Gun Drone Aggro can we tone it down or remove it ?

[plainguy]

Gun Drone.. Love the power.. Cool looking floating gun. 

I was very vocal back in the day to change it to the floating gun.

 

Nonetheless.. If you are playing a Hover Blaster Gun drone works pretty well because the air gap between you and the mobs.  

 

BUT if you are NOT.. OMG... Forget it.. 

 

Gun Drone aggro will pull mobs that I just used Hail of bullets, Mighty Total Radial Judgement and Trip Mine on..  HOB has a knock down, Mighty has a knock up ( because I picked that option ) and trip mine has a KB and a proc to change it to KD.. So this combo keeps all the mobs in one spot.. The Gun Drone can only target one Mob.. But the taunt aura will pull 1 to 3 mobs on it.  

 

It literally becomes useless for short range characters..   

It gets one shotted by purple con or double teamed and one shotted by 2 orange con mobs.  

 

I can summon 3 gun drones with burn out and even with 3 gun drones one barely survives until the next fight. 

I have tried  summoning them trying to keep them back behind me and then creep up to engage thee mobs at range but mobs again will literally run past me to attack the Gun Drone. 

 

I have no clue why this put in or what Dev was upset at devices that needed to put this in..   

 

 

[Redlynne]

58 minutes ago, plainguy said:

I have no clue why this put in or what Dev was upset at devices that needed to put this in.. 

It's what happens when you try to nerf Regen (again...) and accidentally hit Devices instead.

 

But seriously ... a Gun Drone that Taunts $Targets to attack it?

 

 

 

self-de·feat·ing

/ˈˌself dəˈfēdiNG/

adjective

adjective: self-defeating

1. (of an action or policy) unable, because of its inherent qualities, to achieve the end it is designed to bring about.

[Lex Talion]

If you look at Gun Drone's power list you will notice 'Taunt' as the last point, since this patch

I assume it was an attempt to upgrade Gun Drone to a combined damage and survivability tool, so it might actually become a (somewhat) useful T9 power. Unfortunately combining a taunt effect with vulnerability to smash damage AND complete resistance to healing makes Gun Drones piñatas without filling.

 

Personal 2 Cent: I used to like Gun Drones too, and a pair of Gun Drones flanking you looks badass indeed, so I feel your pain. But as long as they don't attack my target or at least do cone attacks I consider them random, fragile, and therefore useless ST DoT dispensers that I won't waste a power pick on, let alone precious slots.

 

[The Godchild]

--> Gun Drone 2.0 <--

 

I refer to this thread I started way back in September about the drone and the changes and the total waste of a power they've sadly turned gun drone into :/

[Menelruin]

You know, I know this is probably smashing the cottage rule to bits, but.....what if we just made it so that when the Gun Drone dies, it self-destruct for huge damage to every enemy near it?

[The Godchild]

That'd actually be hella useful n'fun to have >.> Give it a trigger similar to time bomb where you have like 10-15 seconds before it goes kah-bewm~

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Menelruin said:

You know, I know this is probably smashing the cottage rule to bits, but.....what if we just made it so that when the Gun Drone dies, it self-destruct for huge damage to every enemy near it?

That is not cottage rule since otherwise it's the same power. 

 

Adding something is not the cottage rule. Cottage rule would be replacing what the gun drone does so it only is there to be hit and blow up and not shoot.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[plainguy]

3 hours ago, The Godchild said:

--> Gun Drone 2.0 <--

 

I refer to this thread I started way back in September about the drone and the changes and the total waste of a power they've sadly turned gun drone into 😕

Can you port that over to here as it is in the blaster forum.

I think you should get credit for the work.. 

 

[The Godchild]

Gun Drone 2.0 REPOST! =D

(Original thread link)

---

 

Really, I'm not 100% sure why anyone felt the need to add the taunt factor to it. Gun drone was fine before...but now, ehhhhh....I summon it, and it basically dies 3-5 seconds later because its taunt is a mag 4 AoE around it, not something tied to the attack its using on someone. This is not a helpful change I must say...

 

The glaring issues with the drone are as follows:

• Vulnerability to 2 common damage types (+20% from Smash and Fire) and weird res to other types (50% lethal, 30% cold and 70% psi) that don't really matter too much since it doesn't give it any lasting power regardless. Toxic damage eats through it like paper, as does negative and energy...3 extremely common damage types at endgame.
• It can't be healed, buffed or supported in ANY way (except +damage) because of all the 100% resistances to buffs it has. How can you have it tank when you can't support it at all?
• Its taunt is an aura around itself, not the target its attacking. Unless you stand right next to the drone, its taunt is useless since it tends to remain in the same spot till you move a significant distance away from it. More often though it collects a bunch of dudes around it that it's not even attacking and dies soon after because it has no means of defending itself or prioritizes nearby targets.
• The drone acts like it has less range then the player that summoned it, it'll just float there doing nothing most times unless you intentionally move in closer to the range where enemies can see/react to your presence. I know this was a pet mechanic they had to add in to force MM pets to actually use their melee attacks (ninja shuriken spamming waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day for instance), but this is a ranged-only pet with an attack range that's the same as a player (80'-ish range) that won't acknowledge anything unless it moves within about half that range.

 

Possible changes that could be made to make gun drone more viable as a tank pet:

• Vastly increased regen/add a HoT/self-repair function or remove the 100% healing resistance
• Remove the PBAoE Aoe taunt, replace with a single target (or even an aoe) taunt tied to the target its attacking...possible debuffs to add to this feature like -damage or -tohit
• Increase is resistances considerably, remove damage vulnerabilities...possible immune to toxic and psi damage since its a machine, it already has immunity to all status-type effects to that end.
• Increase passive defenses to a level that would make it much harder to hit compared to the 0% defense it has atm (it also can't be +defense buffed because of its resistance to it :/)
• Add another attack that is an aoe of some kind, be it cone or targeted. The drone only has a single ST attack at present., something like a flash bang or seeker drone would be a good compliment to it for tanking. The Sniper/gunslinger from The Old Republic comes to mind since they had a concussion blast that was a pbaoe knockback to give you some safe space when people close in, something like that as a knockdown/disorient would be a great help.
• Vastly reduce the recharge to make it more of an on-demand tank pet. Presently with 100% rech bonus and about 50% rech slotting it comes up in about 80 seconds vs the 90 second 'active' time, not helpful when it gets destroyed in less then 10 seconds. You can have more then 1 drone out presently, but changing it to only allow a single drone wouldn't be hard to do, they nerfed storm's Painclouds to only have 1 out at a time afterall so its not like they couldn't make that change to gun drone as well (update below! **)
• Reduce the taunt mag down to a level below what a player can generate normally so npc's favor taunting players over the drone, I've watched brutes taunt something only to have it turn on my drone instead since the mags were identical and the drone had attacked more recently. Mag 1 or 2 would be perfectly viable for an off-tank role, and wouldn't impact anything while solo.

 

Personally I'm of the opinion that gun drone should be reverted back to the pre-taunt state since its not a pet that's designed to tank anything...its a dps pet with a single ST attack and a very limited range (less then a player has normally) and nothing that makes it strong enough to take any degree of attention from more then a single source. The notion of trying to have it do something else is nice...but honestly its not designed for the role its now been given, either revert it back or make it actually tanky to compensate for its new role. Till then, imma just not summon it and focus on keeping my distance and popping heads off with Sniper Rifle.

---

 

** Minor detail I learned after leveling up a storm corr: HC/private servers must've reverted the live changes since I can totally have 2 painclouds out no problem. But still, at one point it 'was' limited to 1 so the coding is certainly there already.

 

This is just the intro post I made, not any of the follow ups obviously but peeps can use the link from above to get access to the thread.

Edited June 9, 2020 by The Godchild

[Redlynne]

7 minutes ago, The Godchild said:

Remove the PBAoE Aoe taunt, replace with a single target (or even an aoe) taunt tied to the target its attacking

Counter-proposal:

• Remove the PBAoE Taunt
• Add Placate effect to attacked $Target on delay after damage by Gun Drone is completed (if DoT lasts 2s, then apply Placate after 2.25s which is 0.25s after DoT completes) to all Gun Drone attacks.

Mischief Managed™

[The Godchild]

....I see what you did there >.> and my previous comment from that thread still stands...

 

Quote

Gun Drone: "Hey boss, I found some angry guys that wanna talk to ya!"

Me: "...god damn it"

 

Still makes me laugh when I read that....even this many months later 

[Rathulfr]

As a ranged hover blaster, I like the Gun Drone.  It works pretty well as a distraction, because of the air gap between me and the mobs.  😉

Edited June 9, 2020 by Rathulfr

[Zeraphia]

3 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

As a ranged hover blaster, I like the Gun Drone.  It works pretty well as a distraction, because of the air gap between me and the mobs.  😉

I agree with this actually, but I do wish it was tankier for what it is. I've found it to have great utility when you're getting stomped on a hard EB/AV (solo) and need an escape/breather.

[Rathulfr]

1 minute ago, Zeraphia said:

I agree with this actually, but I do wish it was tankier for what it is. I've found it to have great utility when you're getting stomped on a hard EB/AV (solo) and need an escape/breather.

Yes, it's quite useful: "Hey, look over there!  FLOATING GUNS!"  *blaster flees*

 

[The Godchild]

I honestly respec'd outta Gun Drone because I found better options for sets rather then just having a 4 slotted mule power...and I don't regret the decision since I honestly kill fast enough solo that its not needed. If they reverted it back to just being a cute little floating dps source, I'd happily pick it back up.

[plainguy]

7 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

As a ranged hover blaster, I like the Gun Drone.  It works pretty well as a distraction, because of the air gap between me and the mobs.  😉

I pretty much said the same in my opening post..

 

I have an AR Device and it works very well as a hover blaster..

 

But with my DP Device.. Sucks big time..

 

What I do notice is on a council map I farm when I jump down from the 3rd floor down to the first the Gun Drones sits about 2nd floor level.  So sitting up high it works well.  

If they could somehow work it in where it follow but at a higher level that might help out.

But then I could also see the AI getting stuck trying to go high in a cave mission where it is more involved in trying to get high up as required instead of attacking

 

So after circling around on this I just say get rid of the taunt..  Just don't fix what isn't broken..

 

 

[Redlynne]

This is making me wonder if Gun Drone was supposed to get the "Taunt Haunt" treatment given to the Darkness Control power Haunt ... where the Taunt is something granted to the $Target so as to make the Haunt(s) focus on THAT $Target (by Taunting the Haunts to attack them, rather than just anyone in range).  If it had been done THAT way, so as to direct the firepower of the Gun Drone onto a Designated Victim™ .. that would make a lot more sense.  But having the Gun Drone use a Taunt that makes every $Target nearby turn to destroy the Gun Drone ... that's just DERP.

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, plainguy said:

I pretty much said the same in my opening post.

Yeah, that was the joke.  My sense of humor is often too dry for text.

 

[plainguy]

Just now, Rathulfr said:

Yeah, that was the joke.  My sense of humor is often too dry for text.

 

No I am slow on the uptake sometimes..

 

[Bossk_Hogg]

The taunt addition was clearly a dev's pet idea they refused to let go of. It received virtually no positive feedback in the testing, most people found it a direct nerf or useless, and it was still forced on us. IMO its basically cottage rule violation. Let it take taunt slots if people want it to "tank" for all of two seconds, but don't screw it up for everyone else.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Bossk_Hogg