I want to debuff.

I've never made a debuff toon and would like to know whats the best debuffer in the game? I want to be able to turn AV's into kittens by the time i'm finished with them. So what AT has the best debuffs and what powers?

I would say either Rad/Sonic Defender or Cold/Sonic Defender. Rad blooms much earlier, but Cold might be able to top it out at the very high end. /Sonic due entirely to the -res.


(not sure how Poison/ would stack up vs those two, but Rad and Cold are tried and true )

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Three of the four "support" ATs share powersets. The ones that don't share everything (trollers and MMs) don't share different things than do fenders and corruptors, the other two support ATs. Controllers don't get dark miasma, and masterminds don't get radiation emission as I recall.

The "best" debuff AT is from a raw numeric standpoint the defender, as they get higher AT mods to the debuff portions of the powers they pick. MMs, trollers, and corruptors all share slightly lower AT mods to debuffs, but bring other qualities to compensate for it. Controllers get containment (double damage to mezzed targets), corruptors have higher baseline damage than defenders and get attacks earlier, and masterminds have their own entire teams to lay on the damage and roflstomp hard targets.

In my experience the added debuff values defenders get aren't usually outweighed by the benefits the other three ATs bring with their toolkits. By and large you don't need the extra (20%? I forget) debuff value when say... a controller can solo a giant monster with their weaker but still quite powerful debuffs. You don't need that extra bit of debuff when a mastermind's army of pets can aoe violate packs and packs of mobs or bring a lot of power on a single hard target.

All that aside, the classic most loved debuff sets are radiation emission and dark miasma, as both debuff regen, tohit, defense, and damage resistance. Both get combat rezzes (dark's is the best in the game and also does -regen/tohit/etc.) and control powers (fearsome stare is love, and choking cloud is an easy +rech from the basilisk's gaze 4-slot set). Dark gets a slight edge as it has a perma out of box (except for MMs) pet that also uses debuffs and the crazy strong dark heal, while rad can turn dead teammates into nuclear bombs.

Ultimately it's up to you which support/debuff AT you play, but for my money I'd suggest a radiation controller (illusion suggested primary) or a dark miasma MM (I'd suggest demons or bots, as both hit hard but demons also bring MORE debuffs in the personal attacks and the pets).

I thought Dark Miasma had an AoE stun that happened to rez any fallen teammates in the area...

You definitely can't go wrong with a Rad/Sonic Defender for debuffing, and Dark/Dark Defenders are also great at it (they debuff fewer things, but they debuff the heck out of them and they tend to be things you really want debuffed, like ability to hit). Cold Domination is also a great debuff set, though you need lots of recharge to really get the most from it.

One character I'm currently trying out is an Electric/Time Controller. At first glance it doesn't look like it debuffs nearly as well as a /Rad or /Cold but between the massive slows and the endurance drain what you actually debuff is the enemy's ability to attack you at all... that seems like a pretty hefty debuff to me.

For kittenizing AVs, I've found few to be more effective than Dark Miasma or Kinetics.

-damage is one of the most effective mitigation debuffs against AVs since it isn't resisted in the same way as most debuffs (there's the occasional exception where the AVs actually resist it more than other resists, but more commonly you can get them down to around Lieutenant or Boss levels of damage). Dark adds another layer to that with huge volumes of -tohit (it's always resisted heavily by AVs, but you can pump out so much that it still has an impact), a decent amount of -regen and -resist, and a strong heal. Kinetics is less debuffy, but all the extra endurance, +dam/+rech, and mez protection certainly doesn't hurt.

I've run as most buff/debuff sets, and while they all bring something to the table and frequently excel in other areas, but those two are the ones I'd want along for removing any threat an AV might pose (e.g. Rad is hugely popular, and provides advantages that e.g. Dark does not, but its debuffing is not quite as focused on mitigation, so in my experience the AV feels less kitten-like).

Throwing in a vote for a traps character of some kind, probably a traps/sonic defender if you want to really go nuts. The mortars all apply a -26.6 def/res debuff, seeker drones are -26.6 damage apiece, PGT is a nasty -1000 regen debuff and the best part? Mortars/drones will stack their debuffs, getting around the "this effect does not stack from the same caster" problem. You can use procs out the wazoo as well, whee!

The only issue with traps is that it's nowhere near as fire n' forget as rad or cold; you have to get stuck in to lay your pseudo-pets (which can die, too!) and that can get seriously hairy against big nasties. Your character will also needs gobs of +rech to get the rather lengthy timers down to the "every mob" stage. Still, it might be worth considering.

E: Hmm, I could be wrong about the seekers actually; apparently they won't stack. Anyone know for sure?

E2: Looking at city of data, it looks like you can't have more than 2 seekers out at once (unlike the mortars they won't stack from you) but the flashpulse effects will stack from the different drone casters. I'm honestly not sure if that's correct though.

Biowraith is right on the money. I've never seen something as efficient as Dark Miasma at turning AVs into kittens, independently of the skill or possible lack thereof of your teammates (if any!). Throw in /sonic for the -res goodness, and they just melt. As an aside, -dam and -res seem to interact in an odd way that turn resistance buffs into goo. Normally, resistance resist resistance debuffs, but I've seen a dark/sonic dropping Reichsman while in Unstoppable to negative res by themselves.

Kin is great for the -damage, also for the often underrated Siphon Speed, which is set to be unresistable. That means stacking it a few times, you can make a significant dent in the attack speed of the AV, as well as push back their critical powers such as tier9s and nukes.

Gotta go with Traps/Sonic Defender on this one. Their -res numbers are absolutely staggering and Traps is also a delightfully potent set in numerous other ways.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Also considering a demon/poison MM, with the updates to /poison and the debuffs put out by the pets.

You want to Debuff?

Dark/Sonic Defender. Go Villain to get the Def Shield from Mace PP and get your self 45% S/L/E and Ranged defense, and be the sexeh. Doooo eeeeeeeet.

I'm kind of liking the potential of Time Manipulation defenders. They don't do any one thing especially well, but they can do a little bit of everything.

My Rad/Sonic Defender is still my go-to big game hunter though. I've soloed a couple GMs with him, so that should say something about the potential.