Oddities with Rabies

[Crystalion]

I like the direction taken in v1.10 with Rabies, don't get me wrong, but the way it works is very odd and can be exploited in at least two significant ways. First, some background...

(I'm tired so I had to cut my testing short and, thus, I'll try to be brief)

Rabies has been changed to be a "normal" attack, requiring AR to hit and delivering normal damage (and presumably effects and triggering LEBs--no time to test any of that, sorry). The poison done ramps up quite strongly now, increasing also in duration. The poison creeper vine acts as a passive synergy for poison damage bonus (and Rabies gets an AR boost, iirc).

So far, so good. Now it starts to get weird...

The mana cost for the skill isn't charged when you miss.

The skill "infects" the target with some sort of effect (ala Inner Sight) or perhaps its a curse or maybe an evil aura (unlike Hurricane, which seems to be just an Aura in disguise, I'm not at all sure what this thing is). Periodically other enemies next to the infected target get infected (no AR needed and probably they don't get a chance to block, but, again, no time for testing).

It seems likely the new infectee gets infected only with the remaining duration (note that I didn't say "and damage" as clearly things are more complicated than that), but I've not tested tightly enough to verify this idea. I did observe (most of these tests were PvP multiplayer tcp/ip) one case where the sound/anim of infection appeared to be re-applied to the lone target. This oddity might explain why the damage done is higher than stated on the lying character screen™ (by more than measurement fuzz).

The stated duration for the skill seems to be both the poison time length and infection duration. I didn't have time to test if curse duration reducers or poison length reduction affect one or both. I did, however, observe that poison immune targets can be infected and will pass the infection along. This is a very important factoid.

This means that highly poison resistant (or immune) entities can be useful carriers. Asymetric PvP can thus be used so the druid doesn't have to be on the front lines to deliver his rabies. One can even carry this to an extreme and team with a Necro (non-partied, Necro friendly, Druid Hostile) who Bone Prisons monsters that the druid infects, transmiting the infection, of course, to the poor monsters trapped within the prisons. Please note that Bone walls/prisons are not "unattackable" in v1.10 as some people have claimed--some skills ignore them, true, and other skills don't target them unless you shift click, but they are definitely attackable (unlike, say, Ravens, afaik).

I particularly like the idea of an Enchanted Rabid army of (poison immune) Revives. :D

But wait, there's more!...

If you are evil PK scum and have a partner and you get your Rabies duration way up, you can go PvP vs. your partner and both of you can get near your intended victim. You then infect your partner in crime (who naturally has very high poison resist, like 95%, and is braced for the onslaught. He then stays glued to the victim (who has time to wonder, briefly: "why is this guy glowing all sickly looking like that?!"). The Rabid wolf then TPs to town and declares hostility.

Yep, you guessed it.. at the moment of declared hostility the infection goes live vs. the victim. You can die from this "poison" even if you take no other damage (i.e. no "poison can't kill you" grace). Maxed Rabies and syngery does do enough damage now, after PvP penalty, to be a threat. Fortunately before griefers have time to build these characters on Ladder (e.g. Hardcore) Blizzard has time to fix things (I hear there are some other serious problems, so I trust we'll be seeing 1.10++ soon).

In any event, Rabies is a complex and interesting skill now, worthy of more research.

Gotta sleep.

[Brista]

lol :lol:

[Brother Laz]

Rabies is a weird thing. Even in 1.09, when I played with the skill and missile tables in the dlls I never understood exactly how its weird combination of missiles and collision/move effects works. Changing anything would break the skill.

[GentlemanLoser]

Hi Guys,
Crystalion, thats great! I assume that the physical attack of Rabies now leeches as well?

Infection and infection duration haven't changed from earlier versions. I seem to remember that monsters were checked for infection about once per second, and would be infected if next to (range 1?) an already infected creature. I'd think that the increase in the skills duration is a two edged sword. You can now infect more creatures, but your killing speed goes down, as your damage is spread out over more time. This could be used to replace PMH, and allow you to change to another skill to do your killing (gotta be fury...)

Poison immunes being infected and reamining infected is strange... Did the duration change at all? I would have thought that poison resistance would reduce both Rabies damage and duration, and that immunes would be immune to infection.

Bone prisons can be infected! Ohhhh... Imagine a screen full of infected creatures held in place by prisons just waiting to die! Better than blinding them! (While blind, do monsters still attack surrounding bone prisions?)

A nasty PK tactic! Just throw in teleport (charges or enigma) if your target won't stay next to you... I wonder if there is anywhere this tactic wouldn't work....

Now throw in +PSD mods to the equation (only thing other than +skills that increase Rabies damage). Although bramble has been reduced, it should still be posssible to get about +100%, and together with about SL 20-25 about a 30 second infection time.

Nice...

[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.

[Brista]

Stray thought for PvM: Rabies and flee :)

[Crystalion]

Stray thought for PvM: Rabies and flee :)

Yes, in discussing technical (i.e. "workshop" forum) issues I often neglect to emphasize (what to me are) the obvious strategic (i.e. "armory" forum) benefits.

I made a -act 3 clvl 21 druid and twinked him with:
1) cash
2) greater healing potions
3) Khalim's Will

With the cash I shopped Charsi and Gheed and acquired 47% net faster hit recovery (past the 42% stated at Tommi's hit recovery and blocking speed tables for a breakpoint to 4 frame recovery. I distributed most of my stat points into Vit (saving some in case I needed Str or Dex. At 60 mana for clvl 21 I knew I had plenty for what I'd be doing).

I then made a cow portal and left the game (leaving the test Druid in players 1 with access to MooMooFarm).

I put a point into Lycanthropy (for convenience of wereform duration), prereq points, one each, to Werewolf and Feral Rage, as many as I could into Rabies and the rest into Poison Creeper (I then grabbed the Den of Evil point and put it into PC as well).

With this "no uncommon equipment required" build (terrible AC, soso to-hit, little physical damage to speak of and only 1-40 lightning) I totally owned the cows (they at mlvl 27+ and me at 21).

The King never even got to emit lightning. :D

I gained a level and a half doing the clear and also scored a druid hat with +1 to Rabies. B)

Since Poison Creeper is one of the easy early "great race" skills to pump, clearly you could bootstrap this character easily.

The build isn't point intensive (completing in the very early 40s), so you can later add Fireclaws(lots, incl. synergies) or Fury(20)/Grizzly(20 in dire wolf) according to your preference.