Analysis
the Poison Skills
Within the Amazon's Spear and Javelin Skill tree there are two Poison Skills: Poison Javelin (PoisJ) and Plague Javelin (PlJ). Both skills are only usable along with Javelins as weapons. The Poison Skills are throwing attacks. The attack speed of throwing is a bit slower than the standard attack. This is true for all throwing attacks including the two Lightning Skills LiB and LF.
Like every other throwing and missile weapon Javelins have a missile range. It indicates how far a missile may maximally fly before vanishing. This missile range is not used with the Poison Skills. Using a screen with the 800x600 resolution the Plague Javelin flies form centre (where the Amazon stands) to the upper, lower, right or left sides of the screen. The diagonals aren't covered completely. The missile range of a Poison Javelin seems to be slightly longer, since the PoisJ cloud extends a little further in the throwing direction. A thrown Javelin (standard throw) flies about twice as far as a Plague Javelin. You can find more info about the missile ranges of the different skills and distance weapons here.
The two Poison Skills throw a Javelin which leaves a trail of green poison clouds in its wake. Opponents within those clouds are poisoned. The Poison Skills are ranged as well as AoE skills. As an unpleasant side effect the clouds diminish clear vision onto the area by their green clouds until those clouds dissolve. The survey is maybe temporarily impaired because of that.
Besides the mana costs each skill level raises poison damage per second and the duration of the poison effect. The higher the skill level the more the damage per second will rise. Relevant breakpoints are at cast level 9, 17, 23 and 29. Additionally PoisJ and PlJ enhance each others poison damage as synergies. In my humble opinion the Poison Skills count for 'all or nothing'. Either one leaves them at a one point prereq for LF and uses them with the already assembled + skills or one maxes both poison skills. Since we are only interested in the Poison Skills here, that means an investment of 40 points.
Behind the javelins trajectory several partly overlapping clouds of varying size develop and form a ribbon of clouds. They start at the Amazon and end at the point of impact. The diameter of the cloud ribbon reaches approximately 1/10 of the screen width. Each Mob hit by the javelin, standing in or moving into the sphere of the poison clouds will be poisoned for a specific duration, depending on the skill level. The duration of PoisJ is the highest possible poison duration within the game, reached by no other skill. The poison clouds last for approximately three seconds.
have a sniff ...
PlJ is similar to PoisJ, but releases additionally another poison cloud at the place of impact. It consists of several single clouds and spreads out over an elliptic area along the throwing direction. With an 800x600 pixel screen this clouds cover an area of approximately 20% of the screen. The clouds last for 3 seconds. Any obstacle (wall, opponent) or the end of the missile range will be taken as place of impact.
and now for all ...
Every enemy blundering into a poison cloud is poisoned. As long as an enemy stays within the cloud the duration of the poisoning will be restarted every frame, even if this enemy happens to be PoisI. As long as the opponent stands within the cloud, the life regeneration is stopped. This is true too for PoisI. Poisoning is only modified by enemy's Poison Resistance and in PvP additionally by Poison Length Reduction.
If a second PoisJ or PlJ is thrown and a mob is within two clouds at the same time, the scenarios well-illustrated for periodically distributed Application of Poison are applied.
the AR-Bug
According to the LCS and the skill description PlJ gets a percentage AR-Bonus. This is not used due to a bug. This bug exists for all ranged elemental skills of the Amazon. See brianc84 tests AR bonuses on ranged attack skills don't work for further information.
The AR-Bug doesn't matter along with using Zon's Poison Skills, as I intend to show.
Pierce - what is it worth?
How do the Poison Skills interact with Pierce, and is there a possibility to profit by Pierce?
In order to apply pierce, the 'to hit check' has to be positive. ITD can't spawn on throwing weapons. The AR% of the skill is not used. So AR issues must be covered by equipment, points in dexterity and/or Penetrate. In order to improve the CtH one may also use Inner Sight. With maxed Pene (one normally hasn't got points left for this), 151 dex skilled, 20 dex from Titan's and maybe the AR%-Bonus of a visionary hat (1% AR per level) the CtH in Hell is around 45 to 60%. Here the question arises, whether the additional effort for piercing is worth it, if only every second throw is able to pierce anyway.
If PlJ, thanks to a positive AR check and Pierce, hits several mobs standing behind one another, each hit mob counts as point of impact and a sequence of expanding poison clouds is triggered. Each of these clouds originates at a slightly different place and at a slightly later time. For each of these clouds the poison strength (Damage per Frame) is calculated separately. These clouds will at least partly overlap each other, so a mob may stand within several clouds at the same time.
Pierce enhances the chance for poison damage being statistically nearer to the maximum possible. Admittedly this is only an insignificant amount of improvement, since at high levels the difference between the minimal and the maximal possible poison damage is less than 1%.
With Pierce one possibly may cover a slightly lager area. This can be neglected. With herdable mobs the use of the Poison Skills demands a special herding tactic. Mobs have to be gathered around a blocker, and mobs standing further away have to be lured into the cloud and bound onto the blocker too. Neither the slightly better chance for poison maximum nor the larger area justify the investments necessary for pierce.
Cast Delay
Both Poison Skills have a cast delay. After using a skill with cast delay the usage of the same or any other skill with cast delay is blocked for a time t. Of course skills without delay can be used in between. The Amazon has only a few skills with delay; some other classes are better known for their acquaintance with delayers.
the Amazon's Delayer skills:
- Immolation Arrow / ImA has 1 s delay
- Valkyrie has 6 s delay
- PoisJ has 0,6 s delay
- PlJ has 4 s delay
As long as one uses only Poison cast delay doesn't matter. Specializing on poison one can't afford to constantly recast Valk for repositioning. The duration until the main attack becomes usable again would be too long. So this means for us no constant repositioning of Valk and no fragile Valk. Only Decoy gets repositioned. This leads up to quite a substantial investment into the castable blockers Valk and Decoy.
Comparison of Poison Damage
If you want to see accurate damage values, please check one of the following skill tables or calcs:
- indiablo.de Skill-Calc
- Chippydips Skill-Calc deliberately not linked here
- diabloii.net Javelin & Spear
- AS Javelin and Speer Skills
- d2wissen Gift-Calc this one's German only
Here a small overview with some exemplarily values will do. I won't regard items that enhance poison skill damage while not raising skill level or items decreasing resistance. Those items could considerably affect the here stated values, yet the read off tendencies persist.
| Poison Javelin | Plague Javelin | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| castLvl | Poison Length * | Poison Quantity ** | dam/s *** | Poison Length * | Poison Quantity ** | dam/s *** |
| * Poison Length is given in seconds. ** Poison Quantity is the average total damage, fully synergised, thus the damage over the full duration. *** dam/s is there as an illustration, since it is more significant for comparisons with other skills than the correct specification of the poison strength in frames. | ||||||
| 20 | 46 s | 9.5k | 207 | 10.6 s | 5.7k | 538 |
| 25 | 56 s | 17.1k | 305 | 12.6 s | 11.5k | 913 |
| 30 | 66 s | 28.5k | 432 | 14.6 s | 21.6k | 1479 |
| 35 | 76 s | 44.2k | 582 | 16.6 s | 36.2k | 2181 |
| 40 | 86 s | 62.8k | 730 | 18.6 s | 53.7k | 2887 |
| 45 | 96 s | 84.5k | 880 | 20.6 s | 73.9k | 3587 |
| 50 | 106 s | 109.1k | 1029 | 22.6 s | 96.9k | 4288 |
Reading the stated values, the damage per second as well as the poison length of PoisJ differ significantly from those of PlJ. Due to the high poison length PoisJ is well suited for bosses and opponents with high life values. The poison strength is roughly calculated by dividing the total damage through the total duration. Whoever wants may recapitulate the precise calculation. As shown the damage per second and thusly the poison strength of PlJ is distinctly higher. The higher the compared levels are the bigger the differences in poisons strength become. At castLvl 20 the poison strength of PlJ exceeds PoisJ poison strength two and a half times, at castLvl 25 threefold and above castLvl 40 fourfold and more.
I have consciously stated total damage and not damage per second. Skills operating over such long times are not designed for the fast damage as e. g. a Necs Poison Nova. They are designed for high amounts of damage possible over the whole duration, during which poison is effective. Consequently the two Poison Skills in 1.1x are actually comparable to the skills Poison Explosion from Necs (likewise a standing poison cloud) or Rabies from Druids. The Sniper Assassin in 1.09 worked by the same principle of high poison damage over very long time periods, too.
For questions, suggestions or criticism about this topic you may reach me anytime via E-Mail.
