Vanden

I have to be doubtful of that. If I take the aggro on a Poison MM, I have no way to heal myself outside of inspirations. The damage does add up eventually. If my T3, the only pet with the HP to survive hits from a damage-debuffed EB, takes the aggro, I'm actually in a situation where having only a single-target heal isn't a liability. Without Challenge, it's pretty hard to grab the aggro yourself either way, since the T3 pet is both debuffing the enemy with NG and doing the most damage.

Maybe. I could be wrong.

I ignored the -Speed and -Recharge because it doesn't matter; the -Recharge doesn't come into effect until the boss or higher has used all its attacks, sometimes more than once since some enemies have so many attacks they can string together a lengthy chain before the -Recharge really affects their output. Plus, because of the way recharge times are calculated, that hefty-sounding -65% recharge debuff only means that the enemies' attacks take 33% longer to recharge, hardly gamebreaking.

-Speed doesn't help with combat unless the enemy tries to run away, or in specific cases when the enemy tries to melee you, but then you have the headache of keeping your T3 pet in melee for NG.

The numbers and my experience simply don't show Poison being a powerful set. When my EB fights consistently end when, after I apply my debuffs, the Commando loses aggro for whatever reason and the EB turns and two shots nearly all of my pets with AoEs, there's little room for interpretation.

Anything you just said about Alkaloid can be said about every other healing power. The difference is that every other healing power has much better base stats, except for O2 Boost, and O2 Boost at least affects the target almost immediately instead of having a leisurely wind up followed by travel time for the projectile to reach its target. Moreover, O2 Boost is in a set with much better AoE than Poison. In addition, since Poison is only available to Masterminds, you are GUARANTEED to run into situations where Alkaloid is not enough, because a slow, weak, single-target heal is not enough to keep six targets in the green. Frankenslotting can improve Alkaloid, yes, but all it can do is take it from terrible to less-terrible.

Poison as a whole is very weak. People claim it has amazing debuffs, but my experience would suggest otherwise, and I think the numbers back me up.

Let's take a look at everyone's favorite debuff, -ToHit. Poison has two sources of this, Weaken and Neurotoxic Gas. Weaken does 11.25% -ToHit, enhanceable to about 16.75%. Neurotoxic Gas does 12.5% -ToHit when used on a T3 minion, and can't be enhanced. That's a maximum of 29.25% -ToHit. Fine for minions and lieutenants, but you can't have NG up for every mob. Moreover, minions aren't usually worth a Weaken. Now, bosses have base 75% hit chance, so that's 46.75% base chance ToHit when they've got both debuffs on them. But wait, often times you're fighting bosses higher-level than you. That both increases their tohit chance and reduces the effectiveness of your debuffs. Next, we need to realize that around 50% or more of your damage output is from your T1 and T2 pets, which are lower level than you and even more levels below the boss.

What all this means is that even with both sources of ToHit debuff on this boss, he still has a better than even chance of hitting your main sources of damage. Most bosses have enough damage to kill your weaker pets in two hits in an AoE, even with the max damage debuff applied to him. Start fighting EBs and AVs and the situation gets even worse.

Success against hard targets with Poison depends as much on your Primary, inspiration use, and management of pets as it does on your Poison powers, perhaps more.

I have two high-level MMs: A Thugs/Pain and a Mercs/Poison. Here's how a typical EB fight will play out for each.

Mercs/Poison: Give the Commando inspirations, hit him with NG, and send him into melee with the EB. Pray the EB or its mob doesn't hit him with knockback, because if he's not attacking, he's not drawing aggro. Hit the EB with my debuffs and pray Commando keeps aggro, because I can only heal one pet at a time, and if the EB's attention turns to me and the rest of my pets, I'm losing two of them, minimum, because they're weak and don't have insps. Usually fail once or twice.

Thugs/Pain: Buff thugs with World of Pain, pop a break free, jump and EB and hit him with Anguishing Cry. Taunt EB with Challenge. Stand away from EB and spam Challenge and Nullify Pain, standing near pets for Nullify Pain occasionally to heal Bodyguard damage. Rarely fail more than once, if at all.

In my experience, an AoE (self) heal and a pool power (Challenge) is more powerful against EBs than the entire Poison secondary.

Ah-heh, heh, I think that's a chunk I'm not willing to bite off at this juncture. It's not just a lot of art work, it's a lot of bookkeeping work keeping track of which ones I've done and not done, plus I don't have access to a lot of those powers on my own characters so I wouldn't be sure which would get what. I can agree with what you're saying, though.

City of Data says Triage Beacon works on any ally, not just teammates.

1. I CAN change the macro icon, but there's only the one grey circle. If you want different macro icons, you can start a Gladiator match in the arena or grab a Heavy in RV, then click and drag the pet control icons from the pet window into your tray. You can't rename the macros, but you can edit what they do and they'll still retain their appearance.

2. Ninja Run shares its icon with the Low-G Pack (the temp super jump power you can buy in Siren's Call or the Arena). Despite that, there is an amber icon for it in the next update.

I don't think that change is in the current version, but I could be wrong. I don't see it listed in the OP. Anyway, to revert that, delete the file "Arachnos_Patron_SelfBuffResistancePhysical.textur e" in the Icons folder. Details on where to find that folder are in the OP.

I knew it! I knew it was too good to be true! When I read that post the very first thing I thought was, "I don't believe you. It's too good to be true."

No! No! Better idea! Resolve to invent a time machine and also to travel back in time to December 1st, 2009 to give your past self the time machine, so you can travel back in time to when the system was being made to make sure it's more flexible! If you do that, your future self should appear with the time machine as soon as you make the resolution!

That's bad advice, because it can be mathematically proven that slotting for damage is better for endurance woes than slotting for endurance until you hit the damage enhancement soft cap. Accuracy trumps both, though.

Oh, that's a relief. I thought it looked weird with those weapons, but at this point wouldn't be getting looked at.

I stand corrected. But that does sort of undermine your argument against adding the Coral Hammer, which you mentioned is a temp power in a way that could be read as meaning that that is a reason you wouldn't add it as a weapon. Sure it's too big as-is, but you could just resize it like you did with the Carnie mallet.

Though maybe that's not something you "just" do.

But what about the Ring-Pommeled Sword, BABs? WHAT ABOUT THE RING-POMMELED SWORD?

I'm pretty sure there's no debt during an invasion.

WebCoon is the 35 power for Banes, their 38 is Call Reinforcements.