Simple Fix for Mercs

[Shazbotacus]

So I've made threads about this in the past and each time I've learned something about making these suggestions for fixing Mercs work. I consulted users over the Discord and was advised to keep suggestions as simple and direct to the cause as possible, so that's what I'm going to do now. I have also consulted Mastermind players, also on the Discord, who share my concern with Mercs' poor performance since the day City of Villains launched with the Mastermind archetype. I'm going to keep things as simple as I can think of. I'm going to list each henchman, a list of proposed changes to its powers like patchnotes would be presented, and my reasoning for enacting the changes I propose to each henchman. I will then summarize my proposed changes, why they're beneficial, and why there should be minimal objection. All numbers provided will be at base level 1.

 

Soldiers:
Burst: Increase damage to 9.9 (3 ticks of 3.3), fix activation time to 1.0 like Assault Rifle -> Burst is for players. Resulting damage per cast cycle will be 1.98, or very slightly behind Thugs' Pistols
Heavy Burst: Increase damage to 18 (6 ticks of 3), which will  bring damage per cast cycle up to 1.69 or just slightly higher than Thugs' Dual Wield
Auto Fire: Fix activation time to 4s like Assault Rifle -> Full Auto for players and widen the cone angle to 20 degrees. That will slightly increase damage per cast cycle to 0.9, or slightly above Thugs' Dual Wield, and allow it to hit far more targets than the current 5 degree cone angle does.

 

Why?: This will bring Soldiers' damage output much closer to Thugs as a reference point, who are pretty close to other T1s in terms of damage while Soldiers' were far behind. So this just brings the T1 up to par with the rest.

 

Medic: Replace Frag Grenade with another support power handed out in a manner similar to Stimulant: choose either an absorb shield, max health, or a regeneration buff enhanceable with healing. This power should have a duration of 90s and a cooldown of 4s. Stimulant should also have a cooldown of 4s and a duration of 90s. Also consider replacing Heavy Burst with another healing enhanced power as suggested above.

 

Why?: Medic having Frag Grenade is detrimental to its function and survivability, and the henchman could stand to have a stronger presence in improving Mercs' survivability as, indeed, is its function. This should make slotting for healing more worthwhile as well.

 

Spec Ops: 
Burst & Heavy Burst: Enact the same damage and activation time changes that were done for Soldiers.
Snipe: Reduce cooldown to 6s and change activation time to 2.67s similar to Assault Rifle -> Sniper Rifle for players. This will increase damage per cast cycle to 2.01 from its current 0.88.
Web Grenade: Add 15 Toxic damage (5 ticks of 3 Toxic over 8.2s) and shorten the recharge to 8s. This means a damage per cast cycle of 1.52.
Flashbang Grenade: Cut recharge down to 45s, increase -To Hit and other debuff durations to 30s. Increase -To Hit debuff to -7.5%.
Tear Gas Grenade. Cut recharge down to 45s, change -Damage to -7.5% To Hit, and increase debuff duration to 30s.

 

Why?: Strongly enhanceable -To Hit which, along with their hard control, applied much more consistently will help provide survivability. Debuffs for half a minute, crowd control for 6s, should make Spec Ops a decent debuffing henchman that provides much of Mercs' survivability by reducing the enemy's chance to hit for a decent window of time. They also lack severely compared to some other Tier 2 pets' damage, and that would be addressed with the changes to their attacks and web grenade.

 

Commando:
Burst: Same thing done for Soldiers here.
Full Auto: Fix animation and activation time 4s like Assault Rifle -> Full Auto for players, and reduce recharge to 30s. This changes the damage per cast cycle from 0.39 to 0.76.
LRM Rocket: Simply reduce the recharge to 30s. This increases the damage per cast cycle to 0.67 from 0.09 (lol).

 

Why?: This should help the Commando's AoE damage to be decent.

 

Serum: Cut down the recharge to like 90s or something and remove the crash.

 

Why?: Well sure it's like putting a tier 9 super armor on your pet, but the problem here is that it only protects a portion of your damage output from getting snuffed out, whereas for other players it protects all their damage and that makes it a lot more meaningful. Here, it's just a waste as you make one pet harder to kill but then neuter its offense by taking away all its endurance for 20s, a painfully long time, only a minute later. I wouldn't use this power even if it were given to me for free as it is.

 

So why do all this? Why should no one object? I see Mercenaries was built to be a sort of utility set with decent damage like Necro was made to be, but it just doesn't perform this function with the source of its utility being on terribly long cooldowns that stops them from being present for a great majority of the time. They also suffer very low damage not just from their type being resisted, but because their damage output is just plain low. Increasing their damage values to approach other henchmen is the logical thing to do here, and fixing their activation times like has been done for players' AR is also needed to help them go through their abilities so they can have their effects out faster. They have almost no other defense outside of their Spec Ops' CC and debuffs. Imagine Bots without shields, or Thugs without Enforcers (and damage), or Necro without the Lich. That's what Mercs is like right now.
 

Here is data produced by Galaxy Brain testing all Mastermind pets, and only pets, on SO enhancements. Mercs are dead last in single target. It also needs to be noted that Bots in the Single Target category, though only appearing ahead of Mercs by 10 DPS, is likely further ahead than this graph shows, so Mercs are relatively further behind than that.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Shazbotacus

[Gigaburger]

This is what we need to be even remotely bearable as merc MMs. People do not realize just how terrible playing mercs is. Whenever I join a team I feel like a complete burden and it's hard to enjoy the game. But I enjoy mercs thematically and it was my main back on Live. I've seen these charts and I feel like even they do not do complete justice. 

This chart which I got from the discord from @黒の色  (Dunno if he was the creator or not) shows the ST dps breakdown of a beast mm. Note that this includes the dps of the MM themself which is the difference between the total of this chart and the total of the above chart. The TIER 1 wolves alone do roughly the same DPS as the ENTIRETY of the mercs lineup. The tier 2s alone do almost 30 dps MORE than the entire merc lineup. I think this does a pretty good job of showing our plight and just how desperate we are for ANY changes at all. No one wants to feel like a burden to their team, and a merc MM is essentially just his secondary set as the damage they are outputting from the mercs is almost completely negligible. 

I really hope we can get some love soon because it is so hard to force myself to play this game when my favorite powerset is so far behind every other set.

[Redlynne]

The real problem with Mercenaries is that it was probably the FIRST Mastermind powerset that was built.

Full stop.

 

That means that what Cryptic Studios had "available" for being repurposed into the Mercenaries themselves was OLD LEGACY powers that had been used by Assault Rifle for Blasters and were basically the Tommygun attack powers used by a lot of Family and Mooks NPCs.  Later on, Assault Rifle for Blasters (and Defenders, eventually) got a "tune up" to be less stupid with their animation times and recharge and so on ... but that update to the tuning of powers never extended to Mercenaries, which had to (polite cough) ... soldier on ... (ahem!) with their poor game design after everything else that came after them were designed much better.  So the Mercs' attack powers are all OLD LEGACY powers that were meant for NPCs, where no one is going to mind if they underperform which have never been given a balancing pass to bring them up to par with the rest of the Mastermind primaries.

 

In other words, the real problem with Mercenaries can basically laid at the feet of being first NEVER getting adjusted to match everyone else ... leaving them stuck with obsolete antiquated terrible attack powers that work "fine" for Foe NPCs (who tend to be more numerous so as to "make it up in volume" for their lack of individual firepower) but which land on absolutely abysmal breakpoints (that all break unfavorably away from Mercenaries being useful/effective in combat) ... and they have never even once received a balance pass to bring them up to snuff.

 

Cryptic Studios never did it.

Paragon Studios never did it.

... and now it's up to Homecoming to finally get around to doing it when they can find the ever scarce resource of Developer Time™ to do it.

 

 

 

Personally speaking, I'm of the opinion that twiddling some of the recharge times on the OLD LEGACY obsolete powers along with basically DOUBLING the base damage of every damaging power that Mercenaries have(!) ought to be sufficient to bring them up to par with the other Mastermind primary powersets.  That way, you would only be editing the excel spreadsheet parameters that govern what they're "allowed to do" rather than trying to reprogram all of their animations and deal with the huge can of worm that THAT would open for things to start breaking all over the place.  Yes, it would mean that the OLD LEGACY obsolete animations would be kept, but at least they wouldn't all be AS SUBSTANDARD as they currently are.

 

Point being, if you can "better balance" the animation to recharge times for the Mercenaries attack powers, so as to reduce idle time waiting for attacks to finish recharging, while simultaneously increasing the damage that each power delivers ... that then would cause a marked enough improvement in the damage output of Mercenaries to keep them from gnawing a hole through the bottom of the barrel like they've been doing ever since the release of City of Villains.

 

 

 

After that, you basically just need to fix Serum into not being a Joke/Trap power that's a complete and utter waste of a power pick ... and you'll be good to go.

I'm thinking that would be the simplest, cheapest and perhaps most effective way to "fix" Mercenaries so they aren't weighed down as badly by the legacy of their abysmally bad game design parameters that they got stuck with in the first place which have NEVER BEEN MOVED.

 

Is it a "perfect" solution?  No.

Would it be an "adequate" solution?  I'd like to think it would be ...

[Gigaburger]

4 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

The real problem with Mercenaries is that it was probably the FIRST Mastermind powerset that was built.

Full stop.

 

That means that what Cryptic Studios had "available" for being repurposed into the Mercenaries themselves was OLD LEGACY powers that had been used by Assault Rifle for Blasters and were basically the Tommygun attack powers used by a lot of Family and Mooks NPCs.  Later on, Assault Rifle for Blasters (and Defenders, eventually) got a "tune up" to be less stupid with their animation times and recharge and so on ... but that update to the tuning of powers never extended to Mercenaries, which had to (polite cough) ... soldier on ... (ahem!) with their poor game design after everything else that came after them were designed much better.  So the Mercs' attack powers are all OLD LEGACY powers that were meant for NPCs, where no one is going to mind if they underperform which have never been given a balancing pass to bring them up to par with the rest of the Mastermind primaries.

 

In other words, the real problem with Mercenaries can basically laid at the feet of being first NEVER getting adjusted to match everyone else ... leaving them stuck with obsolete antiquated terrible attack powers that work "fine" for Foe NPCs (who tend to be more numerous so as to "make it up in volume" for their lack of individual firepower) but which land on absolutely abysmal breakpoints (that all break unfavorably away from Mercenaries being useful/effective in combat) ... and they have never even once received a balance pass to bring them up to snuff.

 

Cryptic Studios never did it.

Paragon Studios never did it.

... and now it's up to Homecoming to finally get around to doing it when they can find the ever scarce resource of Developer Time™ to do it.

 

 

 

Personally speaking, I'm of the opinion that twiddling some of the recharge times on the OLD LEGACY obsolete powers along with basically DOUBLING the base damage of every damaging power that Mercenaries have(!) ought to be sufficient to bring them up to par with the other Mastermind primary powersets.  That way, you would only be editing the excel spreadsheet parameters that govern what they're "allowed to do" rather than trying to reprogram all of their animations and deal with the huge can of worm that THAT would open for things to start breaking all over the place.  Yes, it would mean that the OLD LEGACY obsolete animations would be kept, but at least they wouldn't all be AS SUBSTANDARD as they currently are.

 

Point being, if you can "better balance" the animation to recharge times for the Mercenaries attack powers, so as to reduce idle time waiting for attacks to finish recharging, while simultaneously increasing the damage that each power delivers ... that then would cause a marked enough improvement in the damage output of Mercenaries to keep them from gnawing a hole through the bottom of the barrel like they've been doing ever since the release of City of Villains.

 

 

 

After that, you basically just need to fix Serum into not being a Joke/Trap power that's a complete and utter waste of a power pick ... and you'll be good to go.

I'm thinking that would be the simplest, cheapest and perhaps most effective way to "fix" Mercenaries so they aren't weighed down as badly by the legacy of their abysmally bad game design parameters that they got stuck with in the first place which have NEVER BEEN MOVED.

 

Is it a "perfect" solution?  No.

Would it be an "adequate" solution?  I'd like to think it would be ...

All I've ever wanted was recharge times and damage numbers to be improved. I'm looking for a quick and simple fix myself. I'm okay without the medic changes for now but ofcourse I believe mercs need an overhaul at some point. But for now, I'll take whatever buff we can get, small or large. Fingers crossed a developer will take it into their hands and be our savior!

[Shazbotacus]

It’s entirely true regarding Mercs never getting caught up when Assault Rifle had its powers go through an animation and activation time quickening. I imagine we would prefer mercs be given that treatment because it really, really should’ve happened to them too. A lotta things shoulda happened to them but they were utterly ignored.

 

But if for some reason that’s not possible, you could increase damage to the target damage per cast cycle numbers I presented. I’d prefer a little more effort to make mercs’ powers behave in a consistent manner to what players get, as it should have always been, but you could technically make them work by doing this along with, of course, the other things I suggested, especially for Spec Ops who need help the absolute most.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Shazbotacus

[Elthenar]

I wouldn't touch the recharge times. The reason that they made pet powers have an unmodifiable recharge is because the AI was completely bonkers. Up until Masterminds in general get a balance pass, the simplest solution is to determine what role Mercs should play and buff their powers accordingly. Since fiddling with the recharge rates is likely impractical, that kind of rules out building them around the CC of the Spec Ops. So I would simply up their damage to a competitive level. My own thoughts would be to make them a strong single target set because of the powerset of the spec ops.

 

While their damage overall is exceptionally feeble, it is the spec ops that are the biggest failure.  They have 8 powers, not counting brawl, and only 4 of them attacks. 1 of those attacks is rifle butt and none are AOE. Their other powers are the largely irrelevant stealth, web grenade, flashbang and tear gas.  Web Grenade is somewhat useful but flashbang and tear gas are absurdly useless. So you have tier 2 pets that don't do damage, have little defensive ability and weak, unreliable CC. Until someone has to the time to do a deep dive and completely rework mercs, IMO the best option is to give the spec ops a massive damage boost. I would do it by making SCAR snipe hit like a truck. They are Spec Ops, let that snipe be their calling card. A damage value of 120 points or so wouldn't be out of line.

 

After that, simply increase the base damage of the soldiers and Commando (with an emphasis on their single target attacks) to get their single target near the top and not worry too much about their AOE rank.

 

The other big problem with an easy fix is Serum. As it stands it is much to great of a cooldown for too little reward.  My own solution would be to add a reasonably strong passive effect to it, similar to Fortify Pack with Beasts. I would give them a permanent, enhancable defensive bonus. I would lean towards defense, because it would give players a reason to devote slots to Serum without having a second resist bonus attached to the same power.

 

The net result would be a top of the line single target set with middle of the road AOE and solid to great defenses. Given that they don't offer much besides ranged damage, compared to a set like bests with strong -res built in, that sounds fairly balanced IMO.

[Gigaburger]

 

12 minutes ago, Elthenar said:

I wouldn't touch the recharge times. The reason that they made pet powers have an unmodifiable recharge is because the AI was completely bonkers. Up until Masterminds in general get a balance pass, the simplest solution is to determine what role Mercs should play and buff their powers accordingly. Since fiddling with the recharge rates is likely impractical, that kind of rules out building them around the CC of the Spec Ops. So I would simply up their damage to a competitive level. My own thoughts would be to make them a strong single target set because of the powerset of the spec ops.

 

While their damage overall is exceptionally feeble, it is the spec ops that are the biggest failure.  They have 8 powers, not counting brawl, and only 4 of them attacks. 1 of those attacks is rifle butt and none are AOE. Their other powers are the largely irrelevant stealth, web grenade, flashbang and tear gas.  Web Grenade is somewhat useful but flashbang and tear gas are absurdly useless. So you have tier 2 pets that don't do damage, have little defensive ability and weak, unreliable CC. Until someone has to the time to do a deep dive and completely rework mercs, IMO the best option is to give the spec ops a massive damage boost. I would do it by making SCAR snipe hit like a truck. They are Spec Ops, let that snipe be their calling card. A damage value of 120 points or so wouldn't be out of line.

 

After that, simply increase the base damage of the soldiers and Commando (with an emphasis on their single target attacks) to get their single target near the top and not worry too much about their AOE rank.

 

The other big problem with an easy fix is Serum. As it stands it is much to great of a cooldown for too little reward.  My own solution would be to add a reasonably strong passive effect to it, similar to Fortify Pack with Beasts. I would give them a permanent, enhancable defensive bonus. I would lean towards defense, because it would give players a reason to devote slots to Serum without having a second resist bonus attached to the same power.

 

The net result would be a top of the line single target set with middle of the road AOE and solid to great defenses. Given that they don't offer much besides ranged damage, compared to a set like bests with strong -res built in, that sounds fairly balanced IMO.

So instead of changing the recharge of LRM from 4 minutes, make it a literal nuke in terms of damage? 

 

I am oddly okay with this. 

[Elthenar]

1 minute ago, Gigaburger said:

 

So instead of changing the recharge of LRM from 4 minutes, make it a literal nuke in terms of damage? 

 

I am oddly okay with this. 

I was talking about the Spec Ops snipes, not LRM.

 

Yet, I would be oddly ok with that too lol

[Shazbotacus]

You could just up their damage values, but what we'd be left with is basically a ranged DPS set like Ninjas as they'd still have pretty much pathetic survivability and nothing that makes them unique beyond that but those utility powers on absurd cooldowns, and extreme burst damage every few fights because of how long it'd take LRM to recharge. Of course the ideal solution would be to patch those recharge problems so they can be marked by their CC and debuffs, and I recognize y'all have said as much, but the bottom line I'm saying is if really is the case that the only way to make mercs do what they were supposed to is an overhaul, then so be it. Indeed, Spec Ops need an overhaul more than any other pet in the game.

 

Thing is, though, I don't know if it really would be that breaking to lower their powers' recharge timers. The Homecoming team gave them an AI overhaul not long ago that really helped all henchmen; I'd need someone who worked on AI to confirm that's still the case.

[Elthenar]

34 minutes ago, Shazbotacus said:

You could just up their damage values, but what we'd be left with is basically a ranged DPS set like Ninjas as they'd still have pretty much pathetic survivability and nothing that makes them unique beyond that but those utility powers on absurd cooldowns, and extreme burst damage every few fights because of how long it'd take LRM to recharge. Of course the ideal solution would be to patch those recharge problems so they can be marked by their CC and debuffs, and I recognize y'all have said as much, but the bottom line I'm saying is if really is the case that the only way to make mercs do what they were supposed to is an overhaul, then so be it. Indeed, Spec Ops need an overhaul more than any other pet in the game.

 

Thing is, though, I don't know if it really would be that breaking to lower their powers' recharge timers. The Homecoming team gave them an AI overhaul not long ago that really helped all henchmen; I'd need someone who worked on AI to confirm that's still the case.

 

My post was meant as the simplest possible way to make them competitive in the short term with a absolute minimum of dev time spent. It doesn't cover other relative shortcomings, like not having the extra pet to dump the IO auras into, but at the end of the day damage can make up for quite a lot.  Plus, If my version of Serum was put in, the passive bonus would help boost survivability to near that of beasts, which are pretty tanky.

[Gigaburger]

12 minutes ago, Elthenar said:

 

My post was meant as the simplest possible way to make them competitive in the short term with a absolute minimum of dev time spent. It doesn't cover other relative shortcomings, like not having the extra pet to dump the IO auras into, but at the end of the day damage can make up for quite a lot.  Plus, If my version of Serum was put in, the passive bonus would help boost survivability to near that of beasts, which are pretty tanky.

I gotta agree with you here. We are not going to see a merc overhaul for a long time. That would take so many man hours from the devs and I don't want to rush them into it. I just want something that makes them bearable to play. Thats it. I really do love how they almost never stop firing. I love the showers of bullet casings. I love their aesthetic and I LOVE my memories as a young teenager who mained a mercenary mastermind back on live. I will be perfectly happy with a simple damage buff if that is all that the HC dev team can do for us in the near future. Recharge times, I have no idea if they can mess with that without breaking the AI or not. I am not educated in any of this stuff. All I want is to be able to join a group and feel like I am contributing in some way other than my third-rate support abilities because my merc primary quite literally is nearly useless.

There is no worse feeling, when your group is mowing down mobs, and a straggler runs off, and you sit there and struggle to kill (arrest?) it. It is frankly embarrassing. I am just begging for any simple change that can make them bearable to play in the short term. I will gladly, and patiently, wait for whatever changes they decide to make for masterminds in the future if I can just play my favorite powerset and not feel like a waste of a party slot.

[Shazbotacus]

True, giving just Serum a passive effect would be a pretty simple way to add some survivability. I'd probably stick to resistance, though, and have the sum of the passive and active effects be what amount is provided right now. Serum would still probably call for resistance and recharge slotting, probably +to hit if we keep that in there too.

[Redlynne]

My sincere wish for Serum (for the Mastermind) would be that it becomes a 300s duration on a 300s recharge power that instead applies a Grant Power effect to the Medic ... so that it's the Medic who is handing out the Serum to all the Mercenaries to buff them (think Protector Bots and their Force Field bubbles).  That way, it's kind of a "Medic Approved" buff to all of your Mercenaries that is doled out by your Medic along with the Stimulant and so on.  That way, it's relatively fire and forget for the Player to deal with.  You basically just delegate the distribution of the Serum to your Medic to give to all the Soldiers, Spec Ops and Commando.

[Shazbotacus]

I... kinda like that. Yeah. So for 5 minutes, Medic hands out Serum buffs to all your henchmen? Is that right? ‘Course if Medic dies you’re down serum buffs until you can equip a new Medic with ‘em.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Shazbotacus

[Patti]

I just like medic as replacement for serum with serum added as medic power to grant other mercs and soldier 3 replacing old medic.  Small change with big positive outcome.

[Elthenar]

1 hour ago, Redlynne said:

My sincere wish for Serum (for the Mastermind) would be that it becomes a 300s duration on a 300s recharge power that instead applies a Grant Power effect to the Medic ... so that it's the Medic who is handing out the Serum to all the Mercenaries to buff them (think Protector Bots and their Force Field bubbles).  That way, it's kind of a "Medic Approved" buff to all of your Mercenaries that is doled out by your Medic along with the Stimulant and so on.  That way, it's relatively fire and forget for the Player to deal with.  You basically just delegate the distribution of the Serum to your Medic to give to all the Soldiers, Spec Ops and Commando.

 

I had a similar thought but I wasn't sure how slotting would work. If you put enhances in it, would it effect the ability the medic gets? I don't know if any other power works that way.

 

Since we are talking medics though, there is one big thing I forgot. For the love of all that is holy, give the medic the same range as all the other mercs. With his current shorter range, he likes to lead from the front, which is generally a terrible idea for your medic.

 

 

On a longer timeline, I'd like to see the Medic lose the grenade and pick some stuff out of pain dom. Like Suppress Pain or Nullify Pain.

[JayboH]

23 hours ago, Gigaburger said:

People do not realize just how terrible playing mercs is.

 

Well, they know they are bad; some don't understand just how bad.  I didn't realize just how unbelievably awful they were until I made an instant 50 with all the trimmings awhile back. 

 

It took forever to defeat anything.  This is with every enhancement you can think of.

 

Mercs is likely one of the worst powersets in the entire game across all archetypes.  It's THAT bad.

[Shazbotacus]

The struggle is real, and has been a chronic condition since Mercs was born.

[Redlynne]

44 minutes ago, JayboH said:

Mercs is likely one of the worst powersets in the entire game across all archetypes.  It's THAT bad.

Agreed.

Mercs need Dev Love.

[Elthenar]

6 hours ago, JayboH said:

Well, they know they are bad; some don't understand just how bad.  I didn't realize just how unbelievably awful they were until I made an instant 50 with all the trimmings awhile back. 

 

It took forever to defeat anything.  This is with every enhancement you can think of.

 

Mercs is likely one of the worst powersets in the entire game across all archetypes.  It's THAT bad.

 

You know your set is weak when you could literally double its damage across the board and it would still only be middle of the pack

[Shazbotacus]

2 hours ago, Elthenar said:

 

You know your set is weak when you could literally double its damage across the board and it would still only be middle of the pack

So much this. Let's keep talking about Mercs, guys. My soldiers need some proper training.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Shazbotacus

[Gigaburger]

7 hours ago, Elthenar said:

 

You know your set is weak when you could literally double its damage across the board and it would still only be middle of the pack

Double mercs damage across the board, and their single target damage would change from last place, to second-to-last place lol.

[Shazbotacus]

It's pretty sad 😂👌

[Elthenar]

On 7/11/2020 at 11:40 PM, Shazbotacus said:

It's pretty sad 😂👌

It's even better. Given that most of their damage is lethal they suffer from being the most commonly resisted damage type as well.

 

So low damage combined with getting resisted the most equals a sad powerset 

[JayboH]

21 minutes ago, Elthenar said:

It's even better. Given that most of their damage is lethal they suffer from being the most commonly resisted damage type as well.

 

So low damage combined with getting resisted the most equals a sad powerset 

Didn't we find out that toxic is actually the most commonly resisted?