Poison changes suggestion

I’ll try and avoid being my usual overly verbose self. Success not guaranteed. Apologies in advance in order.

The primary purpose of this proposal is not to make Poison more powerful. It is to make it more appealing. The primary means under consideration are changes to underwhelming powers and the addition of an ability the set completely lacks, that is, alpha strike mitigation.

Alpha strike mitigation (ASM) is a catch-all term meaning a powerset’s ability to reduce the incoming damage delivered by a spawn’s opening salvo. Note that this can very well mean up to every attack a mob has used once. Compared to other Buff/Debuff powersets, Poison has virtually no ASM at all. Weakening a target will not be significant when facing a big and/or uniform spawn, Neurotoxic Breath offers good beta strike mitigation but not really significant ASM (due to the hold being unreliable and very short; at best, it just delays the alpha strike by seconds), while Noxious Gas has very low uptime, and its method of delivery makes it unlikely that the debuff will be applied before the bullets start flying.

A common complaint about Poison is that it’s “Radiation Emission, but weaker”. Indeed, there is currently not all that much reason to pick Poison over Rad’s slightly weaker but AoE debuffs backed by the very desirable AM buff. Part of this suggestion is an attempt to distance Poison from Radiation Emission in the name of unique appeal.

Changes to powers:

Alkaloid
Alkaloid, not without reason, has a reputation as one of the two worst single target heals in the game, only considered not worse than O2 Boost because it is available to a quarter of the archetypes, trading the latter’s stun protection and resistances to highly annoying debuffs (endurance and perception) for a extremely situational toxic resistance. Alkaloid’s already low HPE is exacerbated by its availability only to endurance-inefficient Masterminds and its almost 50% faster than others (not counting Arcanatime) animation. The fact Poison masterminds start with this power doesn’t help its perceptions.

A simple buff of the heal value to Heal Other/Soothe/Cauterize levels could work, however, it would only further homogenize the set. My suggestion is as follows: Reduce the duration of the resistance buff to 15s, perhaps remove it entirely. Keep the heal and the cost at the same level. However, add a strong Heal over Time component for the duration. Possibly as strong, or stronger, than the “burst” heal at the start. This would make the power weaker than Heal Other at burst healing, but if allowed to fully apply, the heal per casting will be noticeably higher. The HoT should, rather obviously, not stack, rather refresh, increasing HPS at a noticeable cost to HPE.

A similar effect could be achieved by a strong but limited duration +regen effect, however, my experience suggests that would prove a veritable nightmare to balance. 25% of a mob’s life over, say, 15s is imperceptibly small for a Minion class henchman, but utterly devastating if applied to a Archvillian class mob. Possible ways to abuse this are left as an exercise to the reader. It is my belief that burst +regen should be reserved for self-heal powers, like Energize or Instant Healing.

Elixir of Life
Pretty much a clone of Mutation, with the added drawback of a short but powerful hold at expiration. It is my belief that this should be made the main drawback, and the resulting debuff should be reduced in potency.

Paralytic Poison
A simple, straight-up hold, with no secondary effect. It is my belief that the power should be moved up to Tier 8 (lvl 35), and receive such a secondary effect, in the manner of some non-crippling debuff. Finding a fitting debuff may be difficult, as the set already covers every one imaginable, however, a straight-up -dam seems fitting with the toxic theme. Alternately, the power could add a toxic DoT, however that would throw off slotting and not really fit the ‘paralytic’ descriptor.

Poison Trap
It is my belief that this power should be taken out behind the barn, shot, shot again for good measure, buried in an unmarked grave, and spread over with salt just to be sure. No cottage rule, no excuses. Just gone. The only thing this power does well is ruin the name of Traps’ Poison Trap.

Pestilent Cloud - NEW POWER
Sliding into Tier Seven, this power is meant to give Poison a degree of ASM. The character launches a sizeable glob of poison gunk, either by baseball pitch or Shout’s slow spit animation. The power itself is a Patch about the size of Tar Patch, and it has three discrete effects:

Firstly, any mob that passes through the patch has its damage debuffed some. This effect persists a few seconds after leaving the area.
Secondly, any mob caught in the initial blast has a high chance (actually two independent chances) to be afflicted by a damage-less sleep.
Finally, the cloud pulses out an often but low (Earthquake mechanic) chance to place a sleep on any mobs that remain in its area of effect.

The Pestilent Cloud would play a role similar to Fearsome Stare. Control the enemies who you don’t shoot, debuff the offense of those you do.

Noxious Gas
While no doubt an awesome power, it is in fact, Too Awesome To Use due to its low uptime. This may be personal bias speaking, but I propose something radical: Turn it into a toggle. Keep the recharge low enough that being detoggled/turning it off to save end won’t cripple your efficiency for the next spawn or two, keep the cost high enough that you have to work for it to not worry about keeping it up (think Disruption Field... though hopefully no higher, even for a Mastermind). This’ll give Poison characters a clear, reliable goal of a power to aspire to unleash upon their unworthy foes.

Plus, if the set ever gets proliferated to Corruptors, this power might work just as well on your teammates...

This concludes this suggestion. Comments? Questions? Opinions? Death treaths?

I finally got my /poisoner up high enough to see the set as a whole, my experience certainly made me think there were some tweaks needed.

Alkaloid: the toxic toss makes timing tricky, but as it 'looks' right, I don't see this changing. A slight endurance reduction may be nice. Heal over time? It seems overcomplicating.

Elixer of Life: It's fine enough as-is, honestly.

Paralytic Poison: The developers cannot/will not move powers. The ST Hold is helpful, but limited. As 'limited' seems to be the name of the game for poison, this seems to not be changeable. While this is one of the 'good' powers of poison, -damage would help poison pull ahead in it's supposed specialization, heavy single debuffage.

Poison Trap: The lead weight of the set. The devs have stated, however, that they will not completely replace/remake powers, however. This seems to be the only dependable-ish AoE mitigation, but is not dependable...apparently on purpose. The trouble: all pets have AoE's, and cannot be told to stick to single target attacks. Sleep is thus a very bad pairing with masterminds. It's also a bad pairing positionally: ALL of poison is ranged. Planting a trap at my feet is an issue. Though this was made for 'out of combat' use, it's really just a pre-combat power. the close positioning is hard to leverage, and the 'trip' part of is is quite small.

I'd submit this suggestion:
Give the power a 40 ft. cast distance. The caster prepares slime (interruption period) then tosses it to the location, where it sticks to the floor. When tripped, (using a larger trip area, 7ft radius) the smoke goes off, putting foes to sleep. The gas causes deep weariness when inhaled, doing a pulsing -end to all targets in its area.

So, any enemies in its area will eventually be drained of all endurance. This makes them unable to attack; however, the power does no -recovery, so between drain ticks they may have a chance to fire shots. this make sit reliable, but slow, AoE mitigation. It also uses a present power attribute, the -end, and gives an effect more potent when stacked with other players' draining abilities. Without other players, it still works as an effective reduction to incoming damage.

Noxious gas: the ally toggle suggestion has been made before, and I'm all for it. The power is good, but seems overly reduced, considering the size of the AoE and the lateness of the power.

It's possible that we're simply thinking of two separate contexts. I think you're referring to what breaks sleep on a player character, whereas I was referring to NPCs.

At least, I'm pretty sure I've seen Mass Hypnosis'd mobs get Handclapped and not wake up. Unless that's an animation bug. Alternatively, something changed when ragdoll got added.