Oddities with Rabies

[Crystalion]

I assume that the physical attack of Rabies now leeches as well?

Sorry, haven't tested that yet (had to watch Matrix 1 & 2 again today, as we're going to go see it tomorrow). What I have tested since my last post...

Rabies seems to be an aura afaik. It is periodically (maybe every 20 or 25 frames?) taking a shot at re-poisoning anyone infected (not just neighbors) but, obviously, with the decreased time remaining. This can be easily seen with Paladin Cleansing and Resist Poison Shrines (which set poison durations to 0, so you only take damage from a frame's worth of poison at the initial attack, iirc). With Cleansing you can see the re-application of the poison by the rabies repeatedly. This probably means, PvP, that having antidote potions is not a cure-all.

Poison resist definitely cuts down on the damage taken. Oddly the effect doesn't spread if you are too far away (tried confederate TPing and Waypointing and observed failure of the rabies to propagate--not sure whether zone or distance is the deciding factor but this probably means you can't use it as a trick to kill Baal without ever being in WSK).

A nasty PK tactic!  Just...

Actually the technique I outlined can be improved, as the confederate can, after being infected, accept a party invite from the Rabid wolf, to turn off the infection re-infecting him (he can drink an antidote potion to stop the ongoing poison) *but* he remains infected (and apparently communicable). However I don't know what the "distance" results of today's testing mean compared to the TP to town to hostile testing from yesterday. Could be the whole thing isn't practical (I need to actually test it with a friend, instead of trying to run three copies of the program with WinXP switching for testing).

I have to say, though, that Rabies does enormous damage now by normal and nightmare standards. Since poison kills regen (if the monster isn't immune) I wouldn't be surprised if the build works in hell with a bit of a boost from items. A Fury werewolf is somewhat dependant on weapon damage for the build to work. It seems to me that a Rabies/Fireclaws werewolf build should be viable without much in the way of uncommon equipment needs, at least into Hell.

...

While everyone knows that Armageddon can now be cast by druids in wereform, I tend to find it more interesting that they removed the recast timer on summon grizzley. You can now treat it as a one-point-wonder (plus prereqs of course) as if it were a Decoy.

Strangely, in a one-on-one combat, it seems to me that a Druid using a Poison Creeper (resummoned as needed for PMH), Grizzly (resummoned as needed) and Heart of Barbs Spirit (pumped a bit, unless you're patient) would take down most monsters, sans equipment or even a merc. Not one-on-one (as is typical) this gets me to wondering if the new hit-blinds-target ability of Ravens might actually "fly" for crowd control.

If you're focusing on druid summons, the life you can give a grizzly is just insane (for something you can just recast when it dies). I'm tempted to make a Call to Arms for testing just to see how tanky an extreme grizzly can be. Since they split up the stat boosts, you can choose to not boost the grizzly's DR so a thorns build (which can also ignore Damage) might actually make some sense, if you pay a care to stopping regen. Wild.