I don't get the love for Poison

[WuTang]

51 minutes ago, tidge said:

(*1) for example, in some circumstances 'dragging' bosses from one spawn to the next can be more efficient than standing around to defeat a boss.

And in an uncoordinated PUG, how many stay behind killing that single boss? LOL My experience has been 2 or 3 most of the time and at least 1 every time.

 

It's sort of like how in an ITF, on that first pull where most of the time there are two groups, one static, the other patrolling, and more than half the team pour it on, blowing their Judgement and maybe their T9 nuke as well, then have nothing for the huge pull in the first big room. All of these variables... Playstyles account for so much of the inefficiency. 

[WuTang]

7 minutes ago, dukedukes said:

 

It's not just poison... According to your logic nearly every -res debuff available in the game is not worth taking. Goofy thinking at best, the only valid criticism of VG is it notifies mobs. Enjoy your blaster.

Bub, you seem to be taking this personal. How 'bout we tap out for a bit...well, I will, do what you want.

[dukedukes]

12 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Bub, you seem to be taking this personal. How 'bout we tap out for a bit...well, I will, do what you want.

 

The cards are on the table at this point, not much more to say. It's all good 🫂

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, dukedukes said:

 

With Darks 3 sec cast times I could understand not wanting to use it, though I'm not sure your attacks would be any more efficient. VG is a toggle so there's no effort involved. I just combat TP or spit jump (it's advanced poison stuff... don't ask) into fights and VG does its job without me accounting for it.

 

 

I guess not... Well, it's good you picked up poison trap to help out teams like this, or are we team blaster now? The goalposts keep moving around... hard to keep track. I do still remember my Envenom is ~60% better than yours, so that's cool.

I do have the oppressive gloom toggle, almost always running. But solo charging large spawns i toss Dark Pit giving a brief window of mag 4 stun.  This is great for my PBAoE Nuke and PBAoE Incarnate Nuke. But, … on a  speed team i sometimes do not even cast Fearsome Stare.  Just Nuke and/or hang back and add Cone AoEs to Scourge whatever my teammates are nuking. If the fight is tough i do try to get Tar Patch out. 

[Jacke]

I have a Poison/Water Blast Defender who's build I crafted with the help of others including @Psyonico.  I'm unfamiliar with both Powersets, so the build is likely open to improvement.

 

I took Water Blast to have some self-healing besides from the Defender ATO1 special.  Didn't take Poison Trap, but after reading what @WuTang wrote, now I'm wondering if I should squeeze it back in.

 

Definitely took Envenom and Weaken early and slotted heavily.  And worked mostly on getting good RA Defense.  I expected Venomous Gas to be primarily protective against meleeing mobs.  Stuck to just giving it 1 Extra Slot and planning to slot with 2x Enzyme Exposures.

 

 

[dukedukes]

9 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I do have the oppressive gloom toggle, almost always running. But solo charging large spawns i toss Dark Pit giving a brief window of mag 4 stun

 

Mag 4 stun is peak entertainment, great choice. I run that on a warshade with gravitic emanation and inky aspect, I wish they were max 16 target powers but it's still pretty fun regardless. 

[EnjoyTheJourney]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

In my experience, the dominant "math" is "how many more attacks to defeat the spawn?". If only 70 more damage will do the trick, doing 12% more than 70 to defeat the spawn isn't speeding up defeat times by 12%. By the time this sort of debuff has a measurable effect... we are either talking about playstyles that can be considered "inefficient"(*1) or are of limited circumstance(*2). Even when adventures are advertised as "kill most", it is extremely rare that I see a team trying to "kill most"... of course I have to remind myself that 51% of spawn defeats would qualify as "most".

 

(*1) for example, in some circumstances 'dragging' bosses from one spawn to the next can be more efficient than standing around to defeat a boss.

 

(*2) for example, standing around next to a GM or some other bag of HP.

Try out the math another way. Let's say a generic level 54 boss has 2730 hit points and a generic level 54 elite boss has 5400 hit points. For ease of calculation, they have no resistances to any kinds of damage and their life regen is zero. This makes for conservative estimates of the effects of -res damage multipliers on clear speed.

With purple patch effects applied, damage does 65% of its nominal value to +3 mobs. With the above assumptions about enemy resistances and life regen that means enemies have the following effective life pools ...

effective boss hit points after purple patch effects ... 2,730 / 0.65 =4,200
effective elite boss hit points after purple patch effects ... 5,400 / 0.65 = 8307

 

So, let's say a nuke does 2,000 hit points of damage. Very impressive, the boss only needs 2,200 hit points more incoming (nominal) damage to be defeated. But wait, that pesky VG-using poison character was in the vicinity applying VG to that boss. So, they lost about another 240 effective health. Now it only takes a little less than 2000 more (nominal) damage to take down the boss. The same calculation shows the elite boss can still survive 6307 hit points of incoming (nominal) damage before they fall over. Or, just over 6000 damage if VG has been applied. 

When you add more and more damage to each them the question becomes whether or not the amount of damage added from VG is likely to more than make one or more incoming attacks to the boss or elite boss unnecessary. Since bosses and elite bosses have significant life pools, and in practice they often have some meaningful damage resistances and some life regen, VG is noticeably contributing to damage with every single attack that lands. The odds are quite good that as you're getting close to doing all the damage needed to take out a boss or elite boss that VG already contributed more to damage done than at least one (and perhaps multiples) of the individual attacks being directed at a boss or (especially) an elite boss. 

This is a more accurate way of trying to analyze the effects of VG effects on clear speed, instead of trying to work backward from a small amount of "remaining life" to figuring out the same thing. 

Edited 13 hours ago by EnjoyTheJourney

[tidge]

This comes dangerously true to describing my thinking about -Resistance...

 

7 minutes ago, dukedukes said:

According to your logic nearly every -res debuff available in the game is not worth taking. Goofy thinking at best, the only valid criticism of VG is it notifies mobs. 

 

...where the quote doesn't accurately describe my thinking about -Resistance is this: If -Resistance can be shown to have a reliable reduction in effort to defeat whatever, and the -Resistance isn't otherwise compromising my personal playstyle (or build goals)... I'm reaching for the -Resistance.

 

I agree: -Resistance is a force multiplier. If I'm running a Mastermind, or something else with pets that are damage dealers... -Resistance will speed up my solo times. .. but a lot of this has to do with henchmen and pets being generally worse than players at defeating spawns.

 

I'll also reach for -Resistance when I'm playing something that will absolutely be hanging close with the enemy and not otherwise being susceptible to being defeated or unlikely to defeat the enemy in one or two attacks. (*)

 

As I noted in this thread long ago... for my playstyle VG wasn't helping clear spawns, for my team efforts, I was having to compromise too much in my build to be "at the heart of it all" just to have VG (possibly) contribute. For those teams, I started hanging back (or keeping VG toggled off) and I didn't notice a change in our team's performance.

 

5 minutes ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Try out the math another way. Let's say a generic level 54 boss has 2730 hit points and a generic level 54 elite boss has 5400 hit points. For ease of calculation, they have no resistances to any kinds of damage and their life regen is zero. This makes for conservative estimates of the effects of -res damage multipliers on clear speed.

 

<blah blah blah fishcakes>

 

For single targets with large sacks of health, Envenom's -Regen is not insignificant, and it has a larger amount of -Resistance than Venomous Gas... and the -Resistance of Envenom is for All damage types. As I wrote, I'm not anti -Resistance.

 

(*)The question of "how many attacks to defeat?" gets really tricky once %damage from procs is in play. %damage is inherently unreliable, and most proc-bombed attacks use procs with different types of damage.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, WuTang said:

And in an uncoordinated PUG, how many stay behind killing that single boss? LOL My experience has been 2 or 3 most of the time and at least 1 every time.

 

It's sort of like how in an ITF, on that first pull where most of the time there are two groups, one static, the other patrolling, and more than half the team pour it on, blowing their Judgement and maybe their T9 nuke as well, then have nothing for the huge pull in the first big room. All of these variables... Playstyles account for so much of the inefficiency. 

 

This also aligns with my own experiences. Players don't typically coordinate enough to leverage the percentages, so scenarios that ignore player behavior as well as RNG and mobile positioning are at best asymptotic hypotheticals. ITFs can be especially cruel because of the  DDR, -ToHit debuff or not.

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by tidge
Pilums Schmilums!

[dukedukes]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

For single targets with large sacks of health, Envenom's -Regen is not insignificant

 

High HP targets (AV's, GM's) have 60-87% regen res so -50 is pretty bad. Poison isn't known for its -regen, traps has -1000 regen and a bunch of the debuffers have -500. It matters most on GM's and that's a pretty specific activity so it doesn't hurt the set much IMO.

[Snarky]

I am trying to be honest here.  As much as my dumb Snarky (pat pend TM) butt can be.  
 

Corr, specifically Ice Cold Corr, but all Corr, are the TOP choice for hard content.  Because -res and debuffs.  
 

How are we having multi page debates about if -res is good?  Seriously 😐 

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I'm as puzzled as Snarky. I don't see how this thread has not yet reached a consensus. 

I've seen rational arguments in multiple game forums for why "additive" increases to damage can have a very marginal effect. But, damage multipliers (such as resistance debuffs, although there are also other kinds of damage multipliers) are usually a crucial focus for builds across ARPGs, MMOs, and other games where damage is important. I can't recall any other game forum in which I've seen players, other than perhaps brand new players, repeatedly assert that double digit damage multipliers won't make a noticeable difference.

At this point, there are other things to do.