Poison Damage Questions

[neod]

I have an a1 merc and she is going to use a socketed bow. I was thinking about putting in a Perfect Emerald for the poison damage but I was concerned about the stacking properties.

1) Say the merc hits a monster and it poisons it (say with a p emmy) and then if she hits it again before the poison time expires does the damage stack or does it over-write the old poison starting the time limit again?

2) Which ever is the case, would it be better to socket with a p emmy which does 100 damage over 7 seconds or with a Tal rune that does 75 damage over 5 seconds? I would assume if it over-writes then it would depend on how fast she is shooting. And if she is hitting more than one monster.

Please help...

-NeoD

[gta-maloy]]

It doesn't stack, when there is poison damage being drian and a new damage is added, the one with the highest damage is taken over.

[Wyrm]

There was a topic before about basically the same thing, which should answer your questions here.

In answer to your second question though, Tal Runes do better damage per second (15) than Perfect Emeralds (14.2857...).

[neod]

thanks. very helpful.

-NeoD

[Refrigerator]

*Slight thread hijack* :(

I have a question about how poison stacks with other poison sources. If, for example, I had a bow with a perfect emerald, which is 100 poison damage over 7 seconds, and I had a small charm in my inventory which did 10 poison damage over 3 seconds, would it end up being 110 poison damage over 5 seconds?

What if the charm did 10 poison damage over 13 seconds? Would it be 110 poison damage over 10 seconds?

What if instead of the bow it was the necromancer's poison dagger skill? How would that work?

I'm pretty sure the information is out there somewhere, but I have no clue where... Thanks for any help! :D

[adeyke]

If you have several items with poison damage, the rates add and the durations average.

For 100 over 7 seconds plus 10 over 3 seconds:

Rate 1 = 100/7 damage/second = about 14.3
Rate 2 = 10/3 damage/second = about 3.3
Total rate = about 17.6 damage/second

Duration 1 = 7 seconds
Duration 2 = 3 seconds
Average duration = 5 seconds

17.6 damage/second times 5 means a total of 88 damage over 5 seconds.

For 100 over 7 seconds plus 10 over 13 seconds:

Rate 1 = 100/7 damage/second = about 14.3
Rate 2 = 10/13 damage/second = about .8
Total rate = about 15.1 damage/second

Duration 1 = 7 seconds
Duration 2 = 13 seconds
Average duration = 10 seconds

15.1 damage/second times 10 means a total of 151 damage over 10 seconds.

I haven't personally examined poison dagger. However, from what I've read, the rate still adds, and the duration still averages, except that you don't count poison dagger as one of the sources. That is, if you have three poison damage charms, you'd normally add up the durations and divide by three. If you're using poison dagger, you add up all the durations (including that of poison dagger), but you still only divide by three, not four.