Insects. Swarm Blast has always been in the back of my mind when it comes to this sort of idea, and we now have precedence for it thanks to that one attack in Beast Mastery.
I don't know how this would fly with players (pardon the pun), but it could be a set that could do some toxic damage and implement soft-holds/immob/confuse as part of its gimmick.
Two other Sets that have Ranged Toxic damage: Spines (in a limited fashion) in a PBAoE and a Cone, and the Dominator Thorny Assault set.
Thorny Assault could be a starting point for your "Biological".
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Originally Posted by PapaSlade
Rangle's right....this is fun.
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Sounds like it could be a "Seeker Drones" (from the Traps set) variant. I kind of like the idea of it, something like "Stinging Insects".|
Originally Posted by QuarriosSoul
I don't know how this would fly with players (pardon the pun), but it could be a set that could do some toxic damage and implement soft-holds/immob/confuse as part of its gimmick.
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I could see some people grouse though because "my character Poisonous Gas Man is all about deadly gas but has nothing to do with insects" or something. Still, I like it.
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When I still played Blaster, I had one of each primary well into their 30s... Except Sonic Attack. I never, not for a moment, considered making one, and this is the exact reason why. Mouth-based powers simply don't work for me unless you're talking about biting, and even then it's iffy. Even when Sonic Blast got a custom power animations to shoot from the hands, some attacks still remained mouth-based, and it never really worked for me. What I wanted to do was something akin to Spider-Man villain the Shocker, but that was never meant to be.|
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Having said that, if we can learn anything from Sonic Attack, a mouth-centric attack set can still be accomplished.
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When you're talking about power styles and animations, I believe you're REALLY going to have to look into alternate custom animations. Remember that, developers? Power customization? You said you were going to expand it? Yeah, it hasn't gone anywhere, it still exists. And it can save you a lot of work making a zillion new sets if you just proliferate some animations.
I don't have a problem with a mouth-based set so long as it comes with non-mouth-based alternate animations. As with most Blast sets, exactly what the animation is doesn't matter. At the end of the day, it comes down to pointing a hand or two or waving a hand or two. What matters is what effect you project with your finger-pointing and hand-waving. The "soul" of the set, thus, is in the effects, which can remain consistent between mouth and hands. Hell, you can even recycle old Blast set animations and not many people would care. There's no reason to have it done either-or when you can do both.
Speaking on the subject, I agree that it's very easy to do wrong, and I'd say both Plant Control and Beast Mastery are clear examples of why, as well as clear examples of misunderstanding what a set constitutes. Plant Control fails on the "throwing seeds" part because it pretty much eliminates any kind of natural magic type plant controller. For instance, The Pirates of Dark Water series had a character named Tula, who was an "ecomancer." Essentially, her powers revolved around magically making plants grow out of the ground and impede her enemies, basically by waving her hands and making green light. No seeds involved. For Beast Mastery, despite getting a series of embarrassingly absurd arguments about "speaking with animals in their own language," having the Mastermind growl and howl simply eliminates any type of scientist or wizard who gained control of animals via indirect means, as well as circus animal wranglers, leaving only room for the literal Beastmaster of the movie by the same name. That's as narrow as narrow gets, and it entirely eliminates characters like Ben 10's Dr. Animo - a scienitst who mutates and controls animals via a sciency techy helmet with antennae on it.
It's easy to get wrong, so a set that's both generic enough to cover most themes AND customizable enough to cover the themes that simply don't fit into any one specific look is the way to go.
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That said, you're highly unlikely to see a set that's entirely or primarily toxic damage for the simple fact that Paragon Studios had to add the damage type post-launch. Once upon a time, the Vahzilok did untyped damage because they were intended to be especially hard, but people complained that it was completely unresistable for Tankers whereas defence-based SR Scrappers have a much easier time. For a while, they started dealing Fire damage because... Acid burns? Then the studio up and added a new damage type - toxic... But not entirely. They added the damage type and they added resistance against it, but never added defence against the type. Right now, SR has decent protection against Toxic same way as they do against Psi, but unlike Psi, NO-ONE has defence against toxic damage because it doesn't exist. I'm more than convinced that for this reason alone, seeing a toxic damage set is highly unlikely.
But, hey, if it happens, I won't really complain. I don't exactly PvP, so what do I care?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I would rather see a Toxic melee set that would include a toxic vomit cone and maybe a explosion (PBAOE) if they could put in a damage like aura that trails behind you that would be something new and different.
There are a few people in comics who use this powerset it could represent anything from toxic venom to chemical burns although some could also be representative with Radiation as well.
A few are Doctor Phosphorus(DC Villian), Chemo(DC Villian), Chemical King (Legion Member) Im sure there are many more.
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You've got your facts wrong: check the thread I linked in the first post. Toxic damage works just like the other damage types, and there is a Toxic attack type that can be Defense'd--Toxic Burst and Hellfire Aura use it.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That said, you're highly unlikely to see a set that's entirely or primarily toxic damage for the simple fact that Paragon Studios had to add the damage type post-launch. Once upon a time, the Vahzilok did untyped damage because they were intended to be especially hard, but people complained that it was completely unresistable for Tankers whereas defence-based SR Scrappers have a much easier time. For a while, they started dealing Fire damage because... Acid burns? Then the studio up and added a new damage type - toxic... But not entirely. They added the damage type and they added resistance against it, but never added defence against the type. Right now, SR has decent protection against Toxic same way as they do against Psi, but unlike Psi, NO-ONE has defence against toxic damage because it doesn't exist. I'm more than convinced that for this reason alone, seeing a toxic damage set is highly unlikely.
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I think the reason we haven't seen a lot of Toxic is because the devs haven't put a lot of focus on Toxic.
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*checks* Holy crap, they are typed "Toxic_Attack". When did that get changed?
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Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
You've got your facts wrong: check the thread I linked in the first post. Toxic damage works just like the other damage types, and there is a Toxic attack type that can be Defense'd--Toxic Burst and Hellfire Aura use it.
I think the reason we haven't seen a lot of Toxic is because the devs haven't put a lot of focus on Toxic. |
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As happens from time to time, I got to thinking...
It is no secret that Toxic damage is near and dear to my heart, and I in fact have a character dedicated to it. After sampling Water Blast on the beta server, my thoughts turned to the ever-elusive Toxic powers and the character concepts surrounding them.
In essence, Toxic damage applies to anything chemical, be it molecular substances in their basic forms or organic fluids such as bile and venom. It's considered an "exotic" damage type, and it has been the rarest of them ever since its introduction. Protection from Toxic damage, with occasional exception (such as two of the Power Sets currently in development), tends to come as a byproduct of self-heal powers and only in the form of Resistance, for no power grants Toxic Defense.
Thing is, Toxic damage is so eccentric that we really don't have any good sources of it, and there's quite a genre of character concepts that can't be worked into characters due to this. That said, when designing Toxic sets, what kinds of concepts should be accommodated?
We have precedent in the game already for two general themes of Toxic powers: biological and technological.
Biological
The biological powers, let's face it, almost exclusively originate from the mouth in some form or another. Vahzilok fire projectile vomit at you. Arachnoids, Hydra and the Devoured spit... something at you. Snakes spray you with venom. And players get access to a power called Bile Spray, which is exactly as it sounds and I'm not surprised I've only seen a handful of other people ever take it.
Though it may be a niche, the spew-rific character is one we currently can't make. I'm not a super hero buff, so I can't think of any examples in the comics scene of characters who specialize in... puking on their enemies... but that's something we really can't get in the game. As much as I hate how restrictive it is, any biological Toxic Blast will wind up being a bunch of variations on the same thing: Spit, Vomit, Upchuck, Spew, Regurgitate, etc.
Having said that, if we can learn anything from Sonic Attack, a mouth-centric attack set can still be accomplished.
Technological
I think there's a lot more freedom of concept in the technological side of Toxic damage, but it unfortunately alienates the biological character concepts.
Already players have access to Toxic damage that piggybacks on otherwise non-Toxic weaponry: Dual Pistols, the Bane Spider Mace, the Widows claws, um... I guess that's about it, and two of those are melee. The one exception is Poisonous Ray, which in a way that defies all logic fires a burst of energy that is somehow poisonous. The "poisonified projectiles" concept is a bit finnicky, but there is a precedent for it.
One thing we do have, though, is Venom Grenade: a form of ordnance with a chemical payload. NPC enemies use some things like this as well, such as the Nemesis Gas blasts or the various forms of poison gas missiles like the ones used by turrets and Malta Titans. The D.U.S.T. soldiers in First Ward have a Toxic Burst that isn't all that elegant, but it's effective: they just dump a bunch of acid on you and call it a day.
Somewhere in here we've got the Hellfire attacks from Demon Summoning. The whip and a couple of the pets have a sort of flame that deals Fire and Toxic damage. This makes about as much sense to me as Poisonous Ray, but hey, it's Toxic.
While the potential for a tech-centric Toxic Blast set allows for quite a bit of variety, it will likely use a weapon of some sort regardless of what form it takes.
Meeting Half Way
A third option would be a compromise: half bio, half tech.
On the one hand, it's extremely easy to just do it wrong by giving some total mismatches like Projectile Vomit on one side and Venom Grenade on the other. Yeah, they're both technically Toxic ranged attacks, but there's no synergy or conceptual link between them. Doing it this way is sloppy.
On the other hand, doing it right is plenty difficult. What first comes to mind is Spider-Man: he has the relative strength of a spider and can crawl on walls like a spider, but he can't spin silk like a spider; he has to make that himself (I know he did it in the movies, but that's not canon). Somewhere in there is a happy medium of biology and technology, and I really think I want that in a Toxic Blast set.
Although visions of Toxic Blast have been dancing in my head for years, I've still not come up with an overall concept that I'm satisfied with to the point that I can design 9 powers for it.
How about you guys? What concepts would you want for a Toxic Blast set?