Need pro help to make a necro poison calculator

[Kitriara]

Hey all.

I'm a computer programmer, and I've recently landed a new job. I'll be using Java and VB instead of C# which I'm used to, so I was trying to come up with a personal project to brush up on my skills. There are a bunch of different poison calculators out there, but I dont know how reliable or current they are, so I figured with the help of the experts here I could make a correct necromancer-specific 1.11 one.

I know there are many different poison guides around which talk about damage calculations, so what I need is for someone in the know (Mantis maybe?) so tell me which of them are 100% accurate, as they will become the base of this program. I want to make something that will finally be trustworthy and can properly calculate dagger, nova and explosion, as well as taking things like Venom charges and gear properly into account.

Thanks in advance to those who can help point me in the right direction. Once I read the right guides and get the equations properly set it shouldnt take me more than a few days to have this thing ready to go.

[Mad Mantis]

Most of the poison specific calculators I've seen aren't current or aren't very reliable. If they allow you to calculate Venom with PDagger it invariably leads to a wrong answer. Skill calcs do give a correct answer when it comes to the amount of damage from Poison spells.

One script, which I still haven't had a change to review is this one. You should check it out.

Let me search a while for some other posts on this forum. I should be able to come up with a good way to calculate poison damage. All we need to do is find someone willing to test the program that will result from this.

[xyzthorakzyx]

Well, I can't give you an exact formula, but I can tell you the damage listed in the arreat summit is not correct.

If you want exact numbers you could always use a trainer or something in single player and test the damage ingame...

[Kitriara]

I dont have access to D2 at my current location, only programming materials. I was going to go with the data from the skill calculator they have over at d2items, which as far as I know has all the right numbers. Otherwise I would use a trainer and test every single number myself for accuracy.

While Mantis decides the best way to go about getting some info I'm just going to do some preliminary layout work and such. After that its just paramount that I know exactly how poison damage is calculated for different things so I can make this THE tool for poison necros of all kinds.

Tao of Poison is one everyone seems to point me to and such, but I'm trying to pour over this forum and find the right info about how dagger interacts with charms, poison from items, socketables, etc. As far as I know the other necro two poison skills are unaffected by anything except skill level and +poison%/-poison resist items. Even then I still need clarification for myself on how those work.

[Mad Mantis]

I was going to go with the data from the skill calculator they have over at d2items, which as far as I know has all the right numbers.

Go with the skill calc at the German site. I trust that one more than the other. Or at least check the numbers from both skill calcs against each other.

As far as I know the other necro two poison skills are unaffected by anything except skill level and +poison%/-poison resist items. Even then I still need clarification for myself on how those work.

That is correct. Those are rather easy to figure out. It is PDagger that is doing irritating things. It stacks in all sorts of weird ways. I know how it stacks with Venom and -%Res and +%Damage. All I need to figure out is how Venom and PDagger stack with other items. Venom is easier than PDagger.

[Kitriara]

Well, the calculator is 99% complete... the only thing missing is THE final damage calculation and order. I've numbered my points to make them easier to respond to. So here are my questions so I can code this and we can get some people to test this thing...

1. The daggermancer guide, derived from the Tao, states that the duration of poison damage from items is averaged. I assume that this means:
- socketables: TAL runes, jewels, emeralds
- charms
- poison from wearable gear... swords, helms, heads, etc.

Is this correct?

That would mean that, like in the daggermancer guide, these items would calculate duration like so:

TAL = 75 over 5 seconds
Wormskull = 80 over 8 seconds
Small charm of Blight = 6 over 2 seconds

So duration is 5 + 8 + 2 = 15/3 = 5 seconds.




2. Now, we ADD the duration of both Poison Dagger AND Venom to that figure.

So, in the above example, a level 20 Poison Dagger (9.6 seconds) and, for simplicity, a level 7 Venom (.4 seconds) would bring our total duration to 5 + 9.6 + .4 = 15 seconds. Is this correct?



3. To get the damage, you need the damage-per-frame of each item, which you then multiply by the duration in frames. Here, this is 15 seconds which is 15 * 25 = 375 frames. So:

TAL rune = 75 / 125 frames = 0.6
Wormskull = 80 / 200 frames = 0.4
Small charm of Blight = 6 / 50 frames = 0.12

Level 20 Poison Dagger = 560 (average) / 240 frames = 2.33
Level 7 Venom = 160 (average) / 10 frames = 16

Now, we add these up: .6 + .4 + .12 + 2.33 + 16 = 19.45 damage-per-frame.

We multiply this by the total frames, and get 375 * 19.45 = 7293.75 total damage over 15 seconds, or 486.25 damage-per-second.

Is this all correct so far?



4. Here is where it gets tricky. I'm not sure at what point these get applied. Lets say you have a poison facet, +5 / -5. We could have more of either +/- mod, but lets keep it simple. So now...

New damage is (7293.75 * 1.05) * 1.05 = 8041.35
With a new duration of 15 seconds * 1.05 = 15.75 seconds

This means that our new damage-per-second is 510.56

Is this correct?




5. Lastly, lets say you have a level 5 Conviction aura... resistances = -50%. I realize that, unlike the ITEM MODS that grant a -resist% which affect duration, these do not. Its pretty much a +50% damage. I realize that Lower Resist works the same way, so I can add that in too once I figure where to put it. Again, we'll keep it simple...

Where does this figure into the equation? Is this applied AFTER step 4, or during it, where it would change the above to:
(7293.75 * 1.55) * 1.05 = 11870.57
giving us, finally, 11870.57 over 15.75 seconds, for a grand total of 753.68 damage-per-second.

Clarification on this is key for my calculator to show the right damage for people who wish to input their conviction and lower resist amounts.

I think thats everything I need to know. I'm pretty much looking for Mantis or RTB to respond to this, no offense to anyone else of course.

[Pherdnut]

Poison is full of all manner of quirks and quandries. For instance, NC seems to think poison charms don't affect duration. The Tao is from version 1.09. If you want to make a truly accurate calc I'd seek out RTB's help. He's the chief stat cruncher that I know of in these forums.

[Mad Mantis]

In response to number 1, 2 and 3.

Not quite. That depends on whether or not Venom is present. Without Venom the duration gets averaged. Then you take the total damage per frame and apply that to the total duration. Just standard work.

With Venom you need to calculate the effect of Venom on the charms etc. It will shorten their duration to 0.4 seconds. The you add the damage per frame of the poison sources to that of Venom and you then calculate what the damage will be over 0.4 seconds. Then just add this new Venom damage to PDagger in the way we have discussed before.


In response to number 4.

Facets and other mods get applied after all the other stacking effects. Once you find the total damage you can start with the +%Poison damage and -%Enemy resist. First you apply the +%Poison damage and then the -%Enemy resist works with this new damage.


In response to number 5.

Conviction (note that it DOES NOT affect poison resistance) and LR would be applied during step 4, but will not affect the poison duration. LR works together with -%Enemy resist to bring the monster resistance down and thus increase your damage.


Unfortunately I don稚 have a lot of time to work out an intricate numerical example. If you値l give me to Friday/Saturday I値l create an example based on what I know. I値l send this to you, RTB and NC and I値l ask them to check it. RTB is the man with the coding knowledge and NC has been busy playing with poison and its effects for a very long time.

Regrettably I知 not in the position right now to check anything. So until I have a bit more time I値l be stuck checking your calc numerically. I値l help designing an series of experiments to test your calc, but I can稚 help testing anything until the beginning of September.

[RTB]

There's just one thing missing: Poison Length Modifcations. Besides the quirks of Venom and Poison Dagger there are also a couple of other mods that adjust this.
-% resist on items (not LR) also increases poison length, and against players/Ancients Poison Length Reduced by x% reduces it. NM and Hell penalties also apply to this variable. For monsters the default value is 0, and it has the usual caps for players (lower = -100 (counts for monsters too), upper = 75).

Another question is whether you'll be using bite dmg or listed poison dmg. My suggestion is to at least use bite dmg internally and keep the option open to display both. I can also provide a complete list of all items with poison dmg and the per Slvl increases of all poison skills if you want.

[Kitriara]

Damn... I coded the entire thing using non-bite damages, but I guess I'm going to have to recode that. I thought this was almost beta but this will set it back a tad.

RTB, I'll take you up on that stuff. May as well make this thing accurate.

Are you also saying that on NM and Hell all monsters get reduced PLR when YOUR mods are kicking in? So a -50% would only be -25% in nightmare?

Guess we need a little more discussion. If you want RTB, I can also email you the code; its C# in Visual Studio .NET.