Tripmine: Still relevant or a power whose time has passed?

I am in the midst of making a new version of my traps defender. With all the new improved Pool powers, I am looking for some space in my build (and I want to return my build back to its 59% ranged softcap.), and I have seized upon the power: TRIPMINE.

I had it in my old Traps/ defender but I rarely used it. I found incarnte play just doesn't give time or or need for a Interruptable Explosive patch, and single player I was better off just using the aoes I had avaialble from my secondary.

Tripmine seems like a power that City of Heroes has just passed by.

Can anyone provide any compelling reason why Tripmine should remain in a traps player's build?

Well if you have a low AoE blast set (such as Beam Rifle) then it can be useful as AoE damage but for the most part it isn't that useful. The primary use of it is really to front-load damage by setting a bunch and luring enemies into them but that's not actually that useful of a tactic.

Solo AV fights, fun explodey times, or a place to fall back when things get crazy are all uses that I've found for Trip Mine both on my corrupter and MM.

Honestly, I find them more hilarious than useful.

Downtime during the Terra Volta, known ambushes - It's a major giggle to prepare a field of mines and poison traps and see them going off like 10 at a time after a cutscene, but it rarely actually wipes out much more than the minions unless you stacked them all on top of each other, and is never a >necessary< thing.

I've never played Traps but they would certainly be useful on a BAF, both for the escape phase and for getting the drop on Nightstar and Siege's adds. TPN, you could set them up at the center of the room for the building phases, exploding enemies as they get pulled away from the terminals. That's all that really comes to mind for the trials though. Definitely a situational power.

Skip it with confidence!

Initially, I took it on my Traps/Ice 'fender because I thought I might have some use for extra AoE or something. Or set muling. But that was not the case!

- In (solo) AV fights, if you have a ST attack chain, that'll bring you more reliable DPS. Especially if it's fast, like fire/ice, you can get at least 3 attacks in for one mine (5s), WITH the flexibility to stop in the middle. As you mentioned, your blast set likely has more front-loaded AoEs.
- Downtime after dropping Poison Gas, Acid Mortar, and Caltrops at high levels of recharge is maybe 20-25 secs. This is not a long time to mess around laying mines.
- Don't worry about BAF and Terra Volta.

It's slightly more useful on a MM, where maybe you have no other attacks and can also control where you fight. But you're a defender, go blast stuff.

Setting up the max number of tripmines in one spot, then running off the aggro a few mobs to lead them back to the mines, and then watching a whole bunch of minions get thrown about while they go boom! I loved that.

With the AS changes, fast SNipes, medicene getting a power that removes the interrupt..(I think)...why cant Tripmine get something similar? Tie it with to hit or whatever. You reach that condition, it is auto or faster deloying.

What about..making the tripmines into..Mines. As in, they deloy flynig midair, kinda like how the malta turrets do, and just follow you about.
In the late game, the power is rather lacking.

I think they're a cool idea, but have a flawed implementation.

I last played with them a few years ago, but I remember it being a big case of balance by irritation. Your effective alpha strike was limited by your own patience. I knew I could lay 16 or so before the first one vanished, but never did, no matter how bad the EB I was trying to solo out of sheer boredom. After ten I'd rather die to whatever was in the room next door.

I'd suggest speeding up the recharge and animation, keep the interrupt, but only allow for 5 at a time. When you place #6, #1 vanishes. Place #7, #2 vanishes, and so on. This way you can lay down your kill box fairly quickly and then get on with the action, even lay down a trip mine mid-fight if you feel lucky and un-aggroed.

The damage is about scale 2? (ie two standard AoEs). So the interrupt needs to be there to stop mid-combat mine spamming if the recharge is sped up.

This does unfortunately spoil things for those with the patience to currently lay out 18 mines, so its not a perfect solution. Maybe have some way to toggle between these fast but limited number mines and slow ones we have now, like the Swap Ammo power?

My biggest gripe with Trip Mine is the procs IOs don't work in this power. With the PPM changes there's a lot of lost potential here.

Procs also weren't working in Seeker Drones, confirmed by the devs - not sure if that was ever fixed.

Trip Mine is a good power. Time Bomb is not. If you find uses for Trip Mine and can spare the slots, grab it.

What I don't understand is why it doesn't take interrupt enhancements. This seems like an oversight.

Tripmine seems like Clown Summoning for MMs: would you play a Clown Summoning MM because they out-perform Bots or because you'd enjoy watching them hit people in the face with pies?

How you answer that question probably predicts how you'll feel about Tripmine. Me, I like watching the pies fly.

I do think it's very useful to keep in your toolkit and I'd always include it with a Trapper. Except... Defenders have a right to skip it out of protest. MM, Corr and Blaster Trip Mine all do the same damage. Defender TM damage is 65% of all of those. That's just lazy. I'm not going to make this a crusade, because I'm afraid the answer may be to adjust MMs to 55% and I like the power way too much on my MM to give that up.

I haven't had trip mine in my ar/dev's build since....wow, a long, long time.

You can do some cool stuff with it, but it imposes a static, boring playstyle I don't enjoy. If I wanted to spend 10 minutes building up my base before attacking the enemy I'd play Starcraft.


/edit

and yes, Time Bomb is hot garbage.
I question the grip on reality of anyone who says otherwise. =P