Base node increase damage by 60%. Total Damage over the current second node without the delay and spreads faster inherently.
Rabies duration is reduced by each enemy it spreads to. Get rid of the aspect and move it all into this node.
3a. If Rabies is active on only one target, it does 150%(x) damage
3b. Enemies infected with Rabies are vulnerable.
Poison on Druid needs a massive rework in general. Toxic claws are only used for Envenom. Lupine key passive could be changed to be poison related since it’s useless as is. Rabies has never really been a solid pick for a skill slot.
Personally think they should turn a few skills into active passives.
Rabies would just allow all your abilities to inflict it vs having an active hurricane. Only one active passive skill could be chosen, but it would allow people to craft a build and gain a CC, dmg mit form, etc… that they could utilize.
But rabies has been bad since season 0.
When combat is as fast-paced as it is in this game and in D3, you end up in a situation where damage delivered over a longer period of time drops off a cliff in value. If everything is instant, instant becomes the baseline expectation. Anything other than instant is immediately inferior. To keep DoTs relevant, they either need to do enormous overall damage, there needs to be a burst component to the dot (as in explosion procs), or they need to provide some sort of important utility (when mob is infected with rabies, spirit costs against them are -75%, or mobs that die while infected with rabies have a small chance to be turned into werewolf companions, you get the idea).
Rabies doesn’t scale with crit, crit damage, increased attack speed, apparently it also doesn’t scale with vulnerability (but likely a bug), and what else? I’m sure I’m missing some. The way lucky hit works with dots is also pretty lame. Even if they wanted to keep the functionality, the least they could do is provide the actual per tick % chance to proc a lucky hit effect in the UI. All I know is that xfals rabies build sounded fun, but isn’t fun in practice because it doesn’t proc anywhere near often enough even when stacking lucky hit (around 70% rabies tooltip lucky hit chance).
I tried building a rabies druid recently and there was also a massive lack of multipliers to scale this damage. Few good legendary nodes, few multiplier glyphs, and the aspect options (changelings and the 2nd half of the insatiated aspect) were also not great, not creative, and not enough of them. Inevitable fate aspect does not seem useful given how many limitations it has, but I need to see how it actually works in practice. Creeping death seems useful at least. The virulent aspect tripling on bosses effect also apparently isn’t working on bosses the way it’s intended according to other player reports.
Idk, I’m just throwing ideas, all I know is that rabies needs more. Slowing down the overall pace of the game would make builds like this more relevant (minion necro builds too) but I don’t think the playerbase wants that. So, we need to adapt rabies to fit within this faster paced system.
Totally necroing this thread, but I wanted to test out rabies again with the Virulent Aspect. So far (tier 1 new breechs, will do more testing at higher levels, but Rabies is great to get poison out to a ton of mobs really quickly in this game mode. I’ve had really good results with being able to basically spam Rabies on mobs (elites included). Maybe I’m just crazy, but it looks like rabies is stacking with application (the bite) on elites. Will do more testing on it, but to get that poison spread to as many mobs as possible it seems to be an overlooked ability.
I do agree the dot tick damage needs to be faster and the spread needs to be a bit quicker. Just my thoughts on it. Just wanted to try something new and off-meta this season for shred. I hated playing werenado, and none of the other meta builds interest me.
Using it with the werewolf companions it does spread fast which in turns makes the cd instant in infernal horde mode. With the 70% area, this keeps it up in a wide area. The problem is it just isn’t that strong. The game just isn’t designed for a slow ramping dot. But, it does do the trick for keeping things poisoned.
This forum moves very slowly, so you aren’t really necroing.
I will add a minor suggestion that will make the skill feel more satisfying to use. In d2, rabies had strong visual and audio cues every time something was infected. It felt GOOD seeing and hearing everything being infected. It’s not super noticeable right now, especially audibly. Maybe make the color a bit more distinct, and add a gross infection noise when it happens.
Rabies needs to stack for each application not reset its duration, also DoTs should not spread its lhc% with each DoT, they should apply the base lhc% for each tick, companions should be eable to reduce its rabies procs with our cdr and aspects like virulent. Xfals werewolf pack could be an actual build like this stacking rabies from us and the wolves.
Besides that rabies obviously needs a buff on its base damage and good aspects that synergyse with a rabid wolfpack. (Not a companion build just you and your wolves spreading rabies).
I actually have been wondering if the rabies temper needs to become multiplicative at this point.
I like rabies with the large temper bonus, which goes up with masterworking. In addition, it’s not true that rabies doesn’t scale. The initial hit scales, the DOT doesn’t.
That and it really doesn’t ramp, more like slight rises
I just got the corroded signet. With a huge explosion, it makes rabies worthwhile. I love watching my enemies keel over from pure poisoning. With the radius bonus, it’s time for fun!
People still trying to make poison druid a thing. Good laugh. I gave up a few seasons ago when they nerfed changeling & blurred beast.
It’s more that this thread is trying to provide blizzard targeted feedback to fix this incredibly broken skill to whoever may be listening.