seebs

""just swap out AR for DP" seems to be non-trivial; the power sets aren't all that similar. In particular, I'd point out: DP's tier 9 is a PBAoE, and trip mines is now uninterruptible, making it a somewhat useful PBAoE, and I would guess that building for a bit more melee defense might be rewarding.

Huh, neat to know. But there's no way for global recharge alone to get me Enough Trip Mines. 😛

So far as I know, time bomb is still pretty awful, with its sole benefit being that you can plant it, and then walk *around a corner* so that aggroed mobs can't target you. But they can charge towards you. Through trip mines. But I have in general been happy with toe-bombing as a viable strategy for a /dev blaster now that trip mines are uninterruptible. 2.77s cast time is sort of long, but the damage+knockback works nicely. Trip mines also give you that +18% damage buff, briefly, which isn't awful. Does the FF +recharge proc actually fire very often in trip mines? I expected it not to, because the mines do AoE damage, but the power isn't AoE or anything.

I am also really interested in DP/Dev. Yes, I know about traps, but... /dev gets uninterruptible trip mines. So I'm just accepting that I need to try to get a ton of resist and defense if I'm going to survive, but also. Trip mines! Things I want: (1) trip mines (2) trip mines (3) i dunno maybe some other OOH MORE TRIP MINES. So I guess that means a ton of global recharge. I don't care too much about soloing at +4/x8 or anything, but would like to be able to go chase Incarnate stuff and so on. Not yet 50, but will be someday, maybe. I play the market some so it's pretty practical for me to just go ahead and fill in the blaster ATOs, or whatever. PvP recipes and purples would take a bit longer to afford, but a couple hundred million would be "more than I have now, less than I'll have by the time I make 50".

Someone said trip mines isn't interruptible. Is that unique to /devices? Because I have a /traps, and trip mines is definitely still interruptible there. Answer: Yes, apparently.

That is, I think, the best line in the whole thing. My CoH-playing friends were still quoting it occasionally years after the game died.

I haven't played it on HC much, and as noted, this guide was written for Live originally, and needs some updates. But I note also that two of the things on my list of suggested fixes have happened. 🙂

OP did not read all the tooltips carefully enough and will edit post. I have no idea why I was so convinced that things hadn't changed much. Possibly because I don't think the descriptions have always been changed. I've run into this a few times; the plain-text descriptions of things are often out of sync with their reality. That said, this was clearly updated for the addition of recovery/regen to Field Operative.

How to Suck at City of Heroes (and Villains) In most MMOs, experienced players know that there is no such thing as a bad group; there are only good groups, and funny groups. City of Heroes is afflicted with a player base many of whom are basically intelligent and friendly, meaning a lot fewer funny groups, which in turn denies us a lot of opportunities to rant on the forums. You can help. By learning to really suck at CoH, both game mechanically and socially, you can keep SG channels and global channels hopping with funny stories, giving other players the chance to bond as they commiserate. This guide gives you an overview to key ways in which you can completely fail at many aspects of City of Heroes. I try to cover build advice, character design, interaction with other players, and more. This guide is necessarily a work in progress, and I am deeply indebted to various pick-up groups for their contributions, feedback, and ongoing support. Section 0: Be ncsoft Really, this is the ultimate tactic. However, it may have been done to death. Consider avoiding it. Section 1: Philosophy To really suck at a game, there is one thing that is more important than anything else: You must take the game very seriously. This doesn't mean you have to put in a lot of effort learning to play the game, it means you have to be offended when other people play the game in a way you don't like, or when people fail to contribute directly to your positive game experience. Let's do a little pop quiz. You're in Port Oakes, and the zone is dead. You wanna do a couple quick paper missions to get your jet pack. You search the zone, and there's someone else there. You invite them to team with you. They decline the invitation. What do you do? A. Sit around waiting for someone else who can team with you, instead of just running the missions solo. B. Send them a chat message "y not?!?" and immediately ignore them before waiting for a response. C. Cuss them out at length for not knowing that this is a "multipalyer game, moron". D. Find some of your friends to team with, even if they're of different levels. It was a trick question; the answer is "A, B, and C". You can't do D, because you don't have any friends. However, the other three options are all correct. Let's examine them in a little more detail. Option A highlights a key strategy in sucking at CoH: Never do something alone when you can have someone else do it while you sit at the door berating them for not doing it fast enough. You should always be ready to let someone else do something for you. Option B shows a dextrous combination of two key strategies. The first is demanding that people justify themselves to you; the second is not actually paying attention to their response, and ideally making sure they know you weren't paying attention. Always remember that, if someone fails to enable you to play the way you want to play, it means they are stupid and wrong. Tell them so. Note that this is not a reciprocal arrangement; if other people want to tell you how to play, tell them in no uncertain terms to shut up. You know what you're doing; they don't. They aren't paying your $15 a month. Section 2: Character Building (yours) City of Heroes has taken the unfortunate path of making nearly everything viable, making it hard to do a really bad job of picking your initial sets. However, there is still some hope; you can pick a set for the wrong reasons. For instance, rather than playing Empathy as an amazing buff set that can empower your teammates to steamroll content, you could play it as a pure healing set, taking only the healing powers. This will utterly gimp your performance. Give serious thought to completely ignoring one of your sets, usually your secondary. A defender who never uses attacks can deprive a team of a major source of effective debuffs; a scrapper with no defensive abilities can faceplant faster than a "pure healer" defender can heal. Learn to slot. One strategy would be to stick with TOs at all levels because they are "cheaper". Also, slot for endurance reduction. You're always running out of endurance, right? So slot your attacks for endurance reduction, rather than accuracy or damage. This way, instead of killing things in fewer hits, or hitting more often, both of which indirectly reduce endurance consumption, you can focus on directly reducing endurance consumption. People will sometimes talk about "ED". Ignore them. Six-slot your powers for the trait you want. Again, it's crucial that you ignore, or insult, people who try to suggest ways your build might be able to more effectively accomplish your goals. What do they know? If they wanted to play your character, they should have thought of the name first. Section 3: Character Building (everyone else) Everyone else's build is your business. If they didn't make the right choices, that will cripple the team. So be sure to look closely at what they've got. If they haven't picked a core power of one of their sets, let them know. Don't let them just handwave it off; make sure they acknowledge that their choices were wrong and explain exactly how they'll rectify the situation. In rare cases, a particularly mule-headed sort will ignore you if you keep commenting on their build; this is why you should have a second account. Keep up the pressure. Remember, you're doing this to make the game better. Some people make choices so awful that there is no point in considering teaming with them. For instance, if someone were to take a travel power that doesn't have good synergies with their combat powers, that would be a sign that you should probably boot them from the team immediately. Similarly, if someone does something particularly unsalvageable, such as building a defender who isn't primarily focused on the defender's role (healing), boot them right away. Consider advertising the reasons for the boot in the local broadcast channel (see Chats and Channels, below). Section 4: Fighting Enemies The most important thing to keep in mind is that there is only one right way to fight in CoH, but there are many wrong ways. If people deviate from the ideal plan for your current situation, berate them mercilessly. Don't try to help or recover from a problematic situation; stand back and start blaming. It's vital that your long chat message about whose fault it is reaches team chat first. In general, a good strategy can be identified by the amount of planning and explanation it requires. If your strategy can be explained within one or two chat messages, it's probably going to be worthless when things start to happen -- in the frenzy of battle, simple rules and plans are unlikely to have taken all the contingencies into account. You need detailed multi-step plans. If the plan fails, identify who screwed up and let them know it was their fault. There are a few core strategies you should be familiar with, and a few general rules you need to know about how to develop a new strategy. I'm going to illustrate each general rule with an example of a strategy built to maximize its effect. Herding There are several ways to "herd" in City of Heroes. Some players figure that a tanker (or brute, or scrapper, or anyone else durable) can pick up some aggro, draw a spawn together, and pretty much just run with it. Never, ever, fall for this trap. You see the problem, right? It's way too simple. A good herding strategy should involve constant communication with detailed instructions. Obviously, the tank is the leader of the group, so the tank needs to control every aspect of the process. The tank should announce where the spawn will be herded to, warn people repeatedly not to get involved until the spawn is ready, then tell them when to attack. Do not rely on the judgement of other players. There is little chance that an experienced blaster will be able to somehow guess when it's safe to attack. Worse, a mistake could result in a team member dying; because of the extremely stiff penalties associated with death in CoH, this is a major disaster. Advanced players may find it more rewarding to die quickly while out of line of sight of the rest of the team, or while trying to bring the spawn back to the team. Ideally, the tank will die precisely as everyone else starts fighting, allowing aggro to be spread evenly among the blaster. This strategy illustrates a couple of general rules. First, the most efficient way to do any content is to have only one player active as often as possible. Too many cooks spoil the broth! If you have multiple players acting and making decisions, they may get out of synch or split the team. Having the other seven players wait for the right moment lets you keep the focus where it belongs -- on you. Secondly, it's worth noticing that this strategy played out entirely differently in the past, before the aggro and target caps. One of the best ways to suck at City of Heroes is to never, ever, change your behavior in response to massive changes in the game engine or combat mechanics. Mining Let's say you're not a tank. How do you make sure everything is about you? Simple! Set up mines and time bombs. These are a great way to keep gameplay focused, and therefore efficient, as you carefully set up a large mine field, describing in detail the order in which someone should pull a spawn through the field. While you're talking, and they're listening, the group is working the way it is supposed to. Again, see how the focus of the group on a single player makes that player more important and builds team spirit. Be careful not to use mining strategies only against spawns that are otherwise too hard for the group, or selectively based on circumstances. The point of a strategy is to use it all the time. Healing Pure healers are a build strategy, but healing is also a combat strategy. The key to healing is that you want to heal damage. That means damage has to be taken, first. Resistance and defense buffs for players reduce incoming damage, and that means less healing. Similarly, to-hit and damage debuffs for mobs mean less incoming damage, and thus less healing. But healing is what keeps you alive, so those things are bad. If you aren't dying, it is because someone is healing you. Sometimes, people will try to claim that they are helping by using powers which don't heal you. Don't be fooled. No green numbers? Boot that defender and get someone who knows how to play the game. Section 5: Chats and Channels Global channels, supergroup and coalition, broadcast, team chat, the help channel... All of these media exist to serve you. Be sure to use the right medium for any communication. Usually, that will be the broadcast channel or a global channel. The most important thing to understand about channels is the word "trolling". Trolling is the process of doing things which create drama, such as disagreeing with you, or providing some kind of reference or citation in support of a claim. People who do this are doing it because they love drama. Of course, in part they're getting the right idea; the purpose of channels is to provide a venue for drama. Every channel, whether it's a "global" channel or local broadcast, is there to provide entertainment to the participants, in the form of drama. On rare occasions, people will fail to specifically identify their religion or the intimate details of the sex life. Luckily, you can always tell, so you can use these as the basis of a compelling argument as to the worth of their contributions. This can, of course, lead to people trying to "troll" you by claiming that your behavior is offensive. Remember to petition them for harassment when they do this, especially if they announce that they have reported your behavior to the GMs. Special case: Tells Tells are a special case, because they are sort of like a channel, in that there are social norms for how they're used. First off, never use tells as a preamble to a super group or team invite. Just invite people. What would you tell them that they wouldn't get from the invite window? You don't want picky people with a sense of entitlement who are only interested in some teams, or might have expectations of a super group. These people will turn out to be horrible whiners. No, you want people who will click yes on anything you ask. That said, it is of course perfectly reasonable to send people tells asking them to join your super group. Don't restrict this to people you've met, or that you know in some way; as the section on super group recruiting will explain, limiting the field that way hurts your chances. Ask everyone. Use the search window to find people, so you don't risk missing people on the grounds that they're already in a super group or something stupid like that. Section 6: Teaming Blind invites. Nothing will fill a team faster than running down the search window clicking invite-to-team as fast as you can. Running a team is a heavy responsibility. To run a team, you have to be ready to make fun of how people play the game, kick them from the team if they annoy you, and sit around saying "ne1 hav bank mis?" Furthermore, it is up to you to ensure that your team composition is viable for missions. If you are running a level 28 team, for instance, do not invite anyone under level 26 to your team; they will be a liability to the team. Similarly, don't invite anyone over level 30, because when they "exemp" down, they will forget how to play their character. You may find it more rewarding to play on teams run by other people. This gives you a great opportunity to educate them about how to run a team more effectively. The most effective way to get a team is to pick a zone where there's a lot of under-dressed female heroes you can look at, and stand in one place saying "lft" in broadcast. Try not to be too specific about your archetype and level. If you are running a team, be sure to focus on the most crucial support role; be the person who gets the mission, then show leadership in helping people understand the mission objectives. For instance, if you could find a hunting mission, you could direct people to the most efficient way to repeatedly complete it. A decisive and clear-speaking leader could summarize this in only a few words; perhaps "Go. Hunt. Kill skulz." Section 7: Running a Super Group It's a tough call whether you should run your own super group or try to steal someone else's. The key thing is that you'd better be in charge. You may wonder how to tell whether a super group is good. Conveniently, the game provides an objective and reliable measure of the quality of supergroups, called "prestige". As the name suggests, this is a direct measure of how prestigious your super group is. It is, of course, necessary that group members always run "in SG mode", where they will be contributing prestige to your super group. (At higher levels, this can reduce the rate at which they acquire inf. Tough luck for them, your super group matters more.) Because super group membership is such a huge responsibility, it's important to have detailed rules and regulations for your super group. Never allow someone any kind of rank within your super group if they also participate in other super groups. Similarly, never allow any kind of criticism of your group or leadership; criticism of leadership leads to anarchy and chaos, and prevents a super group from running like the well-oiled military machine it is supposed to be. Your super group's channels are your chance to impose structure on the game. Be sure to enforce, as ruthlessly as necessary, any policies you set. Policies should be set to maintain the distinctive culture of your SG, and to encourage isolation; you don't want people getting along with, or interacting with, members of other SGs. Examples of good SG chat rules: Never use abbreviations such as "LFT" or "LFM". Never say anything that could lead SG members to think that you're gay. Never talk about activities that involved people outside the SG. Never discuss game features, such as AE, which are not part of the usual play style of your SG. On the other hand, some rules are so crippling, so extreme, that they prevent people from forming the esprit de corps that marks a successful community. Examples: No cussing. No derogatory remarks based on sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion. No promotion of RMT services. Never let people view your super group as a fun way to hang out with friends. The super group is all. It gives them access to the base. It gives them team mates. The super group is mother! The super group is father! Your group should have clear and explicit policies covering every conceivable case. Try to provide your own definitions for common English words; this technique, pioneered by cult leaders, allows you to create a separation between your "in" group and outsiders. Super group membership should be all or nothing. People who play other games, or play in other super groups, or play on the other faction, are not serious about your super group. Get rid of them. Better, just keep them in roles of non-authority, but continue to get prestige from them. Growing your SG Growing your SG is crucial, because only by drafting hundreds of players and trying to get them to level all their toons in SG mode can you get enough prestige to be a truly respected SG. Just as everyone respects any group that has lots of prestige, no one will take you seriously, or care what you think, if your SG isn't one of the top ten. Remember! Prestige is an objective measure of the quality of a super group. To make this work, you need people. Lots of people. Now, some people will just meet people they enjoy playing with, invite them to join a supergroup, and focus on whether they have fun together or enjoy each others' company. These people are losers. You will never see people who are having fun instead of farming prestige in the top ten list on any server. You might think you should announce your SG, or promote it by running events. Wrong. Advertisements in broadcast channels will not get you enough people. This is especially true if jealous and bitter people who want to sabotage you might respond with comments on their perception of your SG's quality. No, there are only two good ways to get people into your SG. The first is to use the search interface to find people who are sort of low level and invite them. Macro this, because you're going to be doing it a lot. Just send them all a message, something like "Hello, would you like to join a super group?" Now, you may have noticed that the search interface doesn't show you whether people are already in a super group. That's okay! As long as your request is polite, no one will mind. It doesn't matter how often you ask the same person, or their alts, or how badly you've treated them in the past. It's still a friendly question. So keep right on asking. Don't worry about responding to questions. For the most part, people who ask questions about your group before joining it aren't really interested. They're just stringing you along because you've already invited them twenty times. The people you want are people who say yes without knowing anything about your super group; these are the people who can be molded to serve your needs. Another great recruiting tactic is grouping. Group with people, then invite them to your super group. Some people do this wrong; they wait until they know which players they enjoy grouping with. Wrong. The goal is numbers, numbers, numbers. Nothing else matters. Just invite them. If they say no, kick them out of the team immediately; they are of no use to you. It's possible to screw this up, though. If you mention to people that you're recruiting, they might anticipate that you're not actually looking to run missions with them unless they're willing to serve your prestige-farming needs. So don't do that. Rely on the fact that players assume a mission invite is for the purpose of running missions. This will let you perform an elegant bait-and-switch, which nearly always makes a strong impression. Section 8: Communications Skills The fact is, it doesn't matter how you write, or spell. What matters is that if anyone criticizes your spelling or writing, you must freak the *@#!* out. Nothing helps drive home the irrelevance of communications skills like an outraged rant. Consider this representative sample: You sure told them. (Note that this has been censored for presentation on the forums; obviously, in game, you'd spell those words out, for approximate values of "spell".) Section 9: Roleplaying It is important to clearly state in your character's description that other people cannot read your mind, as only Mary Sues can read other people's minds. If someone else tries to tell you what their character is like, this might disrupt your RP. Be sure to tell them off for "godmoding". Generally, it is a safe bet that a female character who has some kind of costume is interested in explicit sexual roleplaying. Remember not to kill the mood by getting all meta-gamey and asking about this; it breaks immersion. People often won't know how they should react to your character; you can provide a "roleplaying hook" by describing exactly how they react to your character. For instance, if your skin exudes a powerful poison, it's important to tell people up front that anyone who touches you for any reason dies. Some people may "godmode" by making up excuses for why their character is supposedly "immune" to poison, such as being already dead or a robot or something. Be sure to clarify in your description that these exceptions don't work. Here's an example of a way you could make your background clear: See how well this works? Other players immediately know where they fit in interactions with you. Sometimes, people may not know why they should be interested in your character. Give subtle cues; for instance, you could macro an emote about touching some piece of jewelry you wear. Hit this macro often when roleplaying, so people know it's important. You can add to the mystery by reacting with furious rage if anyone dares ask about your mysterious traits. That helps cement that you are a serious roleplayer. Section 10: Advanced Topics If you've read this far, you are probably ready to really, really, annoy other players. However, you can always get better. Just remember that righteous indignation and blind fury are both great responses to nearly anything, and that it is a safe bet that other players are lying to you maliciously whenever they say anything inconvenient to you. Above all: Never have fun. If you start having fun, then other people might find it infectious and also have fun, and then where would we be?

(WARNING: Not updated since Live, and some things have changed a lot.) It was the best of sets, it was the worst of sets. The /devices set has long been regarded as the weakest of the blaster secondaries, and that's because it is. However, "weakest" doesn't necessarily mean "weak"; the set is viable, playable, and even (for some people) fun. This guide gives an overview of the set, some notes about how to use it, some historical review of why the set is the way it is, and some notes for people coming from a traps set, or considering giving up on devices in favor of traps. You'll note that /devices is a secondary set, but I've called it a primary. Here's the thing. If you enjoy the way /devices plays, it makes an excellent primary. You can play a /devices blaster who has taken a blast set as a secondary, and you can have a ball doing it. Thus, this is a guide to the /devices primary. I'm starting, not with the review of the powers, but with the FAQ. The real point of the guide is to tell you what the set is like. The powers are only interesting if you like the feel of the set; if you don't like how the set feels, it doesn't matter what the statistics are. Who should play /devices? If you are looking for the best set for steamrolling content, look elsewhere. The /devices set's strengths are all about setup and preparation. If you're steamrolling content, the set is marginal, and you generally won't use it. You don't get a "Build Up" power. You don't get hard-hitting melee attacks. Your immobilize doesn't do damage. If you're soloing, /devices can be an amazing set. It's not always fast, but there is something wonderful about watching a x8 spawn melt away without getting to make a single attack against you. No, I'm not exaggerating. Now, it'll take a few minutes to set up, and it won't work every time, but you can do that. If you want to play a Natural origin blaster with a secondary that makes sense, /devices is your only choice. All of the others would require some kind of amazing technology, magic, mutation, or whatnot; only /devices is built around things that are at least conceivably within the realm of non-superhero technology. If you want to play a superspy, half blaster and half stalker, you might like /devices. Here is what I do for a tough-looking spawn, when soloing. I find the spawn. I find a nearby corner. I spend a couple of minutes laying down a field of trip mines between the spawn and the corner. I smoke grenade the spawn. I set up a time bomb in the spawn. I walk around the corner. If any of them actually survive (usually they don't), I might have to actually use one of my blast powers. Otherwise, I have just killed them all without them even being able to target me once. I move on. If that sounds fun, you might want to play a /devices blaster. If that sounds tedious and unfun, you probably ought to look at other sets. Why is /devices weak? The /devices set has never really been updated to fit the modern CoH game. Before ED and IOs, Targeting Drone meant that you could put one more damage enhancement, and one less accuracy, in most powers. That translated into a substantial damage increase -- figure about 10-15% compared to a blaster who had to slot for more accuracy. Now, most people will have damage at the ED cap, and with set bonuses, they may well have plenty of accuracy without even explicitly slotting for it. Targeting Drone went from a pretty decent power to a sort of mediocre power. It's still better than nothing, but it's not at all obvious that it's better than a pool power, or better than not using it and saving your endurance. Similarly, Cloaking Device was a really nice stealth, back when there were no Stealth IOs. Now, it's not great. It's not awful, and it helps that it stacks with Stealth IOs, but it's a mediocre to pitiful amount of defense (especially since only part of that defense is available when you're in combat), and stealth is not in and of itself all that useful most of the time. The big central flaw, though, becomes clear when you look at time bomb and trip mines. The powers that ought to be among the set's star players are utterly useless once combat starts; they are essentially impractical to use except by setting up before combat. On a fast team, the average spawn will be dead in the time it takes you to set up a time bomb, rendering the power completely pointless. Quite simply, /devices was not built for CoH the way it is actually played. But wait! There's been changes since Live, and now it's actually a pretty solid set. How does /devices compare to traps/ or /traps? The traps/ defender set is widely regarded as an amazing set. The reason is clear if you look at a few of the powers that traps/ has and /devices doesn't. Look at Triage Beacon, Acid Mortar, Force Field Generator, Poison Gas Trap, and Seeker Drones. Do you know what they have in common? They aren't interruptible. You can use them in combat. And that means that you can actually get substantial utility from them. Furthermore, with the better defense of FFG, a traps/ defender can toe bomb with a reasonable hope of success even after a fight has started; a /devices blaster has to build very, very, carefully to get enough defense to be able to use any powers in combat. Defenders get less mileage from Trip Mines and Time Bomb than blasters; for blasters, at least the bombs do enough damage to be potentially worth the hassle. For defenders, Time Bomb does less damage. (Corruptors, however, might consider it as a situational power.) Masterminds replace Time Bomb with Detonator, but Trip Mines is pretty useful everywhere. If you really want to use the /devices powers actively in combat, on teams, consider going with a traps/ defender, or /traps corruptor, instead. Why would anyone play /devices, then? Why play a set which is inefficient compared to other sets? Because this game is not fundamentally about efficiency of builds. It's about building a character that looks cool to you. It's about awesome super heroes doing amazing things and being stunning. If you have never seen a /devices blaster wiping out a spawn with mines, it's hard to appreciate just how awesome it looks; the ragdoll physics in CoH really shines on handling large numbers of enemies hitting mines with decent knockback. (Ask around if you want to see this; I bet most people who would play /devices would be happy to show it off.) I play /devices because I love the way it plays, and don't care that it's inefficient. I sit around watching TV while I set up nests of trip mines. I wander through missions arranging to one-shot the one and only enemy on the map I need to kill, without bothering to kill everyone else. Sure, I get less loot and XP and inf. But my superspy stealth infiltrator is playing like a superspy stealth infiltrator, not like a muscle-bound idiot. So I'm happy. Is /devices really slow? Yes, and no. If you fully deck out a set of 10+ trip mines, and a time bomb, you are going to spend a couple of minutes doing it. On a team, that's probably useless. Solo... If you can beat a spawn just coming in and leading with a regular AoE from your blast set then burning down the one thing left standing, don't use trip mines. If you're looking at a spawn that you simply couldn't beat at all conventionally, though, /devices is infinitely faster, and requires fewer hospital trips. The real question, I think, is whether you get more XP per hour of play by playing cautiously against larger or higher level spawns with trip mines and such, or by playing aggressively against weaker or smaller spawns. I'm not sure yet. I'd be interested in feedback. In general, the time it takes to do a bit of setup (one trip mine, caltrops) is trivial; if you do a trip mine, a time bomb, a trip mine, and a gun drone, you've just spent about 30 seconds, and the remainder of the spawn will be pretty fast; the question is whether you could clear the spawn in 30-40 seconds some other way. Maybe you could. In CoH, enemies regenerate while you fight them. What this means is that the more you can get all your damage out at once, the less damage you have to do. Trip Mines let you spend a number of activations and recharge cycles in advance, then get all the damage from them at once. That's potentially a very good thing, and can speed life up. On a team, however, while you're setting up mines, the other 7 players aren't doing anything, and that makes it a lot slower (like any strategy that has people sit on their thumbs waiting for someone). Solo, though, it's not as much of a slowdown as it looks like, because your activations are all going into damage soon. (It's still sort of slow, because of all the recharge time, during which you're not cycling through other powers.) One thing to keep in mind: For soloing missions that don't require a defeat-all, stealth will be faster at completing missions. It may not be faster at gaining XP, though, as the XP for mission completion isn't huge. On the other hand, if you just want to quickly run through some story arcs to get an accolade or a particular badge, well. So about those powers. I'm not gonna lean too hard on what powers you should or shouldn't take. With I19, blasters are no longer paying the three-pick "fitness" tax, and it's now quite possible that it's reasonable for you to take everything in your primary and secondary without feeling like you're missing out too much. Toxic Web Grenade You have to take it. This is not as bad as it sounds. Immobilize, shimmobilize. What matters is that this power gives a solid -recharge penalty. Oh, and a -fly. But the -recharge is what really makes this sorta useful. Feel free to spam this on really tough targets, even targets you can't actually immobilize with it. If you're using assault rifle, this gives you a way to keep things in Ignite. Note that even AVs and the like often don't have enough immobilize protection to keep this from nailing them if you stack it. Note also that, if you get mezzed, you can keep using web grenade, along with your T1 and T2 blasts. With the new update giving it non-trivial damage, it's even better; this is now a decent power to use fairly regularly. Slotting: Accuracy, immobilize, endredux. Recharge is already decent. Procs are of questionable value, but not unthinkable if you have spare slots and money. And, of course, damage. Caltrops If you're like me, you read the description, thought about how little "minor" damage sounded like, and looked for something else. I'm gonna ask you to do something crazy. Read the "Detailed Info" of this power before you make that decision. Did you notice the words "magnitude 50.00" in there? I bet you did. Yes, this power has a magnitude 50 fear effect. Enemies will run away from caltrops. You know what enemies do while they're running? They don't attack. Not only will enemies run to the edge of caltrops; if they prefer melee, and they've tried a couple of times to get to you, they will sometimes run away to the far end of the map trying to find a path to you that does not go through caltrops. Oh, and while they're running away? As long as they're on the caltrops, they're doing it with an 80% or so slow. Anything that isn't slow-resistant will be running away from you in slow motion. This means they spend even more time running away. And if you aren't attacking them, they will very rarely take a break from running to attack you. Watch out for things with slow resist, though; warwolves will run out of blast range, run back, hit you, run back out of blast range... How to use caltrops: Put caltrops on a corner, stand around the side, and take pot shots at the people who occasionally slow up. Drop caltrops under your feet and just stand there shooting. It's all good. Effective use of caltrops makes /devices a much, much, better set than it would be otherwise. Caltrops is effectively permanent out of the box, but a little bit of recharge helps you move your caltrops and make sure you always have some under you. Caltrops is, in practice, a pretty good replacement for melee defense. Caltrops can also help drive people towards trip mines, or keep them in place when thrown under them. Caltrops have an avoid affect, but it only affects enemies once they've hit the caltrops. Enemies will not stop before reaching caltrops that they've never hit before, although they may run around avoiding that particular patch later. Learn the radius of caltrops. It's a bit larger than the activation circle, and precision in deciding where things come to a sudden halt is a big advantage. Slotting: A little recharge is all you really need. Damage is pretty trivial (though it can add up on a large group), but consider a damage proc, such as the Impeded Swiftness chance for smashing damage. It'll only fire every 10 seconds, but it fires right away when you drop the caltrops. Accuracy is completely irrelevant (and they won't accept plain accuracy enhancements.) Taser It's a stun. Magnitude 3, meaning lieutenants but not bosses (but keep reading). Whether you want this or not is largely a function of whether your blast set has a stun to stack this with. My main /devices character is a dual pistols blaster, and while the blast set has a stun, the stun is converted to a hold when using special ammo, meaning no stacking without a lot of toggle management. Not especially rewarding. Still, it's a stun that you can use to keep a lieutenant locked down if you slot it for stun duration and recharge. Not awful, but probably skippable. On the other hand, if your blast set has a stun, you can lock down a boss. Suddenly, this power becomes a lot more attractive. This has been buffed in the recent past to increase range and reduce recharge. Since live, this has also acquired a fair bit of damage. It's now a usable damage-dealing power. Definitely attractive. Slotting: acc/stun/rech, mostly. And now maybe damage. Targeting Drone The to-hit bonus isn't awful. If you're not clear on the difference between to-hit and accuracy, the answer is that to-hit is multiplied by accuracy. If you have a 10% to-hit bonus, and a power with 1.6 total accuracy, your chance-to-hit is 16% higher with that power, not 10% higher. This also gives resistance to to-hit debuffs and a perception bonus. Overall, I like it; worth taking. Some people prefer Tactics, which gives a smaller buff but shares it with the rest of your group. UPDATE: Now has +damage, too, and pretty awesome. UPDATED: Now has damage buff, now sort of amazing. There's a base 20% damage buff, which is nice, and I'm told that when you're out of combat, that increases to 80%. So for the first few seconds of combat, you get an amazing damage buff, then it degrades to merely quite good. Slotting: Consider a Gaussian's set for it; note that the set bonuses may be more important than the actual effect on your to-hit. The chance-for-build-up proc is debated in here. It's a 5% chance to fire, for 5 seconds, every 10 seconds. What that means is that you get about 2.5% extra damage from it, which is pretty minor. On the other hand, you don't have a real "Build Up" power in your secondary, so it's perhaps better than nothing. The down side is the lack of control; some people would rather put the proc in Aim in their blast set, so even though they'll get fewer fires of the proc, they're more likely to be at useful times. (Not all primaries have Aim, mind you; if you're a dual pistols blaster, your only option would be here or something like Tactics.) Smoke Grenade A very nice power. The -tohit penalty isn't huge, but it's significant; comparable to a minor to-hit debuff power in some of the debuff sets. The -perception penalty is very nice. If two spawns are close together, this lets you kill one without the other noticing. If you have cloaking device, but no stealth IO (or vice versa), this gives enough -perception to make you effectively invisible to the victims. Even without them, you may be able to sneak by some groups. Note the unusually large area affected, but the target cap is only 10; for multiple spawns, you'll need more than one smoke grenade. Duration is one minute, recharge is 15 seconds or less. The perception debuff is auto-hit in PvE, but not in PvP. The to-hit debuff is not auto-hit, so you may want some accuracy, though set bonuses are likely enough. Slotting: I slot for a bit of recharge and a bit of to-hit debuff. Might be an okay set mule, if you find a to-hit debuff set you dearly love. Do not slot this with procs like "chance for recharge debuff"; procs will aggro, and the non-aggro nature of this power is a big part of its charm. Field Operative As cloaking device, this was sort of mediocre. The newly upgraded Field Operative, however, is pretty solid; it adds regen and recovery buffs. Field Operative is unambiguously superior to the Concealment pool Stealth power, because it has no movement penalty, but the movement penalty isn't that significant. The defense bonus is fairly trivial. Strengths are that this power takes defense sets, and that it stacks with stealth IOs. With this on, and a stealth IO active, you are effectively invisible except to things like Rikti drones, snipers, etcetera. (And remember that Smoke Grenade can help some with those.) Note also that, while it is a toggle, it's a free toggle. Zero endurance cost, but you get a recovery boost. A large recovery boost; this is more +recovery than Stamina, and more +regen than Health. A lot more. With the regen/recovery buffs, this power has significantly improved. It also now takes heal and endurance recovery sets. And it stopped consuming endurance, which is nice. Slotting: Defense sets! If you didn't take combat jumping or hover, put your kismet +accuracy here. (Or don't bother; you may not need it since you have targeting drone.) Trip Mines One of the real shining points of the set. Trip mines are slow to set up, but the damage is impressive. Mines last until something triggers them (by coming near them) or about four minutes, and you can set them up in 25 seconds unenhanced. (About five seconds of activation for the power, 20 seconds recharge.) Enhance for recharge, accuracy, and damage. Endurance really doesn't matter; even with incredible recharge, you're still looking at around 12-15 seconds per mine, so if you have at least 1 endurance per second recovery, you cannot run out of blue placing these. One of the reasons this power is liked despite the slow setup is the option of toe-bombing: Run into a spawn and plant a mine; it goes off essentially immediately, doing decent damage to everything nearby, plus knockback. Once a fight has started, though, you have to be careful; the power is interruptible, and as a blaster, you probably don't have awesome defenses. You can also drop a trip mine at your feet before you start blasting. If you pick up aggro from something, and it runs up to you... boom. UPDATE: Apparently no longer interruptible, this being a change since Live. Trip mines will not go off if you are too far away from them when something runs over them; I don't know the exact distance, but it seems to be around 60-80 feet, which is to say, blast range. The blast is delayed a bit from triggering. The down side is that if you have a string of these, a single minion can trigger three or four before taking damage from them. Some creatures will actually get out of range before the mine triggers, taking no damage. For best results, stack them at corners and wait around the corner. If you can teleport an enemy in, Caltrops can keep them from moving fast enough to get away from a trip mine before it goes off. For that matter, caltrops which overlap a trip mine's area can cause things to run into the area, then stop before they run out. To get good results from trip mines, you need to have a bit of setup time, and you need to know where creatures will be going. A tank who wants to work with you on this can do a great job of moving things over mines, and so can a gravity controller with Wormhole. (Teleport Foe might be worth thinking about, too.) Usually, this isn't worth the effort on a team, but if you end up in a bit over your heads, the option of doing a ton of extra damage is really worth it. If you're playing around, be sure to try to set things up so that something gets knocked back from one mine to another. So much mitigation! So much funny! Slotting: Obliteration is a great set for trip mines; lots of recharge, not much worry about -endurance. Global recharge is also your friend. And yes, accuracy and damage. These can miss, and then you cry. Time Bomb The great thing about Time Bomb is that, when you make level 35 on your /devices blaster, you can pick literally any pool power. Okay, it's not quite that bad. But it's pretty bad. The issue is that Time Bomb goes off at a fixed time. Your other powers let you set up a kill zone which will screw up your enemies when they come to you. If you try to use Time Bomb that way, you will spend a lot of time being disappointed. Maybe you prefer to use Trip Mines to toe-bomb in combat; if you try to use Time Bomb that way, it goes off near the end of a fight, because it's a 9 second activation plus a 15 second delay. Most spawns are pretty far gone 24 seconds in. If you do not get a stealth IO and a stealth power (or a good AoE sleep, like the one in Sonic Blast), don't bother with Time Bomb. It's useless to you. If, however, you have such things, give it a second look. With invisibility, you can walk into a spawn, use Time Bomb, and walk away. You now have 15 seconds to get... wherever. Say, on the other end of a field of trip mines. The time from a time bomb being dropped to it going off is just about exactly long enough to run away a little bit, plant a single trip mine, run around a corner, and activate a gun drone. What Time Bomb offers you, with invisibility or comparable stealth, is the ability to open a fight with an attack against which the enemy cannot retaliate. If you shoot an enemy, everything in the spawn that has line of sight to you can shoot you. Every attack power you have is vulnerable to this... except Time Bomb. Which goes off at a time when you've walked around a corner. The damage isn't much higher than trip mines, but Time Bomb has more knockback, and a significantly larger radius (20' instead of 12'). Most of the time, this will hit an entire spawn if you place it in the center of the spawn. With a little slotting, that means no minions left. Slotting: Again, Obliteration. The base recharge of 6 minutes sounds huge, but since this power is fairly situational, getting it down to a couple of minutes is usually fine. When soloing, you will also be spending some of that time planting new trip mines. Gun Drone This power is... sorta mediocre. Not awful, not great. The good news is: It does damage, it can take aggro off you. The bad news is a fairly long recharge, and a high endurance cost. (The ludicrously long interruptible activation time was changed; it's now a 1s activiation.) A couple of slots of some recharge-intensive pets set, plus some global recharge, and you can keep this out pretty much all the time. Apparently, with enough recharge, it is possible to overlap gun drones, though it takes a fair bit of effort. Some reports suggest that gun drones, when summoned, can inherit some of your buffs, such as inspirations. Details are not known to me. This used to be a stationary turret, and that was worse; making it mobile means it can stay with you for its entire minute and thirty seconds, making it useful for two or three spawns. Again, not so useful on teams, but it can be a life saver solo, where it's extra damage and some potential aggro mitigation. Furthermore, if you're invisible or stealthed, your gun drone can soak an alpha. It may even survive; they're surprisingly tough. You can even summon it in the middle of a spawn. Gun Drone is single-target. On single targets, such as elite bosses and AVs or GMs, it may provide enough additional damage to be pretty noticeable. The reason it seems weak normally is that blasters tend to have enough AoE that, on a large spawn, Gun Drone isn't adding much. If you've summoned a gun drone, and you want to go toe-bombing without being noticed, consider /releasepets to get rid of it. Don't bother with Grant Invisibility, the drone attacks without waiting for things to attack you or it. (People who are used to using invisibility on FFG in Traps might not anticipate this.) Slotting: Pick up some recharge intensive pet stuff, probably. Don't bother with the defense/resistance procs, you aren't really pet specialized, and the gun drone doesn't pick up that much aggro. So, about blast sets (or "primaries") If you pick /devices, it is your primary; it is the set which defines how you play, and your blast set (which would otherwise have been your "primary") has to be used in ways consistent with /devices, or you're going to hate your character. The other secondaries tend to be used to support your blast set and maybe give you a bit of flavor. They have comparable basic functionality; some sort of immobilize, some melee attacks. None of them will encourage you to spend five minutes setting up for a fight. None of them allow you to wipe out an entire spawn without using a single attack from your blast set. The /devices set can be useful with any blast set. Thematically, it goes especially well with archery, assault rifle, and dual pistols. Here, you will find the one benefit of the pre-combat setup aspect of /devices: Less redraw in combat. Most of your /devices use was done before the first shot was fired. If your blast set has a stun, that will give synergy with Taser, allowing you to keep a typical boss locked down, but mind the redraw for the weapon sets. With the I24 snipe changes, targeting drone is a very good way to get permanent insta-snipe; this only works with sets that have snipes. The dual pistols set has no Aim. This is, well, annoying. A dp/dev blaster has no good options for temporary boosts to blast output. On the other hand, you are constantly doing pretty well. Assault rifle, unique among blast sets, gets a damage bonus to its snipe from targeting drone. This is perhaps intended to make up for the lack of an Aim, but nothing similar has been done for dual pistols. The weapon sets have inherent accuracy, which gives good synergy with targeting drone. Archery's Stun Arrow stacks with Taser. Hello, Mr. Boss! After considering your appplication to be an active participant in this engagement, we've been forced to select another applicant, as your skills are not required at this time. Please walk around slowly in a circle until someone kills you. Energy's knockback can be much more useful coupled with your ability to set up trip mines and defenses; you can knock people into mines, or back over caltrops. Lots of potential there. Sonic's sleep power lasts long enough to set up a Time Bomb. Fixing /devices One of the most recurring themes in the Blaster forums is requests that the developers fix /devices. I won't lie, the set could use some love. At this point, the things that stand out the most as flaws, to me, are: Targeting Drone suffers a lot from IO sets and ED. Giving it a slight general damage boost would go a long way towards making up for the lack of a Build Up. Wouldn't take much to make it a pretty nice power, but it's just a bit weak right now. This has been mitigated somewhat by the snipe changes. (Update: The snipe changes referred to were the ones that made snipes instant at high to-hit, which are no longer true, but it got the general damage boost.) Trip Mines are too interruptible and slow. Increasing recharge time and reducing activation time might do a lot of good for them. (Update: Also fixed.) Time Bomb is too situational, and in particular, too suited to an uncommon situation. Gun Drone is pretty expensive. There have been many other suggestions for improving /devices. I quite like idea of a remote-placeable Time Bomb, which would make it more useful to people without perfect stealth, and/or make it easier to use on teams. Also, ideas like a way to force it to trigger prematurely have been floated. But underneath it all... There are bigger problems in CoH than /devices. While the set has weaknesses, it's still viable for team play, quite nice solo, and offers a unique play experience. So if they never get around to doing anything about it, people will still play /devices and have fun. Long-ago last edited: December 5, 2014 (or later if I forgot to update this) More recently edited: Dec 12, 2019

elec armor's set-level description says "this set has no healing abilities", but Energize is a heal?

answer: yes, my ability to type an email address changed. for the worse. fixed it. sorry, nevermind.

I signed up, it worked, my spouse signed up, we've tried "resend email", no verification email has shown up. Same email server, and there's nothing showing up in the logs at all this time, last one showed up fine. Did anything change recently?