Trip Mine => Minefield

[Greycat]

So, running a mercs/traps MM and realizing... again... how tedious Trip Mine is.

 

Even solo, it takes a while to set enough up to do anything interesting. It's interruptible, of course. No guarantee of going off, and often just unimpressive. You pretty much need to plan to build for recharge to get things out before your grandkids have grandkids.  On a team? It's often fairly pointless to even try.

 

We could just drop the recharge on them some, but again - still takes time teams generally won't give.  So to update them, let's turn it from trip mine into minefield. Select an area, 5 mines are randomly placed in that (10'?) circle.

 

They'd be mostly the same strength as the current trip mine - can be tweaked down (or have the END cost bumped up) if *absolutely* needed. Since you're putting five down now, as an offset they could be set to not take/be affected by recharge... but it'd make them less tedious and more useful, I'd think, solo and on teams.

[Rudra]

Would probably work fine for teams. Solo though? There are only 2 things I would do with it for solo play. First, I would make it function like the trip mine from /Devices, get rid of the interrupt time. Second, I would reduce the recharge so it doesn't take forever to build your trap.

[Nyghtmaire]

I love this idea. I experimented with trip mine on my ninja/traps and noped right back to a respec. Ended up taking it late merely to mule some set bonuses. But I use it maybe once every three missions (it’s too slow and wonky even solo) and never with a team.

 

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

They'd be mostly the same strength as the current trip mine - can be tweaked down (or have the END cost bumped up) if *absolutely* needed. Since you're putting five down now, as an offset they could be set to not take/be affected by recharge... but it'd make them less tedious and more useful, I'd think, solo and on teams.

Fine with a high endurance cost, such as equivalent to MM’s Tornado in storm (or roughly 26 end compared to a current cost of ~16). Don’t care for making immune to recharge reduction. But even with that, it would be a wild improvement.

[Rudra]

44 minutes ago, Nyghtmaire said:

I love this idea. I experimented with trip mine on my ninja/traps and noped right back to a respec. Ended up taking it late merely to mule some set bonuses. But I use it maybe once every three missions (it’s too slow and wonky even solo) and never with a team.

 

Fine with a high endurance cost, such as equivalent to MM’s Tornado in storm (or roughly 26 end compared to a current cost of ~16). Don’t care for making immune to recharge reduction. But even with that, it would be a wild improvement.

Some powers are geared for only team play. Like half the powers in Thermal Radiation as an example. Some rare powers are geared for solo use. In this case, Trip Mine is a solo player power. You need to stack up on the recharge reductions, but when you finally get the recharge down enough, you layer as many in a spot as you can and then lure the boss, EB, or AV onto it. It looks to me like the power was designed for solo use, and for those of us that devote enough to it, it works well.

 

I'm for improving Trip Mine though. The interrupt in it is just silly seeing as how the Blaster version lacks it. And the long recharge works against what looks like its primary use to me, the ability to place multiples to just ruin an opponent's day. I would also be fine with improving the power's ability to trigger when an enemy gets in its effect radius. (I have too often watched my target standing on the trip mines and they don't trigger. That needs to be fixed.) However, I am against the OP's call for the power to be made into something else. Like I said in my 1st response, the OP would fine for teams. It would kill the power for players like me though. Let some powers remain more solo-friendly than team-oriented. We have lots of powers that only work for teams. Is it so bad to have a few that work for teams that are willing to wait and set up and for solo players? Please don't let the current mow everything down as fast as possible meta take away tactical players' ability to employ traps like that while solo.

 

(Edit: Speaking of the Blaster version, can it be affected by recharge reduction effects too, please?)

Edited April 13, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to strike out part I have never seen in game: Teams that wait for others to set up anything, including MM pets.

[BronzeKnight]

I like the idea of more trip mines per cast. For both solo farming and team play that seems to be the best way to modify the power. If this was done  the only thing that would change is that you couldn't do what i call "toe bomb" where you stack a bunch of trip mines on top one one another. But that is just a work around for Detonator being a bad power. Looking at the MM version of traps in particular Detonator should be your nuke, trip mine should provide you more utility. As things are now Detonator seems to exist just to be skipped, I know there are a few die hard fans of it but that's true for every power. 

 

Personally I like the idea of a minefield power for MM traps. It implies a level of prior planning  for the character (I.E, they already had mines laid out and are just activating them) which seems very "on brand" for MMs. It would make the power more useful in teams and make it more distinct from Detonator.  

 

But the above is all major changes. On a smaller scale I would like to see the interrupt time removed from every version of Trip Mine and improvements made to it triggering (or rather not triggering) when mobs are standing on top of it. 

[Rudra]

5 hours ago, BronzeKnight said:

Personally I like the idea of a minefield power for MM traps. It implies a level of prior planning  for the character (I.E, they already had mines laid out and are just activating them) which seems very "on brand" for MMs.

If the mobs were invading your base instead of you invading their base, that would make sense. With you invading their space, having pre-placed mines that you can just trigger without having to take the time to place does not make sense. Unless your MM is Landlord, Owner of All Property. If the villains just rent their bases from you, then that level of pre-planning without having to actually do the pre-planning and pre-placement of the mines would make sense.

 

Edit: Basically, my take is that if your MM does that level of pre-planning, then you should be doing that level of pre-planning and place the mines yourself. After all, you aren't fighting from home territory, you are fighting in enemy territory. And that level of pre-planning requires effort. Which is done by placing the mines using the Trip Mine power. Which is a very MM (and other tactical character) level of preparation.

Edited April 13, 2023 by Rudra

[Rudra]

6 hours ago, BronzeKnight said:

I like the idea of more trip mines per cast. For both solo farming and team play that seems to be the best way to modify the power. If this was done  the only thing that would change is that you couldn't do what i call "toe bomb" where you stack a bunch of trip mines on top one one another. But that is just a work around for Detonator being a bad power. Looking at the MM version of traps in particular Detonator should be your nuke, trip mine should provide you more utility. As things are now Detonator seems to exist just to be skipped, I know there are a few die hard fans of it but that's true for every power.

If you want to address Detonator in this thread too, then I would say you are on the right track. Make Detonator allow the character to place up to X "hidden" bombs with no duration limit. If you place a bomb after reaching that limit, then the oldest one despawns. The power also provides a popup power when you place any bombs. That popup power can either detonate all currently placed bombs, or more complicatedly, allow the player to detonate specific bombs. (Rapid click to detonate them all if the popup allows for specific bomb detonation.) A controlled detonation bomb that lasts until the mission is completed or the bombs are detonated would be very different from the passively triggered mines from Trip Mine. (And would also make the power something I would actually use.)

 

Edit: Or for simplicity and for those that want to keep Detonator more or less as is, change it so that your pet places an Omega Weapon (from the Crab Spider tree) style bomb, but the pet still gets back into the fight as the bomb explodes. (Because the last thing a MM needs in a difficult fight is to throw away a minion. Especially if in Bodyguard Mode and relying on the sheer number of pets to stay alive.) Make it the nuke it is implied to be. You had the foresight to bring the Big Boom, but it is up to your pets to actually lug it around for you.

Edited April 13, 2023 by Rudra

[kito]

Did not read after a bit but my 2 cents would be make trip mine stack (kind of like combat teleport) and then you can rather place them down faster till you run out of stacks or you put down your full stack (say a square of 4 of them) and need to recharge the stacks again if needed you can still put down one when the cd if back but it will only be one at a time till you stack it back up

[Communistpenguin]

17 hours ago, kito said:

Did not read after a bit but my 2 cents would be make trip mine stack (kind of like combat teleport) and then you can rather place them down faster till you run out of stacks or you put down your full stack (say a square of 4 of them) and need to recharge the stacks again if needed you can still put down one when the cd if back but it will only be one at a time till you stack it back up

That is actually a solid idea tbh. 

[BronzeKnight]

On 4/14/2023 at 1:32 AM, kito said:

Did not read after a bit but my 2 cents would be make trip mine stack (kind of like combat teleport) and then you can rather place them down faster till you run out of stacks or you put down your full stack (say a square of 4 of them) and need to recharge the stacks again if needed you can still put down one when the cd if back but it will only be one at a time till you stack it back up

This sounds good. I'd want to test it for a bit see how it plays though. Were you thinking it still be interruptible or faster casting?

[kito]

7 hours ago, BronzeKnight said:

This sounds good. I'd want to test it for a bit see how it plays though. Were you thinking it still be interruptible or faster casting?

 

 

I would think yes? But I have not used trip mines in a long time. But the feel that while being shot at you could set up a trap would not feel right it think. And with fold space you can always set up then tp thing on top of them.

 

[srmalloy]

58 minutes ago, kito said:

And with fold space you can always set up then tp thing on top of them.

This is the soloing routine for my Grav/Traps Controller — Trip Mine, Poison Gas Trap, Trip Mine, refresh the FFG if it's close to expiring, Trip Mine, move away, Wormhole the spawn onto the mines. If I've got a red lieutenant in the spawn, add a fourth mine before using Wormhole. This alters for a large spawn; I've noticed that the mobs stretch out in a line to the ENE when wormholed if there are lots of them, so adjust the mine placement accordingly.

 

And it's fun running the 'Destroy the Cask of Djer' mission from Efraim Sha to lay down a sizeable mine patch at a chokepoint after defeating the Cask's defenders, then take out the Cask and let the ambush defeat itself stumbling over the mine field.

[Major_Decoy]

The one time I used Trip Mine on a team was during Silver Mantis. I couldn't handle the chaos of taking down turrets so I left to prepare a surprise for Colonel Durray.