Poison damage for dummies (aka me) - Also vs Lightning -Please help?

General Discussion
1

Hello everyone. Sorry this is so long.

I never became one of those players that knows every last technical detail about the game’s mechanics. And I don’t play that much.

I’m just trying to figure out how much poison damage my 29 lvl Paladin will actually deal, if I put a Perfect Emerald (+100 damage over 7 seconds) in this socketed War Scepter I just found.

I’m reading the math in some places, and it’s quite complicated. It also doesn’t make sense. Sometimes the same website mentions different values and I can’t figure out why. Also, min and max values when poison damage doesn’t look like it has a range.
Plus, all numbers I see just seem unreal. I keep finding values that go from 1k, up to 10k? Sounds unbelievably overpowered.

How would that poison damage be affected by two charms that deal +6 over 3 seconds? I read that something is averaged, and I wonder if that reduces the damage from the Perfect Emerald or makes it apply even faster.

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This scepter would replace the current (unsocketed) one, with more interesting skill bonuses. But the current one deals +1-100 lighning damage.

I’m GUESSING poison damage is a better idea because it’s not such a random number, but I read lightning paralyses enemies or something?

I didn’t know anything about that, but I AM interested in such an effect. I already have a bit of cold damage from charms, but I’m not sure if that provides enough of a slow-down on enemies. Also, do those two effects stack?

I COULD just keep both scepters available, for when I run into enemies that are resistant/immune to lightning or poison. But I’m in Normal’s Act IV, so it’s gonna be a while until that happens. And I wanna decide which scepter should be my main, at least for now.

Thank you all for your time.

2

poison is basically a DoT (Damage over Time), where lightning is a on hit damage, but has a wide range (1-100 in this case). In general, poison damage is terrible against things that die quickly, unless you can stack an ungodly amount of it and it deals it’s damage in a short amount of time. Like the Necro Poison Explosion, it’s dealt over 2 seconds. Lighting is better if you can hit fast and often, as the more you hit, the more damage you do.

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Bit Rate Conversion

To understand Poison Damage and how the game calculates it, we need to first understand the terms Bit, Frame, and Bit Rate. We use Toxic Small Charm as our example.

Bit

The game converts Poison Damage into Bits. A Bit is a unit of Damage measurement for sources that deal Damage over Time (DoT). Each 1 point of Damage is 256 Bits.

  • Bits are the smallest unit of measurement for Damage.
  • The game does not round Damage properly when converting back up to points, from Bits. Any calculation of Bit Damage in terms of points and seconds is inaccurate, due to rounding errors.
  • Bits are used to determine a source of Poison’s Bit Rate, which relies on its Frame count.

Frame

A Frame is the smallest unit of measurement for the game’s engine, in time. 1 Frame is 1/25th of a second.

  • 1 Second = 25 Frames.
  • While Frames are normally used to describe the lengths of an animation, the entire game actually runs off Frame Length.
  • Bit Rate damage is applied every Frame.

Bit Rate

Bit Rate is the Bit Damage of a Poison source, divided by the number of Frames indicated on the source of Poison Damage.

  • A Toxic Small Charm says “100 Poison Damage over 5 Seconds”. We need to determine this source’s Bit Rate.

Bit Rate = [(Poison Damage * 256 Bits) / (Seconds * 25 Frames)]
Bit Rate = [(100 * 256) / (5 * 25)]
Bit Rate = 205 Bits per Frame

  • We communicate the Poison Length as Frames, with respect to seconds.

Poison Length = (Frames) / 25
Frames = Poison Length in Seconds * 25
Poison Length = 125 / 25

  • While this simplifies to 5 seconds, we need to use the Poison Length in Frames for future calculations.
  • We have 205 Bit Rate over 125 / 25 Frames. This single source of Poison Damage would deal 205 Bit Rate damage, every Frame, for a total of 125 Frames OR 0.8 Damage every 1/25th of a second for 5 seconds.

note that Poison used to be BUFF but was nerfed back in the day, so make sure you’re following recent guides.

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4

Ok then. Let me see if I get this straight.

Lightning delivers an average of 50 damage in this case. With a single hit.

But poison will deliver how much damage, in the same amount of time? Considering its full damage takes 7 seconds to run its course.

Would that be just 14 damage? 100 / 7?

Thus poison would only make sense if you’re a slow hitter or you hit and run a lot.

As I’m playing a melee Paladin which I’m trying to base mostly on Zeal/Sacrifice/Fanaticism, hitting and running would only be my main tactic in exceptional cases. With enemies that are way too dangerous to stay up close for the full fight.

5

This calculation is nice… but confusing and it doesn’t answer another thing: What happens when you hit a target with said poison charm(+100 damage over 7 seconds), poison it…now it is supposed to be poisoned for 7 seconds but you hit it again after 2 seconds.

-Does this reset the DoT effect like in World of Warcraft and the target took damage of 2 seconds DoT and now has a new 7 seconds DoT on itself?

-Did the DoT tick down for 2 seconds, doing about 14 damage per tick… and the new DoT takes the 78 that are left in the DoT and adds another 100 to it?

In the first case scenario, I would choose the lightning over the poison. Especially when you use a class that has a multi-hit attack like a Paladin with Zeal or a Amazon with Jab, where you expect to attack an enemy more then once over the lifetime of the poison.

In the second case scenario… you could “stack up” the poison on stronger enemies and it would add up and not loose in power.

6

Avoiding the topic of calculating the damage per frame of Poison and looking at it’s use. I will bring up monster re-gen which poison will help mitigate.

If you use zeal and get into a group of targets where you are hitting 5 different targets, 1 hit per zeal, the poison will keep adding a little extra damage while you are hitting the other targets. This small bit does help a little and stops the small amount of regen while you are busy hitting something else. When you are zealing on one target the poison damage doesn’t do much. I usually find a toxic small charm to add in some poison and use as little space in my inventory as possible.

If you use a weapon where they monster may get hit once and then run or you may not get in another hit for a few seconds the longer duration of poison helps and you get in the full damage. These types of attacks are like poison dagger, strafe, blade fury. I am currently running a blade fury sin and using hit causes monster to flee, I hit them, they run and poison ideally drops it.

Poison does not stack. if you hit the target again before the poison has run it’s course it is re-applied and the timer is reset.

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Poison basically is used now to stop monsters from healing, as foes cannot regain while poisoned. Also, if you keep re-poison a foe it will NOT stack damage, but will refresh the timer on it. Basically no extra damage if it’s already positioned. (aside from the extra time that it remains poisoned)

Lightning is fickle:
I could do 1 damage instantly, or could do the max. The range of damage is kind of a dice roll. May get lucky with a max damage roll, or could fizzle out and do barely any damage.

For example: if you’re a Necromancer using Poison mages, you only need 1 or 2 around to stop mobs from healing. Can unsummon unused skeleton mages to get setup with more fire or ice mages.

Once you get into hell, it’s all about the ability to break immunities. as you can run into stuff thats 100% immune to forms of damage causing the player to utilize other forms of damage.

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I can see you’re copy/pasting from one of the websites I checked, and couldn’t understand.

That website says 143 damage over 179 frames. I can see that 179 frames translates to roughly 7 seconds, but why is it 143 damage instead of 100? What’s the logic in that? Also, I’d need to know how the two small charms I mentioned, affect that. +6 over 3 seconds.

9

There’s a table on that website to reference.
Not sure how to explain it any better then that.

it would help to know what you’re trying to do i guess.

10

Think this way:

If you have 100 damage over 5 seconds. You only need to account those things:

1- the target resist
2- the target poison length(mostly for being hit or pvp)
3- single strike

If you hit a foe with 100 dmg over 5 sec and that foe has 50% resist to it. Means 50 dmg over 5 sec. Reducing the overall damage from 20 to 10 Per sec

But then, if you strike the foe on second 2. Would be the initial 10 damage per sec in the first second and reset the counter for a new hit. Because the same source of damage doesn’t stack.

In 5 seconds your max damage would be 50 against a foe with 50% resist to it. While other elements you do instant damage, if you had 1-10 lightning damage each strike you would deal that 1-10 additional lightning damage.

Then you get poison length, that are linked with the duration of the poison. On hell if you don’t have reduction all poison you receive has double duration. Which would effectively double the damage received.

So, you need to account the amount damage per sec your poison would deal to the foe and how many strikes you do in that interval. Multiple instances of poison stacks with each other if they’re from different sources, but while they’re active they can only applied once.

So if your sum from gear is 250. Your max damage combined on those all dots would be 250 as long those dots are active. You can reset the counter but the damage will always be those 250. Only being affected by target resist, your % poison damage and the target poison length reduction.

Is great for single strikes but not that useful for a zeal build by example. Could be useful for a bowzon with buriza and multishot, but not that useful for a strafe build.

One of the main usages of poison are often to counter monsters regeneration on hell, but often doesn’t worth to invest if you have open wounds or prevent monster heal affix.

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DoT = BAD for zealots.

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Yeah so is “Prevents Monster Heal” and “Bleed”. Knowing it doesn’t stack… I will use poison as I used it before… not as a main goal.

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Ok, so to sum it up, poison (+100 over 7") is not useful when compared to lightning (+1-110) for a zeal/fanaticism paladin. Because poison barely takes advantage of the multiple, quick hits I get. While lightning takes significant advantage.

You mention stopping monster regen, as the main benefit of poison. But being in Normal right now, where they barely regen (if at all), that’s unnecessary. And by the time their regen becomes a big deal, I should have access to better options. Poison without needing to sacrifice some other edge, prevent monstear heal, or open wounds.

As for lightning damage’s possible side effects… Is it true that it stops enemies for a moment? Making them “stutter?”

14

test it out and observe the reaction.

the reason nobody can give you a value on poison is because it depends on your target and what difficulty you play in.

if you can’t observe an immediate benefit, is it really worth it?

15

It seems like you’ve got a handle on it now. Lightning would be better for your set up.

As for the lightning damage provided by the gem triggering hit recovery frames, I can’t find anything indicating that would be the case.

16

Lightning doesn’t have that kind of perk, what can do is trigger an effect called hit recovery. But isn’t exactly related to lightning itself but the amount of damage in a single blow.

Because the perk of having huge max damage can help to trigger the condition of hit recovery which would be dealing more than 1/12 of the target hp in a single blow.

So having a nice damage can trigger fhr more often. Some few are immune to it but most of monsters are vulnerable to it.

17

Ok, coming back to this. First of all, thank you everyone.

I ended up dropping the poison option, in favor of the lightning one. But then I found a better weapon. I’ve greatly boosted my item drops and xp gain with setting difficulty to 4 using the “/players” option. I found out I could handle that with little problem.

Buuut I’m back to poison issues. Now I have two poisons charms. +50 x 6", +169 x 9".

Without going into “is poison a good option or not,” because I can keep the charms without giving up any other items for now…

Is it wise to keep both? Or do they average in a way that wastes the +169’s one?

It’s really tricky to figure out, since the character’s panel just adds it all up together. And it’s not something you can just appreciate at first glance.

18

myself, I end up dropping all the + elemental damage charms on the ground to make more room for fast run/walk and resistances early game and late game I’m full on gold or magic find charms.

just my preference.
as your magic find and levels increase you will find more charms that are obviously better.

19

Short answer: I’m sorry, but that doesn’t really answer my question. I’m not gonna give up on both, just for the extra room.

Looong answer:

That would require a big change in the way I play my Paladin, and I don’t think I’d like it either.

SPEED: I’m all for it, although I did pick a normal speed weapon over a fast one for the big damage difference. I use Zeal+Fanaticism, and I’ve tried to keep all the items that boost my run speed significantly (I’m up to +50%).

ELEMENTAL DAMAGE: It’s not my priority, really. I’m just discussing the options because they’re there, but I’ve diversified into other things. The only other item that gives me elemental damage and nothing else, is a small charm for a tiny amount of cold. And that’s because it slows down enemies, and gets rid of dangerous corpses pretty often.

ELEMENTAL RESISTANCES: I HAVE tried to prioritise those. But, almost all the best items I found for those ended up being insufficient in other aspects. So I keep them stashed away, for temporary use against specific cases.

Which hasn’t actually happened so far, 'cos I haven’t run into a major “oh no, this specific resistance is too low!” emergency yet (about to reach the Act V Ancients quest in Normal).

Right now, my res are F 85, C 58, L 39, P 74. But I’ve spent a large amount of the game thus far, unable/unwilling to prioritise res.
I have a Nokozan Relic, and my shield gives me 31 to fire and 8 to the rest. But the shield, I keep because it also brings plenty of other benefits: Significant boosts to general shield stuff, damage, AR, and half freeze.

My strategy is simple. I attack hard and fast, but also smart and tactical. I use the superior speed to dodge the nastier elemental threats. Doing hit and run when I feel I cannot stay in the thick of it for long.

That way, I don’t have to worry about prioritising res. And I can just let them build up on their own, as I get nicer items for my actual priorities while also improving my res.

I don’t think I’ll ever spend points in Salvation either, for example. Its benefits are, to me, totally cancelled out by being limited to one aura at a time.

20

are you into hell yet?
nightmare and hell have increased -resistance penalties.

normal is like easy mode to learn the game.
nightmare is when you are introduced to immunities.
and hell is when your knowledge is tested.

normal is 0 resistance penalty
nightmare is -20 resistance penalty
hell is -50 resistance penalty

don’t really feel much damage impact if you are in the positive… but if you are in the negative… you’ll notice.