Dark Miasma in Endgame

[Apparition]

Over the past several months, I've seen quite a few people allege that Dark Miasma is a second tier support set in endgame and not nearly as good as Cold Domination, Radiation Emission, nor (now) Trick Arrow.  Why, exactly, is this?  I recall Dark Miasma being considered one of the top tier prior to sunset.

[Coyote]

Dark Miasma is absolutely top tier when soloing.

On teams that are steamrolling, its defensive abilities are usually irrelevant, and you generally want ways to increase the team's damage... +Damage, +Recharge, and -Res on the opponents.

DM doesn't do any +Damage or +Recharge, and its -Res is slower to activate and slower to recharge, so if you're wiping spawns in 20 seconds or less, you won't have Tar Patch up for the next fight. At this point, you can help shut down the spawn's attacking ability, but if the team's defense are already strong enough (and in steamrolling teams they are), that's an irrelevant contribution.

 

Thus, DM in the end game is only good in three situations:

1: soloing. Okay, it's great here.

2: teaming with weak teams. Okay, it's great here also, but usually there are enough good builds even on a PUG that it's a rare situation when a team is weak enough that there isn't already a Tank or someone else who can tank or control the spawns, even if it helps if the rest of the team is protected from adds. So it's useful sometimes, but not as much and not very often. And, unfortunately, if you get on a good team, it's superfluous.

3: against AVs. Stacking Tar Patches are good -Res, it does solid -Regen, and the -Damage that it puts out neuters most AVs. Granted, a lot of teams could tank AVs anyhow if they're doing missions that have them, but there are still plenty of times that a team can use a bit more AV neutering.

 

But since most teams in the end game are steamrolling missions, or else organized for TFs by experienced players who generally have builds that can tank spawns or AVs... on most teams, it's not a useful set.

[Omega-202]

Coyote is pretty on the ball here.  The only addition is that the animation times are brutal on Dark Miasma.  At endgame, animations are the main limiting factor to effectiveness, both for support and damage (ie DPA).  If a team is steamrolling, a Dark Miasma player has no time to drop Fearsome Stare and Tar Patch and then start attacking before the enemies are mostly dead, let alone dropping Darkest Night.  

 

They're good solo or on unorganized teams but are innefficient on steamrolling teams outside of AV fights.

[carroto]

On 1/3/2021 at 9:03 PM, Omega-202 said:

the animation times are brutal on Dark Miasma.

Yep.  On a fast-moving team by the time you can put your debuffs in place, they're already irrelevant.  There might be an occasional opportunity to do a little reactive healing but that's slow too, and the teammate who needed it probably moved out of range before you could get it off.  The whole set just feels sluggish.  This is always true, but it really stands out on a typical fast-moving high-level team.  It's not uncommon in those situations for me to mostly ignore Dark Miasma and focus on blasting instead.

 

Sure then I'm just a gimped blaster in those situations, but it's fine because the team doesn't really need more damage anyway.  The set solos so well, and contributes greatly in those team situations where it's actually needed.  So the lack of endgame utility isn't that much of a problem for me.  There isn't much that's needed, and not that many sets that can provide it.  We can't all play the same handful of sets all the time.

[RageusQuitus2]

Only dark was banned from the timed tf competitions last year.  Specifically because of what it does to AVs.  Its all about taking out AVs in most end game content and dark is reported to be OP in that regard.

[Apparition]

6 minutes ago, RageusQuitus2 said:

Only dark was banned from the timed tf competitions last year.  Specifically because of what it does to AVs.  Its all about taking out AVs in most end game content and dark is reported to be OP in that regard.

That was probably due to the bug of stacking Tar Patches, which was fixed a few months ago.

[Doomguide2005]

4 hours ago, Apparition said:

That was probably due to the bug of stacking Tar Patches, which was fixed a few months ago.

Well it will put out very solid amounts of both -regen and -damage.  Both Howling Twilight and Twilight Grasp are stackable unless CoD v2.0 needs updating (-500 and -50 respectively).  HT would require a lot of recharge to stack twice, TG not so much.  Add in Darkest Night.  Not sure how that adds up to Tier 2 when the only drawback is animation time.

 

Edit: specifically against AVs it can match top -regen outputs.

Edited February 23, 2021 by Doomguide2005

[Parabola]

7 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Well it will put out very solid amounts of both -regen and -damage.  Both Howling Twilight and Twilight Grasp are stackable unless CoD v2.0 needs updating (-500 and -50 respectively).  HT would require a lot of recharge to stack twice, TG not so much.  Add in Darkest Night.  Not sure how that adds up to Tier 2 when the only drawback is animation time.

 

Edit: specifically against AVs it can match top -regen outputs.

Sadly the different components of Howling Twilight have different durations and the -regen only lasts 30s. Therefore at 180s base recharge the best uptime possible for this effect would be 2/3 of the time if you could hit the recharge cap. So dark is outperformed on this front at least by rad, cold, thermal, poison and traps who can all have 100% uptime on their -regen power and a couple of those are -1000% regen as well. Howling Twilight is at least auto hit which not all of those other options are.

 

As others have said dark is hampered by long animation times and the fact that its main focus of debuffing is -tohit which become superfluous when teammates have enough mitigation of their own. It's sad to look at a trayful of powers thinking 'well there's no point in clicking half of these'. Solo the set is absolutely amazing. You can do things like use Darkest Night to toggle pull into Tar Patch and then hit the bunched up mobs with Fearsome Stare and all your aoe's. This just doesn't get old for me but unfortunately you are very unlikely to find a team that needs you to do half of that. Insert obligatory comment about the faceroll high level game here...

[Apparition]

Yeah, the -regen only lasting 30 seconds is why my Dual Pistols/Dark Miasma Corruptor uses Longbow Lore pets.

[Doomguide2005]

    Arrg, yeah math skill apparently took the night off.  I knew that and somehow thought with 400+% recharge it would overlap HT. 

     As for the team destroying stuff so fast the debuffs don't matter.  Well that's just an endgame issue in general for all debuff sets not just Dark.  

 

[Omega-202]

2 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

As for the team destroying stuff so fast the debuffs don't matter.  Well that's just an endgame issue in general for all debuff sets not just Dark.  

It's more of a problem for some sets than others.  Trick Arrow is mostly in the 1.6 s animation range, whereas Dark and Rad are mostly in the 2.17 to 3 s range.  It really adds up.  

 

The whole problem is an artifact of the early days game balancing.  Those debuffs used to be some of the most powerful abilities in the game, so the 2-3 second animations made sense.  But in the games current state, there's no reason for them to take so long.  

 

If I had my druthers, I'd change all anchor toggle animations to a 0.8 s brawl animation and some of the other debuffs to the quick backhand sweep ("Energy Torrent") animation, even just as placeholders.  It shouldn't happen because I'm sure a lot of people like the classic animations from a stylistic perspective, but something would need to be done.  

[DreadShinobi]

7 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

It's more of a problem for some sets than others.  Trick Arrow is mostly in the 1.6 s animation range, whereas Dark and Rad are mostly in the 2.17 to 3 s range.  It really adds up.  

 

The whole problem is an artifact of the early days game balancing.  Those debuffs used to be some of the most powerful abilities in the game, so the 2-3 second animations made sense.  But in the games current state, there's no reason for them to take so long.  

 

If I had my druthers, I'd change all anchor toggle animations to a 0.8 s brawl animation and some of the other debuffs to the quick backhand sweep ("Energy Torrent") animation, even just as placeholders.  It shouldn't happen because I'm sure a lot of people like the classic animations from a stylistic perspective, but something would need to be done.  

Animation times could be looked at for sure and the sets in question would greatly benefit, but imo tohit debuffs as a whole just arent as valuable as they have been in the past unless youre just leveling with no IOs ---> see discussion on whether game should be balanced around IOs or not. It would be interesting to see if an additional effect could be added if a critter receives a certain level of tohit debuff. If you cant see anything, being inflicted with terrorize or taking psionic damage would both make sense, or a resistance debuff - you cant guard against what you cannot see.

[Force Redux]

If my team is steamrolling with my Miasma characters, I go solo ahead of the team. 

 

This is not unique to steamrolling teams and Dark Miasma. Against anything but AVs, many ATs have reduced contribution. 

 

Of course, I don't always run +4/x8 incarnate content. I exemplar down a lot, as well. Or run more challenging content like 801.1+ AE. I rarely feel useless. 

 

Reminder, my incarnated BR/Devices blaster isn't really essential either at veteran power levels where rotating Judgements, Lore Pets, Hybrid buffs and various Destiny powers make almost everything redundant as the murder ball rolls along.

 

DM is just fine, if you love it, play it, that's what matters.