Very important questions about poison necros

[ralbu]

First of all hello all necros out there. I'm pretty new to these forums (as in posting), but I have read them a lot in the last month. Also, I don't have too much experience "on the field" (started playing Diablo on bnet about 2 months ago), but I played 2 years of single player and I'm like a spounge when it comes to reading info & FAQs.

So to the point..... Poison is a huge secret for everybody out there....including the famous Tao. The big question I would like to receive some answers to is:


Does posion nova and poison dagger cancel each other out? Or how do they add up and what is the formula?

I have done extensive researching, read the Tao twice and I haven't found an explanation to this problem. It is of utmost importance, IMO, since it can change the builds (in the way you play, not the skill point allocation).

Also, the question can be extended to: What happend when you use multiple sources of poison: melee, spell, charms, other items? Tao explains only items+melee/range attack, but no word about poison.

Also, why is poison nova so underrated everywhere. I searched a lot with googles and read a lot of builds and I haven't found too many novamancer builds out there. I mean the spell is just TOO GOOD! with synergies and lvl 20 it can reach about 2.5K dmg in 2 secs... which is much more than you can get with Pdagger, even with end-game gear (believe me...I just finished reading the last thread concerning Venom). Now if you take in account +poison skillers, -poison res and +posion dmg, we are talking about instant killing power. Not to mention that it works great especially on groups of monsters.

Of course, I might be wrong about everything since I don't have so much experience..... But I doubt it ;)

Also, as a side note question, does -posion res and +posion dmg modifiers works with spells (Pnova) or only with melee/range attacks?

Thanks a lot to all the necros who will be willing to help me clarify these things. I think it will be useful for everybody out there to solve these problems.

EDIT: What happens when you also take in account poiuson explosion? (another posion spell). How does it factor in with other spells, melee attacks, items etc.?

[Myrakh-2]

A monster only has one poison timer, so there can be only one poison at any time. A new application cancels the previous one.

Poison damage items have no effect on spells. +%damage/-%res gear does.

Poison explosion, to my knowledge, isn't used a lot since it has a rather small blast radius. It's still a synergy, thoiugh.

[Mad Mantis]

Does posion nova and poison dagger cancel each other out? Or how do they add up and what is the formula?

Welcome Newcomer to The Darkness. Grab a brew :drink: and feel free to raise some corpses.

As Myrakh-2 said, a new source of poison cancels an older one, but ONLY if the new source has a higher damage per frame.




Also, the question can be extended to: What happend when you use multiple sources of poison: melee, spell, charms, other items? Tao explains only items+melee/range attack, but no word about poison.

That depends on the which attacks you use. PDagger functions oddly with other sources of Poison. Venom just reduces everything to .04 seconds, except PDagger. Nova is unaffected by any other source of poison.




Also, why is poison nova so underrated everywhere. I searched a lot with googles and read a lot of builds and I haven't found too many novamancer builds out there.

It isn't really. It is just that everybody and his goldfish went nuts for the Marowwalk-bugged Bonemancer. Nova has always had a loyal following and has been a powerful spell. A lot of the guides etc. you can find via google aren't really up-to-date or are of questionable quality.




What happens when you also take in account poiuson explosion? (another posion spell). How does it factor in with other spells, melee attacks, items etc.?

Unaffected by other poison items. Affected the same way as Nova when it comes to -% Enemy resist and +% Poison damage. It will only override other poison if its damage per frame is higher.

[Pherdnut]

Poison Explosion is almost worthless. It's radius is tiny and it's more effective to save those corpses for Corpse Explosion. It's rate of damage is also roughly the same as Nova.

Dagger has the advantage of a lengthy duration and it can stack with item based poison mods. Nova can't do that.

But yes, Nova is a more practical skill for the most part. Even if you could get enough stuff to get a higher damage rate out of dagger you still have to stab everything at least once.

[ralbu]

Thanks a lot guys for helping me out. I think I'll go the nova-skelemancer way. It's good that nova is affected by +/- posion dmg/res items/gear. I think it can reach huge levels of damage/frame and with a bunch of skeles to keep the monsters off me :thumbsup:

May the power of darkness shine upon thy!

[Dadaravager]

My minionless necro, started in the days of 1.7, or a little earlier, obviously before synergies and poison's improvement in later versions, used to wander around the first 3 areas of Act 1 Hell.

He would run very fast, needless to say, dodging and weaving. Spamming lvl 29 Poison Nova supported by a high level Lower Resist, he would kill almost eveything he met (except for the poison immune). for the little demons and their shamans, it would take one application. For the bigger monsters it would take up to 5 or 6. He rarely resorted to AI curses and Corpse Explosion.

How much better must a fully synergized Poison Nova do? Damage will not be the problem, of course. Survival in the mean time will be!

Dadaravager

[AnimeCraze]

Of course, now that skeles are useful, you can spend 2 points for getting a few tanks. Then you don't have to run around while waiting for things to die.

[ralbu]

With nova, you don't even have to run around too much, since the duration is 2 sec only

[Me2NiK]

On the underrated factor, poison nova is generally "underrated" because in games with five or more players, it becomes less damaging due to the fact that it has a duration and therefore is unspammable, and to get good damage, it takes incredibly good gear.

[ralbu]

As I stated in the beginning of the thread, I don't have too much "field" experience, but Io have a lot of theoretical. So here it goes:

At slvl 20 with all siynergies to slvl 20, nova will do about 2.5K dmg over 2 secs. Which means about 1.2K per second. Then let's add into the image the trangoul bonus of 25% increase dmg... that makes the damage 1.5K dmg per second.

Now let's factor in the -25% posion res from 3 pieces of trangoul and the lower resist curse. Againt normal monstars it will lower the res under 0, so even more damage (in normal and even nightmare it will double the damage). Also, LR has the power to break immunities which is great.

And think about it...I didn't take in account +posion skills and bramble which will make the poison damage skyrocket.

I think Nova is very viable... Plus the meatshield offered by a bunch of skelles :thumbsup:

[Iuris]

While I'm here, I'd like to ask something.

I am making a venomancer, it's at about level 50something. I've maxed out nova and dagger, explosion is hext. What I'd like to know is whether it would be better to go for skeletons or revives.

All my gear (Single player solo gameplay, so trang's gloves are the best I have, bramble's far far away) is, of course, aimed at +P&B tree, so I'm worried about whether it would be a smart thing to invest in skeletons. Even a single point in revive should cover all my meatshield needs, while the skeletons would probably be rather weak and vulnerable without the +skills. Esetially since i doubt the character will go beyond lvl 80-85.

Any thoughts on the matter?

[Mad Mantis]

Even a single point in revive should cover all my meatshield needs, while the skeletons would probably be rather weak and vulnerable without the +skills. Esetially since i doubt the character will go beyond lvl 80-85.

A reasonable concern. The Skellies need at least 21 points and some pre-buff gear to be viable meatshields. If you get to level 85 this can be achieved.

With a good playstyle and some curse use you should be safe already. The Revives will do a very good of tanking on just the points needed to put 1 in Revive. It will be completed much earlier. Going with Revives is probably a good idea.

[Pherdnut]

As I stated in the beginning of the thread, I don't have too much "field" experience, but Io have a lot of theoretical. So here it goes:

At slvl 20 with all siynergies to slvl 20, nova will do about 2.5K dmg over 2 secs. Which means about 1.2K per second. Then let's add into the image the trangoul bonus of 25% increase dmg... that makes the damage 1.5K dmg per second.

Now let's factor in the -25% posion res from 3 pieces of trangoul and the lower resist curse. Againt normal monstars it will lower the res under 0, so even more damage (in normal and even nightmare it will double the damage). Also, LR has the power to break immunities which is great.

And think about it...I didn't take in account +posion skills and bramble which will make the poison damage skyrocket.

I think Nova is very viable... Plus the meatshield offered by a bunch of skelles :thumbsup:


People have been known to get 8K out of Nova before all their -resists are taken into consideration. A perfect faceted D-Web at -55, triple trangs at -25, a couple more facets at -10, plus the LR curse at around -60 will ensure that most enemies are taking close to or more than double that damage and few enemies have more than 15K. Poison is very powerful with the best possible gear. Even with my less powerful crappiest possible DWeb and triple trangs with no facets I was really impressed with the performance of my poison/skelli. With my merc finishing enemies off before the poison wore off, corpse explode easily took care of the remaining enemies whose hit points had typically been reduced to half in cases where the enemies didn't die outright. Against the canon fodder types in places like the Pits I didn't even need LR. They would just keel over from a non LR'd nova. With skeletons tanking, cows were a cinch.

[Kitriara]

Remember though that items with a -poison% mod on them makes your poison act WAY differently than you'd think. It is NOT remotely the same as an equal +poison damage%. At all.

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=277202
This explains it.

However, the time of doing boring calculations by hand is almost done; I've been working with Mantis and am 85% done a 1.10/1.11 poison calculator for necromancers.

[Pherdnut]

I'm clearly confused on something about that test. I thought his conclusions boiled down to a couple things.

Item mods granting -resists and +% damage increase duration proportionally.

LR does nothing to duration because it is not an item mod.

I've since been told that no, +% damage item mods don't increase duration but don't see anything in that thread to the contrary.

I don't see anything about damage rate but assumed this was also proportional. i.e. resists at -100% equals a doubled damage rate when compared to 0%. Please correct that if I'm wrong.

It doesn't sound that complicated. If you double your damage rate, you're doing twice as much damage in a given duration, right? If duration is increased that just saves you some mana as far as I'm concerned.

[Kitriara]

I'm pretty sure +% mods on increase duration, only the minus ones.

Also, as far as I know, things like Lower Resist and Conviction do just like you said, pretty much applying a proportional +damage% equal to the -resist%.

[Mad Mantis]

Item mods granting -resists and +% damage increase duration proportionally.

Read Experiment 4 (http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=277202) from the test. It shows what happens when Izual is subjected to PExlosion boosted only by Bramble. The duration is as you would have expected.




I don't see anything about damage rate but assumed this was also proportional. i.e. resists at -100% equals a doubled damage rate when compared to 0%. Please correct that if I'm wrong.

The damage rate is doubled AND the duration is increased. So you are doing more damage and you are doing that same damage longer.

[Pherdnut]

Ah, there it is. It was this bit that was throwing me off.


Closing (AKA, conclusion of the conclusions)

It seems that another odd "feature" of the game is revealed. The only explanation I can offer is that in the 1.10 beta items that increased poison damage (such as Bramble) increase the poison's length as well

[RTB]

The pierce-pois property (-% poison resist) reduces both Poison Resist and the Poison Length Reduction value. The latter is normally at 0 for all monsters. What's left to debate is whether this feature is in fact a bug or not.

[ElJefeII]

The pierce-pois property (-% poison resist) reduces both Poison Resist and the Poison Length Reduction value. The latter is normally at 0 for all monsters. What's left to debate is whether this feature is in fact a bug or not.


poison nova is the strongest spell in the game if you use it correctly.

throw a golem on corpses, throw attract on a monster near a corpse, hit it 1x, youll see everything die boom. it keeps on ramping up and ramping up till it reaches an insane level. pnova is good for people who just like to run around like ninies and not use AI curses, golems, skills, etc etc.

its a build though thats great for mf'ing solo where running around like a moron spamming things kills stuff well to work out the mf averages.