Posion - Venemous Gas Suggestion

[Castiel777]

As a controller can we please make it so that I can target an ally or enemy with this ability. Having it on me all the time really isn't ideal and doesn't do much if were to compare it to something like Hurricane where that would make sense. I would love to stick it on my tank or scrapper. 😄

[Psyonico]

The MM version is kind of like this, but terrible.  It's a click power that puts the aura on a pet.  However, it is on a very long recharge and the debuffs are not enhanceable. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

It would make tanks way too powerful. 

 

I agree it's completely underpowered as a PBAoE toggle 

 

Personally I'd like to see the last couple of poison powers reconfigured

 

Paralyic Poison underwhelms - but there are game balance reasons why we should keep it

 

Poison Trap is useless and so is VG. 

 

Make VG a gtaoe that pulses in the same way that Lightning Storm does but pulses gas that sleeps/holds enemies

 

But then you'd need to do something with Poison Trap, which is also sucky. I'd advocate for a cone spit that is untargeted (like the Vorpal Incarnate power) so it goes in the direction you're facing and anything in the cone is hit with a corrosive venom that does damage and reduces defence. 

[dukedukes]

VG is a bit unique that it puts you in a precarious position of notifying mobs in order to debuff them. It's an aspect of the set that is unique and interesting to build around. Sonic already has an ally targeted -res as an option, removing something unique and making it something similar to what already exists doesn't seem interesting to me.

[Frosticus]

Please don't.

PT and VG are 2 of the 4 key powers in poison. 

 

If poison is tweaked I hope VG and PT remain as they are.

[srmalloy]

9 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Poison Trap is useless and so is VG. 

Depends on circumstances. Playing solo, my Grav/Traps Controller uses Poison Trap regularly, putting down 3-5 Trip Mines, a Poison Trap (occasionally two) and sometimes an Acid Mortar, then Wormholing a spawn onto the mines. The Poison Trap helps ensure that any survivors of the blast don't react as they get a random piece of sculpture bounced off them. On teams, though, the team is generally fixated on speed, moving so fast that in the time it takes to put down Poison Trap and one Trip Mine, the team has already bumrushed the next spawn, so she normally uses Poison Trap and Trip Mine for preemptively mining the known approaches of ambushes (like in the Yin TF, when she plants several PTs in the antechamber of the reactor room, knowing that a Freakshow ambush will be coming through there). Since Traps doesn't have VG, though, I can't speak to it for that character.

[Scarlet Shocker]

23 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Depends on circumstances. Playing solo, my Grav/Traps Controller uses Poison Trap regularly, putting down 3-5 Trip Mines, a Poison Trap (occasionally two) and sometimes an Acid Mortar, then Wormholing a spawn onto the mines. The Poison Trap helps ensure that any survivors of the blast don't react as they get a random piece of sculpture bounced off them. On teams, though, the team is generally fixated on speed, moving so fast that in the time it takes to put down Poison Trap and one Trip Mine, the team has already bumrushed the next spawn, so she normally uses Poison Trap and Trip Mine for preemptively mining the known approaches of ambushes (like in the Yin TF, when she plants several PTs in the antechamber of the reactor room, knowing that a Freakshow ambush will be coming through there). Since Traps doesn't have VG, though, I can't speak to it for that character.

 

That is very fair comment. 

 

I think one of my big problems with poison traps is that it's stuck to the ground and a specific location - I found that many of my best Poison toons take hover because they are above the fray, and so it is additionally tiresome when you have to disengage hover just to park the trap then click hover and relocate. This is not just a problem with poison but many ground based powers. It's more of a problem with hover than the power itself in that you can be at zero height but if hover is on, you can't use the power. It's almost as if Devs Hate Hover 🤣

[Scarlet Shocker]

9 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Please don't.

PT and VG are 2 of the 4 key powers in poison. 

 

If poison is tweaked I hope VG and PT remain as they are.

 

I don't think you've made a case here, just statement

[dukedukes]

10 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Please don't.

PT and VG are 2 of the 4 key powers in poison. 

 

If poison is tweaked I hope VG and PT remain as they are.

 

Have you thought up a poison redesign? I wouldn't mind reading through it.

[Uun]

15 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Poison Trap is useless and so is VG. 

Useless to you the way you play Poison. I've got an Illusion/Poison controller and a Poison/Sonic defender. I find both to be incredibly useful. Poison Trap works well as both an AoE control and a proc bomb. If you're comfortable living in melee range (which you should be to play Poison effectively), Venomous Gas, stacked with Envenom and Weaken, neuters your foes and floors their resistance. 

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

It's more of a problem with hover than the power itself in that you can be at zero height but if hover is on, you can't use the power.

Then you should be proposing that it, like many other of the powers that were originally "only on the ground", be altered to function when you're close to the ground, and can be used when you're in minimal-altitude hover or flight.

[tidge]

My personal take on Venomous Gas is: I never take it (for reasons explained ad nauseum in another thread)... but if I could toggle the Controller version on an ally, it would absolutely be OP enough that I'd always take it (eventually). It's because the VG toggle only works on otherwise fragile ATs with few PBAoE/melee option is the root cause of my avoidance of it.

 

Briefly: The self-toggle VG is a power that looks good in theory, but like several other powers that look good on paper it doesn't contribute enough in my actual play experiences (measured by mission clear times, number of attacks that need to be made) to warrant the sorts of build choices and changes to play style to try to leverage it. I do think that there are corner cases where having VG might be better than not having it... but in my experiences these are rare enough that if I thought such a choice was the correct one (for that content) I would just have a second build that incorporates VG (and whatever other changes I'd have to incorporate for that content).

[Scarlet Shocker]

4 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Then you should be proposing that it, like many other of the powers that were originally "only on the ground", be altered to function when you're close to the ground, and can be used when you're in minimal-altitude hover or flight.

 

I have done so and my pleas seem to fall on deaf ears

[Scarlet Shocker]

6 hours ago, Uun said:

Useless to you the way you play Poison.

I've made this point many times over the years. The beauty of this game is that it can be played many ways. I figured that was kind of inherent in my post. 

[Frosticus]

19 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

I don't think you've made a case here, just statement

Is this more clear with regards to my position?

 

 

 

 

[Major_Decoy]

21 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Depends on circumstances. Playing solo, my Grav/Traps Controller uses Poison Trap regularly, putting down 3-5 Trip Mines, a Poison Trap (occasionally two) and sometimes an Acid Mortar, then Wormholing a spawn onto the mines. The Poison Trap helps ensure that any survivors of the blast don't react as they get a random piece of sculpture bounced off them. On teams, though, the team is generally fixated on speed, moving so fast that in the time it takes to put down Poison Trap and one Trip Mine, the team has already bumrushed the next spawn, so she normally uses Poison Trap and Trip Mine for preemptively mining the known approaches of ambushes (like in the Yin TF, when she plants several PTs in the antechamber of the reactor room, knowing that a Freakshow ambush will be coming through there). Since Traps doesn't have VG, though, I can't speak to it for that character.

 

Traps' Poison Trap is not the same as Poison's Poison Trap. Traps' Poison Trap has a -1000% regeneration effect. Poison's Poison trap has a -100% recovery effect. Poison also doesn't have trip mines or the ability to front load damage the way Traps does. Gravity/Traps sounds like a pretty cool pairing because not only do you have the ability to fortify an area to prepare for enemies, but you also have a way to get them there.

 

Venomous Gas is a nice power if you build for it, grab as much defense as you can (it needs to be defense because if you get mezzed Venomous Gas detoggles). It's great for defenders that like to be in melee. You get an auto-hit debuff that you don't need to activate on every spawn, and poison trap is useful as a PBAoE hold (I mean, it's 100% chance of a mag 3 hold when it goes off). As long as all your enemies are within fifteen feet of you, they're held and debuffed, you've got paralytic poison for bosses, it's pretty good.

 

The problem with Venomous gas and Poison trap is that they the last two powers in the set and the only powers in the set that can't be used at range. All the rest of the set is training you to stay at range. Envenom and Weaken have small enough splash radii that if you shoot at someone to your left, you won't hit a target on your right. Neurotoxic Venom is a narrow cone with a sixty-foot range. And it has no self-buffing powers, so all that defense you need comes from set bonuses and pool powers.

 

It's just not a set that meshes with itself well. If you want to keep range poison trap and venomous gas are useless. If you want to melee then you're probably using almost only venomous gas and poison trap, and just using envenom and weaken on the hard targets.

 

If you know the set when you start building the character, venomous gas and poison trap are really useful. If you're learning the set from playing the character and you pick a blast set that likes to stay at range, like Water Blast, then venomous gas and poison trap just seem worthless. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

5 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Is this more clear with regards to my position?

 

 

 

 

 

Certainly makes things clearer 🙂

[srmalloy]

7 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

Gravity/Traps sounds like a pretty cool pairing because not only do you have the ability to fortify an area to prepare for enemies, but you also have a way to get them there.

It's a stylistic thing, but when I'm running my Grav/Traps Controller through missions solo, I regard it as a bit of a personal failure if any of the mobs in the mission get an attack off before they go down. I respec'd out of a couple of procs in Wormhole that I'd seen in a build here on the forum because they didn't mesh with the playstyle -- Wormhole by itself doesn't cause aggro, but if you put a proc in it, the proc check aggros everything in the effect radius, even if the to-hit check on the teleport fails. 

[Shin Magmus]

HARD NO.

 

   Venomous Gas is one of the best powers in the entire game except on MMs, where it is much worse.  The toggle being on you means you're in complete control of where it is and can easily make it affect all enemies in a fight.  Similar powers like Sonic Disruption are quite a bit more annoying because you have to hope that you have a fast and cooperative teammate, and you can't reasonably expect another player to move exactly where you want them to.  With a pet you can sometimes crudely command them into ideal melee positions, but we all know it's like herding cats and they are flat-out slower than players.  You are your most reliable ally.