Devices damage suggestion

Now, we've probably all seen the many arguments and suggestions over the Devices powerset for Blasters and heard all the complaints and sides. Myself, I've been trying to make it work for the past five years and have had enough success to be content with it, yet we all know that many people hate many different aspects and powers.

About the one single thing most often cited as a problem with Devices is lack of damage buff due to the lack of Build Up and Trip Mines and Time Bombs being largely impractical in most situations (read: on a team). There was once a plan to add some kind of Stealth Strike to Cloaking Device, and it carried a description that said that there was for years, and we've seen suggestions of a damage buff to Targeting Drone.

Playing around with my AR/Dev/Munitions Blaster today, however, I got a rather more interesting idea. You know how Devices tends to have those big damage bonuses for its summons? 40-something% for Auto Turret is the one that looks the most easily replicatable to me, and I've used it in conjunction with Survaillance and Sniper Rifle's damage buff from Targeting Drone a lot. But still, it's very, very strongly behind what Build Up does.

So I got to thinking... Well, why not retain the damage buff for the entire duration the Gun Drone is out? I mean, plenty of people complained Auto Turret was useless, and changing it to Gun Drone didn't really help all that much. It costs a mountain, takes bloody ages to set up, only lasts a minute and doesn't do all that much damage. So, what if it gave a damage buff to the user while it was alive? Call it a Defiance buff or give the Turret itself a caster-only AoE damage buff, it's all the same to me. The point is that while the Gun Drone is up, I think it might be swell to have a damage buff to go with it.

The point of the Drone, as far as I can tell, is to have something maybe occasionally get hit instead of you (though it is NOT as sturdy as some suggest) and to boost your outgoing damage. Wouldn't it be right in line with that, then, if it provided its 40% damage bonus for the entire duration of its short life? I can certainly say that a bit of damage buff would help Devices and especially Assault Rifle/Devices, both in survivability/killing power and in terms of speed of progression. Between Devices' control and the SLOOOOOW mines and bombs, as well as its lack of a damage buff, a Devices Blaster can feel rather more sluggish than a Blaster really should be, being that they are all about massive damage on target RIGHT NOW.

I'm not really looking to "fix" the set, as I'm frankly not good enough at it, but I do think this would be a change that would be overall quite cool, would make what is otherwise a... Pretty painful power to have into more of a draw, and shouldn't cause any catastrophic problems that I can see.

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I like this. Though I would also like it if they did a few things such as taking away the interrupt time from the gun drone, and reducing the total time for set up and explosion of the time bomb to 15 seconds.

I love the set, I can really pwn solo, but in teams I find myself only really using caltrops, web grenade, and trip mine. (Okay Time bomb too for [censored] and giggles).

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Sounds pretty weird that the gun drone can give a damage buff.

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I like this. Though I would also like it if they did a few things such as taking away the interrupt time from the gun drone, and reducing the total time for set up and explosion of the time bomb to 15 seconds.

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For some reason, both Time Bomb and Gun Drone have LUDICROUS activation times. Time Bomb takes 8 seconds to set down, and then takes another 15 seconds to blow up. Auto Turret takes only 6 seconds to set down, but costs a bundle and doesn't come anywhere near the destructive potential of the Time Bomb. Even a Trip Mine takes I think three seconds to set down. To my eyes, given that these powers themselves are slow and unreliable to yield just from how they are designed, giving them slower and more unreliable still activation is just compounding a problem.

That's one of the biggest problems I think a Gun Drone damage buff would begin to address. It's the set's final power, and as such is drastically underwhelming, between its cost and its merit. Adding some not-insignificant damage to it for a full minute would change it from "Eh, why bother?" into "Must slot more recharge in it!" To my eyes, that would be a good thing. I like the little bugger, ugly as it may be, and I would really like to feel less silly for keeping it around so heavily slotted.

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I still want fragmentation grenades.

That is all.

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I don't know, I have rolled my first /Dev blaster and I have to say, it doesn't really have that many problems. No it doesn't have more damage, but it has a constant to hit buff and to hit debuff resistance which I think the rest of the sets don't have. So overall I may not do as much damage but it is balenced do to the fact I may not do as much damage but I hit everything, except for the occasional lucky one, but that is usually followed by a strikebraker.

The only thing I don't like about Gun Drone is the set up time, other than that the thing is Golden. To me this helps offset the fact that the set doesn't have build up, not only does it do extra damage but takes aggro, I like it just wish it didn't take forever and a day to set up, that or either if it were perma.

But other than that the set is straight, I didn't take Time bomb or Taser, wanted to try taser but didn't have anyother stun powers to use with it, and Time Bomb was not appealing to me (Not too many sets have all 9 good powers).

I am love with my Fire/Dev/Mun Blaster mainly because he has 53% ranged, 30% AoE, and 23% melee (nothing really gets in melee though) and he is a beast, and when I toss smoke grenade things get a lot better.

Note: Toe Bombing aka mini nuking in itself is a great reason to have devices, don't really see a need for more damage on a set that already does a lot. I would just like to see something done about that set up time for Gun Drone.

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"Yes, winning all the time can be boring."
-Knight_Chill

"It's amazing how well you can put up with endurance issues if you hide them under a large enough pile of bodies."

-Spiritchaser speaking on Dom Revamp

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I don't know, I have rolled my first /Dev blaster and I have to say, it doesn't really have that many problems. No it doesn't have more damage, but it has a constant to hit buff and to hit debuff resistance which I think the rest of the sets don't have. So overall I may not do as much damage but it is balenced do to the fact I may not do as much damage but I hit everything, except for the occasional lucky one, but that is usually followed by a strikebraker.

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To a point, but the thing is, a Blaster survives by taking down the opposition, as he has no defences to rely on. A damage injection like Aim + Build Up can allow most other sets to lay down some serious smackdown and get a HUGE head start, and do so at the cost of 4-5 seconds. While Devices CAN do that, it costs 8 seconds to lay down a Time Bomb plus an additional 15 seconds for it to go off. Targeting Drone may help you hit things, but it doesn't keep you from getting hit. Build Up, on the other hand, allows your lovely Aim + Fireball + Fire Breath to destroy entire spawns, where not having it just leaves a full spawn of pissed off enemies gunning for YOU.

I'm not sure where you're getting your defences from, but I CAN guarantee you're not getting them from your powerset, so the point remains - Devices doesn't provide enough damage to kill things quickly and doesn't provide enough self protection to kill things slowly.

Now, the one thing Devices works really well at is pulling enemies into traps. And, believe me, I'd be the first one to campaign for how good this was, if it didn't take SO BLOODY LONG to do. Even Trip Mines take a really long time to go down, and that's the big thing - no team is going to sit down and wait for you to set them up. I've tried, it doesn't happen. Even my friends don't want to wait. A damage buff would help that a lot, and keep in mind I'm not talking about the full 100% of Build Up. Gun Drone only gives around 36%, which isn't even Aim, let alone Build Up.

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The only thing I don't like about Gun Drone is the set up time, other than that the thing is Golden. To me this helps offset the fact that the set doesn't have build up, not only does it do extra damage but takes aggro, I like it just wish it didn't take forever and a day to set up, that or either if it were perma.

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The Gun Drone may be able to take a few hits, but it doesn't have any aggro-grabbing powers. Not only that, it actively transfers its aggro onto you. Even if you're hidden and completely invisible, if your Drone engages a spawn, half of that spawn will be shooting at YOU. Trust me, I've lost dozens of Sniper Rifle shots for this exact reason. Also, its set down may be long, but its COST is astronomical. 39 endurance points base, that's almost a full half of your endurance bar. And for what? A floating box that does barely any damage and grabs more errant aggro than it holds? I have it, I use it, and I STILL don't like it. It really should either be cheaper or do a lot more. Giving it an owner-affecting damage bonus is one easy way to make it do more. Giving it more attacks or upping the damage on its one attack would be another, but I wouldn't say it's something I'd prefer, personally.

Devices is workable, that much I will never contest. After all, I got a Devices Blaster to 50, so it must be good at SOMETHING. However, it is also slow, fiddly, unreliable and rather wimpy. That's what bugs me the most. It doesn't feel like a strong set. It feels like a set barely scraping together, and it doesn't have to be that way.

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