Tweaking poison to be more mob-friendly and flow better and alternate animations.

[WindDemon21]

For starters, this set really should have alternate animations of throwing down potions or vials.

 

That said though, the theme of poison has always been fun, but the set itself suffers from a LOT.

 

The most glaring issues are the main debuffs needing to be larger at 15 or 20ft with the larger -to hit on the aoe  (small additional that would stack on the ST initial target) Vgas should also be at 20ft instead of 15, it's noticeable, especially for a debuff where 15ft just doesn't quite cut it on a lot of mobs. Envenom also should really have a larger more useful -regen, even if, or better yet, that doesn't stack so you're not pointlessly having to spam it on an AV to try to get more -regen out of it's current pathetic value. (250% would make sense given that's about the minimum useful value for a support set and it's poison, it SHOULD be THE debuff master, so that's even generous having it be so low, perhaps different values for pve and pvp)

 

The other very glaring issue is neurotoxic breath, which should at least be a taoe with a more forgiving duration, but mainly taoe so you can use it in melee which especially with v-gas really demands you staying in melee. It should also, along with weaken have the faster 1.33 cast that envenom has. Having it take so long for what it does and it's current duration really just smacks you upside the head with the clunkiness of the set. In addition, it would be nice if we could slot hold sets so we could proc it out more if we choose to do so, or for more hold bonuses, possibly giving it a more useful base mag 2 hold even at a short duration still, just to detoggle enemies and give some breathing room when it's cast.

 

So crucial fixes:

 

Envenom: 15-20ft radius, higher -regen value that doesn't stack.

 

Weaken: 15-20ft radius, larger -to hit value on the aoe with smaller second -to hit added on initial target. Faster cast time, can be the same as is now but just speed up when the arm is up part, taking it to about 1.5s.

 

Venomous Gas: increase radius to 20ft, and make MM version the standard toggle, move to tier 7.

 

Neurotoxic Breath: Changed to taoe 25ft radius, or location aoe, 1.33s cast time as envenom is (they're the same animation too, so especially makes no sense this power being 2.67s ouch), Increase the duration of the slow to 30s as well so if not proccing out to spam it, it's more forgiving how often you have to cast it, can additionally increase its recharge to 40 or 45s. Change hold to a guaranteed mag 2 short duration, or leave the hold as is slottable for hold set bonuses and procs, but add a quick mag 4 like 10s sleep for detoggling enemies and giving some breathing room as well.

 

Poison Trap: This power should be much sooner in the tier to tier 5 or 6. Even traps gets it a tier 6 and the traps version is easily better. The -end/-recovery also doesn't seem to be working at all. I know the -end states it's only a 1.5% chance? but it may as well not be there with that rate, just remove it and fix the -recovery, maybe bump it up to 150%.

 

 

 

Listed above are the crucial fixes, that would help increase it's mob aoe effectiveness without changing it's current role that people like it for which is very niche atm. Below are additional fixes to poison that would really help the set as well.

 

Starting with antidote which I would honeslty say should be in the crucial category,, for how crucial v-gas is to how the set works and it's survival, the fact of it forcing you into melee and being at risk of it constantly getting suppressed by even the slightest .0003s sleep or anything else, it would make sense for antidote to be a pbaoe buff, and in respect to having poison be the "debuff master", this can also include not being affected by debuffs as well, suggesting that it also get very high resistance to any form of debuff with the power, so including resistnaces to end drain and -recovery, -regen, -to hit, -defense, etc. This would go really far to giving poison an additional niche and helping it out more in both solo and team play. I could see the power also giving a small regen buff as well like 100% but i wouldn't push that too far given these other changes going into effect. move to tier 8.

 

The single target heal, it is what it is, it's fine, nothing special but as tier 1 isn't expecting much from it.

 

However, across the board on support sets, ally rezzes should really have more useful applications that can be used even when a teammate isn't dead like defibrillate and howling twilight do. For this power, I could see it doing some sort of additional buff, like splash a big aoe that rezzes teammates but also grants that regen/recovery or proccing heal/end and move this to tier 9.

 

Paralytic poison, standard power, but could also use a faster cast and some extra small benefit to it, even if just some damage added. Move to tier 6.

 

[tidge]

[Shin Magmus]

Suggesting changes to Poison is Toxic.

[WindDemon21]

6 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

Suggesting changes to Poison is Toxic.

Literally lol, but worthwhile

[Uun]

You're not going to get larger radii in a vacuum. Both Envenom and Weaken currently have 8 ft radii and 30s durations, with Envenom having a 12s recharge and Weaken a 16s recharge. Since the debuffs don't stack (except -regen), the intent was to use the powers against multiple targets to blanket the field of battle. If the radii are increased to 15-20 ft, the recharge would need to be increased significantly (probably to 60s or more) and the duration or strength would need to be reduced. I'm not necessarily against this, but it's a point of discussion. 

 

As far as Venomous Gas, 15 ft radius for a debuff toggle seems pretty typical. Radiation Infection, Enervating Field, Spore Cloud and Disruption Field are all 15 ft while Darkest Night, Hurricane, Snow Storm and Time's Juncture are all 25 ft (I couldn't find any that are 20 ft). Again, not necessarily against increasing the radius, but need to consider whether the strength of the power would be reduced to compensate.

 

I'm in favor of increasing the -regen in Poison, whether by changing Envenom or adding it to Poison Trap.

[tidge]

As my sad clown indicates, the single-ally focus of Antidote just feels wrong in this game. Whatever the balance aspects of it are supposed to involve, I find it to be one of the clumsiest ally buffs in the game.

 

2 hours ago, Uun said:

I'm in favor of increasing the -regen in Poison, whether by changing Envenom or adding it to Poison Trap.

 

Isn't -Healing also a separate thing (than -Regen)? If so, if its the kind of thing that is super-useful against such a small number of enemies that a -Healing component could be added simply as a straight-up boost when fighting things like the Goliath War Walker.

[WindDemon21]

5 hours ago, Uun said:

You're not going to get larger radii in a vacuum. Both Envenom and Weaken currently have 8 ft radii and 30s durations, with Envenom having a 12s recharge and Weaken a 16s recharge. Since the debuffs don't stack (except -regen), the intent was to use the powers against multiple targets to blanket the field of battle. If the radii are increased to 15-20 ft, the recharge would need to be increased significantly (probably to 60s or more) and the duration or strength would need to be reduced. I'm not necessarily against this, but it's a point of discussion. 

 

As far as Venomous Gas, 15 ft radius for a debuff toggle seems pretty typical. Radiation Infection, Enervating Field, Spore Cloud and Disruption Field are all 15 ft while Darkest Night, Hurricane, Snow Storm and Time's Juncture are all 25 ft (I couldn't find any that are 20 ft). Again, not necessarily against increasing the radius, but need to consider whether the strength of the power would be reduced to compensate.

 

I'm in favor of increasing the -regen in Poison, whether by changing Envenom or adding it to Poison Trap.

The problem here is thinking that they are fine as is now though which they aren't. The small radii is clunky and vastly less effective missing most of the mob until after several applications (which is also super hard on the end having to spam them as well).

 

That said there is *SOME* correct aspect in its dual nature of a larger debuff on the primary target but for its main purpose the 8ft doesn't cut it. Fixing the radius to 15 ft I could see warranting the increase but not as vast as you're thinking. 20s would do it just fine even if the duration reduces to 20s as well. But taking roughly 15 seconds to cover the field in the debuffs in its current form is just, really bad.

 

Regarding vgas, the 20ft radius is really closer to where it should be, at 15ft for just the debuff that forces you into melee, suppresses constantly, and really doesn't have that high of a -to hit debuff, in general for support debuffs those radii are too small and should be increased as is anyway that you mentioned which is another topic.

 

Edit: Another option would be to simply move the single target debuff aspect to paralytic poison as well. But without question as is that 8ft radius is just fowl, mostly making it considerable as only a single target debuff with some splash that you can't really full count on, and certainly not on a whole mob like other support set debuffs. Between that and nbreath being awful as a short duration long animating cone, poison has practically nothing it brings until tier 8 and 9, which those only go so far as well, and having it not until tier 8 and 9 is also tragic as well since they're really only somewhat standard on the set, not anywhere near as ultimate as other tier 8/9 powers are. Traps even gets it's version at tier 6, and the vgas as mentioned should be 20ft, but even then its debuffing isn't huge, and constantly gets suppressed from the tiniest mez and requires you to be in melee constantly which is also another major downfall (especailly with the wholly dumb nbreath as its current cone that should be taoe at least) Support debuff toggles should really be 25ft like darkest night, and castable on both ally and enemy like shifting tides is. It's weird this isn't already the case tbh.

Edited October 26 by WindDemon21

[Uun]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

Isn't -Healing also a separate thing (than -Regen)? If so, if its the kind of thing that is super-useful against such a small number of enemies that a -Healing component could be added simply as a straight-up boost when fighting things like the Goliath War Walker.

Weaken has -heal, but not resist heal. (I believe only Acid Arrow has resist heal.)

[Razor Cure]

I remember back on Live, Poison Debuffs (weaken and envenom) USED to be single target only. God that was painful. The devs had a thread gonig on possible changes, and one of the ideas was to give those powers a 'splash' radius and make them an AoE. Makes sense thematically and helped the set. But as mentioned, the aoe's arent huge, with multiple applications being the idea.

Only..it doesnt really work. With a small mob, sure (but even with a 2-4 person team you may miss someone at the edge of the pack..like a Sapper), but a full team? Nope. Of course, this is less of an issue in a full team, as there will be other debuffs, damage, aggro taking etc. But the exact same thing could be said for buffs like Sleet, Tar Patch, and the Rad toggles, which hit an entire mob 99% of the time.

The difficulty as I see it..how to make the main Poison debuffs great (single target, great, mobs, not great) without just turning them into auto hit toggles like a lot of other debuffs. The change to AoE's was good but (and someone correct me if wrong), the poison aoes aren't even 'proper' ones, because only the target gets the full debuff. This is unlike any other aoe debuff in game (maybe that Marine TP power is closest?) but really drags the set down, as not only do you need multiple applications to 'maybe' hit an entire mob, but they wont all have the full debuff anyway.

The 2 powers at least should have the same recharge (makes NO sense to be different), and the AoE debuff set higher, if not at the full value. A radius bump, at least 10 or 15 (Darkest Night..25!). An effect similar to Disintegration would be very on theme too..like a proc change for the debuff to spread (to targets currently unaffected) to mobs within range.

[WindDemon21]

2 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

I remember back on Live, Poison Debuffs (weaken and envenom) USED to be single target only. God that was painful. The devs had a thread gonig on possible changes, and one of the ideas was to give those powers a 'splash' radius and make them an AoE. Makes sense thematically and helped the set. But as mentioned, the aoe's arent huge, with multiple applications being the idea.

Only..it doesnt really work. With a small mob, sure (but even with a 2-4 person team you may miss someone at the edge of the pack..like a Sapper), but a full team? Nope. Of course, this is less of an issue in a full team, as there will be other debuffs, damage, aggro taking etc. But the exact same thing could be said for buffs like Sleet, Tar Patch, and the Rad toggles, which hit an entire mob 99% of the time.

The difficulty as I see it..how to make the main Poison debuffs great (single target, great, mobs, not great) without just turning them into auto hit toggles like a lot of other debuffs. The change to AoE's was good but (and someone correct me if wrong), the poison aoes aren't even 'proper' ones, because only the target gets the full debuff. This is unlike any other aoe debuff in game (maybe that Marine TP power is closest?) but really drags the set down, as not only do you need multiple applications to 'maybe' hit an entire mob, but they wont all have the full debuff anyway.

The 2 powers at least should have the same recharge (makes NO sense to be different), and the AoE debuff set higher, if not at the full value. A radius bump, at least 10 or 15 (Darkest Night..25!). An effect similar to Disintegration would be very on theme too..like a proc change for the debuff to spread (to targets currently unaffected) to mobs within range.

I just edited my last post for this, but they could also just move the extra debuff that goes on a single target to paralytic poison, or even make alkaloid a new dual-type power castable on enemies for the debuff, or allies for the heal. But those debuffs yeah, they need to be more effective for aoe to really mean much to the set especially with the extra ST debuff in one of those other powers. 15 is pretty much the minimum any debuff should be. It works and is fine for click powers but as i also said should be wider on toggles, a pbaoe on you 20 is enough on vgas but others like rad toggles, spore cloud etc, should be 25 like darkest night especially for how mobs move around the area of the battle etc.

 

The slower cast of weaken and especially nbreath make no sense either, as nbreath is the same spitting of something anyway (which alternate animations of throwing vials would be good too), but i can't stress enough how bad for this set specifically if anything else that it is that nbreath isn't at least a taoe, if not location field as well. (field would be great, but taoe would still allow it to proc a bit better esp with that use if it had a short sleep effect to detoggle enemies too, but a longer duration even if longer rech would be much better for the power too as that change anyway like 30s duration 45s rech.

 

Edit: there is also another big part to this, where this is especially regarding the -to hit and -damage for survival for weaken, Where this is especially needed for that, but then the -defense can be bigger and normal on envenom, but the -resist could be 3 tiered even, biggest to ST, 8ft is 75% instead of 50%, and then the 15ft radius would get the 50% value. So there is still incentive on that one to spread it around, but at least the survival aspect of weaken will properly apply to the larger aoe.

On the other note of the two's recharges, they shoudl be the same, but if they fixed the especially survival one weaken, then it could have a slightly larger recharge, even 30 seconds with the larger -damage/-to hit being larger radius at 15/20, then envenom would be the quicker one to apply across, so that 100% st, 75% 8ft aoe, and 50% 15ft radius value would work pretty well and still incentivise spreading it across the battle as it goes on. End costs should be a little lower too on that given the spam nature which as mentioned above is still a big issue on it as well.

Edited October 27 by WindDemon21

[arcane]

Your suggestions went wayyy overboard here. Just way too many huge buffs being proposed. 
 

I would recommend starting with:

 

- Increase splash radii to 12-15 ft (not 15-20) 

- Increase Envenom’s -regen 

 

That might be only like 10-20% of the buffs you just proposed, but I’m guessing the devs would be more likely to agree with a modest and incremental approach here.

[WindDemon21]

23 hours ago, arcane said:

Your suggestions went wayyy overboard here. Just way too many huge buffs being proposed. 
 

I would recommend starting with:

 

- Increase splash radii to 12-15 ft (not 15-20) 

- Increase Envenom’s -regen 

 

That might be only like 10-20% of the buffs you just proposed, but I’m guessing the devs would be more likely to agree with a modest and incremental approach here.

A lot was specified as being between the core and then additional items. The core is the radius increase to 15ft, with the larger -to hit on the aoe, and nbreath being taoe instead of a cone. That is the absolute start base proposal and is 100% justified.

 

Yeah i even mentioned the others as what would be good for the set, but i could see pushback on them, but that's why i categorized the suggestions. At the very very least though yes, increase radii to 15ft (still think 20 makes enough sense for vgas) with larger -to hit/-damage on the aoe, and then make nbreath taoe or location based as well so you use in melee, that one is honestly hugely needed.

 

These are also mostly just base QoL increases, looking at the rework TA got, this is far from an absurd suggestion.

Edited October 28 by WindDemon21

[Snarky]

some friendly poison...

[Trickshooter]

On 10/24/2024 at 3:18 PM, WindDemon21 said:

Poison Trap: This power should be much sooner in the tier to tier 5 or 6. Even traps gets it a tier 6 and the traps version is easily better. The -end/-recovery also doesn't seem to be working at all. I know the -end states it's only a 1.5% chance? but it may as well not be there with that rate, just remove it and fix the -recovery, maybe bump it up to 150%.

 

The issue that makes Poison/Poison Trap so much worse than Traps/Poison Trap is that the lingering cloud created by Poison's version is not autohit, so every effect has to make two separate rolls in order to take affect.

 

Basically, they both have that initial hold that occurs when they're tripped by an enemy. But the cloud that stays behind and debuffs in the Traps version is autohit, but with most of the effects having only 2% chances to occur every 1 second, so they only have to make that 2% roll to take effect.

 

But the Poison version is not autohit, which means every second, every affect has to succeed at a ToHit roll (subject to level differences and accuracy slotting) and if that succeeds, then it has to make another roll for the 1.5/2% chance for the effects to occur. It's terrible and the only reason it's like this is because the power does like 1 point of damage every second and the devs of old had a zero tolerance policy when it came to powers that do damage being autohit.

 

The simplest way to improve the power is to make that cloud autohit and then individually flag the damage to need a successful tohit roll to be applied, similar to how other powers have been changed (most notably, Consume from Fiery Aura).

Edited October 29 by Trickshooter

[biostem]

I feel like part of the problem with poison, namely the smaller AoEs, could be somewhat remediated by giving the set some way of grouping up enemies or otherwise preventing them from spreading out.  To that end, what if neurotoxic breath was given an immobilize effect, or maybe make poison trap a ranged location power with a taunt effect similar to SoA's Omega Maneuver?

[WindDemon21]

On 10/29/2024 at 10:49 PM, biostem said:

I feel like part of the problem with poison, namely the smaller AoEs, could be somewhat remediated by giving the set some way of grouping up enemies or otherwise preventing them from spreading out.  To that end, what if neurotoxic breath was given an immobilize effect, or maybe make poison trap a ranged location power with a taunt effect similar to SoA's Omega Maneuver?

I wouldn't be against this but it kinda honestly doesn't make sense for poison. The aoe aspect is very huge on the issues with poison.

 

Starting with those main two debuffs:

 

The main issue here is the, honestly dumb mechanic, where it has the higher amount on the single target and lower on the aoe. Even if the higher were on the aoe, this still ends up being very pool in actual gameplay since the radius just screws it over, needing to roughly be cast 3 times in order to cover the same area, costing triple the endurance and taking at least about 15 seconds in order to do so on average. On top of the values being so poor in the aoe splash of it as well, it hardly does much outside of simply focusing on the single target you're casting it on and just "well it hit something else".

 

I'm not against special mechanics, but i am where it just really doesn't work out in most gameplay. It would be much better if these were just dedicated aoe debuffs with the higher value (since as their own the values are a bit low) for Weaken, which isn't a stretch since it's then the same to hit debuff as flash arrow but no unresistable portion, not autohit, smaller radius, and it notifies the mob, as well as no -perception, and the -damage is still far lower PGA, and worthy enough compared to some others. Envenom, is more of where the niche comes in since it's a little faster, but still suffers from the same issues described above, and only works when there are multiple enemies close enough to even get that double stack on. With a 15ft radius this would come into play a lot more which is also the idea, but there also doesn't even need to be this mechanic versus simply shifting over the extra debuff/-special etc into paralytic poison which is kinda sitting out there in an awkward spot anyway as i mentioned in the original post.

 

So basically as it is now, the set hardly does anything until it gets to poison trap (which also TERRIBLY has its own issues, especially since the hold doesn't reproc, which it should, even better than the traps version so like every 5 seconds it should reproc the hold) and vgas (which is fine but still think it should be 20ft to match ptrap and help it actually hit the mob while you're risking yourself in melee, constantly suppressing etc), which also are really not on tier 8/9 levels of most sets for what they do and really should be sooner as well. Alkaloid, is decent enough but pretty standard, ally rez, lol-worthy as consideration, and antidote, also generally skipped by most and not hugely impactful in most teams, and useless when solo. So for the set relying on envenom and weaken, and n-breath which also has major issues with the set synergy, especially given even at face value of "well it's a cone so you jump out and then back in to use it" It's still on the shortest duration timer, isn't a super wide cone, and also has one of the longest animations as well making it just a pure drudge to even use by doing so, hence making it at least taoe if not a location field.

 

Most of these right off the bat are QoL, bigger radii (which even 15ft is generous as far as it still being too small IMO, as debuffs versus just killing the mob, they really should be wider, lots of other support debuffs are and should be), being able to use nbreath in melee etc. The only actual buff to the core aspects is increasing weaken's values. Which make enough sense still even with vgas, given it has it's own balances of the lower values, being affected by purple patch, resistances, SUPPRESSION, not to mention, it's still at tier 9 as well. So while yes it would give poison some of the most debuff, that's kinda the point. It's supposed to be a huge debuff set. It also requires active casting and accuracy checks where most other debuffs in other support sets get theirs (at least the -to hit/damage ones) as autohit and don't require melee. This also could, and should, be someone helped on vgas as well if it, actually left the gas cloud if you get suppressed so the effects last 10 seconds, similar to how dispersion bubble works now only as a debuff.

 

If envenom, weaken, and nbreath were fixed, I'd see it fine enough if vgas had to remain at tier 9, but i do still think poison traps should be at least tier 6, with paralytic moving to tier 8, or if antidode was made pbaoe, would make more sense as the tier 8 keeping PP in it's current slot.

 

Edit: Just to reiterate how god awful poison trap is in traps too. My last poison was a troller I procced it out for damage, which even with 3 purples and some others still felt somewhat meh for such a damage proc overload, but completely forgot since it procs those twice, that it doens't even reproc the hold like the traps version does. It's insane how bad this and the set is.

Edited 18 hours ago by WindDemon21