where they are useful in their current form. Or make an entirely new powerset that does what you want. Personally, I am on the side of 'more varied content', but YMMV. |
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'm looking at the inherent alternate animations of Titan Weapons.
Now I'm looking at the changes in the pipeline for Stalkers and their Assassin moves.
Perhaps they can do a similar thing with sniper attacks. Each sniper attack would have one version of the ability exactly as it is now but harder hitting, and this version of the ability won't fire unless you haven't activated another attack for, let's say, 3-5 seconds. Then there would be a separate version of the attack that would fire off in the heat of battle, with no interrupt time, that would be less damaging (somewhere between a stereotypical T2 and T3 Single target blast i.e. between Power Blast and Power Burst). That's a solution I could very much support.
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Most of us agree there's a problem, but how would we go about fixing it? Here's come thoughts on /Traps that come to mind.
Acid Mortar - It's not bad as it is, but could be tweaked a little. Increasing it's fire-rate so it fires-off more than a couple times in an average combat, or give the shells a bit of AoE, and/or decrease the recharge on it slightly.
Triage Beacon - While 2-3 Beacons are pretty good, a solo Beacon isn't all that impressive. I see two ways to improve it. Make it a mobile drone that follows the user around or reduce the recharge time. Also, if possible, greatly ramp-up the +Regen, but make it so it doesn't stack with other Beacons or similar powers (i.e. Tree of Life).
Trip Mine - Reduce the Cast time, eliminate the Interrupt, increase the Recharge time, and possibly make it's deployment a targeted area on the ground such as how Caltrops work.
Time Bomb - I can't think of a good way to fix it without making it just like Trip Mine, so eliminate it entirely and develop a new power.
Cluster Mine - Have this replace Time Bomb. It functions much like a cross between Trip Mines and Caltrops. It covers a very wide area with small bomblets. Each individual bomblet is triggered by enemy contact and does less damage than a trip mine. However with the large number of bomblets the overall DPS would be potentially high.
a powerset that has 2 powers that most people do not want is fine. Some people will want them for whatever reason.
much worse are powersets that only use a few powers and 5 or more are unused. Granite armor, dual blades, super strength.
If you don't think Traps or Devices are good sets, don't play them.
There are tons of powersets. Find ones you like.
Gadgets and Devices are similar concepts; you have a large variety of very different abilities, so that when you run into an outlier situation that you can't power through, you have something "for just such an occaision". That something should not always be a fast-charging crashless nuke.
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It's a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit. The last time I effectively used time bomb or trip mine on a team was back before we had target caps. Inevitably when I try and use trip mine while on a team (in combat) I either get interrupted by some of the AoE flying around or by the time the mine's laid the enemies I was trying to target are either dead or the flow of battle has moved them out of my AoE.
I have actually recently started to occasionally use my gun drone. It's quite zippy now, but I still don't think it's remotely worth it's end cost.
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Just thinking out loud: how much damage would a time bomb-style power have to do to make it worth it?
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MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812
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If your team is tearing through the content that fast, then that is not a situation for trip mines. It's probably not a situation for your primary, either, actually.
Situational powers are situational. If you take a situational power, either seek out those situations, or ...not. If you ask change the powers in a powerset so that they are just like other powers in other powersets, what you are really doing is just asking for those other powersets to have an alternative animation or something. |
Granted levels 32/35 depending on AT up to pre-Incarnate 50 is a different story, as you'll find players with weaker toons take things a bit slower, but how long will they wait around?
What I'm asking is why does Trip Mine have a 4 second interrupt which you can not reduce and 5 second cast time? Shouldn't the cast time be enough? If anything eliminating the interrupt would make the power more useful IMO.
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
a powerset that has 2 powers that most people do not want is fine. Some people will want them for whatever reason.
much worse are powersets that only use a few powers and 5 or more are unused. Granite armor, dual blades, super strength. If you don't think Traps or Devices are good sets, don't play them. There are tons of powersets. Find ones you like. |
We are talking about specific powers in those sets.
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
If you don't think Traps or Devices are good sets, don't play them.
There are tons of powersets. Find ones you like. |
The big stars of devices are the ones that need to be looked at as they are being skipped, a lot, because they are either just unwieldy in teams or utterly unusable on teams and merely unwieldy solo. I *love* mines but I can't stand time bomb enough to even take it. Only does the damage of two mines, a 6(?) minute recharge, and needs five additional slots since it's a pet so your to-hit buffs don't affect it so two accuracies, two recharges, two damages and you'll wish you had interrupt ED capped.
If it did 4-5 trip mines worth I'd start thinking about it. Toss in a good accuracy multiplier to cut it down to needing only one accuracy and I'd think even more about it.
I ran an ITF with my Bots/Traps Mastermind just now, not half an hour ago, and the lesson was pretty clear - while I faffed about setting down a Triage Beacon that no-one really needed, the team had already wiped the spawn out and were moving to the next, leaving my beacon exposed. Expecting a Cyst ambush, I'd go back to set up a single mine, only for the ambush to spawn around me mid-way through my set-up animation and instakill me. I'd set up an Acid Mortar only for the fight to move around the corner and leave it useless.
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I agree with Sam. Most of these powers should be modified to fit the new game reality. Especially Devices which is by far the weakest Blaster secondary. I would even go farther and say that Rest should have its recharge, debuff and activation time removed entirely. Leave the interrupt. Having spent the last couple of weeks in a galaxy far, far way, I have really come to an even stronger belief that balancing around downtime is a dumb mechanic.
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I don't think the problem is in-combat vs out of combat per se. I think interruptibility does mask the fact that long-duration interruptibles are the last bastion of a time before the importance of cast time balancing became clear. But I think interruptibility and crashes are really the only two "counterbalance" effects we still have in the game in any quantity, and while the easy way out would be to simply eliminate to largely mitigate them, I think it makes more sense to rethink what their true cost and value are, so that the powers that have them can be properly designed to account for them. Interruptible powers like snipes make sense, in other words, if the powers got something in exchange for being interruptible. They currently do not. But I'd be more in favor of balancing snipes around the interrupt than eliminating the interrupt as a general rule.
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I think you missed the point of the post entirely. No one said Traps or Devices are not good sets. In fact it's quite the opposite as evident in the amount of Traps and Devices players posting.
We are talking about specific powers in those sets. |
Almost every set has powers that are not taken by most people. If the set is good, that's fine. In fact having a set where every power is needed is usually seen as bad, because it limits your ability to get other powers.
If you have a set that works well, and you want to have some of its powers made significantly more useful, you are either asking to have the set be broken or for the rest of the set to be nerfed.
Powers in a set are only buffed if the set under performs, not if the power under performs. Powers are not balanced, sets are.
aIf you don't think Traps or Devices are good sets, don't play them. There are tons of powersets. Find ones you like.
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-Then don't lift your arm. Next!
I'm trying to open up a discussion, not force an agenda, and I'm more than convinced there's room for discussion here. Trying to ignore the problems and sweep them under the rug serves no-one, not the people who like these powers nor the people who hate them, not anyone in-between. The wide use of long-animation, highly-interruptible powers is a relic from a previous age before even the game's launch. I'm not convinced it's still relevant, but that's what I'm hoping we can work on figuring out.
It's not so much the damage of time bomb that's the issue. It's that there's a 9 second cast time and then there's a significant wait on top of that before the mine actually explodes. It's just cumbersome since you end up waiting 20-some odd seconds before anything actually happens.
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I tried to make use of this power for years, and all it ever gave me was frustration and disappointment. Even when toe-bombing people, I was waiting so damn long for the thing to set down and go off that my Fire/Fire Blaster would have grilled the spawn and set down for lunch, and that's without touching Inferno. On top of it all, Devices is the set without Build Up, so the shock damage which is a Blaster's main form of self defence isn't really there.
Time Bomb, Trip Mine and Auto Turret were seen as such great powers that the rest of the set suffered for them, and suffered hard. And of the three, only Trip Mine is actually good, and not by that much.
IMO because of the interrupt of Trip Mines the "situation" it suits best is the situation of having teammates that are willing to wait around while you lay them. I'd go as far to say that's nearly impossible in today's game (Incarnate levels).
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To me, presenting these powers are great is kind of like praising a blind man. Oh, he lacks sight, but surely that must mean his hearing is nearly super-human, therefore we must do something to limit that hearing so he's on an even keel against sighted folks. Only it turns out that his hearing is about average, so you're just hampering a man who's already hampered. It's a reversal of the values, as these powers are seen as stronger than they are, because why else would they be so hard to use? Well... Because they're just not very good powers, for the most part.
I don't think the problem is in-combat vs out of combat per se. I think interruptibility does mask the fact that long-duration interruptibles are the last bastion of a time before the importance of cast time balancing became clear. But I think interruptibility and crashes are really the only two "counterbalance" effects we still have in the game in any quantity, and while the easy way out would be to simply eliminate to largely mitigate them, I think it makes more sense to rethink what their true cost and value are, so that the powers that have them can be properly designed to account for them. Interruptible powers like snipes make sense, in other words, if the powers got something in exchange for being interruptible. They currently do not. But I'd be more in favor of balancing snipes around the interrupt than eliminating the interrupt as a general rule.
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And yes, I do believe long-interrupt powers are a relic from an old age, back when Geko seemingly disregarded animation time as nothing more than cosmetic. To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of them then, either. I recall first getting my Sniper Rifle power and trying to figure out how I could use it more often, this being one of the three single-target attacks Assault Rifle got, and being frustrated to see it sit there recharged and ready, but being unable to use it because someone set me on fire or I stepped into the Chill of the Night. I don't remember the game's balancing from those days with great fondness, to be honest, and I wouldn't be very sad to see its last remnants expunge if the simplest solution is seen as the most prudent.
The real kicker is that as the game evolves and new powers are added with old lessons already learned, we're starting to see powers which outperform the old "situational" ones, yet without having to be hamstrung by being situational. Compare Omega Manoeuvre to Time Bomb: It's faster to call, it shows up at range and it taunts enemies to it... It's almost the complete opposite in terms of ease of use. Rather than having the user-hostile balancing mechanics of old, where patch powers caused (and still do) enemies to run away and escape your damage, where running your own toggles could flatline your entire endurance bar in seconds if you affected enough enemies with them, the newer powers seem to cater to the player and present themselves in a convenient, usable fashion. In fact, I hazard to remember a power that has come out in recent years which has had penalties and limitations designed into it. Some powers are good, some just aren't as good, but I can't remember a single one which was designed to be BAD under any circumstances.
Most of the balance issues we butt heads over these days still date back to seven years ago, if not longer, back to the dawn of the game from where they were spawned. PBAoE knockback, long interruptible powers, AoE enemy phasing, messed-up Blaster secondaries and so forth. Whatever we may complain about in regards to recent sets, at least those were well designed, if not always well balanced. They can be fixed by jiggling the numbers. It's the old relics that cause the biggest problems because those you really can't fix without admitting to having to rethink them from scratch. And I'm honestly not sure our developers have the stomach to mess with that legacy, when it's so much easier to just ignore it and keep making new sets that just make the older ones look worse and worse.
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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Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
-Doctor, it hurts when I lift my arm.
-Then don't lift your arm. Next! I'm trying to open up a discussion, not force an agenda, and I'm more than convinced there's room for discussion here. Trying to ignore the problems and sweep them under the rug serves no-one, not the people who like these powers nor the people who hate them, not anyone in-between. The wide use of long-animation, highly-interruptible powers is a relic from a previous age before even the game's launch. I'm not convinced it's still relevant, but that's what I'm hoping we can work on figuring out. |
I don't wear a size Large shirt, so they should not make them and should turn them all into Size XL which I do wear.
You are talking about incarnate team play and saying that some powers do not fit that situation. Which is not shocking - many powers do not fit that situation. Sleeps, for instance.
But rather than accepting that you are talking about trying to make the entire game fit into one style of play, you are pretending that other styles of play do not exist.
Certainly there is room for discussion - start by admitting that there are lots of styles of play and that variety of powers allows for a variety of playstyles.
How about this; when you use it the power button turns into a running toggle. When you click the toggle off the bomb detonates. Change the name to Remote Detonator or some such.
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I was thinking in the sort-of-opposite direction: a (short?)ranged power that you shoot/toss at a foe that does not inherently alert them. After a little while it explodes, dealing AoE damage centered on the target. Sort of like a back-loaded DoT.
Bonus points if the power cascades, setting off other Time Bombs that haven't gone off yet. Additional Bonus points if the target has a chance of noticing it, but the bomb goes off when they notice (and thematically at least, try to remove) it.
This power would still probably only really be useful against EBs and larger, and occaisionally for the fun challenge of seeing how many foes you can tag before the explosions begin. I don't have a problem with this.
My issue with Time Bomb in it's original form is it's designed and named, it's like a bomb that should empty out an entire villain lair except for hard targets, but it can't really work that way.
In any case, the key is the damage/AoE should be huge enough that you cannot outdo it with your other powers with the same slotting.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
they do have a time bomb in the Omega Maneuver that taunts everyone and then explodes.
It is actually useful soloing because of the taunt - it takes the alpha and then explodes.
Trip Mine is fine.
I have a +3 Dual Pistols Traps that does great on I-Trials. In BAF, he parks himself at the NW exit (where Siege spawns) and basically drops 10-12 trip mines, some acid and so on. Any escaping prisoners just blow up nicely.
Even on regular teams, you can set up fairly efficiently and if the team is really nice they'll let you set up and pull into them. A good Traps is an asset to ANY team. As for the rest of the concept, there really isn't a lot of "out of combat" stuff that's egregious. The healing tree and beacon and maybe caltrops and a few others. Unless you're zerg-rushing EVERYTHING, these playstyles should be adaptable to any team...
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But rather than accepting that you are talking about trying to make the entire game fit into one style of play, you are pretending that other styles of play do not exist.
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Certainly there is room for discussion - start by admitting that there are lots of styles of play and that variety of powers allows for a variety of playstyles.
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*edit*
And I find it more than a little uncomfortable that you, the one whose first post in this thread contained:
All powers are situational. Dumbing down the game to only one assumed situation is not a good idea.
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I take it back. DON'T quote me. If you're not interested in participating in the actual discussion, then I'm not interested in defending why the discussion has a right to exist in the first place with you. I am done derailing my own thread with this. If you want to argue for a viewpoint, then by all means - argue for it. I welcome it. But telling me I should be accepting of ALL viewpoints without even being arsed to make a point is meaningless.
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 like this.
I was thinking in the sort-of-opposite direction: a (short?)ranged power that you shoot/toss at a foe that does not inherently alert them. After a little while it explodes, dealing AoE damage centered on the target. Sort of like a back-loaded DoT. Bonus points if the power cascades, setting off other Time Bombs that haven't gone off yet. Additional Bonus points if the target has a chance of noticing it, but the bomb goes off when they notice (and thematically at least, try to remove) it. This power would still probably only really be useful against EBs and larger, and occaisionally for the fun challenge of seeing how many foes you can tag before the explosions begin. I don't have a problem with this. My issue with Time Bomb in it's original form is it's designed and named, it's like a bomb that should empty out an entire villain lair except for hard targets, but it can't really work that way. In any case, the key is the damage/AoE should be huge enough that you cannot outdo it with your other powers with the same slotting. |
The very specific parameters of the suggestion were that it added a new way to use the mines without damaging the existing way of using them for players used to using them the old way. Anyone using Trip Mines in the current normal fashion would be able to use these almost exactly the same, but they could also be used in other ways for other purposes.
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Most of us agree there's a problem, but how would we go about fixing it? Here's come thoughts on /Traps that come to mind.
Acid Mortar - It's not bad as it is, but could be tweaked a little. Increasing it's fire-rate so it fires-off more than a couple times in an average combat, or give the shells a bit of AoE, and/or decrease the recharge on it slightly. |
Triage Beacon- While 2-3 Beacons are pretty good, a solo Beacon isn't all that impressive. I see two ways to improve it. Make it a mobile drone that follows the user around or reduce the recharge time. Also, if possible, greatly ramp-up the +Regen, but make it so it doesn't stack with other Beacons or similar powers (i.e. Tree of Life). |
Trip Mine - Reduce the Cast time, eliminate the Interrupt, increase the Recharge time, and possibly make it's deployment a targeted area on the ground such as how Caltrops work. |
Time Bomb - I can't think of a good way to fix it without making it just like Trip Mine, so eliminate it entirely and develop a new power. |
Cluster Mine - Have this replace Time Bomb. It functions much like a cross between Trip Mines and Caltrops. It covers a very wide area with small bomblets. Each individual bomblet is triggered by enemy contact and does less damage than a trip mine. However with the large number of bomblets the overall DPS would be potentially high. |
Situational powers are situational. If you take a situational power, either seek out those situations, or ...not.
If you ask change the powers in a powerset so that they are just like other powers in other powersets, what you are really doing is just asking for those other powersets to have an alternative animation or something.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!