Poison Set Revamp thread

I asked in the video stream today about the possibility of having the devs take a good look at the Poison set and Matt (Positron) asked that we do it on the boards for Black Scorpion to review and hopefully comment on.

I am no expert when it comes to this set but it's quite possible that it is the worst mastermind secondary set in the game. I would love if it was proliferated to corruptors at some point but I think everyone will agree that the set does not perform on par with the others.

Please comment and be very descriptive with what you think could change and I would even ignore the cottage 'rule' we are all too familiar with at this point.

As I said I am no expert at all but having single target debuffs with those end costs all requiring to-hit checks seems a bit much. I think most find the Poison Trap to be the worst power in the set and might be happy if it just mimicked the Traps version. The heal is... ok once you get it 6 slotted but it still seems a bit high on end for the heal it gives. I realize MM secondaries are supposed to take higher end but this is my main gripe with the set since the entire set idea is to spam the single target debuffs as often as you can to help your pets survive while throwing the heal often.

Also, I know we have a consolidated issues thread but I wanted to take Posi's idea up in a separate focused one for Poison.

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Poison Revamp - consolidated list of suggestions.

1. Alkaloid
-Reduce endurance cost or increase healing %
-Give it an AoE splash with or without dimished effect at larger radius ranges
-Add in a regeneration buff to allow some leeway when healing multiple targets midfight
-Add in a HoT effect such as that of the heal utilized by CWK Menders

2. Envenom
-Give it an AoE splash with or without dimished effect at larger radius ranges
-Increase debuff % / make debuffs fully or partially unresistable
-Add in a chaining behavior
-Add in a procedural behavior such as the one found in Coercive Persuasion: Contagious Confusion
-Reduce endurance cost
-9.75 end (like Gale's cost)
8s Recharge
Activation time 1.00s (currently 1.33s)
Accuracy Bonus 1.20x
Debuff S/L Resistance by 36%. I propose this because /Poison weakens the body the most. Your physical form is weaken so you take more Smashing/Lethal damage. Other resistance type remains at 30%.

3. Weaken
-Give it an AoE splash with or without dimished effect at larger radius ranges
-Increase debuff % / make debuffs fully or partially unresistable
-Add in a chaining behavior
-Add in a procedural behavior such as the one found in Coercive Persuasion: Contagious Confusion
-Reduce recharge to match Envenom
-Reduce endurance cost
-9.75 end
-10s recharge
-Activation time 1.33s (currently 2.07s)
-Accuracy Bonus 1.20x
-stackable -dam, -tohit

4. Neurotoxic Breath
-Balance duration/recharge
-Add additional, unenhanceable effects (-tohit, -def, -res, etc...)
-Increase cone size
-Add minor toxic damage
-modified to accept Hold IOs and sets.
-No change

5. Elixir of Life
-Remove puke after-effect
-Make it a pbAoE with or without diminished effect at larger radius ranges
-No change

6. Antidote
-Give it an AoE splash with or without dimished effect at larger radius ranges
-Turn into self anti mezz toggle
-Add debuff resistance
-Increase duration/reduce endurance cost
-No change

7. Paralytic Poison
-Reduce recharge
-Add minor to moderate damage
-No change

8. Poison Trap
-Make it a clone of Poison Trap from the Traps powerset
-Make it LAoE: pulsing sleep cloud with heavy -recovery and moderate -endurance debuffs
-Make it a clone of Fearsome Stare with altered cast animation
-Make it work like Static Field
-NEEDS TO BE RENAMED
-Get rid of 4s interruption
-Green Clouds deal initial AoE 40.4 Toxic Damage and then the affected targets are put to sleep, just like how Frozen Aura function
Poison Cloud (or similar) - what poison themed set of powers, spells, etc, doesn't come with the ability blanket an area with gas?
Character Animation: Darkest Night/Steamy Mist clone would suffice (or similar)
Gfx: gas cloud, same as current poison trap(s) generate.

Mechanics:

Ranged Location AoE
Duration: 20 seconds
Recharge: around 60 to 90 seconds
Endurance Cost: 20
5% chance of vomit-hold (whether that's the much loved irresistible variety, or just a regular hold (say, mag 2 with 20% chance of further mag 2?)). Tick rate similar to Freezing Rain's knockdown.
-40% recharge
-40% movement speed
-250% regen

Optionally:

Minor Toxic DoT (it does seem silly that a set called "Poison" is entirely non-lethal)


9. Noxious Gas
-Make it a procedural effect from pet attacks
-Make it a summonable/untargettable pet
-Allow use on any/all Friendly targets
-Make it into a toggle with or without procedural behaviors based on radial ranges
-Increase duration/reduce recharge
-Allow effects to be enhanceable
-Grant buffs to target to increase survivability
-Make it a tAoE
-Make it a pbAoE buff to all pets (see procedural effect?)
-Remove scaling effect
-Lower recharge to perma-able levels, endurance cost may need to be raised.
-Reduce recharge from 300s to 240s

----Alkaloid and Antidote - Antidote gets Alkaloid's +Res(still unenhanceable) and it would get the same treatment as ID with regard to being AoE. Alkaloid would get a +Perception and KB protection added. No AoE obviously.

----Poison trap would still be single target, it would lose it's interrupt time and use the throw gob animation. It would have 10 tics. On the first tic there would be a chance to sleep and a 100% chance to drain 10% End and give allies around the enemy some end. Every tic after would have a 10% less chance to drain 10% end. Like Fire power DoTs, if a tic fails there would be no more chances.

Additional ideas:


1. Combine Weaken and Envenom. This gives another power to poison to help round out the set.

2. Chain effect for Envenom, Weaken, Alkaloid. This set IS called poison. Contagious spreading would be fun and unique.

3. Make Noxious Gas a toggle. All effects would be toned down/whatever to compensate.

4. Poison Trap needs love. Make it a Targeted-AoE -regen power. Say, 200%?

5. Antidote needs something unique: +10% To all resistances, +10 more to toxic (does not stack).

6. Neurotoxic Breath: Considering it's recharge is really high in comparison to it's clones from Ice Manipulation and Ice Control. Give it a 50% chance of mag 3 immobilize.

Oh man!

Where to begin?? My very first villain (when I didn't know better) is a Mercs/Poison still active through sheer stubbornness. Poison is AWFUL. It offers absolutely nothing, and its even worse with high level incarnate-style content where none of its powers will do anything. I know the set had a brief spot in the sun some time ago as a Thugs/Poison craze went around but that died out soon after people noticed it didn't actually rock at all.

First thing: Kill the single target nature entirely. CoX is not a game where single target debuffs are going to get you anywhere. Especially later on, you never fight one or two guys unless they are bosses and your powers won't debuff them in any noticeable way anyway.

Second: All its animations suck unless your playing some kind of mutant. Bleh!

Lets do this!!

Alkaloid sucks. Its a crappy, end expensive poor quality heal. Its got decent range but thats about it. It costs WAY too much end for they extremely poor healing it actually puts out. Its an early power you have to take too. Double its heal power and it'll be worth the end and worth using IMO. Or make it a targeted AoE heal even better.

Envenom sucks. It should be an AoE. Then it would be useful.

Weaken sucks. It should be an AoE. Then it would be useful. The -special is the magic of this thing anyway.

Neurotoxic breath sucks. A short-lived slow and -recharge. I tired using this to help mitigate damage but it just doesn't make a big enough difference. Useless for incarnate content anyway -- it won't work on anyone. I'd just turf this whole power and replace it with something to really help mitigate damage. The tragic thing is this probably is one of the better poison powers just because its at least an AoE.

Elixer of Life rocks No really. It actually kicks ***, you just need your buddies to die (and they will because you can't help them!), then they get a sweet buff and you get to laugh as they vomit later Its my favorite power in the set! haha, its true!

Antidote .. does what it says anyway. Its not a terribly useful power though.

Paralytic Poison is... ok. Its a solid hold I guess. Its really your only effective way to mitigate damage later on, especially if you stack it with another hold from a PPP or something.

Poison trap is so bad, its infuriating. It does NOTHING. AT ALL. Just clone Traps/Poison Trap and we are good again. Why is it different anyway?

Noxious Gas sucks... for all but a few Primaries. Its great on melee pets. Too bad not all primaries use melee pets. You can throw it on your Commando and micro him into battle -- if he listens -- but then Poison offers no real damage mitigation so he'll probably just die anyway. I'm not sure how to fix this exactly even. Make it so maybe the effects also work on people he attacks rather then merely an AoE around him? Do both or turf the power in my mind. Or better yet, make it what I describe below.

General observation: Antidote seems to have no reason to be in this set. It doesn't seem to fit very well, antidote should be in a BUFF set, not a DEBUFF set. Replace it with something else.

If Positron where to just ask me what to do, I'd say, "Forget the cottage business. People will complain no matter what you ever do, but less will complain if you genuinely improve things. Like this!"

Alkaloid - AoE heal, it splashes! Change nothing else.
Envenom - What it does now but AoE. Change nothing else.
Weaken - What it does not but AoE. Change nothing else.
Neurotoxic Gas - PBAoE toggle. Provides in a fairly wide area a strong -ToHit. Poison NEEDS a way to help mitigate incoming damage for the MM and his pets, otherwise they die too much. A very solid -ToHit will help, and still worths thematically with the set. It could also provide a tidy +DEF since a cloud of poison might be hard to see through or something.
Elixer of Life - Change nothing. Or make the vomit louder
Antidote - Change this entirely. Forget nonsense about removing status effects on other people, you don't have ANY status effect protection at ALL in this set, and it desperately needs it! Make this a TOGGLE that gives you strong status effect protection to your MM. Especially against sleeps and holds, the bane of /Poison.
Paralytic Poison - This is probably ok. I use it, I like it.
Poison Trap - Clone Traps/Poison Trap. Thats a great power.
Noxious Gas - Instead of buffing a henchman, make this a summon power like storm/tornado. It summons a poison cloud that enters melee range and hovers around there debuffing things in the way that it does now. This makes it useful to both ranged and melee primaries. Problem solved.


And there! That would fix it. That would make it a good, solid, balanced set. You get to keep the debuffs poison was meant to use, but in a manner thats actually useful.. you get some damage mitigation in there, desperately needed status protection, and you retain some of the control thats occasionally useful.

Thats a huge amount of changes, but lets be honest: No one likes Poison much, if anyone truly does like it, they are a tiny minority. Chances are, what made them like it before will still be in my New Poison set anyway, I don't think I proposed changing what the set is SUPPOSED to be, I just made it so it would act like its probably supposed to be like.

Thats my opinion as a very, very long time /Poison user. (In fact, my forum name is after my character "General Lewisite", a tech Mercs/Poison MM.)

Cheers

I like these! Great suggestions!

my first villain (and one of the first villain 50s yay!) was necro/poison

i really liked the set and my character liked the idea of spitting poison.

maybe the solution is for the main single target powers (alkaloid, envenom and weaken) to have some amount of 'splash' - potentially increase the strength of the heal/debuff on the target, while including a weaker, small radius AoE splash. specifically:

alkaloid - increase the heal for the target, add like a half-valued heal in 10-15 ft AoE.
envenom and weaken - increase the debuff values slightly on the target (make it better than AoE debuffs already available in game - rad and dark specifically), and either make it a very narrow cone (10 degrees or so) or a small AoE (i'd go for narrow cone actually - fits the set better). maybe the -special on weaken would only be on the target, or only a % chance for the AoE.

neurotoxic breath is fine, although maybe duration could be longer. it does have a chance to hold you know?

elixir, antidote and paralytic poison are fine. at most paralytic poison could be narrow cone or a small AoE with a chance for hold or immob on the AoE effects, like blind.

poison trap blows, no doubt.

noxious gas is also fine, but maybe allow use on players as well as henchmen (as well as other pets and henchmen)

my 2 cents.

I'll repost what I've said before:

• Envenom: Make the -defense 50%-75% unresistable in its effect. Same to the -resistance if possible. As these are unstackable, this is fine, but makes the set catch up significantly to be good vs. AV's. I'd even remove the stackability of the -regen, but make it completely unresistable.
• Poison trap. [renamed to Leeching trap, or something along those lines, removing dual name confusion] Give it range, a pulsing sleep cloud, and a heavy -recovery, and a medium -end. This gives it an immediate "Oh no! sleep, stop attacking!" as well as a way to slowly sap mobs into weary ineffectualness. So if you are steamrolling, the soft control gives slight but not complete coverage, if you need to play safe, it will get you there with a bit of time. This covers the group weakness while preserving the single-target nature of most offensive debuffs. The ranged drop is consistant with the ranged nature of all the rest of the set. Visual: The player prepares a gob, throws it out to a targeted location, which when tread upon explodes releasing the aforementioned cloud. Interrupt is shortened, and placed in the 'preparing gob" stage.
• Noxious Gas: This needs to be a toggle, plain and simple. Even if its power is reduced, or the hold portion is removed, this is a level 38 power with a 45 second effect on a 300 second recharge that has a 10 target cap, and it dies if your pet (which has to be at close range) dies. It deserves to have more of a presence in a poisoner's career.

My basic view of the /poison set: it seems to sacrifice mitigation for highly concentrated debuffs. But its 'Highly concentrated debuffs' are often on the same level as the AoE's of dark, traps, and radiation. Its trap seems to be its mitigation tool, but the trap has no real mitigation past its first release. (the sleep doesn't tick or remain, so when it's broke, it's broke. The mobs have to be fully drained of endurance to be neutralized by end drain.)

Making the unstackable debuff unresistable makes it FAR better against AV's, and fixing the trap to be reliable but delicate mitigation give some longevity to the set.

Making the final AoE debuff constant means you have better, but still limited, debuffage vs. multiple targets.

My suggestions coming from a ninja/posion

Alkaloid: Either decrese base end cost/increase heal by ~20% each, or keep the end and heal % where they are, but make it a TAoE heal with same range and 15 foot splash

Envenom/Weaken: Either make them chain powers (or some other AoE, just think chain would be a little diffrent) or increase the debuff values a bit and make them partialy (45-70%) unresistable, so that posion would at least be better than anything else for AVs/GMs.

Neurotoxic Breath: I like it, although it'd be nice if it had slightly increased duration (say 25 seconds) and/or extra minor debuffs (10% def/to-hit/damage debuff, all unenhanceable) this would be especialy nice if you keep envenom/weaken single target.

Elixer of Life: Fine the way it is, especialy now that vomiting doesn't detoggle armors.

Antidote: Fine the way it is, although simple wish-list type request, it'd be nice if targets you hit with antidote were granted some sort of debuff proc for it's duration. Something like the interface procs where it's fairly low powered and only stacks once or twice per target hit, but adds a little something to debuffing power. As for the debuff I'd recomend a -rech/slow/-special/-heal(or-regen) combo.

Paralytic Posion: Fine the way it is. If you want to add a few bells and whistles I wouldn't object, but no changes really needed.

Posion Trap: Worst. Power. EVER. It'd be hard to make this any worse (maybe if it buffs enimies or set you on fire?) so anything you want to do with it would be fine. Seldom's pullsing sleep trap sounds kinda cool, as does changing it to the traps version, but then I might have to actualy fit it into my build.

Noxious Gas: Ok if you have melee pets, though I can see why MMs with ranged pets might not like it. . Maybe increase the duration a bit (60-90 seconds?) make the debuffs enhanceable, and maybe add a little def/resist to the pet it's on so they stay alive for it's full duration easier (The def can be explained as it's hard to target them with the posion cloud obscuring them, can't think of justification for resist though)

Quote:

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it. Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with.

My first villain is a bot/poison with all badges up to ish 20 and is a Tier 4 Alpha (starting to work the new slots).

A splash AOE affect to Envenom and Weaken would be great. Neurotoxix breath is fine.

Why does a POISON set have a resurrection power? Doesn't poison KILL? Replace this.

Poison Trap is a sleep gas, not a poison gas like the traps set. However it seems that this was migrated to the Noxious gas power. If BOTH the Nox Gas and Poison trap were poisonous then Poison may become a bit overamped. So does Poison Trap become the same as the Traps set and Nox gas get changed/nerfed? Or does Poison Trap get changed to something else?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I actually like Elixir and it has come in handy far too often on teams. Antidote is kinda useless - in fact most clear mind type powers have limited use - I don't think it needs to change though.

All I ever want out of this set is more teaming utility. Its nice for solo avs and such but how often do I do that? like almost never. I would trade all of that for some aoe debuffage. My first lvl 50 villain just isnt fun to play because on teams my ninjas get slaughtered. There just isnt enough aoe mitigation in this set.

Yeah and for single target, you are expected to spam it and the end costs are crazy - maybe if they were autohit that would balance it a bit but I doubt that would ever happen. Splash would help but just an end cost reduction would do wonders - on top of changing Poison Trap into something useful that is.

I rather like poison as the ST killer set. However, one change I would suggest is to make the heal an aoe. AFAIK, there is no targeted aoe heal, so that would fill a neat niche and make pois a little more solid for mms as well as giving some team utility.

Hmmmmm. Making the status prot and rez aoe would be really awesome now that I think about it! (But not overpowered at all : compare to the /dark aoe rez with awesme stun/debuff and son, trap and ff status prot bubbles). Make us interesting multi buffers and 1T debuffers.

Make those 2-3 changes and I will play my nin/pois to 50 finally (he was my first mm to 40 in I6).

[Edit: poison trap is garbage, forgot that existed because I never take it. Almost any idea for changing it is a good one. I would like for it to be range targeted through to match the rest of the set. /pois isn't really about pullin to a setup zone like /traps, indeed that seems like the opposite of how I play them.]

[edit2: (Now that I'm not typing on my phone)

Weaken & Envenom are pretty solid powers. The recharge fast enough that I can use them when I need them. If we're talking about adjusting them for the current meta-game of steamrolling trials... it wouldn't hurt to give them a small, literal "splash" zone of 5-7ft with say, 50-60% debuff strength.

Already noted my ideas for the buff powers. Adding some debuff resistance to Antidote would go a ways to making it more unique AND thematic. AOE +status prot +debuff resist = something teams might actually want you for.

Neurotoxic Gas: This is a pretty solid power and one of my favorites, I generally open on every mob with it. The one suggestion I would make is a wider cone arc (45, up from 30).

Noxious Gas: The thing that kills this for me is the pet-only aspect, especially on bots & mercs. At minimum, this needs to be castable on a teammate. If it could be weakened slightly and made into an "any" ally toggle, that would go a long way towards giving /pois more of a team presence.
]

My thoughts:

1. Envenom: If the theme is to make /Poison a ST debuff expert (which I agree), then the value needs to be a bit higher. Endurance cost and recharge need to be addressed as well. Tar Patch is a huge AoE debuff that only costs 9 end. Both Envenom and Weaken cost 13 end and has an accuracy check. Freezing Rain can debuff aoe better than what Envenom can do. Freezing Rain also causes knockdowns.

2. Weaken: Reduce both endurance cost and recharge so we can apply on more targets sooner.

3. Poison Trap: First of all, they need to re-name this power because it is confusing. This Trap is NOTHING like the famous Poison Trap. Second of all, they need to get rid of the interruption timer. If the better Poison Trap doesn't have interrupt, why does this one need interrupt? The -endurance effect is very weak as none of the MM pets really do -endurance drain. I would add another effect to Poison Trap so it gives /Poison some good aoe controls. Some ideas: Add -damage after the cloud comes out.

4. Noxious Gas: I would reduce recharge on this down to 240s. It is already hard to use on some of the pets like Commando. I prefer casting it on an ally as well.

I think it's important to look at actual numbers to keep suggestions realistic. So I've been looking a little at Red Tomax. Here's my thoughts on a couple of the powers after looking at the numbers.

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Alkaloid and O2 Boost are essentially the same.
Recharge: 4s
End: 16.25
Targets: 1
Range: 80
Heal: 141.358

Soothe and Cauterize are the same.
Recharge: 4s
End: 16.12
Targets: 1
Range: 80
Heal: 184.194

Comments: I don't know that anything should be changed here. Alkaloid and O2 boost are pretty much in line with the other single target heals in the MM sets when you consider their added buffs (+toxic res for Alkaloid and +status res for O2 Boost). When you compare to the AoE heals they suffer of course, and everything suffers when compared to Twilight Grasp which reaps massive benefits for adding a ToHit check (and the requirement of a foe). But though I'd love to see Alkaloid boosted, I don't think it's out of line where it is (provided my numbers are right).

Personally: I'd rather have the straight up heal than the +toxic res. Heck, I'd rather have a PBAoE heal, but that's too much change.

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Noxious Gas is a little difficult to compare. But we can look at Painbringer, the other buff that MM's get at tier 9. Unfortunately for Poison, the comparison is not very good.

Noxious Gas
Pet target only (pet level determines effectiveness)
Recharge: 300s
End: 22.75
Duration: 45s
Range: 30ft

Painbringer
Ally target
Recharge: 300s
End: 13
Duration: 90s
Range: 80ft


Wow. Painbringer is better than NG in all kinds of ways. Just the ability to cast it on allies rather than only pets is huge. NG is only good on melee pets, Painbringer is +REC, +REG, and +DMG which means it's good on ANYONE. The +REC and +REG mean that it's useful both in and out of combat. It even has twice the range!

Comments: If NG stays as an only effective in melee, pet only, power it really should be a toggle. The situations it's good in are far too limited for it to be anything else. Otherwise it should be made to match Painbringer: make it ally targeted, double the duration, and lock the debuff stats on tier 3 pet levels. Even then it won't be as effective due to the melee limitation, but at least it will be somewhere in the ballpark.

Personally: This is a problematic one because of that melee nature. I think I'd probably just make it a toggle and call it a day.

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Regarding Poison Trap, Wonderslug said the following in the recent Poison Trap thread:

Regarding Black Scorpion: I sent a pm to him for this thread but even if he doesn't comment, I wanted to make an effort to take up Matt's suggestion.

I like Lobster's ideas too.

What if everything in the set was a cone? (Poison Trap needs to be copied over from the Traps version.)