New powerset ideas: Acid Armor and Acid Melee

I'm just going to cut right to the chase and ask you what you think. Acid Armor is designed as a mixed set (with reduced melee survivability) that punishes enemies for attacking them with melee powers.

Acid Melee is designed to exploit the typically low toxic resistances, and is a melee set that does -resistance. (-resistance values, per hit, should likely be 2.5-5%, "low but noticable").

So, peruse them if you wish, and tell me what you think! Anything you can suggest to help balance these sets would be appreciated.

Acid Armor (Brute, Tank, Scrapper Version)
Tier 1) Acerbic Armor – Toggle self +Res (smashing, lethal, toxic)
Tank values: Smashing, Lethal: 30%; Toxic: 50%
Brute/Scrapper Values: Smashing, Lethal: 22.5%; Toxic: 37.5%
Tier 2) Viscous Goo – Auto self +Res (Knockback, energy, negative, fire, cold, toxic, DeBuff Res)
Tank Values: Energy, Negative, Fire, Cold, Toxic: 10%
Brute/Scrapper Values: Energy, Negative, Fire, Cold, Toxic: 7.5%
Tier 3) Slime Shield – Toggle self +Def (Range, AoE)
Tank Values: Range, AoE: 15%
Brute/Scrapper Values: Range, AoE: 11.3%
Tier 4) Mordant Mind – Toggle: Self +Res (Hold, Sleep, Confuse, Terrorize, DeBuff DEF)
Tier 5) Acid Blood – Auto self +Res (Immobilize), (auto-hit) Dmg (Toxic) to foe when player is damaged by a melee attack
Tier 6) Caustic Aura – PBAoE Toggle, Foe Taunt, Foe -res
Approximate -res value 5-7.5% ish
Tier 7) Vitriol – Click self heal, self +Max HP
Tier 8) Stable Compounds – Auto Self +Res (DeBuff Res, DeBuff Def, DeBuff Regen, DeBuff Recovery)
Tier 9 (Tanks and Scrappers)) Noxious Fumes – Toggle PBAoE Foe Choke, Vomit (with a heavy endurance cost to make it prohibitive to run constantly)
Tier 9 (Brutes)) Acidic Rage – Click self +Dmg(all), +Res(all), +Def(Range, AoE)

Acid Armor (Stalker Version)
Tier 1) Hide
Tier 2) Acerbic Armor – Toggle self +Res (smashing, lethal, toxic)
Tier 3) Slime Shield – Toggle self +Def (Range, AoE)
Tier 4) Viscous Goo – Auto self +Res (Knockback, energy, negative, fire, cold, DeBuff Res)
Tier 5) Mordant Mind – Toggle: Self +Res (Hold, Sleep, Confuse, Terrorize, DeBuff DEF)
Tier 6) Blinding Spray – Click, Cone Foe -Per, -Res
Tier 7) Acid Puddle – Location AoE, Foe Knockdown, minor dmg (Toxic)
Tier 8) Stable Compounds – Auto Self +Res (DeBuff Res, DeBuff Def, DeBuff Dmg)
Tier 9) Silent Corrosion – Melee (single target), 180 second recharge. Foe -Res (-20% all), no agro.

Acid Melee (Tank version)
Tier 1) Corrode – Melee, minor dmg (Toxic), foe -res – Uses the animation from fire melee’s scorch
Tier 2) Goo Hammer – Melee, moderate dmg (toxic/smashing) – Uses the animation for super strength’s punch
Tier 3) Envelop – Melee, moderate dot (toxic), foe immobilize, foe -res
Tier 4) Taunt – ranged (targeted aoe), foe taunt
Tier 5) Build Up – self +dmg, +to hit
Tier 6) Acid Shower – PBAoE moderate damage (toxic) – Uses the animation from fire melee’s combustion
Tier 7) Battery Assault – Melee, high dmg (toxic/energy), +special (double energy damage vs. robots), foe -res – Uses chain induction’s animation
Tier 8) Splatter – Melee, extreme dmg (toxic/smash), targeted AoE chance for vomit, choking – uses the animation for stone melee’s seismic smash, has a chance to cause all foes near the primary target to perform the vomit / coughing animation
Tier 9) Venom Spray – close (cone (30ft)), high damage (toxic), foe -res – uses the animation from poison’s neurotoxic breath

Acid Melee (Brute/Scrapper version)
Tier 1) Corrode – Melee, minor dmg (Toxic), foe -res – Uses the animation from fire melee’s scorch
Tier 2) Goo Hammer – Melee, moderate dmg (toxic/smashing) – Uses the animation for super strength’s punch
Tier 3) Battery Assault – Melee, high dmg (toxic/energy), +special (double energy damage vs. robots), foe -res – Uses chain induction’s animation
Tier 4) Build Up – self +dmg, +to hit
Tier 5) Blinding Barrage – melee, minor dmg (toxic), foe -tohit – uses the animation from energy melee’s barrage
Tier 6 (Brutes)) Taunt – ranged (targeted aoe), foe taunt
Tier 6 (Scrappers)) Confront[/b] – ranged, foe taunt
Tier 7) Splatter – Melee, extreme dmg (toxic/smash), targeted AoE chance for vomit, choking – uses the animation for stone melee’s seismic smash, has a chance to cause all foes near the primary target to perform the vomit / coughing animation
Tier 8) Acid Spray – close (cone (15ft)), high damage (toxic) – uses the animation from poison’s neurotoxic breath
Tier 9) Slime – Melee, superior dot (toxic), foe -rech, foe -res – uses the animation from fire melee’s Cremate

Acid Melee (Stalker version)
Tier 1) Corrode – Melee, minor dmg (Toxic), foe -res – Uses the animation from fire melee’s scorch
Tier 2) Goo Hammer – Melee, moderate dmg (toxic/smashing) – Uses the animation for super strength’s punch
Tier 3) Blinding Barrage – melee, minor dmg (toxic), foe -tohit – uses the animation from energy melee’s barrage
Tier 4) Assassin’s Gloop – (envelops the target in a blob of goo – uses Assassin’s Eclipse animation, but a glob of slime instead of a skull)
Tier 5) Build Up
Tier 6) Placate
Tier 7) Battery Assault – Melee, high dmg (toxic/energy), +special (double energy damage vs. robots), foe -res – Uses chain induction’s animation
Tier 8) Acid Spray – close (cone (15ft)), high damage (toxic) – uses the animation from poison’s neurotoxic breath
Tier 9) Splatter – Melee, extreme dmg (toxic/smash), targeted AoE chance for vomit, choking – uses the animation for stone melee’s seismic smash, has a chance to cause all foes near the primary target to perform the vomit / coughing animation

I would /JRanger this, but thats against the rules.

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I would /JRanger this, but thats against the rules.

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So, what's wrong with it, specifically? I can't refine it into something that would be more viable without details. Just telling me 'no' doesn't help the idea improve.

Now, if you'd said "No, we have enough armor and melee sets already" my response would've been "True, we have quite a few, but diversity never hurts and even an odd idea like an armor made out of deadly, deadly acid could inspire something cool from the developers."

I don't understand why the stalker version of the melee set gets the tier 3 from the other version as a tier 7.

Why does the Stalker version not have slime?

For the armor set

Why is the Stalker version missing the self heal?

As most sets have 1 or 2 weaknesses what is this sets weakness I didn't notice it looking through the armor.

Well, first things first, Acid Blood isn't actually possible within the confines of the game engine. We've been specifically told this by either BABs or Castle (can't remember which), but they've specifically told us that retributive damage isn't possible within the confines of what the game can do. There also isn't damage debuff resistance or resistance debuff resistance thanks to how the powers themselves are coded. Damage and resistance debuffs are resisted by your own resistance to those damage types. 50% +res(fire) will not only allow you to resist 50% of incoming fire damage, but also allow you to resist 50% of incoming -res(fire) and 50% of incoming -dam(fire). That's how the game works it.

Secondly, you're giving the set mez resistance but not protection. Is that on purpose or do you just not realize the difference between the two? Mez resistance reduces the duration of effects and mez protection prevents the effect from happening. Also, you're missing any kind of stun protection or resistance. Is this purposeful?

As to the attacks, I really can't see anything wrong with them, but that's because you haven't really included any numbers to go along with them. It could be balanced but it could be horribly imbalanced depending on how the numbers are assigned, especially considering you're wanting the set to run around with -res (which, as we see from Sonic Blast's example, means that you'll have to pay for it with lower base damage). Keep in mind that DPA is much more important than outright damage. I would be very nervous about giving a melee set the Choke and Vomit capabilities of Poison Trap. Nothing can resist it (as it's a forced animation rather than an actual effect), which means that it's going to be pretty powerful. You'd be better served by instead aiming for a specific mez effect like Sleep, Hold, or Stun instead.

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Secondly, you're giving the set mez resistance but not protection. Is that on purpose or do you just not realize the difference between the two? Mez resistance reduces the duration of effects and mez protection prevents the effect from happening. Also, you're missing any kind of stun protection or resistance. Is this purposeful?

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A typo more then anything else, I suppose (I got the definitions of the two mentally reversed). Those are supposed to be protection toggles. The lack of stun protection is supposed to compensate for the addition of confuse / fear protection.

In terms of the retributive damage--I half envisioned it spawning a pet when struck (which the game does keep track of). It's not reflected damage so much as a damaging pet that spawns when struck. If the game engine doesn't keep track of that, it does keep track of whether an enemy attempts to attack with melee powers, and so I could theoretically see acid blood as viable, even though it's likely highly unfeasible.

The choke and vomit would be a very powerful tool--I was originally picturing it as a clicky, but some comments made by others inferred that it wouldn't be useful enough in clicky format, so I should start with something a bit overpowered and then use the forum suggestions to try to bring it down to a more reasonable level.

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I don't understand why the stalker version of the melee set gets the tier 3 from the other version as a tier 7.

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Tanks also get Battery Acid as a tier 7, theoretically it's a more situational power with a slightly higher base damage.

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For the armor set

Why is the Stalker version missing the self heal?

As most sets have 1 or 2 weaknesses what is this sets weakness I didn't notice it looking through the armor.

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The self heal is Dull Pain with a different name. I thought about swapping it with resilience, but I thought an extra utility power might be appreciated.

The set's weakness is the lack of melee defense coupled with overall low damage resistance (fire/cold/energy etc resistance all come from passive powers).

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In terms of the retributive damage--I half envisioned it spawning a pet when struck (which the game does keep track of). It's not reflected damage so much as a damaging pet that spawns when struck. If the game engine doesn't keep track of that, it does keep track of whether an enemy attempts to attack with melee powers, and so I could theoretically see acid blood as viable, even though it's likely highly unfeasible.

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I'm not entirely sure it's possible for reactive systems such as you're envisioning to actually occur, elsewise I'm pretty sure that we'd actually have seen them already. The big problem I see is that, even if you did envision it summoning a pet (that either does an AoE or randomly targeted single target attack), I don't believe that the game is capable of spawning a pet in the manner you envision. Toggles aren't activated modes. They're auto-recast short duration, non-stacking effects. The few powers that are activated modes don't have static benefits for those modes. Instead, they are simply flags that certain powers check for when activating and determining their own effects. It's not possible for a power to react to another power. There isn't a mechanic set up for it in game. All that's possible is for a power to set up a flag that will activate a predetermined effect within a later power, though the effect will use the attributes of the latter power to determine effectiveness (+dam, +acc, level, etc).

The closest you will probably get is making the power itself a damage aura that deals more damage the lower the user's health is. This would probably be accomplished by having it check certain levels of hp (if HP < 100%, 8 toxic damage; if HP < 80%, 4 toxic damage; if HP < 60%, 4 toxic damage; etc) to deal additional ticks of damage the lower the total hp is.

I'd probably redesign the power to be a bit like Oppressive Gloom except that it deals damage rather than stunning the target. Have it cost almost nothing (.125 end/sec), deal a small amount of buff & enhancement ignorant damage (~3 hp/sec), and every 2 seconds deal damage depending on how low your health is. Of course, the primary problem of this would be that it encourages playing at lower levels of health (re: Blaster Defiance problem), but it is a bit thematic simply because you should be bleeding more, and therefore getting more blood on your nearby enemies, when you are at low health. Of course, considering that it's for a tougher AT that is going to have a native heal (Dull Pain clone or not, it's still a heal), this might not be as big of an issue. I'd be curious to see where Castle would put the damage for it, considering how self inflicted damage seems to completely throw off balance equations (re: Energy Transfer and Oppressive Gloom are way better than their recharge and endurance costs would make them seem and the self inflicted damage on those is nearly unnoticeable).

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The choke and vomit would be a very powerful tool--I was originally picturing it as a clicky, but some comments made by others inferred that it wouldn't be useful enough in clicky format, so I should start with something a bit overpowered and then use the forum suggestions to try to bring it down to a more reasonable level.

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Too bad that thought process tends to get you lynched around here, especially considering the "inordinately expensive toggle for inordinately powerful buff" design concept got hurled out the window with the repeated Instant Healing nerfs. Endurance costs are remarkably easy to work around (especially since end redux acts upon them more powerfully than for other powers) meaning that it would be a toggle that is left on at all times, making the user virtually unkillable because everything is choking/vomiting, allowing the player to attack unmolested (which would be horribly broken) or the cost would be so high that no one takes it because it's too expensive because it's so powerful.

You're better off just starting it off as a rather weak power. My suggestion would be to model it off of Moment of Glory, which actually serves largely the same purpose as the effect you want (emergency power that makes you unkillable for a short period of time). MoG accomplishes this by having stupidly high defense and resistances for a short period. Yours would accomplish this by generating a largely unresistable mez effect upon all targets close by. Have the effect last 10 seconds with a 200 sec recharge (MoG gets slightly better uptime because it takes so long to animate and has the psy hole).

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The set's weakness is the lack of melee defense coupled with overall low damage resistance (fire/cold/energy etc resistance all come from passive powers).

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The problem with this is that you're not making it particularly weak. You're actually making it remarkably strong because 1. Dull Pain actually has a remarkably potent mitigation value (SO mitigation is roughly 25% over time) and 2. you're mixing you're mitigation mechanics. The set is getting a long recharge, but still very substantial self heal, a diverse suite of resistances, a very powerful survival tool with no negative side effect as a tier 9, and defense. Specializing in a specific mode of survivability is actually quite weak. That's why */SR was quite weak before it got the scaling resistance to prop it up and still is if you don't have a self heal to prop it up a bit. It's also why */Willpower, which doesn't have particularly impressive mitigation in any particular area, is so friggin' hard to kill. Diverse mitigation methods actually act upon each other to such a degree that it becomes much harder to kill over a larger number of situations.

Somehow I think sets based around resisting toxic damage are somewhat gamebreaking, which I'm guessing is why we don't have a set of that type in the game (correct me if I'm wrong). All other damage types are relatively easy to defend/resist against via the right invention set bonuses. Toxic, however, can only be resisted when completing entire purple sets. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe the devs want to keep toxic as a damage type that can bypass most players' resistances (like acid) and thusly keeping the game challenging.

Having said that, I think your ideas for the build are great. At a glance, the power choices seem fairly balanced (barring the whopping 50% toxic resistance in the tier 1 power). Great power names as well. Very creative.

Vaporeon used Acid Armour.

Vaporeons' Defense
sharply
rose.

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Somehow I think sets based around resisting toxic damage are somewhat gamebreaking, which I'm guessing is why we don't have a set of that type in the game (correct me if I'm wrong). All other damage types are relatively easy to defend/resist against via the right invention set bonuses. Toxic, however, can only be resisted when completing entire purple sets. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe the devs want to keep toxic as a damage type that can bypass most players' resistances (like acid) and thusly keeping the game challenging.

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Most of the in-set self heal powers also have a +res(tox) component. Healing Flames, Reconstruction, Hoarfrost, and Earth's Embrace all grant toxic resist. Invincibility gets toxic resist from Unyielding and Resist Elements. Energy Aura gets some from Energy Protection. Electric Armor gets a substantial quantity from Power Surge. Shield gets some from True Grit and One with the Shield. Dark Armor gets some from Dark Embrace. Willpower gets some from Strength of Will. Every self-survival set except for Super Reflexes gets some manner of Toxic resist at some point (and even */SR gets some from its scaling resists). The big point is that toxic resistance isn't particularly common but toxic damage isn't particularly common either. Very few enemies actually deal toxic damage (some Vahz, some Arachnos, Hydra; are there any others?) and only Hydra have it as a significant portion of their damage.

The acid armor set is really underpowered. The lack of melee defense coupled with the ridiculously low fire/cold/energy/negative resistance and NO psionic resistance would make this set a nightmare to play against most enemy groups. Even in the low levels groups like the outcasts would tear you apart.

The lack of stun protection would leave you completely helpless against the Tsoo Ink Men that gang up on you 10 on 1 with Energy Melee.

Don't you think acid attacks should probably do a mix of toxic and fire damage? Since acid well... burns?

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Don't you think acid attacks should probably do a mix of toxic and fire damage? Since acid well... burns?

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Acid is only considered to burn because it leaves similar appearing injuries and has a vaguely similar feeling as it occurs (quickly freezing a point on the body also feels quite similar to both of these sensations and leaves a similar wound in appearance).

Fire damage is dealt via intense heat. Most (re: all) acids don't generate an appreciable level of heat when they contact skin. It would actually take some very complex finagling to actually make it so that, while the acid was violently bonding with your skin, it was also giving off extreme enough heat to actually damage tissue. Interestingly enough, at this point, the fire damage dealt would still be relatively minor compared to the forces at work involved in the acids and bases on the target in question.

Chemical burns have very little similarity to thermal burns. Acid and poison should do toxic damage. Fire and heat should do fire damage. Unless it's boiling acid or poison, no attack is going to do both.

Why not have it for Acid Blood, to be a damage aura that goes off when you reach certain health levels, like the SR passives. Every 10% you go down could stack a damage aura of 1/5th (or so) the strength of a regular one on you.

Aside from that, there needs to be more resistance or something, because that set is not too survivable.

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Why not have it for Acid Blood, to be a damage aura that goes off when you reach certain health levels, like the SR passives. Every 10% you go down could stack a damage aura of 1/5th (or so) the strength of a regular one on you.

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Did someone really just mimic my own solution to this? Really...

I noticed there's no form of melee mitigation in the set. Ranged and AoE gain defense, but melee gets neither resistance nor defense. I'm assuming the reasoning is because the set also has a power that damages melee attackers specifically, for balancing purposes. And yes, resistance values seem a tad low overall (barring toxic).

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melee gets neither resistance

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There's no such thing as melee resistance. Resistance has no positional components.

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melee gets neither resistance

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There's no such thing as melee resistance. Resistance has no positional components.

[/ QUOTE ]Not just that, but it makes no sense, either. "Hah! I'm almost entirely immune if you try to shoot me with an arrow, but if you stab me with the same arrow, it'll kill me!"