A few musings on crowd control skills/equipment

[Crystalion]

High poison damage,  very low duration on the damage.

435-445 over 0.4 seconds, Venom duration 196 seconds at slvl 20.

My assassin made level 30 and has played with venom a bit. I notice that Fade and Burst of Speed can't be active at the same time but either works with Venom. Did I misrember that previously venom was aura like and competed with either of those two?

Venom forces your poison damage output to a 0.4 sec duration, so you get benefit from other sources but no additional duration. This is quite good if you are repeatedly hitting the target as the rate of poison for venom is sky high. If, however, you are using poison as poor man's prevent monster heal then you have a problem.

Since the Blade line carries the venom you can potentially get more venom out there on mobs than just 2.5 in a second. Presumably having venom and sneaking a weapon switch to set a Blade Sentry before opening a door would be worthwhile.

I have to agree with the "what's not to like" assessment, at least for the first point (to get the freebie bonus from + all stuff).