Partyplay
It's her stable blockers which make the Poisonzon a good party player. Her presence relieves other close combatants. Ranged fighters profit by the Poisonzon too, due to the blockers, SLM and Crowd Control. A further plus is surpassing of the enemies' regeneration rate. Against act end bosses and bosses the PoisJ is preferably used due to its long duration.
If other party members also use poison you'll need to talk. Mostly Necros and Sins will have a higher poison strength than our Zon. If the former happens to be a Poison-Nova-Sorc, ehm -Necro, conferring is always useless, since those have no understanding of poison and NHD. Rabies and poison don't interfere with each other, since Rabies stacks with all other kinds of poison damage. The mechanisms of Rabies is different from the mechanisms of poison, just the result is similar.
The Poisonzon gets most profit out of a Necro cursing LR. Of course in these cases no other curse-alike effects should be used. The same is true for other curses. In open B-Net this will happen only rarely, since most Necros there know next to nothing about cursing. For example Decrepify is seen as something one gets only from weapons like The Reaper's Toll.
Parties with these needless Might-Reaper's guys are most difficult to handle. Due to aimlessly activated Decrepify every other curse goes to hell in a hand basket. The argument of the Poisonzon using herself Confuse and stuff is easy to rebut. The Poisonzon uses curses with care. If the party is hampered by it, she'll refrain from using it. For chars wielding a Might-Reaper's such is unheard off.
Closing Notes
The first notes for the Poisonzon were taken about 20 months ago. At that time I knew nothing whatsoever about poison. I had ignored that topic until then. The partly contradictory statements regarding playability, especially in the German forum, made me write down my first thoughts and planning as well as document the progress of my three Poisonzons. Some discussions (hello Donni) as well as the extent of my notes lead me to outsource the themes Mirror, Mirror ... and IS vs. Pene and publish them in advance as independent topics. Both are greatly based on my experiences with the Poisonzons and are spin-offs of this writing.
Credits
- to Balkoth for his tests about the effect of Facets and -enemy resists
- to reido for his many comments on poison and his Ranger Javazon Guide
- to SolarisW for his Guide to Plague Javelin
- to SSoG for his comparison of TO-Gloves vs. +skill gloves, and his examination of Venom combined with other poison skills
- to Onderduiker for his Poison and Plague Javelins, When modifiers are applied
- to AK404 for the great, extensive, and mostly updated skill descriptions in Guide to Bowazons
- to Crescent for his pictorial comments about microtactics
- to lib for helping with so many of my excursive questions and harbouring me
- to my tireless Beta-reader Tiggy who taught me so much about poison and helped with the theoretical parts
So Long
Othin
For questions, suggestions or criticism about this topic you may reach me anytime via E-Mail.
