Poison, missiles, 1.10

[powerdroid]

Over at the The Amazon Basin, Ruvanal just posted this. Basically, poison damage will no longer stack with missile weapons in 1.10, it will simply work as it does with melee weapons. Important for those who build such things as lethal injector assassins.

[WarBlade]

What I'd really love to know is if the mechanics of Poison are ever going to be improved to something logical.

Fix the Duration, vary the Rate, I say. Ah well. Good to know that missile thing is being brought back into line with melee anyway.

- Thanks. :)

[Ruvanal]

What I'd really love to know is if the mechanics of Poison are ever going to be improved to something logical.

Is logical. It is just that what gets displayed to the user is not a good form for what is going on in the game mechanics.

In the game mechanics the poison damage is is expressed as a rate of damage per frame and a duration (in frames).

To the player however this is not the type of information presented. The player gets total damage from poison (rate of damage per frame * duration (in frames) ) and the duration over which this total is done (expressed in seconds). Also for the player these values are rounded to the the nearest full point of damage and nearest second, which makes it hard to determine what the real rate and duration might be. This rounding can make it hard to acurately work the numbers backward for doing your own calculations. At least skills like Firewall give the rate per second and the duration which is easier for most to work out what is doing on with it.

[WarBlade]

In the game mechanics the poison damage is is expressed as a rate of damage per frame and a duration (in frames).

But that's exactly the part I never liked. Both the Poision Rate and the Poision Duration can vary depending on the item in question.

Am I being totally mis-led by onscreen information in thinking that it is possible for Poison Rate to decrease when another poison source like a Charm is added to the character? Because if the rate can decrease with the increase of items, then I'd call that a rather illogical way of handling the damage, regardless of the fact that the total would still be increasing.

[Ruvanal]

The rates will be added together.

The durations will be averaged.

If you add a short duration item with an alread existing long duration effect, the total damage that you see displayed may have a lower value (due to the shorter duration) even though the rate per second actually increased.

[WarBlade]

The rates will be added together.

Oh damn. :o The fact that this aspect was knocking unheard at the fringe of my awareness earlier is a clear sign of caffeine/sleep deprivation on my part. I know I have some issue with the current poison mechanics at the moment and yet my tired brain doesn't seem to want to focus on it properly.

Forget my babble --> The rambings of the sleepless. <_<

[HunkyDory]

Hail Ruvanal,
ye Keeper of Arcane Knowledge, protector of the Great Library of Harrogath, Fountain of Dark Forbidden Secrets, Grand Vizier of the Realm, etcetera, etcetera....

To sum up :

Rates will be added together
Duration will be averaged
If I fire a volley then my next volley will reset the Poison Duration again.
As long as my Poison Rate is higher than than from other players it will not be reset by them.

Correct?

Regards, Hunky

[Ruvanal]

Correct Hunky.

[HunkyDory]

Hail Ruvanal,
ye Keeper of Arcane Knowledge, protector of the Great Library of Harrogath, Fountain of Dark Forbidden Secrets, Grand Vizier of the Realm, etcetera, etcetera....

Thanks a lot, Ruvanal,

I will put it in the guide ASAP :D

Regards, Hunky

[Brista]

There's a fairly common myth that certain combinations of high damage long duration poison sources and low damage short duration sources are a way of maximising your effectiveness

With poison damage if you want to increase damage per second you need every source you can get

If you want to increase damage per shot then with melee weapons, and in 1.10 missile weapons too, the min/maxing I described is effective

Have I understood this correctly?

[HunkyDory]

Hail Brista, fellow Lurkerlounge Member


Described where?


Regards, Hunky

[Ruvanal]

There's a fairly common myth that certain combinations of high damage long duration poison sources and low damage short duration sources are a way of maximising your effectiveness

Maximizing in what way?

With poison damage if you want to increase damage per second you need every source you can get

Fairly accurate. But you may want to to go for some of the items that have the highest rates as it may take 2 or 3 items with a medium rate to equal one with a highe rate (saving you inventory space or equipment slots).

If you want to increase damage per shot then with melee weapons, and in 1.10 missile weapons too, the min/maxing I described is effective

??
If I am just using a character that is using a fast form of attack, I just use a little poison to help stop the monster from regenerating their life since I will usually be hitting them again for more damage well before the duration runs out. Even if I am using a slower weapon, it is typically not worth it to me to be using any of the low rate poison damage items, better to use those slots or the space for other better equipment. If you are not going to let the poison run through its entire duration, then the only thing you should worry about to increase your poison damage is to use the highest rate items that you can.

If you do intend to let the poison run its entire duration, then you would want to arrange your items to try to maximize the duration in most cases. Typically by having the poison run for a longer duration you will do more damage than a slightly higher rate and somewhat shorter duration.

Example:
Tal rune will do ~15.039 damage/second for 5 seconds
Perfect Emerald will do ~14.355 damage/second for 7 seconds

While the Tal rune has a higher rate of damage, if you extend the damage out to when they have both finished the perfect emrerald will have done more (Tal rune= 75 damage and PEmerald ~100 damage). You would have needed to reapply the damage from the Tal again for it to do more damage over the 6th and 7th seconds; taking away from potentionaly apply poison to other targets.

[HunkyDory]

Hail Ruvanal,
ye Keeper of Arcane Knowledge, protector of the Great Library of Harrogath, Fountain of Dark Forbidden Secrets, Grand Vizier of the Realm, etcetera, etcetera....

How does that process actually work, it takes the Poison Rate value and subtract that from the life regeneration the monsters have?

And how much do they regenerate by the way?

Regards, Hunky

[LavCat]

Correct Hunky.

I have read the Tao and other sources: the more I read the more I get confused. If it is correct that the "rates will be added together", the "duration will be averaged," then poison seems fairly simple.

It sounds too good to be true though? Let me give an example to see if I understand correctly:

My paladin has two charms that are his only sources of poison damage. One is Toxic, one is Pestilent. Toxic rate is 100/5sec = 20/sec. Pestilent rate is 175/6sec = 29.17/sec. Total rate is 49.17 per second over a duration of 5.5 seconds, for a total damage of 270.41.

A corollary of this is that adding additional poison items can only make one's poison rate go up, adding lower rate items can never make your total rate go down.

Have I stated the way poison works correctly?

Also, if anyone knows, what is the current thinking on prevent monster heal? Does poison really cause prevent monster heal not to work? Even with no poison items, I have never been able to convince myself that prevent monster heal did anything at all.

[Brista]

There's a fairly common myth that certain combinations of high damage long duration poison sources and low damage short duration sources are a way of maximising your effectiveness

Maximizing in what way?



Fairly accurate. But you may want to to go for some of the items that have the highest rates as it may take 2 or 3 items with a medium rate to equal one with a highe rate (saving you inventory space or equipment slots).

If you want to increase damage per shot then with melee weapons, and in 1.10 missile weapons too, the min/maxing I described is effective

??
If I am just using a character that is using a fast form of attack, I just use a little poison to help stop the monster from regenerating their life since I will usually be hitting them again for more damage well before the duration runs out. Even if I am using a slower weapon, it is typically not worth it to me to be using any of the low rate poison damage items, better to use those slots or the space for other better equipment. If you are not going to let the poison run through its entire duration, then the only thing you should worry about to increase your poison damage is to use the highest rate items that you can.

If you do intend to let the poison run its entire duration, then you would want to arrange your items to try to maximize the duration in most cases. Typically by having the poison run for a longer duration you will do more damage than a slightly higher rate and somewhat shorter duration.

Example:
Tal rune will do ~15.039 damage/second for 5 seconds
Perfect Emerald will do ~14.355 damage/second for 7 seconds

While the Tal rune has a higher rate of damage, if you extend the damage out to when they have both finished the perfect emrerald will have done more (Tal rune= 75 damage and PEmerald ~100 damage). You would have needed to reapply the damage from the Tal again for it to do more damage over the 6th and 7th seconds; taking away from potentionaly apply poison to other targets.

Ah, I hadn't understood correctly. I plead Not Responsible on the grounds of the amount of rubbish people have talked to me about poison ;)


So it's quite simple really.

For damage per second use the highest rate damage which you can calculate by dividing the damage given on the item by the duration in seconds then dividing again by 25 for the bite rate. This might be the choice of a daggermancer or a hand to hand venom assassin

(Spirea's has the bite rates for the charm affixes some of which the game lists incorrectly as we discussed some while ago)

For cancelling monster regen just one source is fine since you will usually hit them again before the poison runs its course (even 3 seconds is a rather long time to a high level melee character). A character Zealing for a thousand per hit doesn't need to waste an inventory space on an extra poison charm. If Lavcat's pally dropped the Toxic charm and added in a 20 average damage elemental one his damage per second would increase by 20 * his number of attacks per second less the 20 poison he gets now. AND his poison length would improve to 6 seconds

And for maximising damage per shot you are going to try to get sources with either or both of high damage and long duration. A hypothetical 1 damage over 1000 seconds would be a great addition to a character using, say, several high damage sources, multishot and fear. On the other hand low level poison damage charms with short durations may well bring your damage down when added. The 6 poison over 3 seconds small charms that many of us have assiduously collected on our mules are really rather useless once the 1.10 change is implemented

[HunkyDory]

Hail Brista fellow LurkerLounge member,

With Poison there are two strategies :

1. Highest Poison Damage you can get per time period between two consecutive hits.
You don't look at how long the Poison Duration will last because you will keep hitting the monsters untill they are dead. You use either one or more Poison Damage items as a support to up your damage and keep the monsters from regenerating.
Duration on the items does not matter most of the times because you will hit them faster than the Duration can run out. The Duration timer will be reset by each succesfull hit on the monster(s). So you want the highest Poison Damage on an item you can find or get.
This will be valid in both 1.09 and 1.10.


2. Highest Poison Damage over time with a single hit (Venommancer).
You want to hit them once and let the Poison Damage finish them off.
Here you look at the duration of the Poison items because each item will influence the total duration of the Poison Damage. This is were you will start doing the math to see what will get you the longest Duration.
With this option you want the longest Duration on an item coupled with decent Poison Damage.

As long as you use charms the high end ones will fit this profile. When you use other sources you have to look if they will not mess up the total average Duration of your items.

In 1.09 this is bugged for bows as the Durations are not averaged . This will be fixed in 1.10.

To sum up there really is no difference between 1.09 and 1.10 as how Poison works apart from the bow bug that will be fixed.

Regards, Hunky

[LavCat]

...A character Zealing for a thousand per hit doesn't need to waste an inventory space on an extra poison charm. If Lavcat's pally dropped the Toxic charm and added in a 20 average damage elemental one his damage per second would increase by 20 * his number of attacks per second less the 20 poison he gets now. AND his poison length would improve to 6 seconds

The point is well taken, thanks.

One factor I didn't mention is that his toxic charm is actually a toxic small charm of storms. I did not want to confuse my poison example further by getting into lightning damage. Just found this charm about a week ago. It seems too good to give up, and so far I don't have anything better to put in the space. I could replace the pestilent charm with a cold/fire one, however.

Was my poison calculation correct though? And does poison really break prevent monster heal?

[Chameleon]

What will happen to the poison damage and duration of a weapon if, you socket a poison damage source into it.

Example:
Blackbog's Sharp - 488 over 10 seconds
socketed with a P-Emerald - 100 over 7 seconds


Will it just be added and averaged, as if they were two different items?
ie. 588 over 8.5 seconds
or something else?

[Ruvanal]

It is two items. The rates will be added (you are adding the net damages which is inncorrect) and the durations are averaged.

See this link for more information.
http://www.diabloii.net/strategy/x-article...taopoison.shtml

Example:
Blackbog's Sharp - 488 over 10 seconds
or 500/256 damage per frame for 250 frames
socketed with a P-Emerald - 100 over 7 seconds
or 147/256 damage per frame for 175 frames

New frame rate of the two
(500+147)/256 = 647/256 damage per frame
New duration
(250+175)/2= 425/2 = 212 frames

new net damge
(212*647)/256 = 137164/256 = 535.796875
or 536 damage over 8.48 seconds.

[Isolde]

It occurs to me that poison damage display is one of the messier things about d2 ;) It'd probably be better as "X poison damage per second for N seconds". Not sure how to display it in the character sheet though.