Miladys_Knight

Rain of Arrows is number 2.

My favorite is LRM.

HoB is the least awesome of the 4.

I wasn't expecting it to work on things that weren't affected by recharge like SoW and OWtS. I was expecting it to work on domination, just like I was expecting Nerve to help with Nem staff, Black wand, Sands, the ghost slaying axe and all of those other cool temp powers that aren't so cool because their acc sucks and can't be enhanced.

Having a bug that shows the confused icon on the mob when they aren't really confused would explain some of this. It would also partly explain those instances where confused mobs chase me until their queued melee attack resolves against me and then run off to attack their friends.

Yep all there. Too many things here that make no sense, contradict each other, are just flat out incorrect or are misleading.

Ok I re-read this. For the Dom, from the enhacenment screen, it's showing as 3 minutes 48 seconds without the Spiritual Boost and 3 minutes 38 seconds with the Spiritual Boost.

Clicking on the info button on the power shows 3 minutes 48 seconds in both cases.

The info from the official site and from the different displays is quite misleading. This isn't nearly as potent as it looks.

For the blaster, real numbers shows hasten's recharge, at level 50 with Hasten slotted with 3 level 50 Common Recharge IOs, as 3 minutes 35 seconds whether the Alpha is empty or slotted with Spiritual Boost.

For the Dom, real numbers shows hasten's recharge, at level 50 with Hasten slotted with 3 level 35 Common Recharge IOs, as 3 minutes 38 seconds whether the Alpha is empty or slotted with Spiritual Boost.

From the official CoH website:

Spiritual Boost [Common]
For all powers: Increases Recharge Rate by 33%.

One-sixth of these bonuses ignore the effects of enhancement diminishing returns.

I'm getting NO benefit from Spiritual Boost unless Hasten and Domination aren't considered powers. There is no difference in the recharge speed of my powers at all between having Spiritual Boost slotted or removing it from the Alpha Slot.

I was speaking numerically not anecdotally.

Why? Solo I can consume a tray full of insps and deal that damage in relative safety and when I'm done with the spawn I have a full tray of insps again and 30 seconds (or more) duration on the previous batch of insps.

Teamed I'm buffed, the enemy is debuffed and/or controlled, and the tank has them all in a neat pile for me to obliterate.

Devices doesn't work that way. It takes 3 times as long to do 75% of the damage for a safety trade off that isn't a good trade at all. Devices isn't a good set for teaming, its powers are all marginalized by the presence of teammates, and/or IO sets. Its an OK set for soloing it's very safe and very time consuming. The risk to reward ratio is very much out of kilter for /Devices. It's also the set that gets the very least out of defiance and the only one that didn't do well when defiance was updated.

Indeed, blasters are still at a massive disadvantage when compared to a melee toon mostly due to the dev vision for the AT.

It's not hard to do, its merely time consuming. The reward is NOT worth the time it takes to pull it off. Both scenarios are broken and in need of repair.

Ever play a Fire/Fire or a Rad/Fire? My Rad/Fire can put out about 50% more damage in 11 seconds of casting time than you can get with Trip Mine, Time Bomb, Aim and RoA and it can kick that kind of damage out every 30 seconds, and the lions share of that damage is from the secondary. Fire/Fire does it faster because Breath of Fire, Fireball, and Rain of Fire animate in less time than Iradiate, Electron Haze, and Neutron Bomb.

Also my Arch/Dev CAN take out a boss with a sequenced attack that they don't get to reply to. RoA is a non-targeted AoE. It can be fired around a corner without LoS. Trip Mine and Time Bomb don't require LoS either.

Even without criticals from Trip Mines, a stack of 4 with Time Bomb, and RoA + Aim will take out Bosses that aren't highly resistant to Lethal and Fire.

Oddly enough my Arch/Energy/Mace Blaster with Cardiac slotted can do it too...... but in about 1/4 the time it takes to set up the devices.

Edit

Again all ready possible as the buff from inspirations lasts for 60 seconds. Soloing outdoor maps with my Rad/Fire at +0/x8 and having 5-15 active inspirations is a common occurrence. Not so the Arch/Dev.

Standard code rant applies but, they "could" make it do that by making the TD ticks still occur every .5 seconds but have the buff last 260 seconds (the life of trip mine) and making it so that it doesn't stack. Since buffs on the caster are copied to psuedo pets when they are summoned this would do the trick for all blasters regardless of primary. (Provided the devs code Gun Drone as a Psuedo Pet rather than an actual pet.) It would also mean that TD would still provide it's benefit to the tier 1 and 2 primary and tier 1 secondary while mezzed solving that little problem too. (Unless you get chain mezzed for more than 260 seconds.

Sorry. disregard. That's PvP I was thinking about.

You can all ready do this....... every ~180 seconds with SOs and Hasten.

It takes planning, timing, and a bit of luck to do it. It also takes 25ish seconds to pull off (my Arch/Dev does this all the time). You place the time bomb behind the spawn, the trip mine in front of the spawn on a caltrop patch and then back away to 90 feet, hit Aim and RoA just as the Time Bomb starts flashing faster.

The Boom and RoA hit at the same time. The KB propels any still living mobs on to the Trip Mine for a spawn finishing Boom. Stragglers are easily finished off with Fistfull or Explosive.

Oh, that's too much you say? Strangely enough you can do that same amount of damage in 8.5 seconds with Aim, RoA, Fistfull, Explosive, Fistfull plus you get another 10%ish damage from defiance.

With the above set up for Time Bomb and Trip Mine the huge defiance buffs from those powers wear off long before Time Bomb explodes, essentially providing no benefit. If you fire off RoA before the defiance buff wears off none of the mobs will be in Time Bomb radius when it finally goes off or you'll have killed all the mobs. Numerically you are better off dropping Time Bomb at your feet and ignoring it, and using the 52% defiance buff on your AoE salvo (it lasts 15 seconds). You "might" catch a boss in the explosion if you (or it, depending on the boss) can survive the 15 seconds to detonation.

Ok I'll marginally give you trip mine, but only marginally. It's damage is only 30 base higher than Thunderstrike and the recharge is identical. The current 9 seconds total cast time (cast + interrupt) is far too much and makes it nearly useless on a team. (Personally I believe that no blaster power should have a cast time greater than 2.5 seconds but that is a subject for a different thread.)

I won't give you Time Bomb at all. Scrapper Shield charge is in a defense set, it has a 90 second base recharge, it does 113 damage per attack in a 20 foot radius, it's easily self buffed with AAO (let alone with build up) to double that amount of damage, has an identical chance to do Knockback, and has an un-interruptible 1.5 second cast time.

LRM is a blaster ancillary power. It has a 240 second recharge, does 155 damage, it can be buffed by both Aim and Build up, and launched at the mobs from snipe range (or farther with proper slotting/energy secondary/Incarnate powers).

Time bomb has a 360 second recharge, can't be buffed by powers in the primary or secondary (the buff from Aim doesn't last long enough, nor do the ticks from Targeting Drone ), and does 278 un-enhanced.

RoA by comparison does 225 with a recharge of 60 seconds, 4 second cast time, range 90 feet, and buffable with Aim and Build up.

Time Bomb doesn't even come close in comparison.

Cloaking device is barely better than a single IO and it costs endurance to use (and is therefore suppressed by mez). A serious buff is in order.

The devs know Gun Drone sucks that's why they gave Malta a version that works.....

No, you don't trade that. He's right you give it all up and get nothing back. You get nothing from the power teaming unless you get really lucky or are on a team of n00bs moving at a snails pace.

Rarely will you get it to do any damage at all for the reasons he mentioned.

You aren't safe either because the team will get you killed by attacking while you are trying to finish setting it up.

Good luck trying to get another shot in while it's blowing up. IF there are any Mobs left when it does finally blow up there won't be anything left for you to shoot with your follow up shot.

Time Bomb and Gun Drone are egregious powers, having cast and interrupt times that are huge outliers when compared with any other power in the game.

I have a better idea.

1. Web Grenade: Untouched.
2. Caltrops: Untouched.
3. Taser: Untouched.
4. Targeting Drone: Add a 10% global damage buff to the owner to make up for the lack of the aim power OR program it so that it affects pets and pseudo pets belonging to the caster so that it actually helps you with a good chunk of your secondary powers. Making it so that it doesn't suppress when mezzed so that it actually works with defiance would be a nice touch too.
5. Smoke Grenade: Remove the to hit check roll from the debuff portion of the power. Having it check twice is double dipping and makes the power suck far more than it should.
6. Cloaking Device: Double the stealth and defense values.
7. Trip Mine: 1 second cast time. Remove the interrupt.
8. Time Bomb: 2 second cast time. 4 second count down. Remove the interrupt.
9. Gun Drone: Replace with Malta version. (ie: 1 second cast time, no interrupt, the gun drone stays until destroyed.)