I don't get the love for Poison

[EnjoyTheJourney]

It is true that that the stacking mechanics work differently for the T2 and T3 poison debuffs when compared to other debuffs that can stack, such as tar patch and freezing rain. For the T2 and T3 poison debuffs you get the highest debuff on the one targeted and a lesser debuff for those affected by a splash from the targeted debuff. That seems mechanically reasonable to me and probably ultimately to the advantage of players because you get to choose which target gets the "Big Kahuna" debuff and which get the lesser debuff. 

It is more work to double up the T2 and T3 debuffs on mobs, for sure, compared to freezing rain and tar patch. But, venomous gas will usually get applied to mobs only affected by the "lesser" splash debuff, which still makes for a higher total than the T2 / T3 splash debuffs on their own. In practice, it's usually only when fighting EBs and above that it's worth bothering to both target mobs directly with a T2 debuff and to also stack a "splash" of the T2 debuff on them. So, in practice the "wonkiness", as you're calling it, which I would call instead "a welcome opportunity to stack debuffs when they're useful", tends to come up only every so often. 

I can empathize with finding it bothersome that a clearly melee-focused set is given a cone with a lot of range on it and a long casting time. Mechanically it seems at odds with the rest of the set. In a similar vein, I've often found it bothersome to have those kinds of cones in a melee-focused dominator assault set because to me those are "dead spots" in the assault set that I'll never touch. Still, I don't see how having a cone is relevant for making judgments specific to just the poison set. It seems to me that's part of a larger discussion about set design, at the end of the day. 
 

Edited 21 hours ago by EnjoyTheJourney

[tidge]

[WuTang]

13 hours ago, JayboH said:

One of my main focuses in the original post was to point out how wonky the two main debuffs are however - that only the main target gets a full strength debuff and even then it is not the highest debuff you can get on the main target because if you hit a nearby target with the same debuff only then will the first target get the full+splash debuffs.  If a target is hit with two splashes, do they stack if the targeted enemy is different for each splash?  It's weird as heck, and then as I mentioned you have a power that encourages melee range while also having a ranged cone combined without the ability to survive being in melee depending on the scenario.

 

Yes, I agree it is a wonky set. I do like the splash mechanic though. I look at the splash stacking as a bonus and not as part of the main debuff. From my understanding it used to only be single target so the splash is an upgrade. My only problem is I want to target a couple bosses or at least the hardest targets in the group for the main debuff but tab cycling is a very inefficient means for this as the group and team effect target positioning. I also wish there was some animation on the main targets so we'd know who is poisoned. 

 

I'm not real sure how usefully Neurotoxic Breath is. And if you pair Poison with an offense that is heavy on cones, not gonna be a good fit. Unless....you skip Venomous Gas, which actually isn't a terrible idea TBH. It's roughly half the debuff strength as the ranged ones and a huge end drain, blasphemous I know. But think about it, VG is the only reason to be in melee range and the idea is to stack the debuffs, but the ranged debuffs are already pretty stout when they are stacked....hmmm.

Edited 10 hours ago by WuTang

[tidge]

FWIW, I always skip Venomous Gas. It doesn't fit my play style; I can't make the character with it sturdy enough to use it well (because I have other priorities besides trying to make a capstone power useful); I don't need it (solo or on teams)

[UltraAlt]

On 8/22/2025 at 5:57 PM, JayboH said:

It would have been cool to have some DoTs added to a set with this theme.

 

I'm confused. It is a heal/buff/debuff set like the other Corruptor secondaries. 

Which other Corruptor secondary has powers that cause damage?

[TygerDarkstorm]

6 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I'm confused. It is a heal/buff/debuff set like the other Corruptor secondaries. 

Which other Corruptor secondary has powers that cause damage?

Storm is rather well known as a support powerset that actually brings a lot of damage to the table. Cold has sleet, not that that does a whole lot of damage since it's mostly used for the debuffing. Trick arrow has the oil arrow, and Marine has shifting tides.

[Uun]

3 hours ago, WuTang said:

I'm not real sure how usefully Neurotoxic Breath is. And if you pair Poison with an offense that is heavy on cones, not gonna be a good fit. Unless....you skip Venomous Gas, which actually isn't a terrible idea TBH. It's roughly half the debuff strength as the ranged ones and a huge end drain, blasphemous I know. But think about it, VG is the only reason to be in melee range and the idea is to stack the debuffs, but the ranged debuffs are already pretty stout when they are stacked....hmmm.

I may be in the minority, but I like Neurotoxic Breath. It's not only a movement debuff, it's one of the strongest recharge debuffs in the game. I slot it with 1 acc IO, 1 slow IO and 2 %dmg procs (which are virtually guaranteed to fire). The 25% chance to hold is just gravy and can't be enhanced. That said, I wouldn't object to it receiving a buff similar to the one Shiver got when it became Cold Snap.

 

While cones aren't optimal with Poison, they're very manageable (my Poison/Sonic has 3). I don't (and would never) skip Venomous Gas. You just need to become practiced at bunny hopping backward. Combat Teleport can also be useful for this if you set up a bind to TP yourself backward 20-30 feet.

[tidge]

My PoV is that if an enemy could be defeated by me being within melee range of my debuff for less than 10 seconds, my debuff was probably not necessary.

 

As I noted why I skip Venomous Gas: I don't appreciate having to invest in pool powers to make a T9 power useful.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Regarding the "dual boss" scenario, having everything around the one boss that didn't get the "big kahuna" debuff melt faster also makes the one boss who only got the splash debuff melt faster because it will tend to be the last undefeated mob quite soon after the fight starts. If you really feel the need to speed up that process then you can click one button after only that boss is left and apply the full debuff if you'd like. One surviving boss is seldom more than a minor speed bump for a team anyways, either way. 

Still, if somebody enjoys their character more when played at range, then that's more than reason enough to do it. CoH is a pretty easy game and optimizing for fun will usually still lead to a mechanically effective character. It's when you're operating in melee with a poison character that you can really accelerate a team's rate of progress through missions, though. Venomous gas increases the -res and -defense debuffs on enemies, which is helpful for clear speed. And, venomous gas also helps to make it safer to keep drop a highly damaging poison trap loaded with procs as often as possible, which also noticeably helps to improve clear speed. 

[WuTang]

1 hour ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Regarding the "dual boss" scenario, having everything around the one boss that didn't get the "big kahuna" debuff melt faster

 

I find that a dual boss situation is perfect...they both get the "big kahuna" debuff and the splash debuff...and both melt.

[WuTang]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

ou just need to become practiced at bunny hopping backward. Combat Teleport can also be useful for this if you set up a bind to TP yourself backward 20-30 feet.

 

With my current toon, this is exactly what I do, but it's down to theme. A dragon that breathes fire and poison.