Babe Bridou
2004-11-02 17:29:32 UTC
"How does Poison damage really stack, when applied from different sources?"
-Gunde, wondering about her poison necro
"I don't know..."
-Babe, responding to Gunde
Here's what I've always been up to about D2: finding out how those
"underused" or "commonly seen as weak" skills and items could be used in
an efficient way, and provide new build ideas.
At the moment, my focus is on Rabies and its synergy, Poison Creeper.
Forget the carrion wind bug (similar to the marrowwalk bug), this is not
the point of this post.
Both Rabies and Poison Creeper can be very powerful damage sources, but
they act very differently and can possibly interfere with each other... or
at least that's what I experienced. Here is what I think so far:
1) Poison Creeper
_fairly useless against a single opponent. The damage is something like,
100 for 8 seconds at level 20 (I don't recall the exact value...)
_awesome against dense crowds. I don't know exactly how it works, but it
seems like each time a creature is damaged by the poison "mattress", it
starts damaging every other creature also in the mattress as a ricochet
effect, which in turn damage every other creature, etc, until the mattress
litterally becomes a venomous grave with only a couple or so creatures
surviving. Those ricochet effects apparently do stack their damage per
second, and the scaling effect can indeed put a crowd down to a sliver of
life... if it stays long enough on the mattress without dying - a bit
tricky to achieve... :)
_it is *not* a killing skill, as it will kill only the weakest monsters in
the group and leave the survivors alive and kicking.
I don't know how to deal with this skill alone. It can be very well
complimented with shockwave or maul, to leave the monsters in place, or
with hurricane + holy freeze. Grizzly won't work IMHO, because it'll knock
monsters away from the mattress. Wolves won't work well either, because
they tend to spread the monsters before you can lure them into the vine...
For 20 skill points, it's IMHO among the best "fire and forget" skills in
the druid's arsenal. If you want a comparison, I'd say that this skill is
"a potential spammable-permanent-poisonous-crowd-crushing-ranged-device".
It has severe diminishing returns as the crowd gets thinner in the
mattress (less ricochets) and is very tricky to use effectively, but when
it works out well, it so works out damn well!
OK, I really don't know yet how one could build a character and maximize
the effect of this skill, but having it kills quicker than not having it,
that's all I can say :)
2) Rabies
Ok, Rabies is impressive numberwise when fully synergized. Now I have it
at about 13 or so with +skills, with max synergy, and the damage is a bit
too low for me to use it as a killing skill.
One thing I find irritating is the fact that you can't "repost" your
virus, in hope of resetting the duration counter. One bite and you're good
for some furying, ducksitting or dicethrowing with your favourite pack
mates for a few seconds while the virus spreads among the enemies. But
once the initial infection ends, all enemies are automagically cured at
once! So don't expect to deal tens of thousands of poison damage to a full
screen, it won't happen, because each frame that passes between
consecutive infections is lost in terms of damage.
To maximize this skill, I try to bite several opponents *before* the first
virus spreads out to get them, kind of like running in circle so everyone
gets plagued with diseases with various lifetime, so that when one virus
ends, the other can start its contamination on the victims of the first
infection. Oh, it gets tricky... (that's why I tend to use feral rage and
fury nowadays ;)
Now for the big question: are Poison Creeper and Rabies counterproductive
with each other? It's hard to say.
3)Do they interfere?
My take is, whoever gets last gets the head. Those skills don't stack,
that's for sure. Rabies contaminates about twice per second every monster
in the vicinity and applies its damage every frame between contamination
pulses. I don't know about the damage rate of Poison Creeper, but it seems
to pulse once per creature in the mat every 10 frames or so, with
independant counters for each creature. (sorry if it's tricky to catch, I
personnally don't get it right, anyway). I think that every 10 frames, you
replace the rabies damage with the Poison Creeper damage, and every 13
frames, you replace the poison Creeper damage with the rabies damage.
As a result, from my observations, my hypothesis is:
when the Poison Creeper damage is high, that means a lot of creatures in
the mat, a lot of scaling poison pulses per second which get resetted by
the slower Rabies damage every half second
-> final damage is less than poison creeper damage alone
When the Poison Creeper damage is low, that means only one creature in the
mat, the high damage Rabies gets interrupted once or twice per second by
the low rate poison creeper, for a duration of 3 to 7 frames, depending of
the exact time at which both infection started...
-> final damage is less than Rabies damage alone
Additional testing is required, nothing is for sure here. So far, I tend
to believe that using both skills result in less power in every
situations...
If someone has already made, or read, any investigation concerning those
skills, I'm strongly interested in reading them, before I start hotkeying
the "unsummon" skill when facing only one enemy.
-Gunde, wondering about her poison necro
"I don't know..."
-Babe, responding to Gunde
Here's what I've always been up to about D2: finding out how those
"underused" or "commonly seen as weak" skills and items could be used in
an efficient way, and provide new build ideas.
At the moment, my focus is on Rabies and its synergy, Poison Creeper.
Forget the carrion wind bug (similar to the marrowwalk bug), this is not
the point of this post.
Both Rabies and Poison Creeper can be very powerful damage sources, but
they act very differently and can possibly interfere with each other... or
at least that's what I experienced. Here is what I think so far:
1) Poison Creeper
_fairly useless against a single opponent. The damage is something like,
100 for 8 seconds at level 20 (I don't recall the exact value...)
_awesome against dense crowds. I don't know exactly how it works, but it
seems like each time a creature is damaged by the poison "mattress", it
starts damaging every other creature also in the mattress as a ricochet
effect, which in turn damage every other creature, etc, until the mattress
litterally becomes a venomous grave with only a couple or so creatures
surviving. Those ricochet effects apparently do stack their damage per
second, and the scaling effect can indeed put a crowd down to a sliver of
life... if it stays long enough on the mattress without dying - a bit
tricky to achieve... :)
_it is *not* a killing skill, as it will kill only the weakest monsters in
the group and leave the survivors alive and kicking.
I don't know how to deal with this skill alone. It can be very well
complimented with shockwave or maul, to leave the monsters in place, or
with hurricane + holy freeze. Grizzly won't work IMHO, because it'll knock
monsters away from the mattress. Wolves won't work well either, because
they tend to spread the monsters before you can lure them into the vine...
For 20 skill points, it's IMHO among the best "fire and forget" skills in
the druid's arsenal. If you want a comparison, I'd say that this skill is
"a potential spammable-permanent-poisonous-crowd-crushing-ranged-device".
It has severe diminishing returns as the crowd gets thinner in the
mattress (less ricochets) and is very tricky to use effectively, but when
it works out well, it so works out damn well!
OK, I really don't know yet how one could build a character and maximize
the effect of this skill, but having it kills quicker than not having it,
that's all I can say :)
2) Rabies
Ok, Rabies is impressive numberwise when fully synergized. Now I have it
at about 13 or so with +skills, with max synergy, and the damage is a bit
too low for me to use it as a killing skill.
One thing I find irritating is the fact that you can't "repost" your
virus, in hope of resetting the duration counter. One bite and you're good
for some furying, ducksitting or dicethrowing with your favourite pack
mates for a few seconds while the virus spreads among the enemies. But
once the initial infection ends, all enemies are automagically cured at
once! So don't expect to deal tens of thousands of poison damage to a full
screen, it won't happen, because each frame that passes between
consecutive infections is lost in terms of damage.
To maximize this skill, I try to bite several opponents *before* the first
virus spreads out to get them, kind of like running in circle so everyone
gets plagued with diseases with various lifetime, so that when one virus
ends, the other can start its contamination on the victims of the first
infection. Oh, it gets tricky... (that's why I tend to use feral rage and
fury nowadays ;)
Now for the big question: are Poison Creeper and Rabies counterproductive
with each other? It's hard to say.
3)Do they interfere?
My take is, whoever gets last gets the head. Those skills don't stack,
that's for sure. Rabies contaminates about twice per second every monster
in the vicinity and applies its damage every frame between contamination
pulses. I don't know about the damage rate of Poison Creeper, but it seems
to pulse once per creature in the mat every 10 frames or so, with
independant counters for each creature. (sorry if it's tricky to catch, I
personnally don't get it right, anyway). I think that every 10 frames, you
replace the rabies damage with the Poison Creeper damage, and every 13
frames, you replace the poison Creeper damage with the rabies damage.
As a result, from my observations, my hypothesis is:
when the Poison Creeper damage is high, that means a lot of creatures in
the mat, a lot of scaling poison pulses per second which get resetted by
the slower Rabies damage every half second
-> final damage is less than poison creeper damage alone
When the Poison Creeper damage is low, that means only one creature in the
mat, the high damage Rabies gets interrupted once or twice per second by
the low rate poison creeper, for a duration of 3 to 7 frames, depending of
the exact time at which both infection started...
-> final damage is less than Rabies damage alone
Additional testing is required, nothing is for sure here. So far, I tend
to believe that using both skills result in less power in every
situations...
If someone has already made, or read, any investigation concerning those
skills, I'm strongly interested in reading them, before I start hotkeying
the "unsummon" skill when facing only one enemy.