The State of Poison Damage

General Discussion
1

Id like to start a discussion about poison damage and the dismal state it’s in compared to every other damage type in the game.
And perhaps we can even come up with some ideas to improve it.

What is wrong with poison damage, you ask?

  1. Damage over time.
    Although I don’t think there is anything wrong with this itself, as this is the defining characteristic of poison in diablo 2, it is implemented in a way that holds it back. It locks you into waiting for the poison to complete, resulting in DPS that is a fraction of what any other damage type would achieve.

  2. The poison bug.
    Any damage done to an enemy while it is poisoned, stops the enemy from taking poison damage for that frame.

  3. Low damage.
    Some of the numbers seem impressive, but when broken down over the duration, ends up in the lowest DPS among all damage types. This applies to both skills and items.
    For example we will use exceptional unique swords,

Fire: Todesfaelle flamme
50-200 Fire damage on hit

Lightning: Cloudcrack
1-240 Lightning damage on hit.

Cold: Bing Sz Wang
50-140 Cold Damage on hit + slowing

Magic: Ginthers rift
50-120 Magic damage in hit (not resisted, almost no immunities

Poison: Plague bearer
300 poison damage over 8 seconds.
Seems high right? That’s 37 damage per second. That can only be applied once. It’s by far the worst out of all the damage types here.

Where is the advantage here?
Fire has balanced damage. Decent low end, decent high end.
Lightning is extreme on low end, and on high end.
Cold is has lower ranges on both, but provides crowd control, and defence
Magic is a bit lower like cold, but cannot be resisted.
Poison, is just low. Low and slow. There’s no upside here.

  1. Does not stack.
    This is where it really starts to suffer bad.
    With every other damage type, the full damage is applied again instantly upon re-application.
    With poison, striking again does nothing. You’re locked into low DPS.
    If you are on a team with another poison character, one cancels the other out.

  2. Does NOT engage hit recovery.
    This one is bad too, every other form of damage can stagger the enemy, creating a window of safety for the player. Poison can not.

  3. -Enemy Poison Resistance is one of the hardest element resist negating properties to find.
    To get -40 to -50, you need to find the second rarest item in the game, deaths web.
    Compare with an um rune to make crescent moon, which provides -35 enemy lightning resist, or a lem rune to make voice of reason for -24 cold resist

  4. Not affected by conviction.
    Other elements get a massive -85 enemy resist from infinity, except for poison.

  5. In PvP, you can just rejuv/antidote the damage away

SOLUTIONS:
I think the biggest problem with poison is caused by its inability to stack.
I think straight stacking would overshoot the mark, but what if it stacked at half power with each application.
So let’s say you hit a monster with a 10k poison dagger… if you strike again, it only adds 5K. And then again, only 2.5k.

Or allow up to 4 seperate poisons.
1st: full power
2nd: half power
3rd: quarter power
4th: eigth power

Or maybe each application reduces the duration by a certain amount, while retaining the damage.
So the damage gets pressed into a shorter window with each hit, making for higher DPS?

I haven’t thought these solutions through very much, just thrown them out there.

1 Like
2

No doubt a limitation of processing power at the time of game development. Single thread operation and all…

Then there precision accounting/transmission for math formulae over a dialup connection. And ping times… Oh dear, this is getting “ugly”… :stuck_out_tongue:

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3

I tend to agree on most points you make, but would like to keep the fact that poison is not triggering hit recovery and that it is applied over time. That makes it unique and complex (what is not a bad think for the game we love imho).

I do think that a p-nova necro is not weak at all and fun to play. So all changes should not end up in a power creep here (maybe a bit more power for boss fights).

I do think that the items which apply pdmg are weaker compared to others. That’s why we buffed a lot of these in our itemizations tread. I think that will help at least a bit.

But I fear that we will not see the overall mechanic beeing changes. Since that would be a hell of work for the company not putting any effort in the game. :crossed_fingers:

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4

I totally agree. Allow me to clarify, I did list the hit recovery as a downside, but I don’t think that part should change. Just like I wouldn’t want conviction to change.
I was just listing all of the downsides to make the case for why poison needs something beneficial added to it.

I wanted to mention this build in my post, but it was already way too long lol.
This skill was a good example of poison done right.
The damage being packed into a shorter duration is a big win.
Although what saves this skill, is actually its AOE.
You only start to see a need for stacking when up against a boss. 5000 DPS is great for washing away all the little ankle biters in the pit, but up against Baal, it takes a few minutes lol

I actually hadn’t considered the technological limitation. Good point.
Perhaps the damage could just be added to the total of the original poison stack then?
I trust blizzard could find a way if they sought to improve it :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Nice breakdown in the OP, it’s cool to see how each elemental effect differs from the others and the strengths each one has.

Instead of stacking, I’m in favor of giving Poison skills a direct damage portion that is dealt against already Poisoned targets. When I think of Poison, I think of hitting every target on the screen, they’re all taking damage over time and that’s the strength of it.

If you added a stacking mechanic you would then feel like you’d have to stack the Poison on all the targets when that doesn’t really feel necessary. Poison Nova is strong because its duration is short.

In short, you would apply the DoT once and it wouldn’t be refreshed until it expires. More powerful DoTs would still overwrite. Further Poison attacks would then deal direct Poison damage based on whatever Poisoning effect you have.

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6

Wow, this is a fantastic idea, I like this more than both of the suggestions I posted.
What % of the poison damage do you think should be applied instantly when a target is hit with poison again?

7

I don’t really know. Figure that comes to mind would be like 15%. So if you’re dealing 37 DPS with Poison you’d be dealing 43 DPS to the target you’re hitting.

Again, the strength of it should be the DoT, this is to just throw you a bone when you’re hitting a single target, instead of pointlessly refreshing the DoT to no real effect.

If this seems low, you could also just increase the DoT and the bonus would scale with it.

8

Yeah I think this is good too. You’re right that It’s important not to draw away from poisons defining characteristic of damage over time.
If this was implemented, and some of the longer durations cut down, I think we could see poison actually playing in the same league as the other damage types. It’ll still be the weakest, likely, but at least itd be on the map.

EDIT: 20 second durations in a game where monsters don’t live more than a second or two, and even bosses are dead in less than 10 seconds…. This is a recipe for failure right here.

9

Hahaha oh man, I just looked at Poison Javelin. 46-second duration hmmm :smile: Even without taking power scaling into account, anything above say, 6 seconds does not mesh well with the game’s pace.

10

No wonder why my poison nova/summoner hybrid is so weak, the skeletons and revives must be preventing poison damage from working properly :frowning:

Yes please fix this!

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11

I love how POE does it.

You deal actual poison damage with hits, and something like 10% of the hit damage “poisons” the enemy over a certain duration, and has unlimited stacking potential (only limited on the speed in which you can keep applying, and the window before the first poisons wear off). This would make a ww poison stacking character feel excellent.

2 Likes
12

Yes they are. Fight diablo in the chaos sanctuary with, and without minions as a poison nova necromancer, and your kill time is actually FASTER without them. By a good amount too.

I noticed this before this video was even posted, because when I teleporte away from diablo to save my merc, I noticed his Health would go down faster with just my poison than when my minions were beating on him too.
REALLY needs to be fixed.

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13

That’s unbelievable!
I haven’t even looked at the amazons side. I knew it was bad, cause this is a recurring theme of poison… but didn’t know it was that bad lol.

This goes against the pace of the game for sure.
Not even the ubers live for 45 seconds lol

14

My thoughts would be:

  1. I agree that the duration should be reduced on most poison skills. 46 seconds is way too long. Perhaps 8 seconds as a maximum for any skill to reach?
  2. Poison damage should be applied with every tick, and not be negated by other damage being dealt. This issue makes me wonder if poison damage is actually applied as negative regeneration rather than straight damage. If this is the case, it may be difficult to change. Does anyone know on this?
  3. I think the easiest way to deal with stacking would be for poison to deal, for example, 25% of the damage up front on every hit. I think this would be easier to code and simpler to remember than keeping track of if a monster has been hit and how many times. What do you think? Would that be sufficient?
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15

Great ideas

  1. Yes. 8 seconds is a good maximum to settle on.

  2. I think you might be into something here. If it was negative regeneration, I can’t see it conflicting with other damage types.

  3. I like this 25% upfront idea a lot. It doesn’t add more damage out of nowhere, it just speeds things up a little, and rewards a successful re-application.

16

many ppl swear that poison nova necro is pretty good but i dont see it.

bad value performance for how much the build will cost.

now after reading this… i feel that way even more!

17

It’s really been left behind. For how expensive it is, yikes.
It used to have a niche in that it could farm any zone in the game, but since sunder charms, any build can do that.