Getting the most out of /Devices

[Rathulfr]

7 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

Field operative may be the best sustain power blasters can get.  Gives health, endurance, and defense.  No click required.   Targeting drone is very nice.  Gives damage and tohit and again, no click required.  You can try some other stuff, but nothing else is really needed from the set.  And guess what?  That's not so bad.  You get everything you need from a secondary in 2 powers that you just turn on one time and benefit from 100% of the time with no interruptions to your damage output.

 

It's not flashy... it's not special... but it's good.  If you want an all ranged blaster and are OK with your primary attacks being all you use, devices is a great option.  (trick arrow is another great option).

This.  Don't forget that Field Operative also includes stealth, which is one less end-hungry power I usually take in my other stealthy characters.  Field Operative + Celerity: Stealth in Sprint is basically Invisibility+.  Combine with Smoke Grenade if necessary to be completely undetectable in tight hallways or click guarded glowies.

 

And Targeting Drone eliminates the need for Aim or end-voracious Tactics while still giving me a power to slot a complete set of Gaussian's.  Yes, it does mean that my teammates don't benefit from Tactics, but at least they're still getting Maneuvers and Assault from me.

[Rathulfr]

3 hours ago, Frostweaver said:

Yep, it's really cute to set a ton of bombs preparing for an EB and have him half kill himself running towards you, but it's even cuter to watch him start running towards you after you just sniped half his health, stop and start slowly running away and occasionally turning to throw an irrelevant rock or something into the air above you.

I don't even care about the gun drone taunt thing, because it takes only 1 second to drop, is up every 45 seconds, and pumps out some Damage OR keeps stuff from hitting me for a few seconds. It's not a pet, it's a trap, and it does a fine job as a trap... the people who hate it keep thinking of it as a crappy pet. Not to mention it's usually sitting in a patch of caltrops, dragging stuff onto them.

PREACH! 

 

The permanent boost to snipe from slotted Targeting Drone makes my Energy/Devices Blaster a one-shot sniper machine when it comes to minions and lieutenants, and two-shots for bosses.  If I don't one-shot my target with snipe, snipe + my T1 usually does the trick, leaving me to two-shot the next target with my T3 + T2 (if necessary).  After that, my quick-snipe is recharged and ready to go again.

 

I don't cast Gun Drone for damage: it's my taunt bot and Expedient Reinforcement mule (+dam, +rech, +regen, +ranged defense -- what's not to love?).  And sometimes my recharge is so fast I can have two out at the same time for a few seconds.  They're my buddies! 🙂

 

[Frostweaver]

2 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

They're my buddies! 🙂

 

They aren't my buddies, they are the pebbles I toss on the other side of the generator so the stormtroopers look that way for a second, just before I stave the backs of their heads in 🙂

[merrypessimist]

Personally I find the best way to look at Trip Mine is as your pbaoe attack.  Not to spend two minutes setting up ambushes, but as your "oh crap I'm surrounded, better deal with that" one click.  It's about a two second animation as I recall, which is not too much longer than most blaster pbaoe attacks and does pretty decent damage in a fairly wide radius.  Think of it as your Dragon's Tail or Spin.

[Rathulfr]

On 4/28/2020 at 10:50 PM, merrypessimist said:

Personally I find the best way to look at Trip Mine is as your pbaoe attack.  Not to spend two minutes setting up ambushes, but as your "oh crap I'm surrounded, better deal with that" one click.  It's about a two second animation as I recall, which is not too much longer than most blaster pbaoe attacks and does pretty decent damage in a fairly wide radius.  Think of it as your Dragon's Tail or Spin.

Yeah, I have it late in my build, unslotted except for one proc, as a contingency plan, if I need it.