So, I’ve been noticing a lot of Poison Nova picks recently, and that was fine, until I had a weird interaction in a QM game where Poison Nova was wrecking us. So I saved the replay, and spent a long time looking at it’s interaction. Brought up the ol’ calculator and did some maths. But something isn’t adding up.
So with Andariel’s Visage, it states, “Poison Nova heals for 50% of the damage dealt and its duration is increased by 50%”. When I hover over the ult in the talents tab, it shows it does “1437 damage over 15 seconds” at level 21. A Tracer on our team goes into a 1v1 with Xul, Xul pops poison nova, and it strikes Tracer as she is 1899 health. Now when it hits her, the enemy team is at the very end of level 20, and the ult reads "1381 damage over 15 seconds. The amount of “negative” health that tracers life bar shows is basically all of it. Which indicates it is doing more than 1381. About 5 seconds into the DoT, they reach lvl 21, and the damage increases, and Tracer’s life bar becomes fully “negative”. Xul has no spell power buffs, no enemies are doing DoT to Tracer (nor do any damage her at all) and yet she dies from Poison Nova when she was hit at 1900 health. Now, we also have to take into account that Tracer has health regen, of 12.58 per second at level 22. So over the course of 15 seconds she should be regenerating 188.7 health. which now brings the total damage done by Poison Nova to over 2000. At level 20/21.
Later on in the same game, he pops Poison Nova (at level 21) on a nearly full health Nova, who had 2177 health, had just picked up a health globe, and when the full duration of the Poison Nova expires, it leaves Nova at 359 health. The health globe should have provided her with 288.63 health (9% of 3207 which is Nova’s max health at lvl 23), and she regenerates 6.60 health a second at lvl 23, which would 99 health over the full duration of Poison Nova. Nova roughly had 2564.63 health over this time, and when we subtract her remaining health at the end of Poison Nova, 359, we end with a total damage of 2205.63 dealt to Nova. If Poison Nova was supposed to deal 1437 at level 21, and we take 50% of that damage (718.5) and add it, we get 2155.5 which is nearly equal to the damage dealt.
My assumption is with the change to Poison Nova now lasting 50% longer which was done in the last patch, it has also added 50% more damage. Which is neither reflected in the tooltip nor in the talent description. Is this bugged? Am I doing maths wrong? Or is there a weird way HotS does the math that would justify this HUGE increase in damage?
P.S. I don’t know how to post my replay, but I have it saved if anyone wants it. I can give you time stamps for when these actions occur, so you can see for yourself if necessary.