[/Devices] Please Take the Taunt Aura off Gun Drone.

[Redlynne]

3 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

*Coughcough* Detonator exists and can blow up pets just like you want here, and porting it to Dev... and hell letting you use it on an enemy directly would be cool  *coughcough*

Pets will "allow" your Mastermind to do "whatever" the Mastermind wants to do to them ... including making them suicide bombers.

Letting you do the same to Foes (directly!) would be ... A Bad Move™ ... from a game design standpoint.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 minute ago, Redlynne said:

Pets will "allow" your Mastermind to do "whatever" the Mastermind wants to do to them ... including making them suicide bombers.

Letting you do the same to Foes (directly!) would be ... A Bad Move™ ... from a game design standpoint.

At least the tech is there in theory to be used on the Gun Drone in a way.

 

My separate, but related, wish is to just have this in CoH:

 

 

[Redlynne]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

My separate, but related, wish is to just have this in CoH:

 

Essentially a "sticky" Delayed Blast Fireball ... akin to putting a Limpet Mine onto something (tag them now, boom them later).

 

The simplest and most obvious way to achieve that goal would ironically be through use of a Toggle.

Toggle ON to place "sticky" detonation device onto $Target.

Toggle OFF to make the "sticky" detonation device self destruct (for AoE damage) ON COMMAND later.

 

That way you don't have a "countdown" timer to detonation, you just need a deadman switch.

The only difference that the game engine would care about is whether the effect is anchored to a $Target or to a Location (and getting the game to allow you to do either/both could get tricky).

[selfunconsciousness]

Just checking in on this - was this change ever taken into consideration? Was wondering as I was trying to decide between /devices and /temp for a beam rifle blaster. 

[Sakura Tenshi]

3 hours ago, selfunconsciousness said:

Just checking in on this - was this change ever taken into consideration? Was wondering as I was trying to decide between /devices and /temp for a beam rifle blaster. 

Sadly, nothing that I've heard.

 

A bit late, but chipping in my own thoughts, if I had to improve gun drone meaningfully,* it'd probably look like:

• Gundrone keeps it's mez immunities, inability to be buffed, and +perception
• HP is reduced to Tier 3 MM pet levels (so around 937hp at level 50)
• Resistances are now 20% to all across the board (removing it's smashing and fire weakness though lowering it's psionic and lethal resistances)
• Gundrone speed increased to be capable of matching a player with fly and afterburn active
• Gun Drone's attack is now given two attacks. Suppression Fire (Targeted AoE, moderate damage, applies long duration -recharge, -tohit, -def, and 20% chance for mag 2 fear to affected enemies [overwhelming incoming fire]) and dual chain guns (Cone, moderate damage, -def, deals bonus damage to any enemies afflicted by sleep, fear, immobilize, stun, or hold)
• You now summon 2 gun drones

The rough idea is to work with Power House's suggestion of giving devices a group control power via two gun drones spitting out two AoE attacks with some good mitigation debuffs and a chance for stacking fear effects and an cone attack that synergizes with this new control as well as devices' other control powers. Overall, the gun drone is less survivable, but in exchange becomes much much more aggressively oriented.

[Tath99]

In my opinion:

 

As the last power pick in Devices [Gun Drone] should stand out more:

 

- Increase its HP and resistances noticeably.

- Keep its Taunt effect.

- Increase its rate of fire slightly.

- Consider changing its attack from being a [Burst] to a [Buckshot].

 

Changing its attack to [Buckshot] might allow for an interesting area of denial device akin to a damaging repulsion field.  Think: Taunt, Knockback, Taunt, Knockback.

 

 

 

[Black Zot]

Or we could do the intelligent thing and just give /Dev back its working capstone power.

[ScarySai]

On 3/27/2020 at 7:15 AM, Tath99 said:

- Keep its Taunt effect.

You lost me, bud.

 

As established many times already, this power has not, is not, nor will ever be an effective 'tank'. It should do it's job as a gun drone and shoot things good.  I personally like @Sakura Tenshi's ideas, as they fall more lin line with what a DPS pet should be capable of.

 

The set sacrifices build up, I think the drone doing decent damage isn't asking too much. Regardless, at the bare minimum, the taunt is the thing that needs to go. Compromise isn't the call here, the idea is bad.

Edited March 29, 2020 by ScarySai

[DR_Mechano]

Yup still no word from the devs on why they honestly thought adding a taunt to Gun Drone was a good idea and that, in the long run, it turned out to be a genuinely silly choice made under the guise of something that didn't really matter, instead making /dev have two completely pointless powers at tier 8 and tier 9.

[Kalidor187]

I like the taunt. I six slot Gun Drone with Expedient Reinforcement and have a 42 second recharge which gives me two at a time. They're a little underpowered for a t9 ability on damage, but you don't take Devices looking to max your dps, it's a utility power set. I really only notice my drones dying prematurely when solo'ing and when that happens they did their job of peeling off a few mobs in a group or keeping a boss out of my face for a little bit. If they survive, they add a little single target dot. Win win.

 

If I could change anything, it would be adding Field Operative's stealth effect to them.

[Replacement]

22 hours ago, ScarySai said:

The set sacrifices build up

Just a quick correction: the set doesn't sacrifice Build Up.  Targeting Drone replaces it, as of the /Devices rebuild.

 

18.5% ToHit all the time vs 20% for 10 seconds

+80% Damage on first hit of a fight and +20% for all other attacks vs +100% for 10 seconds.

 

This doesn't prove anything you're saying wrong or anything.  I think /devices still has some power budget to play with vis-a-vis survival utility, but just wanted to clarify this statement is no longer true.

[ScarySai]

I find BU to be generally more valuable in every situation, perhaps the drone would perform better over a longer fight on a low-recharge/non-IO build, or if the out of combat time was shorter, but as it is, rotating aim and build up off CD just outperforms it in most situations that I've seen. Bugged targeting drone was a pretty fun time though, lol. It's nice for the snipe damage scaling on a really tight build, I'll give it that. 

 

I will agree, however. Devices certainly has some budget to go around, I disagree with CP saying it has 'too much damage' already, when the set's only claims to doing damage are trip mine, and proctrops - the latter of which is probably going to get hit hard by a future ppm nerf.

 

/Devices is a great set held back by having way more useless powers than it should. Time bomb still sucks, gun drone is now effectively worthless for anything not involving muling ER, and trip mine/caltrops are effectively so good that they carry the set.

Edited March 30, 2020 by ScarySai

[Bossk_Hogg]

5 minutes ago, Kalidor187 said:

I like the taunt. I six slot Gun Drone with Expedient Reinforcement and have a 42 second recharge which gives me two at a time. They're a little underpowered for a t9 ability on damage, but you don't take Devices looking to max your dps, it's a utility power set. I really only notice my drones dying prematurely when solo'ing and when that happens they did their job of peeling off a few mobs in a group or keeping a boss out of my face for a little bit. If they survive, they add a little single target dot. Win win.

 

If I could change anything, it would be adding Field Operative's stealth effect to them.

I believe you may be the first person to express any positive feelings towards this change. Given that they die more or less instantly though, they really aren't doing a good job of buying you time though.

 

Seems like we could remove the innate taunt, let them accept taunt sets to bring it back up, and call it a day. 

[Tath99]

On 3/29/2020 at 8:22 PM, ScarySai said:

You lost me, bud.

 

As established many times already, this power has not, is not, nor will ever be an effective 'tank'. It should do it's job as a gun drone and shoot things good.  I personally like @Sakura Tenshi's ideas, as they fall more lin line with what a DPS pet should be capable of.

 

The set sacrifices build up, I think the drone doing decent damage isn't asking too much. Regardless, at the bare minimum, the taunt is the thing that needs to go. Compromise isn't the call here, the idea is bad.

My suggestions were made in the spirit of:-

 

- If Taunt were to work, [Gun Drone] would need to be more resilient.  More hit points, resistances, buffable, healable.

- Its role would need to be akin to, but lagging behind, the performance of Singularity.

- A design decision must be made to make it a 'Tanking Pet'.  Currently it is in a half-way house position.

 

I don't disagree that the power should "shoot things good".  Fixing that necessitates questioning its rate of fire, single or AOE attack type, damage type.  However, sustaining that damage, for the full duration of the power, requires some aspect of granting the pet greater survivability.  Having had Taunt attached to [Gun Drone] has highlighted how physically weak the player version is (anecdotally) compared to the Malta version.  With or without Taunt [Gun Drone] should be tougher.

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Tath99

[Redlynne]

6 hours ago, Tath99 said:

Having had Taunt attached to [Gun Drone] has highlighted how physically weak the player version is (anecdotally) compared to the Malta version.  With or without Taunt [Gun Drone] should be tougher.

And if the Taunt were changed to a Placate ...?

[Tath99]

2 hours ago, Redlynne said:

And if the Taunt were changed to a Placate ...?

Actually, I was musing over exactly this whilst making my post.  Would it work as intended?

 

(If the Pet used Placate would it protect the Drone but regrettably push aggro back on the Drone owner?)

 

 

 

 

[ScarySai]

@Tath99I don't disagree with the idea of making it more survivable, but trying to think about this from CP's perspective, he would likely want it to either A: Double down on the taunt and make the drone more resilent, or B - my personal preference: Keep it squishy, but lose the taunt and make it much more of a damaging pet.

 

Making it both tankier AND better at it's intended job of shooting things super good, doesn't strike me as something he would do. Furthermore, my /devices blasters thus far have been perfectly capable of surviving most encounters, so I'd rather have the extra damage.

 

I am also of the opinion that the taunt cannot be compromised with, it has to go. Doubling down on that would be an act of stubborn pride rather than intelligent design.

Edited March 31, 2020 by ScarySai

[Tath99]

51 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

@Tath99I don't disagree with the idea of making it more survivable, but trying to think about this from CP's perspective, he would likely want it to either A: Double down on the taunt and make the drone more resilent, or B - my personal preference: Keep it squishy, but lose the taunt and make it much more of a damaging pet.

 

Making it both tankier AND better at it's intended job of shooting things super good, doesn't strike me as something he would do. Furthermore, my /devices blasters thus far have been perfectly capable of surviving most encounters, so I'd rather have the extra damage.

 

I am also of the opinion that the taunt cannot be compromised with, it has to go. Doubling down on that would be an act of stubborn pride rather than intelligent design.

You make a good point.  It cannot be both.

 

Bear in mind however that Devices has [Trip Mine] AND [Time Bomb] already.  These, I would argue were originally intended to be the +damage powers within the set.  If that still holds true, they need to be in the right spot - leaving [Gun Drone] requiring a somewhat different schtick / emphasis.  Whatever that is - [Gun Drone] needs to demonstrably / logically outshine [Trip Mine] and [Time Bomb] below it - and be deserving of its position as last pick in Devices.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Tath99

[ScarySai]

4 minutes ago, Tath99 said:

Bear in mind however that Devices has [Trip Mine] AND [Time Bomb] already.  These, I would argue were originally intended to be the +damage powers within the set.  If that still holds true, they need to be in the right spot - leaving [Gun Drone] requiring a somewhat different schtick / emphasis.

Then change Time Bomb into the distraction and make gun drone the damaging one. Trip mine is awesome, time bomb is one of the most worthless powers in the game, gun drone had its uses before the taunt change.

 

Outside of procced caltrops and tripmine, which hits slightly harder than most other blaster pbaoes  - the set really isn't packing damage on the level of say, /fire, /mental, /time, /atomic or /elec.

Edited March 31, 2020 by ScarySai

[Redlynne]

2 hours ago, Tath99 said:

4 hours ago, Redlynne said:

And if the Taunt were changed to a Placate ...?

Actually, I was musing over exactly this whilst making my post.  Would it work as intended?

(If the Pet used Placate would it protect the Drone but regrettably push aggro back on the Drone owner?)

The Placate would make the Drone less likely to hold aggro for the damage it is dealing.

If the Drone IS NOT CAPABLE of "tanking" damage ... and we have ample evidence that it both is NOT and not even meant to(!) ... then avoiding being an aggro magnet is a zero sum game (as you cite) only in the solo context.  In a team context, it will probably mean that aggro is shed onto the melee monsters, not onto the */Devices caster, and the Drone will survive longer to deal out more damage over a longer span of time.

[Redlynne]

30 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Then change Time Bomb

1 Time Bomb = 1.43 Trip Mines worth of damage for 18x the recharge time and 1.8x the cast time and 2x the endurance cost

 

You're better off casting a lot of Trip Mines than you are using one Time Bomb.

Time Bomb does not serve a useful niche purpose.

[ScarySai]

I'm against the placate for the same reason I'm against survival change: It's another consideration that might prevent the drone from getting the offensive buff I think it needs more. Removing the taunt would already boost it's survivability substantially in groups - before the taunt was added, in a group I rarely had problems with it, due to the many different targets that could draw aggro other than me and the drone(s), plus the team buffs that would bolster it's survival just by being there.

 

And I agree - which is why I called it worthless, Red.

Edited March 31, 2020 by ScarySai