Poison Nova Needs Fix/Rework

Hey everyone, I wanted to share this video here which explains why Poison Nova is underperforming especially against single target enemies. Should Blizzard fix this or rework Poison Nova (or rework how poison damage works entirely)?

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Ofc is should be fixed, Poison Nova ticks being interrupted by even 1dmg from minion is a bug dumb beyond imagination.
Poison rework however should also be done, that however is a completely different, complex topic.

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Thank you for the input! As it stands now, any type of damage (physical or poison) applied in a Poison Tickrate frame CANCELS/OVERRIDES the poison damage. Poison Nova is massively affected by this, and it feels EXTREMELY unfair/unnatural for the build to be subject to such a bug (or system if itā€™s intended).

Whatā€™s even worse is, the Assassin ā€œVenomā€ ability can work normally. Venom does not encounter this bug (or it is not subject to this calculation system), since it necessarily combines the poison damage with another source of damage (so it can still do the poison damage regardless of this bug). Therefore, this might even be a Poison Nova specific (maybe also Rabies?) bug actually.

I want to provide constructive feedback here, and would like to state this needs to be top priority fix for D2R Necromancer. If poison nova can actually damage bosses, the entire build might become a viable ladder push build (poison nova + powerful revives + powerful merc dealing collective damage), which may bring some sort of freshness to meta compositions in future seasons.

Very likely, although there is still possibility that Venom, due to very short duration, just finishes its ticks before other damage source overrides them. It might be recommended to thoroughly test Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion though, not only Rabies.

Iā€™m not Necromancer expert, but doesnā€™t Poison Nova build require Death Wand to be viable? Although, in the light of latest discoveries, it might turn out that Trang Oul gloves + 2 other Tang Oul set items is enough for the build. Btw, it could be a material for another test - how well a Poison Nova Necro can preform without Deathā€™s Web and maybe facets.

Great input as always. Deathā€™s Web is crucial for Poison Nova Necromancer because of ā€œlower enemy poison resistanceā€ aspect of it.

As you already know, I have suggested various changes for Poison Nova necro (actually all necro specs) in this post:

I am currently working on a piece and will include this section :slight_smile:

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It never made sense why the necro did such little damage to bosses. I thought maybe they had some ridiculous poison length reduction amount or something. Good work on finding this.

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Thank you! Now we need to raise awareness and hope that the developers fix or rework Poison Nova!

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Agreed, its hard to get any traction with past experience on some of these niche bugs.

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The whole poison tickrate and damage applies in a frame system is causing this problem. Any other source of damage within that frame canceling poison damage is flat destroying this ability when fighting against high hp single targets. This can be fixed and it will 100% make poison nova gameplay better.

There are different suggestions, but I believe separating poison damage source from all other damage and applying it indepedently regardless of other damage sources is a good solution. In addition, if poison damage becomes stackable and collective on top of this change, it may provide power upgrades for poison.

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found a 20/50 DW and decided to make a poison nova necroā€¦
now i find out its bugged xD
Just my luck

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Maybe it will be fixed/ reworked :slight_smile: one can only hope

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You could combine 3piece Trang with a grief to reach roughly the -poison res that dweb would give. Missing out on some +skills for sure tho.

Maybe plague in a dagger would work too for -poison res.

Blizzard please fix this I am ladder starting poison necro and this bug makes me so sad. I will still play poison regardless but for the love of all that is holy please fix this.

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This was not fixed for Season 2. Still bugged for S3. Maybe they will fix it.

We can hope and pray at this point :slight_smile:

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did some tests yesterday bc of this thread
and im getting different results from the ones presented in your vid

p1 diablo + 13 skeleton warriors + a2mightmerc + golem + LR
kill time of 12s

p1 diablo + LR
kill time also of 12s

Your results show that pure poison nova kill is the same as army + poison. Army + Poison Nova should be faster kill time whereas you are getting the same kill speed, which proves army interferes with Poison Nova damage.

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Thats exactly what i thought but it seems that something was ā€œimprovedā€ bc i didnt get higher times with the army

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Iā€™m looking for a clarification on this bug: Iā€™ve heard it stated two ways, first that any other damage to the target cancels out the poison damage/the remaining timer. The second it cancels the poison damage only in that frame. This is a big difference as if you cast PN, target gets hit by something while you still have 1 second remaining, it would either nullify all the remaining damage or only the damage in that frame.

It seems to me that it only nullifies the damage in that frame rather than cancels the entirety of the remaining damage.

Iā€™m currently running a PNova necy, using a Thorns Merc, fire golem and revives using amp or LR depending on where I am. Cows; Amp works best while Arcane or Chaos LR seems to shine more. This build is nice because before I was able to get DWeb and 3 piece Trang I could still run Cows Chaos etc without too much issue (it works well with ā€˜starterā€™ gear.) By the way even with low end gear Diablo was going down in about 10 second due to the Thorns damage (amped.)

I have noticed while running the fire golem I do not see the poison damage stopping after he ticks away with his fire aura. Similarly if Iā€™m fighting ranged targets and melee targets, the monster generally die within a similar amount of time to a Nova rather than the melee monsters dyeing noticeable before or after. You would expect if the melee attack canceled the poison damage those who are still taking full poison damage would die at a different time than those who had their poison damage canceled by the melee attack.

Skulm did you see the changes to next hit delay in the upcoming season? Maybe this can give us some hope.