Which Interface for Big Game Hunting?

Hey everybody

I'm in the process of retooling my Peacebringer for more damage so I can further focus on taking down Bosses and above both on teams and solo. As part of that process I'm looking at which Incarnate abilities will be most useful for him, particularly Interface.

I know when the slot was first introduced Reactive was the way to go for the DoT and debuffs. But now I'm eyeing Degenerative since, to my knowledge, nothing resists -MaxHP debuffs. But just how effective are they in the long run? The effect only stacks four times. Will that really make a difference over the course of a long fight?

I believe UberGuy or someone did an analysis of degenerative that showed that against AVs it was competitive with reactive core's overall effect. That's cool and everything but the reason I bring it up is to point out that against anything short of an AV, the damage proc is waaaaaaaaay more useful than any of the debuffs or controls. Which damage proc? Take your pick, I believe reactive is the strongest but even the psionic one beats any of the debuffs against minions, lieutenants and bosses.

Against everything up to about AVs, the -maxHP of Degenerative is actually better for time to defeat than Reactive's. However, you pretty much need to be looking at AVs and the like for that benefit to really show up. Against things with bigger maxHP than "regular" AVs like you meet in missions (which includes GMs, Hamidon, entities like Reichsman or iTrial AVs), Reactive starts to be better.

As PleaseRecycle mentions, in most situations, you will do best with the Radial side of the interfaces adding direct DPS than with the debuff side. Of the versions, Reactive probably comes out on top in raw DPS, because even on the Radial side, you still have a chance of -resist debuff. After that, I would expect Spectral and Preemptive to be next and basically tied, as they have the same DoT damage magnitude as Reactive but no debuff effect. Degenerative may come in closer here, because it has 80% of the damage per tick, but again includes the -maxHP debuff. Finally, Congnitive would be in last place for big game, as it has 80% of Reactive's damage but no debuff.

In theory, Cognitive and Degenerative have lower damage per tick because they are "exotic" damage types, which might make them seem attractive. In practice, versus critters, I don't find this compelling. Critters with strong "physical" protections frequently have Toxic resists as well. While Psi resist is not as common as physical resists, when it is resisted, it is often resisted very severely, with 50% being a very common value.

In contrast, and if I remember correctly, some analysis was done that showed fire turned out to be one of the most infrequently resisted things you could deal damage with.

Spectral and Preemptive basically tied? Yes the both have the same DoT but -end and -recovery are debuffs, two really. Both debuffs procs at double the rate of Spectral (25 vs 12) and depending on the AT and power sets used it can actually make a difference. Tied if you can't cap on the debuffs of preemptive then yes.

For my spider's big game hunts I go either radial degen or reactive. Degen seems to slightly outperform reactive for me but not by much. You'd be fine with either of those.