Time Bomb... seriously what are the devs thinking?
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2012-02-18 23:09 in Blasters
The one thing I use time bomb for:
* Mine corridor.
* Walk into enemy group.
* Drop time bomb.
* Run around corner.
* If something makes it to me, shoot it in the face once to take off the remaining fraction of a health bar.
Opening a fight without any chance for retaliation is surprisingly valuable.
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Since several of us have uses for it, this statement is clearly lacking in factual support.|
Originally Posted by _Ail_
Time Bomb really is useless. You are almost always better off just placing another trip mine, and anyone who thinks otherwise is (IMO) deluding themselves. I have at least never really heard (even in this thread where people are scrambling for faux-reasons) of a valid reason for taking time bomb.
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I would also venture to say that those of us that do use it and find it useful would be very happy to have it altered to make it more useful.
You also need to remember that not every one that plays this game is a VIP or has access to IOs. With SOs only Time Bomb fits very well indeed into to the trapping set up chain.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
for the time spent, Time Bomb should do enough damage to kill even lvl bosses.
(about the same damage as Aim+BU+blaster nuke (@1,700))
doubling the damage on TB shouldn't take more than 20mins to code?
perma jump is ---> /up 1
Its an autoskip power. Something to be made fun of.
The only good thing about time bomb is that it makes it easy for me to skip it.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
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plus from Local_Man:|
Originally Posted by seebs
The one thing I use time bomb for:
* Mine corridor. * Walk into enemy group. * Drop time bomb. * Run around corner. * If something makes it to me, shoot it in the face once to take off the remaining fraction of a health bar. Opening a fight without any chance for retaliation is surprisingly valuable. |
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| Time Bomb isn't useless . . . it is extremely situational. It could use some improvements to make it more useful and less situational. |
I dont know if it matters but i thought of a "fix" to both kinds of bomb, and the reasoning behind it makes sense in both for playstyle and realistically:
Turn them from old school "Pie plate mines" to highly advanced "sticky mines".
Remove the placement interrupt time and make both types a thrown device, with similar mechanics to placing an ignite or caltrops.
Then give trip mines a small activation delay (3-5 sec), during this delay it is visible to all players, if destroyed it will still blow up as normal.
Thus:
You'd be able to quickly throw a mine into combat safely.
You'd reduce risk of detection when placing bombs prior to combat.
You'd have more control over exact placement of the ensuing blast.
The trip mine delay is to:
A: accennuate that you threw a mine, not a grenade.
B: making it a bit harder to land ideal hits, increasing the skill and fun factor
Essentially this would turn the bombs from "big & unvieldy" to "flexible" and would represent thrown sticky bombs or such (making it even possible to "stick" a bomb in interesting places for interesting knockback effects, low ceilings and adjacent walls come to mind).
For PvE this means:
You can hang back from a teamfight and throw mines into it almost as you would any other TAoE. (But with a timer)
More elaborate takedown tactics.
More safety.
For PvP this means:
The mentioned changes dont really change preplaced minefields so Tp -> Mines still works normally.
In teamfights potential victims can see incoming mines when they've just been thrown, thus smart targets could just move away.
I hope you like the Idea and I really hope the devs notice it
Sonic/Devices makes great use of it when solo.
Siren's Song + Time Bomb = a spawn that you can walk away from and have it just disappear.
I fail to see what is wrong with powers that do not fit the "ZOMGFASTFASTFAST!!!!" mentality that seems to permeate every facet of this game nowadays.
It really isn't about how fast you do things. It's about having fun. If you're having fun, speed is irrelevant.
Would it be fun to go faster? Maybe. But maybe not.
When is the last time any of you played the game in no hurry to do anything? Just wandered around city zones that no one ventures into now that we have a zillion ways to avoid travelling at all? Stopped and did an emote somewhere just because it amused you to do so? ANY of those things, or dozens of others that I used to see people do all the time?
Kind of makes me sad really. A gigantic game that goes unappreciated because people are teleporting directly to their mission door so they can rush through the levels to get to the "good part".
It's slowly becoming exactly what I dislike about most MMOs, and every time I see threads like this deriding a power that some people enjoy because it isn't "good enough" it just reminds me of it.
Don't like Time Bomb? Then maybe Devices isn't the secondary you should be using.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I don' know that there's anything wrong with powers that aren't amazing. Situational powers are fine to an extent. Time bomb is mostly just too situational, which is why these debates keep on coming up. I mean te sentiments expressed in this thread (being a good number of players don't find the power useful in gameplay) are really nothing new.
There has to be some middle ground where we can keep the flavor of the power and yet have it be more readily useful in teams.
MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812
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Unfortunately the devs made a game where the only way most people can get their build's done is by going "ZOMGFASTFASTFAST!!!!"|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I fail to see what is wrong with powers that do not fit the "ZOMGFASTFASTFAST!!!!" mentality that seems to permeate every facet of this game nowadays.
It really isn't about how fast you do things. It's about having fun. If you're having fun, speed is irrelevant. |
Just look at what you need to do, to put 3 purple sets on a toon. Thats 15,000 personal kills or 120,000,000 kills while teamed, or 300 hero merits. The only way to get that kind of loot is taking it off people on the market or killing endless hordes of things in a race to get it done before you get sick of playing the character.
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If Time bomb Insta-gibbed the entire zone it would be overpowered.|
Originally Posted by TGIA_
A power that takes a few seconds to set up and can be interrupted, then 15 seconds before it goes off?
In what perfect world is this useful? Something that does moderate aoe damage with the same recharge that can be used instantly would be 1 million times as useful. |
My point being that the problem is the 'formula' used to balance powers.
Things like damage, area of effect, etc... are all 'balanced out'
But the formula is incomplete or inapplicable in some cases.
Time bomb would possibly be useful if it had a massive damage increase, or a huge epic area of effect or something.
Timb bomb is trapped in 'outdated formula land'
That's my theory anyway
Maybe give it like base damage of 400 or so blast radius 30 or 40 ft. with 24 or 32 targets with that even abit bad placement you can get a few.
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What if it took 3 days of set up time to insta-gib the zone? Still overpowered then?|
Originally Posted by Umbra
If Time bomb Insta-gibbed the entire zone it would be overpowered.
My point being that the problem is the 'formula' used to balance powers. Things like damage, area of effect, etc... are all 'balanced out' But the formula is incomplete or inapplicable in some cases. Time bomb would possibly be useful if it had a massive damage increase, or a huge epic area of effect or something. Timb bomb is trapped in 'outdated formula land' That's my theory anyway |
Devices is the ONLY secondary power set that can put out 1600 damage in 2+ seconds. The problem is the set up time to do that is a couple of minutes. A blaster primary power set can put out 1600 damage in a matter of seconds, the only down side is that you are exposed to massive amounts of return fire. That's something that IOs can help you resolve. No amount of IO sets will reduce the set up time required for devices to do 1600 damage to a comparable level. You can't even come close. The trade off is just too high.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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I like this idea also, I can't see anyone with Timebomb not liking it tbh. Although time taken to toggle off is time not using Autofire or something which is why it should still be on a timer so that if you don't detoggle it, it will itself.|
Originally Posted by Redlynne
I'm still of the opinion that the best thing to do is to turn Time Bomb into a Toggle power.
Toggle ON to place bomb. Toggle OFF to detonate bomb. S imple E asy E ffective ... not being done.  |
Failing this change, and I know I could of quoted it before but I came back and run through some dorky numbers, looked at how much the game has changed and with it, the increasing number of better alternatives and decreasing number of situations, I think they should lower the cast time down to Tripmines as a nudge. This will make the dropping of it between the last two tripmines more viable and increase dpa to use it as a preferable alternative to a simple trip. The duration of it could stay the same for now as people will pull to it.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
[QUOTE=Miladys_Knight;4146240]What if it took 3 days of set up time to insta-gib the zone? Still overpowered then?
No. Three days would make any power useless. I was not suggesting an increase on timb bombs setup time. Can you expain your point? I don't understand how it relates to what I posted. I am probably just being clueless. Not saying you are wrong, I just need clarification.
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I did explain my point. Devices can lay out 1600 points worth of damage that all happens in the span of 2 seconds which prevents virtually all retaliation. The problem is that it takes 2 minutes to set that up.|
Originally Posted by Umbra
No. Three days would make any power useless. I was not suggesting an increase on timb bombs setup time. Can you expain your point? I don't understand how it relates to what I posted. I am probably just being clueless. Not saying you are wrong, I just need clarification.
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Any blaster primary with decent AoE can do the same in about 30 seconds but you face ALL the return fire.
Its a trade off of 4 times longer for near complete safety. With IOs and/or inspirations you can achieve near perfect safety with the second case and get the job done in 30 seconds.
No amount of IOs and inspirations can make devices do 1600 damage in 30 seconds because of recharge time, animation time, and interrupt time + Time Bomb's Delay.
Now if you look at all that correctly you can surmise that as long as you play ??/devices with a primary that has good AoE (like Fire) you can almost completely ignore your secondary. Which you can. You can play Fire/Devices and only ever use Web grenade which you have to take and Caltrops to keep the baddies out of melee range and do just fine.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
I did explain my point. Devices can lay out 1600 points worth of damage that all happens in the span of 2 seconds which prevents virtually all retaliation. The problem is that it takes 2 minutes to set that up.
Any blaster primary with decent AoE can do the same in about 30 seconds but you face ALL the return fire. Its a trade off of 4 times longer for near complete safety. With IOs and/or inspirations you can achieve near perfect safety with the second case and get the job done in 30 seconds. No amount of IOs and inspirations can make devices do 1600 damage in 30 seconds because of recharge time, animation time, and interrupt time + Time Bomb's Delay. Now if you look at all that correctly you can surmise that as long as you play ??/devices with a primary that has good AoE (like Fire) you can almost completely ignore your secondary. Which you can. You can play Fire/Devices and only ever use Web grenade which you have to take and Caltrops to keep the baddies out of melee range and do just fine. |
I have a limited feel for devices after playing an energy/devices blaster and I tried very hard to make effective use of timebomb when teamed and it seemed impossible. Trip mine was not so bad.
If only there was a respec for powersets.
You offer well thought-out and reasoned advice that I respect as always. I do, however, have a few comments:
Yeah, with /NRG you often just take power thrust (because you have to), build up, conserve power, power boost, and boost range.
This is not because the melee attacks in NRG are useless, however. It is just because you are making an all-ranged build.
Time Bomb really is useless. You are almost always better off just placing another trip mine, and anyone who thinks otherwise is (IMO) deluding themselves. I have at least never really heard (even in this thread where people are scrambling for faux-reasons) of a valid reason for taking time bomb.
If time bomb had a much shorter recharge, or trip mine did not exist, it would be different. But that's not the case. Trip mine does exist, and time bomb does have an absurdly long recharge.
"Hi, my name is Ail. I make people sick."
A partial selection from my 50's on Freedom: Ail = Ice/Traps, Luck = Street Justice/Super Reflexes Stalker, Mist = Bane, Pixy = Trick Arrow/Archery, Pure = Gravity/Energy, Smoke = Fire/Fire Dominator