Dromio

Right on!

I have Reactive for solo and Paralytic for teaming. Since most people have Reactive, and since it doesn't stack any higher from multiple sources, I use my Paralytic -DAM on teams.

Cool! Thanks! I usually am pretty up on patches but that got by me!

No kidding. Lambda bombing was interesting the first time I saw it and then it rapidly progressed to not even vaguely funny or cool. I'm baffled why anyone would WANT to do it.

I've never lead a trial, but I've one starred every dancer I've trialed with.

I have Diamagnetic for Interface. It's for the Alpha slot that I'm doing the recharge one.

I was thinking about the aggro cap this week. I really would love to build a "Defend the Rainbow Bridge" kind of mission in AE with unreasonable numbers of bad guys assaulting a lone team or hero. But there's really nothing out there for me. There's no map for something like that, no unreasonable numbers of foes, and the aggro cap would make the whole thing pointless anyway.

It'd be cool if the aggro cap could be suspended in specific missions. I'd much rather see something like that in a trial rather than all the lame sequester type processes they put in to help people think the trials were a challenge.

Same here. I'm the only one left of my SG (created right at launch) and even Free to Play isn't going to bring them back. The whole Trials thing drove them right out.

I hit my long term renewal right before that so I figure I'll continue to play somewhat in the hopes that more end game options (solo/small team) will be added. If my posting critically on the forums helps to bring some of the things I hope to see in the game to fruition, I'm perfectly happy posting critically.

They should stack. In fact the -DMG from Void, the Interface one, Darkest Night, Chilling Embrace, and any other sources should all stack.

The trick is that the cap on -DMG is 90%. So you won't see any -DMG above 90% and, to turn that around, a foe will always be able to do 10% of its damage to you.

You can test with the Power Analyzer (now on sale at Wentworths). That will let you see the -DMG that has been stacked on a target.

On a single target (for now) in melee with a specific pet. How many targets do Darkest Night and Tar Patch stack on at level 4 without needing a pet (or worrying about tiers), with far shorter recharges, casting only two powers, and without requiring melee distance for casting or effectiveness? Ten? And by default we're talking about 45 seconds out of 300 for your Poison combo. The Darkest Night/Tar Patch combo leaves anything Poison can throw out in the dust in any battle with more than two foes.

Even when the Weaken and Envenom powers get their ghetto AoE anything but the main target will only be getting half the effect, and the stacking is still up in the air (no reports from beta). If the stacking remains the same then only one piece of each of those two debuffs will stack (with only the main target getting the full effect), and of course there's not even a possibility of stacking Noxious.

Plus we're still talking about three powers for Poison. Let's add Twilight Grasp into our Dark combo to keep it even. Now we've added a stackable single target regen debuff, damage debuff, ToHit debuff, and AoE heal to the Dark combo. And it's all still available at level 4 with no pet limitations or AI worries. Oh, and that stackable Twilight Grasp power? It's got an 8 second recharge compared to the 12 and 16 second recharges of Envenom and Weaken.

The hold is a chance for hold (20%) I think. You can't depend on it to fire. It's there, but you can't plan on leveraging it.

Noxious is not powerful enough considering all of its limitations (including targeting, recharge and duration, and lack of suitability to a wide range of MM primaries).

That's Tar Patch. AoE, no pet needed, no pet AI involved, castable at a distance, 30% resist debuff and slow debuff. Default recharge 90 seconds, lasts 45 seconds.

Don't the Incarnate powers work outside of trials? Or are we just talking level shifts here?

Personally I wanted to get the level shifts for when I did trials and the powers for all content.

Thing is, it's not like it's all that strong, especially when you look at the limitations of the current MM power.

- Only targets your own pet.
- Cannot target player allies.
- Performance depends on pet tier, so best used on tier 3 pet.
- Only effective in melee, thus on melee pets
- 45 second duration, 300 second recharge.

Effects are:

10% ToHit Debuff
20% Damage Debuff
20% Defense Debuff
30% Resist Debuff

Compare that to say, Darkest Night, which is not dependent on pet AI, doesn't scale for pet level and can be used in any situation, pets or not. It's also available at level four, and can be used on every spawn.

11%ToHit debuff
22.5% Damage debuff

Heck, add Tar Patch (available at level 2) and Dark is sitting pretty dang close to Noxious Gas by level 4 (34 levels earlier than Noxious Gas) with NONE of the limitations that Noxious gas has. Radiation can do similar things by level 10 with Radiation Infection and Enervating Field.

Or look at Painbringer, another tier 9 MM power like NG. It can be targeted to player or pet, not dependent on tier, effective in and out of battle (not just melee, but battle), and a 90 second duration with a 300 second recharge.

+regen
+recovery
37% damage buff

Noxious Gas is a fine idea, and it seems strong, but its limitations make it not hold up under much scrutiny.

Personally I think at MINIMUM the powers guys should remove the dependency on pet tier from the power. That would open up MM Poison to more MM primaries. But additionally, with the current stringent limitations of Noxious Gas (up to and including Pet AI) NG should have its duration lengthened or even be made into a toggle.

This is what's killing my trials too. I unlocked and slotted one character in the first while after the trials came out. No big deal, it was even kind of fun. When I went back recently with a second character my lag was horrible, there was a lot more waiting to start the trial, and most of the trials were "speed" trials where I'd leave having gotten a very small percentage toward unlocking slots.

All in all I was taking more time and getting less reward this second time around because I wasn't doing the trials in that initial first rush of people.

Noxious Gas should absolutely be changed. It's limited to targeting pets, it only works well on tier 3 pets, and its recharge is way too long. Compare the numbers with Painbringer. Even better, take a look at the Poison revamp thread mentioned earlier in this thread.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=258072

If it's going to be limited to targeting pets it should be a toggle and it should have the tier effectiveness modifiers removed to make it more compatible with all of the MM primaries.

I sure hope someone in beta is really testing Poison. Not only the changes but the powerset in general. This seems to be a time when positive changes are possible.

My idea was to use the upcoming Signature Story Arcs to implement solo/team Incarnate options. Here's the thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=264674

I think it would be a way to speed things up by leveraging something already in the development pipeline.

How did I miss that? I was the one that asked about the MM changes but somehow all I heard was that they were changes, not what they were!


The big thing here is the beta boards as mentioned above. We REALLY need someone in the beta to be testing changes and providing feedback on the powerset as a whole. Perhaps comparing Noxious Gas with Venomous Gas.