Weak in the Knees: Mastermind debuffs (draft)

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 can’t 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 Poison’s debuffing powers are “pure” debuffs—they don’t 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 Domination’s Benumb. Weaken’s “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 heal’s 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 Miasma’s 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 Miasma’s debuffs will stack, meaning additional applications of the power will increase the debuff. For many of Dark Miasma’s powers, this is possible because the debuffs are actually provided by a pseudo pet summoned by the power. In addition, the Dark Servant’s debuffs will stack with the mastermind’s debuffs. While Darkest Night can’t stack in the traditional sense as it is a toggle, both the mastermind’s and Dark Servant’s 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 aren’t stackable debuffs as they are toggles (though they would stack with a teammate’s 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 Arrow’s 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 Arrow’s 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 can’t determine if PGA’s debuff is applied by a pseudo pet and is stackable. If someone would like to do the testing, I’ll 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 Poison’s Noxious Gas.

The tables assume a reasonable amount of recharge via enhancements, Hasten, and/or global recharge bonuses. I’ve 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, I’ve 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 Miasma’s total debuffing is underestimated once Dark Servant is available. Dark Servant is just short of being perma with 100% recharge. For this analysis, I’ve 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 Tomax’s 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 Pill’s 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. It’s 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 Poison’s 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 target’s mezzes, buffs, and debuffs in a way that other sets cannot. However, other sets might offer ways to mitigate against a single target’s 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 Poison’s 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 Poison’s 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 Poison’s 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 Arrow’s 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 Miasma’s debuffs also require no hit check (Tar Patch, Darkest Night, Howling Twilight, and Dark Servant’s Chill of the Night and Darkest Night). Dark Miasma provides all this debuffing alongside quite effective buffs and controls (and often within the same power—one click, one endurance cost and you’re 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 Summoning’s 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 Generator’s 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.

This is a draft of my look at mastermind debuffs. I have four tables I'd like to include, but I can't figure out how to format them to get them to work here. The tables are just tabbed tables done in MS Word. The tabs just disappear if I paste them in, and using spaces makes the formatting uneven.

I'm interested in feedback about the overall content, formatting, and conclusions.

Thanks!

Just to point out your logic in /Traps...

Yes, Poison Trap is very powerful. There is no denying that. However, depending upon the situation -- be it solo or teamed -- I find Caltrops to be more and more useful as I go along. The thing with Traps, is that you have to think of yourself as a Foward Base. In all aspects, you are a forward base, be it for your teams or for your pets. That doe snot mean that you are weak unless you set up. Caltrops exists for a reason, a very, very good reason: the fear component. People overlook this, especially with Provoke being thrown into the equation. The mitigation is staggering, especially on enemies seeking to close the melee gap.



EDIT: That aside, this is a very, very good start.

Maybe try posting the tables in Google Docs? You can post a publicly available read-only document.

Anyway, great post. I'm looking forward to seeing the tables, I suspect they'll show what I've suspected all along really -- but with tables

I'm essentially a MasterMind-only player, and I've played most of the possible combinations over the years since Villains came out... my experience is that the only solid secondaries for MM's are /Traps and /Dark -- both for exactly the same reasons -- they offer survivability if done "correctly".

/Traps when combined with Thugs or Robots can softcap the pets, and get the MM himself most of the way too. Both of those work extremely well, Bots/Traps is legendary.

/Dark offers the same thing from a different direction, -ToHit. You barely have to lift a finger to get the enemies -ToHit down to almost nothing with when the Dark Servant is up. The nice thing about Dark is that it doesn't require a certain primary to work great.

But the rest vary from terrible (/Poison) to so-so. People using the above two should have a great time with their MM's and should eventually be able to handle the Incarnate content as well as most other archetypes, but the rest are going to suffer.

Don't forget that against AV's purple triangles of doom render debuffs almost worthless while they are up!

Well, here are the tables, sort of. I think they are at least readable so folks can see the content. The forum editor apparently removes any "extra" spaces so I had to place dots to space them out. I'm still working on how best to make this information available within the guide.

(Tables actually placed in the guide, though the formatting problem remains.)

I've made a number of changes to the guide and incorporated feedback provided by Bookeeper_Jay, Redlynne, and Lewisite.

I also added a discussion of the categories of debuffs (mitigation, offensive, and control-like) because I think that helps explain some of Trick Arrow's problems and why Traps doesn't have the same problems.

More feedback please!

I believe that Seeker Drones in Traps is -5% tohit debuff and -20% Damage per drone, and it generates 2, so at least the Maximum table values for that should be doubled. Their duration is 40 seconds, so I don't recall if you can make them perma with 100% recharge though.

One question, is the 100% recharge you mention total, including that slotted into the power, or global on top of assuming the power is ED capped for recharge?

Storm does not have a regeneration debuff, its resistance and defense debuffs should be double, since at 100% recharge you can stack Freezing Rain (usually, the pet despawn bug may get you).

Okay, updated version of the guide uploaded again. Let me know what you think about the data and conclusions, but also the organization and formatting. (I know the tables are still a problem.)

I think I want to somehow merge sections 2 and 4, but I don't know how to do it. Any thoughts?

Looking at those tables you've made ... it's amazing, but ... Trick Arrow is even weaker compared to Dark than I'd thought it was.

Here's an interesting point to add to your Max Debuffing chart ... the number of powers that need to be combined in order to reach that level of Max Debuff. Basically, how "complex" (and balkanized) are the debuffing powers in each of the powersets.

Dark basically blows Trick Arrow out of the water for pretty much everything except Defense Debuffing (which, because of how the game plays, is one of the most worthless debuffs available since EVERYONE slots for "sufficient" accuracy by default). And amazingly enough, Dark gets healing powers and other powers that make the secondary even more useful than Trick Arrow ... while Trick Arrow gets stuck with "also ran" status in just about every single category and by just about every single measure.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Whats really surprising is just how evil /Dark's -ToHit is, but it does explain things I've noticed. I made a Necro/Dark awhile ago because I wanted to play with undead basically, I never considered it to be anything like a primary character.

/But He Kicked Butt/

I was thinking with little in the way of defense or resistances I'd suffer on the big spawns, but nope, he owns them pretty hard. Looking at the 60 -ToHit makes me think even incarnate content should be fairly survivable. I'm not 100% sure of how the relationship between ToHit and Defense works... but if they are essentially similar thats pretty powerful stuff. Word on the street 60 Defense is the new softcap for Incarnate content, anyone know how the mechanic for -ToHit works? Because if, say, +5 Defense and -5 ToHit are equivalent that actually shows /Dark to be stronger than most people think it is.

Neat to get some tables -- great work! It also exposes a lot of the secondaries for the poor performers they are, something this forum needed badly. Thats why you rarely see Trick Arrow and Poison MM's, except for the stubborn players

One small thing to note is that Trick Arrow's -tohit is unresistable. Doesn't mean much for most enemies, but once you're hitting AVs that helps make it competitive with Dark in that area (though Dark can still edge ahead if memory serves). Course Dark still brings a hefty amount of -damage which isn't resisted in the same way, so it's usually still better for mitigation in that scenario (not to mention the heavy aoe heal).

Also not sure if the chart is taking into account TG's self-stacking? It's not difficult to get 2-3 stacks of its debuffs on a single target, and once you're making +recharge builds you can get a few more. Unsure if there's a limit to how many times it can stack, but it definitely stacks from the same source (or did last time I tested it anyway).


And yeah, Dark's popularity is not without good cause. It's a bit of a monster for debuffing, and that's on top of aoe controls and a strong aoe heal. It always amuses me to think of how it was once (arguably justifiably) viewed as one of the weakest buff/debuff sets in the game.

I think an important point is to qualitatively define some of the factors you don't go on to discuss later in you're tables.

As an example you mention Dark is capable of some damage. Well theres Howling Twilight, which does piddly damage and is the only source of damage in the entire set. The DPS on it is magnificently low, and the upfront damage is equally as low. While yes it is a portion of the power, it is by no means it's primary purpose.

Likewise I don't recall the last time I used it as a Rez intentionally. Other than moving closer to a corpse because I was about to fire it as a debuff anyway. Perhaps rank a powers properties in terms of generally accepted useage, and perhaps in different circumstances... wow this is actually turning into a big ask!

i.e HT would be (for me);

Vs AVs...Debuff(regen), Rez, Debuff(recharge/move), Control(stun), Damage
Solo mobs...Control(stun), Debuff(move/recharge), Debuff(regen), Damage, Rez
Group mobs...Control(stun), Rez, Debuff(move/recharge), Debuff(regen), Damage

Also, while people have mentioned commenting on the number of powers required to 'match' debuff of the more popular sets, it may be worth noting the number of powers considered 'skippable' in a set while still maintaining debuff viability.... I.E Black-Hole and Petrifying Gaze and Shadow Fall are skippable if debuff is you're only goal.

Of course I would never recomend skipping Shadow Fall, and personally I have petrifying Gaze, even if i rarely use it, but i do recognise it as a passable/situaitonal only deal.



What I would ideally love to see would be a comparison including the powersets you skipped. FF is a non-issue, offering only control and 'damage', however comparing Fire/Pain to poison would be very interesting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

What do you consider better, Trick Arrow or Poison?