Toxic Damage
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2011-12-11 13:10 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Nice, this must have taken awhile. Do Necro MM's pets deal it too?
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Zombie Horde deals some Toxic damage. This list doesn't really account for summonables; Demon Summoning was included more for the whip attacks.
Thought you might want to add Poison and Traps to your list of toxic damage dealers, at least if you accept pseudo pets as damagers as well ^^ Other than that, nice information! I for one was actually surprised to learn that Toxic wasn't invented from the start!
EDIT: Read above post, nevermind ^^
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Now i could be wrong since it was a number of years ago, but i recall that Vahzilok Cadaver vomit was originally untyped damage, not fire damage, with no player powers resisting it; something that convinced many melee players to avoid the Science origin so that they wouldn't be taking on enemies that dealt damage they had no protection against. i don't recall what defense tags the vomit had, but i'm pretty sure it was at best a single positional tag, if that. (Edit: i seem to recall that originally the vomit had no defense tags at all, but i could be wrong.)|
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
I've been on a bit of a Toxic kick lately. Let me share the fruits of my research!
What is Toxic Damage? Toxic is one of the eight damage types in the game. It wasn't around when the game was designed, but was introduced in Issue 3 because other damage types were insufficient for certain enemy attacks. Cadaver vomit was typed Fire, Reaper darts were Negative Energy, Hydra and Devoured spits were Special/irresistible, etc. There was no damage type to cover chemical-themed attacks, so they introduced one. |
The Devs then added a named toxic resistance and damage type. (The game has multiple untyped damage types that can be used with corresponding resistance options, so basically one of those untyped damages and the corresponding resistance were formally renamed as toxic in the combat engine. Hamidon and Crystal Titan damage and the corresponding resistance inspirations use two of the other untyped damages.) Sadly the defense system for whatever reason cannot have more defense types/tags added, so the defense flags/types that were in there at launch are it.
Minor quibbling aside that's an interesting overview on toxic damage in the game.
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It's possible that Vahzilok were among the various Special damage types on launch day like Hydra and Devoureds, but I was able to find records of the attacks dealing Fire and Negative Energy before Issue 3 introduced Toxic. Possibly changed to make them at least somewhat resistible.
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Odd. Hmmm, admittedly i was going by the descriptions of the combat system as provided by players like Iakona and Arcanaville from back in the day. Cadavers dealing "untyped" damage was a common complaint back then and why all armor set users, including Fire, avoided Vahzilok like the plague. Super Reflexes users didn't complain because for the most part their toggles were generally considered not really worth using against anything at the lower levels.
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Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
It's possible that Vahzilok were among the various Special damage types on launch day like Hydra and Devoureds, but I was able to find records of the attacks dealing Fire and Negative Energy before Issue 3 introduced Toxic. Possibly changed to make them at least somewhat resistible.
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This is correct: Vahzilok Zombies were Untyped damage, and pure horror to fight on a team. (shudder) The game is much harder these days, in many ways, but much easier in others. |
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Odd. Hmmm, admittedly i was going by the descriptions of the combat system as provided by players like Iakona and Arcanaville from back in the day. Cadavers dealing "untyped" damage was a common complaint back then and why all armor set users, including Fire, avoided Vahzilok like the plague. Super Reflexes users didn't complain because for the most part their toggles were generally considered not really worth using against anything at the lower levels.
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These days, I love tackling toxic baddies: I whip out one of my fire tanks and start pumping on the ole' Healin' Flames button. 90 percent toxic resist, for the win!
Not really going through completely but Dwarf Forms for Peacebringers and Warshades offer Toxic resistance, and while there is no defense for a Toxic-typed attack, there are extremely few attacks that are typed as positional (ie, Toxic) only (off the top of my head, Poisonous Ray and Venom Grenade) and the other attack types can provide an avenue for defense from the attack.
Otherwise, a decent guide.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
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AFAIK, there's no reason a new damage type couldn't be added. In fact, there already IS an attack type for toxic, and a few rare attacks are tagged with it:|
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Sadly the defense system for whatever reason cannot have more defense types/tags added, so the defense flags/types that were in there at launch are it.
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Hellfire Gargoyle - Hellfire Aura
As well as a few others such as DUST's Toxic Burst and several of Maelstrom's attacks (from tip missions, not TPN).
There are, however, no powers in the game that actually give defense against it.
I always thought the reason toxic defense was never added was for flavor, and also to not upset the balance of typed defense vs. positional defense equalities, S/L/Melee, Energy/Neg/Ranged, Fire/Cold/AoE. That's a little ironic since it gives positional an edge over typed, but what can you do.
I didn't see it listed, but under "How can I protect myself from Toxic Damage?" you could add ice armor's T9 for stalkers as well: it adds +37.5% toxic resistance for 30 seconds unslotted.
Slotted + hoarfrost's 15% + the pvp resist unique and stalkers can almost cap thier toxic resists for 30 seconds at a time at 74% (you might not even need the resist unique; I can't remember if hoarfrost can be slotted for resists as well).
Good writeup BTW!
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Well, the statement from the Devs at least five years back was that they couldn't add additional defense types to the combat engine. That was also long before elusivity was added, so maybe it's changed, but then i don't why they wouldn't have added it to some of the armor sets. It seems like an odd thing to add the capability and then to not use it at all.
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Originally Posted by Codewalker
AFAIK, there's no reason a new damage type couldn't be added. In fact, there already IS an attack type for toxic, and a few rare attacks are tagged with it:
Hellfire Gargoyle - Hellfire Aura As well as a few others such as DUST's Toxic Burst and several of Maelstrom's attacks (from tip missions, not TPN). There are, however, no powers in the game that actually give defense against it. I always thought the reason toxic defense was never added was for flavor, and also to not upset the balance of typed defense vs. positional defense equalities, S/L/Melee, Energy/Neg/Ranged, Fire/Cold/AoE. That's a little ironic since it gives positional an edge over typed, but what can you do. |
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A couple of things:
1. Its not easy to add attack types or damage types to the game. Having said that, the Toxic_Attack type was added a couple of years ago, but it hasn't really been used. No defense power I'm aware of offers protection to that type, which makes the type essentially meaningless at the moment.
2. The toxic damage type wasn't exactly added to the game, rather the game engine originally supported over a dozen damage types, some of which were not (and still are not) used. One of those was renamed "toxic" and then used, and protection powers given resistance to that type. That's what made it easier to add than adding a whole new type.
3. Its impossible to have "untyped damage." You can have an untyped *attack* - that is an attack that honors no defensive types, and therefore no defense power works against it, except for something called "Base Defense" which is what is debuffed when you are defense debuffed. At the beginning of time, some actual defense powers offered base defense including Elude, but now no player defense buff offers this (because it would then work against untyped attacks like Hamidon).
4. Vahz used to do an unnamed special damage type. That was then changed to fire as the closest match to "acid" in order to ensure it was not totally unresistable by players, and that was a stopgap until "toxic" could be added to the game data. The act of adding toxic wasn't just adding the type: power designers had to go through the game's power database and change all these special damage effects to toxic, and then decide how they were going to add toxic resistance to the players. This took significant time.
5. The reason why Vahz damage was called "untyped" and the phrase "untyped damage" came into being was because combat chat didn't show a type. Instead of being "30 points of fire damage" it would just say "30 points of damage." That's because the type was a special internal damage type the original powers designer probably didn't want to show up in the chat (like Special4 or something). The players interpreted that as being "untyped" damage, because no type was listed. But as mentioned previously, all damage must be typed: there is no such thing as untyped damage because damage must affect *something*, and that something is the damage type. *Attacks* can be untyped because attacks must list which defensive types work against it, and that list can be empty. Vahz "toxic" attacks were positionally typed, but had no damage-oriented defense type, so in that sense they were "untyped" as attacks: damage-typed defense didn't work on them. And since no player power offers toxic defense, that's still true.
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Probably my fault. I encouraged the programmers to add Toxic_Attack (and Elusivity for that matter) so that it would be available to the data people (i.e. the powers designers) so that when the data people then had the time it would be waiting for them to use, and they did: however I was never able to convince Castle to leverage that capability, because he never had the time resources to work out the details of using them in a wide capacity (except for Elusivity in PvP) and retrofit them into the game.|
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Well, the statement from the Devs at least five years back was that they couldn't add additional defense types to the combat engine. That was also long before elusivity was added, so maybe it's changed, but then i don't why they wouldn't have added it to some of the armor sets. It seems like an odd thing to add the capability and then to not use it at all.
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Some may recall this was all part of my master plan for getting a big change to defense: step one: convince the programmers to add the tech necessary in a way that was backward compatible with the existing game (so that it could be added without altering current game behavior); step two: convince the producers that addressing the issues I had was a priority; step three convince the powers designers to use the tech in the manner I thought would best address the issues.
I basically got stuck on step two and a half.
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Doesn't Personal Force Field offer Base Defense outside of PvP?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
3. Its impossible to have "untyped damage." You can have an untyped *attack* - that is an attack that honors no defensive types, and therefore no defense power works against it, except for something called "Base Defense" which is what is debuffed when you are defense debuffed. At the beginning of time, some actual defense powers offered base defense including Elude, but now no player defense buff offers this (because it would then work against untyped attacks like Hamidon).
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According to City of Data, yes. I'm not in a spot to check on my Dominator who has PFF through Mace Mastery.
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Originally Posted by Trickshooter
Doesn't Personal Force Field offer Base Defense outside of PvP?
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Yay video! Here's an artist's conception of what a Toxic-oriented Arachnos Soldier would be like.
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It may still do: its was one of the last holdouts going back a long ways, but I don't think its really supposed to. Base defense works against everything, even so-called untyped attacks. It would work against Hamidon's attacks, in other words. I don't think anything is really supposed to.|
Originally Posted by Trickshooter
Doesn't Personal Force Field offer Base Defense outside of PvP?
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Maybe the devs just don't care because PFF has an OnlyAffectSelf effect. Or maybe they just haven't thought about it too much. In PvP, my recollection is it only offers damage-oriented defense: it doesn't buff melee, ranged, or AoE defense. That's also odd, but again since PFF prevents action the devs may not consider this a big deal.
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Crazy, silly, and groovy. A+
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Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Yay video! Here's an artist's conception of what a Toxic-oriented Arachnos Soldier would be like.
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They also forgot to ever give PFF Toxic Resistance.
And Cord, the Mutant/Magic Dual Origin Enhancement, doesn't enhance Toxic Resistance.
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Because mutated magician rope twisters have notoriously poor attention to detail.
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Originally Posted by Trickshooter
And Cord, the Mutant/Magic Dual Origin Enhancement, doesn't enhance Toxic Resistance.
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I count repurposing something that's not used as "adding". |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
1. Its not easy to add attack types or damage types to the game. Having said that, the Toxic_Attack type was added a couple of years ago, but it hasn't really been used. No defense power I'm aware of offers protection to that type, which makes the type essentially meaningless at the moment.
2. The toxic damage type wasn't exactly added to the game, rather the game engine originally supported over a dozen damage types, some of which were not (and still are not) used. One of those was renamed "toxic" and then used, and protection powers given resistance to that type. That's what made it easier to add than adding a whole new type. |
That could also be interpreted as:"It's easy to add damage and attack types to the game, until they run out of spare types, then it becomes difficult."
A bit of CoH archeology: At launch the engine supported 24 damage types, and 24 attack types. Today it supports 20 of each. Over the years new things have been added that required space in the attribute structure (Fury, PVP Stealth, Placate, etc), and it was easier to steal some space from those unused types rather than expand the structure.
Obviously, it's possible to expand it, as was done when Elusivity was added, but it no doubt requires a lot of work and careful testing to do so.
Of those 20 damage types, currently 13 are being used. Those include the normal 8 damage types, the Healing damage type, and 4 "special" or "unique" types for various mechanics. Two of those are effectively "claimed" as far as resistible mechanics go, since Ambrosia inspirations provide resistance against Unique1, and Essense of the Earth resists Special.
Of the 20 attack types, only 11 are being used. The standard 7, Toxic_Attack (which as noted above shows up in a few places but has no powers that defend against it), and the three positional types.
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| [...] At the beginning of time, some actual defense powers offered base defense including Elude, but now no player defense buff offers this (because it would then work against untyped attacks like Hamidon). |
(though I vaguely remember you campaigning to get that changed before, but I could be mistaken)Vet combat pets also give you a whopping 2.5% base defense.
It doesn't apply to players directly, but MM pets can gain base defense from the Edict of the Master and Call to Arms enhancements.
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| [...] power designers had to go through the game's power database and change all these special damage effects to toxic, and then decide how they were going to add toxic resistance to the players. This took significant time. |
Not bad considering how many attacks needed to be changed.
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Ah, a whole page including someone else noticing this has appeared.|
Originally Posted by Trickshooter
Doesn't Personal Force Field offer Base Defense outside of PvP?
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That's what I get for typing something long and double checking my facts.
EDIT: Cool video
So wait, I must have my history confused, did they add toxic to Spines when the damage type was created, did they retype it, or am I wrong in thinking Spines was one of the original sets? I remember making (and scrapping becase I thought they were ugly) a Spines toon when I first bought the game in 05/2004?
Spines was a launch set. However, Codewalker and I investigated it and the Scrapper version did not appear to have the DoT. NPC versions did, and the DoT's type was Special.
I've been on a bit of a Toxic kick lately. Let me share the fruits of my research!
What is Toxic Damage?
Toxic is one of the eight damage types in the game. It wasn't around when the game was designed, but was introduced in Issue 3 because other damage types were insufficient for certain enemy attacks. Cadaver vomit was typed Fire, Reaper darts were Negative Energy, Hydra and Devoured spits were Special/irresistible, etc. There was no damage type to cover chemical-themed attacks, so they introduced one.
What deals Toxic Damage?
There's a few enemies in the game that pose a threat with Toxic Damage. This list may not be comprehensive:
How can I protect myself from Toxic Damage?
When Toxic was added to the game, certain defensive powers were given moderate-to-light Resistance to it. This was usually in the form of self-heals and godmodes, though Dark Armor and Warshades got consistent protection to it through toggle powers. Though Toxic damage isn't particularly prolific in the game, it's still important to be wary of it because Resistance to it is not very prolific either.
It's important to note that a Toxic attack type was never implemented, meaning you can't have Defense to Toxic specifically. The only way to avoid Toxic attacks is to have positional Defense.
The powers that protect you from Toxic are as follows. Versions of these powers that are also available in the epic sets are not listed, but also provide Resistance to Toxic:
Additionally, the scaling passive Resistances in Super Reflexes will protect you from Toxic damage under the right circumstances.
Assorted Invention Set Bonuses will also provide some light Resistance to Toxic.
How can I protect my allies from Toxic Damage?
Only a handful of ally buffs provide Resistance to Toxic:
How can I deal Toxic Damage?
There's an assortment of Power Sets available to players that have some dedicated Toxic output; usually as a secondary DoT effect:
Additionally, there are some oddball powers that deal Toxic:
There are also two Invention Enhancement damage procs that deal Toxic:
Which powers deal the most/least Toxic Damage?
Powers used by summonable entities such as Poison Trap and Zombie are not factored into this assessment.
The top 5 Toxic dealers, with the strongest listed first, are:
The bottom 5 Toxic dealers, with the weakest listed first, are:
Which character build deals the most Toxic Damage?
Until such a thing as Toxic Blast comes along, our best bets for Toxic characters are Dual Pistols and Bane Spiders. Dual Pistols suffers a bit of a weakness in Hail of Bullets, which is its strongest Toxic dealer, but typically isn't well-suited for general combat.
- Bane Spiders have access to 3 of the top 5 Toxic attacks (all of which are purely Toxic), as well as three considerable Resistance debuffs (Surveillance, Venom Grenade and Arctic Breath). This amounts to a -75% Resistance debuff to Toxic in particular coupled with the strongest Toxic attacks. Their melee attacks also have a Toxic DoT component.
When Degenerative Interface is mixed in, Toxic output will increase proportional to the rapidness of the character's ability to attack. An assortment of AoE powers will deal more Toxic Damage as a result, and greater Resistance debuffs yield more effective Degenerative procs.The verdict? Your mileage may vary, but to me it looks like the Bane Spider wins out.