Weak in the Knees
A Comparative Analysis of Mastermind Debuffing Secondary Powersets
Part 1: Overview
Masterminds are a powerful class, combining unique pet-oriented damage primary powersets with more traditional support-oriented secondary powersets. These support-oriented powers are shared with other player archetypes: defenders, controllers, and corruptors. These secondary powersets can provide support to a team in a number of ways. Support-oriented powersets can buff by shielding, healing, or otherwise improving teammates abilities; protect by using control powers such as holds and stuns; provide another source of damage to help defeat a foe; and debuff enemies, making them more vulnerable and less dangerous.
Debuffs can be categorized in three ways. First are offensive debuffs, which make it easier for you to defeat enemies. These include defense, resistance, and regeneration debuffs. These allow you to hit opponents more easily, do more damage when you do hit, or prevent enemies from healing as quickly. Second are mitigating debuffs, which help survivability by making it harder for enemies to defeat you. These include to hit, damage, recharge, and recovery debuffs. These improve survivability by making it harder for enemies to hit you, or reducing enemy damage output, reducing enemies attack speed, or decreasing attacks when enemies have to wait to recover endurance. Finally there are control-like debuffs which include speed debuffs, perception debuffs, and powers that make it so opponents cant fly or jump. These debuffs help you control the shape of the battlefield, though not to the extent of actual controls.
This analysis was prompted by my interest in Poison as a mastermind secondary and my concern that Poison may not hold up well when compared to other support sets. Poison has been called the premier single target debuffing set. Others have questioned this, pointing out that other sets (Radiation Emission being the gold standard) debuff with numbers equal to Poison but affect multiple foes at once, making those sets more powerful overall.
I decided to look more closely at mastermind support sets and their debuffing aspects in order to get a better picture of how well they compare to one another. I did not include support sets that masterminds do not currently have access to. This analysis will look most closely at five sets in particular. Force Fields offers no significant debuffs. Thermal Radiation and Pain Domination offer debuffs that can be quite powerful, but are less likely to be utilized routinely and more likely to be saved for EB, AV, Hero, and GM fights due to long recharges on the powers.
Part 2: The Powersets
Poison is a powerset that offers debuffs, single target buffs (heal, resurrection, mezz protection) for team support, and controls (though one of the controls is unwieldy and often ineffective). Poison is unique to the mastermind archetype at present.
Poison has four debuffing powers: Envenom, Weaken, Neurotoxic Breath, and Noxious Gas. The first three can be made perma with 100% recharge. The only stacking aspect of these four powers is the Regeneration debuff found in Envenom. Two of Poisons debuffing powers are pure debuffsthey dont provide damage, buffs, or controls. Neurotoxic Breath has a chance to provide a brief minion hold, and Noxious Gas has a chance to provide a powerful hold. Both of these chances to hold can provide some minor mitigation, but are largely flavor. The main effect of both powers are the debuffs. Noxious Gas is unusual in that the defense debuff and to hit debuff aspects of the power cannot be improved by the use of enhancements.
Poison offers significant debuffs to each major category, plus debuffs special. Weaken offers a significant debuff to affected foes mezzes and secondary effects, such as buffs and debuffs. This is unique among mastermind debuffs, and is shared only with Cold Dominations Benumb. Weakens special debuff is an example of a debuff that transcends the scheme I described earlier, as it can be thought of as both an offensive and a mitigation debuff.
Only the regeneration debuff from Envenom is stackable in Poison. Otherwise, additional applications of the power only extends the duration.
Dark Miasma is a diverse powerset that offers debuffs, controls, buffs, and damage. Dark Miasma is interesting partly because many of its powers are double-barreled or more, offering a number of different effects at once. For example, Twilight Grasp is both an AoE heal and a debuff which has been recently improved for masterminds by significantly increasing the heals radius. Howling Twilight is the height of this kind of grouping of effects, offering a buff (resurrection), debuff, damage, and control all at once.
Dark Miasma has five debuffing powers, plus an additional four debuffing powers in the pet, Dark Servant. The five debuffs outside of Dark Servant are: Twilight Grasp, Tar Patch, Darkest Night, Howling Twilight, and Fearsome Stare. The debuffs provided by Dark Servant are Chill of the Night, Twilight Grasp, Darkest Night, and Tenebrous Tentacles. The majority of Dark Miasmas debuffs are paired with powers that provide other benefits as noted above. The Dark Servant provides a more powerful version of the heal and some damage in addition to its debuffs. Only Darkest Night and Tar Patch are pure debuffs.
Dark Miasma offers significant debuffs to resistance, to hit, damage, recharge, regeneration and run speed, with only defense debuffs missing.
All of Dark Miasmas debuffs will stack, meaning additional applications of the power will increase the debuff. For many of Dark Miasmas powers, this is possible because the debuffs are actually provided by a pseudo pet summoned by the power. In addition, the Dark Servants debuffs will stack with the masterminds debuffs. While Darkest Night cant stack in the traditional sense as it is a toggle, both the masterminds and Dark Servants DN will stack with each other.
Storm Summoning has four debuffing powers: Snowstorm, Freezing Rain, Hurricane, and Tornado. Only Snowstorm is a pure debuff power. Freezing Rain and Tornado provide controls and damage, while Hurricane provides control. Storm Summoning provides significant debuffs to defense, resistance, to hit, recharge, regeneration, and run speed. The only significant missing debuff is damage.
Snowstorm and Hurricane arent stackable debuffs as they are toggles (though they would stack with a teammates Snowstorm and Hurricane), but both Freezing Rain and Tornado are stackable as both summon pseudo pets to apply the debuffs.
Traps has five debuffing powers: Web Grenade, Caltrops, Acid Mortar, Poison Trap, and Seeker Drones. The powers provide controls and damage, though in the case of Acid Mortar, the damage is quite low. The presence of damage in Acid Mortar does provide the opportunity to use procs from IO sets, however. The set provides significant debuffs to defense, resistance, damage, recharge, regeneration, and run speed, with minor to hit debuffs.
All of Traps debuffs are stackable except Web Grenade, as all are applied by pseudo pets.
All nine of Trick Arrows powers have debuffs: Entangling Arrow, Flash Arrow, Glue Arrow, Ice Arrow, Poison Gas Arrow, Acid Arrow, Disruption Arrow, Oil Slick Arrow, and EMP Arrow. Flash Arrow and Glue Arrow are pure debuff powers, while the rest provide controls and/or damage (quite significant damage in the case of Oil Slick Arrow). Overall, the set provides significant debuffs to defense, resistance, damage, recharge, and run speed, with minor to hit debuffs and a powerful but rarely available regeneration debuff.
Trick Arrows debuffs from Entangling Arrow, Flash Arrow, and Acid Arrow are not stackable. As a practical matter, Oil Slick Arrow and EMP Arrow are not stackable either, due to the long recharges. Glue Arrow, Ice Arrow, and Disruption Arrow are stackable. I cant determine if PGAs debuff is applied by a pseudo pet and is stackable. If someone would like to do the testing, Ill be glad to add that information to this analysis.
Part 3: The Numbers
The tables listed below provide a side by side look at the aggregate debuffs offered by the five mastermind secondaries that provide a wide range of debuffs. The tables do not include all of the different kinds of debuffs. In particular, perception, recovery, run speed, fly and jump debuffs do not appear. In addition, the special debuff of Weaken is not listed as it is a unique effect.
The tables indicate the base debuffs available without enhancement. The debuffs listed with an asterisk next to them are typically improvable via enhancements. These improvable debuffs are defense and to hit debuffs. The only power where these debuffs cannot be enhanced is Poisons Noxious Gas.
The tables assume a reasonable amount of recharge via enhancements, Hasten, and/or global recharge bonuses. Ive somewhat arbitrarily set this amount of recharge at 100%. This number ignores animation times and Arcanatime, however, so the amount of recharge needed would actually be slightly higher in some cases.
For those debuffs from a power that will stack with multiple applications of that power, Ive capped the number of stacks at two. This seems reasonable as the mastermind will be applying all the available debuffs but also managing pets and providing buffs and controls.
A note regarding Dark Miasma: Because the mastermind has little control over how Dark Servant uses its powers, only Chill of the Night (a 10 radius auto debuff centered on Dark Servant) is used in the calculations. This does mean that Dark Miasmas total debuffing is underestimated once Dark Servant is available. Dark Servant is just short of being perma with 100% recharge. For this analysis, Ive counted it as perma.
A note regarding Poison: I had difficulty obtaining the actual debuff numbers on Noxious Gas. The real numbers available in game do not match the numbers provided by Poison Pill in his guide to Thugs/Poison, and Red Tomaxs database includes only a series of multipliers that I do not know how to apply to the various levels of pets. Because Noxious Gas scales to the pet, I believe the numbers provided in real numbers are not accurate and so I have chosen to use Poison Pills numbers instead. The numbers used for calculations in the table are for the tier two pet. The debuffs would be somewhat stronger on the tier three pet, somewhat weaker on the tier one pet. If anyone has something more definitive, please let me know.
The first table provides a look at the debuffs that can be made perma on a single target (always on a foe without gaps in debuffing). These debuffs can be single target or AoE debuffs, but here we are looking at the impact on a single target.
The second table lists the maximum debuffs that can be applied to a single target. Its important to remember that the amount of time that these debuffs will be applied varies greatly. In some cases, these debuffs can be made perma with additional recharge, in other cases the downtime is fairly significant.
The third and fourth tables list the AoE debuffs that a mastermind can apply permanently and then at the maximum. These two tables in essence remove the single target debuffs and allow us to look at how everything other than the primary target in a spawn will be affected. For this reason, we can think of tables three and four as the splash effects of our debuffs.
For all the tables, the first three debuffs listed are offensive debuffs (defense, resistance, and regeneration) and the last three debuffs listed are mitigation debuffs (to hit, damage, and recharge).
Table 1: Perma debuffs at 100% recharge
..............Poison......Dark.......Storm.....Tra ps......TA
Defense*......22.50.......--.........45.00.....40.00......15.00
Resistance....30.00.......30.00......30.00.....40. 00......30.00
Regeneration..100.0.......100.0......--........--.........--
To.Hit*.......11.25.......60.00......22.50.....--.........3.75
Damage........22.50.......37.50......--........--.........--
Recharge......65.00.......--.........90.00.....50.00......40.00
Table 2: Maximum debuffs at 100% recharge
..............Poison......Dark.......Storm.....Tra ps......TA
Defense*......42.50.......--.........45.00.....40.00......40.00
Resistance....60.00.......60.00......30.00.....40. 00......45.00
Regeneration..100.0.......600.0......--........1,000......1,000
To.Hit*.......21.25.......60.00......22.50.....5.0 0.......3.75
Damage........42.50.......37.50......--........20.00......15.00
Recharge......65.00.......50.00......90.00.....80. 00......40.00
Table 3: AoE perma debuffs at 100% recharge
..............Poison......Dark.......Storm.....Tra ps......TA
Defense*......--..........--.........45.00.....40.00......15.00
Resistance....--..........30.00......30.00.....40.00......30.00
Regeneration..--..........--.........--........--.........--
To.Hit*.......--..........52.50......22.50.....--.........3.75
Damage........--..........22.50......--........--.........--
Recharge......65.00.......--.........90.00.....--.........30.00
Table 4: AoE maximum debuffs at 100% recharge
..............Poison......Dark........Storm....Tra ps......TA
Defense*......20.00.......--..........45.00....40.00......40.00
Resistance....30.00.......30.00.......30.00....40. 00......45.00
Regeneration..--..........500.0.......--.......1,000......1,000
To.Hit*.......10.00.......52.50.......22.50....5.0 0.......3.75
Damage........20.00.......22.50.......--.......20.00......15.00
Recharge......65.00.......50.00.......90.00....30. 00......20.00
Part 4: Discussion
What started my interest in the debuffs available to masterminds was my concern about Poisons performance. What I find is that Poison is a reasonable debuffing set, but is only a standout in two areas. First, Poison debuffs everything and it debuffs everything reasonably well on a single target. Secondly, Poison offers a debuff no other mastermind set offers: the special debuff found in Weaken. Weaken can cut into a single targets mezzes, buffs, and debuffs in a way that other sets cannot. However, other sets might offer ways to mitigate against a single targets mezzes, buffs, and debuffs in other ways. In particular, controls offer mitigation to these effects that can be more complete than a debuff, simply by preventing the foe from using their powers at all.
Three of Poisons debuffs require a hit check, and so require slotting for accuracy. Only Noxious Gas is an auto-hit debuff.
Where does Poison really fail? AoE debuffs, of course. This is no particular surprise, but extent of Poisons weakness in this area is not fully appreciated. First, Dark Miasma, Storm Summoning, Traps, and Trick Arrow offer generally equivalent or superior debuff numbers on an AoE basis compared with Poisons Noxious Gas and Neurotoxic Breath. But beyond that, Noxious Gas defense and to hit debuffs are unenhanceable, unlike any other power in a mastermind secondary. Noxious Gas has a well-known problem with a number of mastermind primaries, as it can be difficult to effectively use with non-melee oriented pets. Using Noxious Gas with non-melee pets involves not only needing to exercise fine control over the pet, but also reduces the effectiveness of the pet in other ways (limiting the size of cone attacks, for example). Because Noxious Gas scales to the level of the pet, using it on a non-tier three pet undermines the power of the enhancement. Finally, to add insult to injury, Noxious Gas has a duration/recharge ratio of 45/300, or 0.15. This means that, unenhanced, Noxious Gas is available 15% of the time. This is worse than any other debuff power available in any other set with the single exception of Trick Arrows EMP Arrow. EMP Arrow is primarily a control power, with a strong but brief regeneration debuff added as a secondary effect.
What surprised me, though, is that Poison is not a particular standout even for single target debuffs. Dark Miasma and Storm Summoning, not always thought of as debuffing sets, are the real winners here.
Dark Miasma offers substantial debuffing, often as a secondary effect while doing other desirable things such as using controls, healing, or resurrecting. Dark Miasma really offers the strongest mitigation debuffs of any of the sets. It also offers strong offensive debuffs, only lacking a defense debuff. Many of Dark Miasmas debuffs also require no hit check (Tar Patch, Darkest Night, Howling Twilight, and Dark Servants Chill of the Night and Darkest Night). Dark Miasma provides all this debuffing alongside quite effective buffs and controls (and often within the same powerone click, one endurance cost and youre good to go).
Storm Summoning offers very strong numbers for debuffs and does so on a perma basis with relatively little recharge (though the endurance costs can be quite high). All four of Storm Summonings debuffs are AoEs, though Tornado is not really controllable and might not affect the enemies that the caster would prefer. Snowstorm and Hurricane require no hit check, and Tornado has higher than normal accuracy (though is unenhanceable for accuracy beyond that). Storm Summoning also provides team support buffs (including heals, defenses, and resistances), effective controls in the form of knockbacks and repels, and damage.
Traps provides a strong set of offensive debuffs. It is slightly less strong in mitigation debuffs but the set offers both control powers (Caltrops with its Afraid component reduces incoming attacks while also debuffing speed) and buffs (such as the Force Field Generators defense bonus and mez protection and the regeneration buff in Triage Beacon) that add to the mitigation debuffs. This results in quite effective mitigation for Traps. The easily used and very powerful regeneration debuff in Traps along with the diversity of different kinds of powers (controls, buffs, damage, and debuffs) help make Traps a powerful and useful set. Caltrops and Poison Trap require no hit check. The debuff powers requiring a hit check are Web Grenade, Acid Mortar (though my experience and the experience of others indicates Acid Mortar seems to hit most or all of the time), and Seeker Drones.
Trick Arrow is a set that is often thought of primarily as debuffing set, though it also offers damage and controls. Trick Arrow provides a decent amount of offensive debuffs, though EMP is not effective as a regeneration debuff. The regeneration debuff lasts only 15 seconds and the power takes 300 seconds to recharge. EMP is really a control power with a debuff added for flavor. Where Trick Arrow really fails are in mitigation debuffs. Trick Arrow provides negligible to hit debuffs, its damage debuffs are relatively low and not perma at 100% recharge, and its recharge debuffs are a mix of single target and AoE, require stacking to be of any impact and are still low compared to the other sets. Unlike Traps, Trick Arrow does not provide a set of buffs to make up for these deficiencies, and the controls available are long recharge, single target, or not always effective. Trick Arrow has had its own advocates for improving the set, though it does bring a number of useful tools to masterminds, especially with the removal of the Oil Slick Arrow bugs. Most of the debuffs are autohit, including Flash Arrow, Glue Arrow, Poison Gas Arrow, Disruption Arrow, and Oil Slick Arrow. The powers requiring a hit check are Entangling Arrow, Ice Arrow, Acid Arrow, and EMP Arrow.
