Traps, Devices and the "out of combat" concept

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.

There are a few other areas where Traps shines:

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.

Heh, that's a whole seperate 2 or 3 rants.

The problem is that these tools just don't work. I get the idea behind them - make these a pain to use so as to offset how awesome they are. Trip Mine is kind of awesome, I admit, but the others aren't. And that's the problem - they're only kinda' sorta' good, but you can do just as well, if not better, with non-situational tools. The cumbersome nature of these powers was intended to give them greater strengths, but it ended up being their crippling weakness.

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.

Again, I'm not saying I have a solution. What I'm saying is I feel this is a problem, and it's been a problem for a very long time. We've ignored it and lived with it for years, but I just want to bring it up and get people's opinions on the matter. Who knows, maybe something will come of it, or maybe we'll bring up some awareness?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

However my devices and traps characters should also be able to pull out that something for their current occasion and use it before the 'situation' gets utterly curb-stomped by the rest of my team while I'm still animating the power.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Among Blaster secondaries Devices is entirely unique, there is no reskin of it in another powerset (see any manipulation secondary) for blasters and Traps lacks smoke grenade and cloaking device. There isn't another Devices clone to go to.

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 have to admit that for my bots/traps mastermind, it's caltrops + poison trap all the way! And in larger, bigger battles, also acid mortar. All those powers are not interruptable and so they can be deployed in the middle of battle. With the bots on guardian mode, I taunt a mob to attack me. Only when they're in close in do I bother setting down my traps. I suppose I could set down a bunch of trip mines before I go a-taunting, but there's usually no point as they fall down pretty quickly anyway.

How do you feel about eliminating in-combat regeneration? That game's rest isn't actually a replacement for ours, its a replacement for our in-combat regeneration. In that game, out-of-combat rest is intended to be used as often as desired because the game itself is designed for it to be used as often as possible.


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.

No, you missed the point.

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.

-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.

The power has an 8 or 9 second cast and a 15-second timer before it explodes, which you can track by the antenna light flashes. That's a huge amount of time to wait and a very big window of opportunity for something to go wrong. Yes, the result is impressive - the explosion is strong and has a very long range - but the Machiavellian precision this requires and the astronomical amounts of luck that are involved just leave such a margin for error that it's just not worth investing in the power. And you DO need to invest in it, at least four slots, more if you want to get much of any use out of it, plus a power pick. I could throw darts at a board with a list of all powers available to a Devices Blaster and probably land on a power that's more useful for its investment cost.

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.

That's my problem with it, as well. I could live with a situational power if its situation were at least somewhat common. For instance, I really like having self-rez powers even though "being dead" is a situation I try to avoid. But I know that, sooner or later, I WILL die, and in THAT situation, no power is superior to a self rez. Well, not counting Revive. An awaken is usually superior to that. But if you look at powers like Rise of the Phoenix or Soul Transfer, if you're dead, these powers are great. The situations for these situational powers are either so rare or such that these powers aren't meaningfully better than their non-situational counterparts, that you end up paying though cumbersome mechanics for a power that isn't worth its limitations.

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, personally, wouldn't have such a big problem with interruptibility if I felt it was worth it, but most interruptible powers really aren't. Snipes deal scale 2.6 damage, I believe, which your average Scrapper can exceed with much greater guarantee of success with just his basic powers, just as an example. The bigger problem is I feel interruptibility is SUCH an enormous hamstring that I have trouble imagining how strong these powers would have to be to justify it. I suppose if Blaster Nukes were interruptible instead of having a crash, THAT I might consider a fair trade of utility vs. raw performance, but most of what's interruptible now just doesn't feel like it's worth it in the slightest.

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.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

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.

Except what you are saying is:
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.

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.

I neither said nor implied anything of the sort. Please quote me, instead of paraphrasing something I said into something I didn't say.

I did. Do I need to do it once ever post? This was never a question of playstyle and always a question of power balance. You can start by addressing that.

*edit*
And I find it more than a little uncomfortable that you, the one whose first post in this thread contained:

are now the one chastising me for being disrespectful of other people's opinions and playstyles and demand I publicly approve of yours. So it's OK for you to dismiss my entire thread without so much as putting in the effort to even get into what I'm talking about how many posts in and keep insisting on arguing over who said what, instead, but if I fail to explicitly state that, yes, there obviously are many different playstyles in this game, that anything else I say is null and void and not worthy of your time.

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.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

A long time ago in a forum far far away I suggested that trip mines be location powers like caltrops, and separate from being tripped they could also be detonated by the blaster that cast them and *only* the blaster that cast them by shooting at them. At the time, the mechanics to allow that didn't exist. Today, I think they kind of sort of do.

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.

The shell does do AOE. I am okay wth it firing faster, but doesnt really need it. If the average combat only lasts 12 seconds, you need to up your difficulty. My avaerage combat, it is not unsual for me to have 3 mortars out, and 2 is a given.

Sure, why not? Again, probably doesnt need it, but okay.

I dont see much wrong with the power really. I am pretty sure it was balanced around the idea that the trapper would set up thier traps, and pull the spawn to you. That is useless on teams, and a very tedious way to play solo. I like having the option, as my traps toon is just about my most versitile toon I have, but it has to be a VERY difficult situation to make me turtle up and set up a death zone.

I actually like it just the way it is because it is a clear skip power that I dont have to debate at all. It really is a gift from the devs.

See? I would have a hard time not taking this power. What would I have to give up for it? There isnt much in my build that I want to switch out for something else, because not only is it a power selection, but something I would probably want to slot. Cool idea though.