I’m a beginning Normal, solo, offline player with 3 characters of each class alternately leveling up. Currently all classes at least lvl 24 Act 3.
Every class uses a very fast bow with a bunch of poison runes in inventory because they clear out the mobs and bosses better than pretty much anything else at range.
My fire and lightning charms suck terribly 1-2 or 2-3 dmg = wildly pathetic. Cold much the same garbage 1-2 dmg but maybe better because they slow enemies.
Poison runes do sometimes 15-33 dmg each – or small runes doing 6 dmg each!
I have been trying to designate and make each character do one main elemental damage type, but poison is by far the massive damage dealer compared to the others.
The only other charms I’ll put in inventory is faster speed or faster hit recovery - the rest are mostly garbage low numbers - except possibly lighning resist especially in Act 2.
Maybe charms later on get better? So far it’s mostly just loading up inventory with poison, poison, and more poison for arrow ranged damage way across the screen.
When starting out, I usually hold onto any resistance charms that I come across. It makes tanking elemental hits that much easier, and the gear options that much more versatile. Charm drops (specifically grand charms) start getting good around Act 3 Nightmare. That’s when the first skiller grand charms can drop.
Only two classes excel at using a Bow. One is the Amazon and even then, she’ll struggle without a good Bow, adequate Attack Rating and/or shrewd use of Inner Sight to pierce Enemy Defense such that her Attacks reliably hit(Guided Arrow excluded and Elemental Arrows can deal Elemental Damage despite not landing a hit). Sorceress is the other since she has Enchant and ideally a Demon Machine or Raven Claw for Explosive Arrow action. The rest, I would encourage using a different build with different equipment.
As for Charms, the damage is only applied if your attacks hit and you’ll come to find that while the numbers on Poison Charms are higher, they’re applied over x seconds. Maxroll does a solid job explaining how Poison Damage works(look it up). Meaning if you attack X times per second, that Fire/Cold/Lightning damage is applied every single attack that lands while Poison takes time to deal its full effect. However, Poison is treated as negative life regeneration, hence it’s “bugged” in a way in that it never truly deals all its damage(another topic on this Forum discusses it). So I recommend sticking to Elemental(charms or Act 3 Enchant Merc) or ideally Physical Damage charms(set a goal to get +3 Max Damage/20 Attack Rating/20 Life Small Charms. They’re insanely rare and of course expensive but every Softcore Bow Amazon has them).
It does its damage properly, but you have to remember that non-SuperUniques regenerate health as well, and sometimes rather rapidly, making it appear the poison isn’t working as intended. It isn’t bugged, it’s just a form of HP depletion that’s countered by HP regen and for poison to work well its depletion rate must exceed the regeneration rate. Against SuperUniques, or if you have the Prevent Monster Heal affix on any of your gear, poison does its full potential, with one very huge caveat: The damage inflicted by the charms and affixes on your gear is restarted each subsequent hit. So if you’re attacking rapidly, you will find your damage ticks resetting and outside of SUs and PMH you’re fighting an uphill battle. Resistances are then another factor in this equation and get stronger as you progress in the game.
Throughout most of Normal difficulty poison easily exceeds the regeneration rates of mobs and they die rather easily to it. Even in Nightmare you can make effective use of poison, but you’ll need much higher concentrations of it, meaning +50 or more per small charm and a fair number of them. Ironically, poison charms can mean the difference between taking down an act boss or running out of sustain mid-fight. With a few good poison charms and on sorc/amazon the best base bow using TalTalTal or TalTal + any sapphire you can take out the act bosses with relative ease compared to doing it the normal way of attrition.
I’m playing Normal offline solo. Most every class I have use Witherstring or some other very fast attack speed bows/repeating crossbows. 3 perfect emeralds in a 3 socketed bow does more dmg than whatever low skills
I’ve been using poison charms + Witherstring = infinite poison arrows – click-click-click arrows everywhere + light up dark areas unlike terrible light radius affix; it’s base dmg by itself is pathetic though . . . if there’s some way to drastically increase attack speed to make it a submachinegun would be awesome.
True but my point has more to do with the fact that if you have a Summoner army attacking the target constantly, the Poison damage for that frame is effectively ignored, hence the “bugged” comment. It’s much more noticeable when you play with an Ally that does DoT or tick damage like a Meteor or Firewall Sorceress where if they constantly have the target taking DoT damage, you might as well not even bother trying to Poison it.
Given they’re playing Single Player, it won’t be as big of an issue(if at all).
Not sure, but I have seen posts advising only ONE damage charm is selected–not all added together. I used to do as you do–as many poison damage charms as possible and assumed they all got added together to be one HUGE damage impact. Test to find out.
Poison Damage normally causes a target to turn green when poisoned, a state which stops damage regeneration and can apply poison damage over the state’s length.
The bug they’re referring to is this one (from the same poison damage link above, I took the relevant info):
More generally, poison damage does not get applied in frames in which any damage from other sources is applied (although poison and Open Wounds both apply simultaneously). [3][4]
In online modes (LoD and D2R, Expansion and Classic, LD and NLD) any damage from other source stops poison damage for additional 7 frames after taking damage. Builds relying on poison damage should refrain from utilizing other damage sources, such as Raise Skeleton. This mechanic is also applied to damage regeneration.[5]