Opinions requested: Weakest Primary/Secondary and least synergy

That's just listing all of the strengths and unique features of devices while completely ignoring all of its deficits. Offense is normally judged by damage over time, not "per application." And while the mechanics of trip mines allows you to set them and run away, it also *requires* you to set them in particular ways which offer no guarantee they will in fact detonate as you intend.

If we're going to talk about "potential" then your competition is the potential damage buff of Soul Drain, which when saturated is +150% damage that is up about half the time with SO slotting. That net damage increase is far more damage than Trip Mines itself can put out.

/Fire, meanwhile, is not just using one power to compete with Trip Mines: its using Burn, Fire Sword Circle, Blazing Aura, and Combustion, plus Build Up, to compete with the entirety of /Devices on offensive output.


My reasoning compared /Devices to other sets. Yours doesn't. Under ideal conditions, /devices can do what you describe. But that's with cherry picked situations. The targets you don't kill, like say bosses, have only a 50% chance of being knocked. And after that, your mitigation drops to zero for that minefield and it comes down to the defensive strength of the other powers in the set. /Ice can perma Ice patch and get good mitigation against minions, LTs, *and* Bosses. And if we're talking about best case potential, then the best case potential for Drain Psyche by itself is +1500% regen. That's on top of the incremental mitigation of WoC and Psychic Shockwave. And once again, Drain Psyche's regeneration works as mitigation against bosses.

So unless you think its just self-evident, I don't see you making a case that /Devices actually has more total offense than Fire or Dark, or more mitigation than Ice or Mental. You're just listing the best case scenario for /Devices. That best case scenario is pretty good, but everyone's best case scenario is pretty good. The best case scenario for Energy is keeping three to four bosses almost permanently inert with stuns and the KB from power thrust. I've done it before myself.

I am not seeking your validation. I do not agree with your reasoning, primarily because you are not comparing the sets. You seem to be offended because I chose one of your favorite sets for this alt. I do not intend to argue the point further with you.

You needn't and "offended because I chose one of your favorite sets" is an oxymoron at best.

I just believe that you will be back again in a few weeks looking for a new pairing simply because this combination won't provide the challenge you seemed to be seeking in your first few posts unless you purposely play it badly which also appears to go against your first few posts.

I could be reading you incorrectly.

Whaaaaat?

I've found */Ice, and Energy/Ice for that matter, to be one of the most survivable blaster sets on SOs alone, and it gets even better with IOs (ranged def cap).

And I'm not just saying that because my main is Energy/Ice.

All the KB knocks them to range, Shiver keeps them there and seriously debuffs their recharge -- so they're ineffectively trying to run toward you. If any do make it into melee range, Ice Patch knocks them down and CE debuffs their damage (as well as what's left of their recharge).

Just pretend that Frozen Aura doesn't exist and you're golden.

Lets leave the the completed overpoweredness of mental out of the discussion for now since we know it's an outlier.

I'm not talking about cherry picked situations. It's not all that hard to consistently set up 3 mines in such a way that you destroy or damage a majority of a spawn. All you have to do is place caltrops in such a way that the spawn bunches up enough that the mine detonations catch most or all of them. That's a trick that you can learn pretty quickly.

I can pop out from cover and use an AoE or 2 to finish off what is left with perhaps the exception of the boss. Some of the mobs will be running because too many of them took too much damage too quickly and I can assess that and either use ranged attacks to finish off runners or let them run while I deal with a more serious threat and just finish them off when they get back.

Even after my mine field is gone I can still keep what is left (including the boss unless it's immune to slows) at range indefinitely simply by backing up and dropping caltrops again (and again if need be). Which iirc you have said that keeping mobs at range is like reducing damage by ~40%.

Since blasters are usually defeated by taking too much damage and being mezzed I see a lot of potential value in the 3 mine field. I can greatly reduce the enemy alpha by eliminating a large portion (or all of it) before they ever launch their Alpha. I reduce incoming mez the same way. Trip Mines and Caltrops still function even if I mess up my pull and get hit with an Alpha mez. That gives me time to use the tier 1 & 2 primary and tier 1 secondary without the remainder of the spawn reaching melee range or perhaps until the mez wears off and I can move again.

No actually, I'm asking a serious question especially considering the other threads where we have been discussing blaster weaknesses. We know that the "players" have a perception that blasters were "fine" or "ok" and the dev's data mining showed that perception to be far off the mark.

Could our perception of /devices be off as far as it is with blaster weaknesses? Is that the reason devices has languished so long without an update other than gun drone? The player base thinks it "sucks" but dev numbers and data give the lie to that perception?

Is the safety and burst damage from Devices actually worth the trade off for the time it takes to use it? Does it save enough return trips from the hospital to equate?

I agree. Remember, I was looking for the OPPOSITE of that.

Then it's possible that /devices wasn't the best choice for a secondary. Say what you will about the set, and lord knows I've complained about parts of it, but it's an incredibly safe powerset to use if you play to its strengths.

Sure it doesn't have a lot of use in a team setting, and laying down mine patches with caltrops fields can feel very tedious, but it's like playing the original version of a stalker who's assassin's strike does AoE damage. That's also kind of why I really wish the recent AS changes could somehow be carried over to Trip Mine and Time Bomb to give them some use when in-combat; those powers are even more useless than AS was when you're in a fight.

I don't disagree with that. But again, I'm comparing it to the alternatives.

Energy Manipulation - Stuns, mega damage, strong utility. No go here

Fire Manipulation - Not the safest set in the world, but a whole lot of AoE damage

Electrical Manipulation - See Energy Melee

Mental Manipulation - lol; Whatever else this set is, it is not weak in anything

Ice Manipulation - Too much control. Damage is weak for sure, but it's very safe. Kind of the opposite of its brother Fire Manipulation.

Dark Manipulation - I thought about this one, but folks talked me out of it. It's a safe set with debuffs, good damage, and OK controls.

Devices - Controls are OK. Defense is good. Damage is OK. It's not great. Set-up time has to factor in.


Look the alt is only level 6. I'm willing to be convinced I made a mistake. Among the alternatives, which do you think is the weakest?

I think Psi/Dev is a solid choice for your goals. You are going to be safe, but it will be slow. Tankers with their old release mods were very, very safe, but I do not think many would say they were not weak. Defenders are another great example of how that worked out. Safety is not the only thing to consider when determining the strength of a combination.

That said, considering the impact debt and hospital runs can have on leveling, the turtle may be the winner. But I bet the feeling is more important in this case than the results.

I'm not really trying to say you made a mistake or anything, just that is you're remotely patient the set is very safe once you get trip-mines (also very boring if you do lay mine-fields without the right temperament).

If you really want to play a 'hard mode' character try limiting your intended playstyle. Like make a range-only psi/em, or melee only rad/elec ... or honestly just keep on playing the psi/dev and don't do the whole mine field thing (or stealth most of your missions). As wonky as the blaster secondaries are they do all seem to have their effective niche, though some of them may be small.

The best way to answer that question is to test it. Run x6 or x7 missions (x8 might spawn things above trip mine's target cap) and see a) how difficult it is to make the tactic work and b) when it works, is it really significantly faster and/or safer than engaging the spawn directly.

A video would be helpful in analyzing exactly how much damage mitigation and DPS that tactic generates across many consecutive spawns.

I actually hadn't planned on taking trip mine anyway. I like the thrill of attacking a spawn directly. I hope to be able to play this alt at +0/x8 eventually. That's going to take some work, but it will probably be more fun than my godmode Fire/Shield Scrapper.

Hands down Elec/Dev.

AR/DEV can at least stack taser + beanbag against bosses.

Edit: My first 40 level toon was an AR/DEV blaster. Man I miss those days....I probably will level up another one. Stacking trip mines all over the place is fun though!

Good Luck on this project EG. I played an Energy/Dev blaster up to 47 and eventually went away from Devices for the following reasons;

Extra damage was available with huge setup time, which got to be very annoying. Devices on the whole was very "defensive". Caltrops, all by itself, was huge amounts of mitigation, but after several respecs, I found that my toon only had 3 powers from the secondary that were being used, and one was web grenade, which I dont like much either. Basically, Devices is the most "lacking" in synergy within it's own set, and depending on your playstyle, will not even be fully leveraged, especially on teams.

I came too late to the thread to offer my choice, but would share it anyway. If this were my project, Electric/Devices would have been at or near the top of the list. Electric blast wants to be in melee range, while devices will create separation in a spawn. The lack of a buildup in devices, lack of a T3 blast in electric, and lack of any way to boost short circuit's draining abilities would make for a very "un-wieldy" combination in my mind. I think Psi has a measurably higher amount of control than Electric as well, but I cannot seem to play Psi blast for long due to the sound effects.

Let us know how this project goes

I agree. It seems to me that EG will be mildly disappointed in his choice here as there will be a lot to like about the combo in the end. One of the big complaints about Psi is that it has few aoe options, /dev will help fill that in with Trip mine, Gun Drone and Caltrops. Another complaint is that some groups are very resistant to psi, once again /Dev offers a good deal of damage that is of another type (lethal with some fire damage to boot). There is enough controls in Psi/ to offer a good amount of mitigation through -rech, kb, sleep and stun to give any single target a bad time and a good amount of kdown/kback between the two sets (particularly if you get Ragnarok kdown proc). This is in addition to the 10.5% or so Def/-toHit that the set offers.

Toe bombing works in large groups as well, you just have to get in front of your tank. Using SG and CD + SS will allow you to get the job done easily too, you just have to time it right and the tank will hit his taunt so you don't get the return volley. It's not like that's any different than with any nuke anyway (but with only about 500 damage).


Overall, no it's not fire/fire, but it will make for a pretty decent set IMO.

Pretty well. I got what I wanted out of the combo which was requiring more care than other combos. Certainly more than my other newbie, Staff/Ice stalker which is OP.

heh heh...

The complaints about Blaster psi blast did figure into my decision.

I've personally found that combo to be pretty effective even before I tricked it out with IOs.

It is hard to go wrong with Sonic or Fire, but all the joyous AoE damage and Hot Feet work counter Siren's Song and, as always, cones and PBAoEs are not the best mix.

My Sonic/Fire is a pirate and is definitely enjoyable.