Quote (Spectre_187 @ Nov 6 2009 10:17pm)

Is it true that all the posion damage your assassin has will be applied in 0.4 seconds because of venom?  Seems a little too good to be true

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32. How does Venom work?

Poison damage in-game is always listed as X damage over Y seconds. Unfortunately, this isn't how the game calculates it. The damage per second is X/Y. The value you should be concerned about is the damage per frame (aka bitrate), which is X/(25*Y). Most of the time when poison sources are combined (not when Venom is concerned), your bitrates are added, and your durations are averaged. In order to achieve the highest possible bitrate, you want the highest possible poison damage over the smallest possible duration.
Maximizing your final damage output involves getting the highest bitrate possible, and being able to re-apply the poison damage before the duration timer runs out.

The strength of the Assassins Venom skill does not lie in a huge displayed damage number, but rather the short duration, which can be applied multiple times in very short succession. The relatively modest displayed damage is much more effective than it looks. Lets say Venom does 400 damage over 0.4 seconds. That damage is really 1000 damage per second if you manage to constantly keep the poison up (which can be done with a speedy kick attack, for example).

A slightly worse thing about Venom is that it effectively ruins all other sources of poison on your equipment that you may have. If you have Venom active, all poison attacks are scaled down to fit the short duration of Venom. Lets say you have a charm in your inventory that does 100 poison damage over 5 seconds = 20 damage per second. Having Venom active does not actually lower the bitrate of the charm, but rather shortens the duration. When Venom is active, that charm deals 20 damage per second over 0.4 seconds = only 8 total damage for each attack. Most unimpressive.
This is why poison charms and other poison sources work very badly with Venom. If you intend to use Venom, avoid using equipment for the sole reason of added poison damage. It won't hurt you, but it won't help you (much) either.
In order to maximize your Venom damage, do three things:

# Have Venom as high of a level as possible when casting
# Have as much +% Poison Skill Damage on your gear as possible when casting and attacking
# Lower your target's Poison Resistance as much as possible

Thanks to Ilkori for updating this section. Poison is not my forte.

Quote (sylvannos @ Nov 7 2009 01:24am)

What happens in a nutshell is that the shortest amount of poison duration is used, and this involves cutting things off.

For example, if you use a source of poison damage that is over 10 seconds, it will be trimmed to line up with the 0.4 from venom.

I'll go look for a link that has the full explanation.

edit:



from here: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=12454666478&sid=3000

Quote (quicksand @ Nov 7 2009 11:31am)

Got it over with fools claws.Found them , though ias is missing , at least are 2 sox.Should i 2 x um ? Ww speed is maxed with those claws right / Using chaos suwayyah.

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7798/screenshot268r.jpg

Quote (quicksand @ Nov 7 2009 01:52pm)

10.2k ar is much better than 4k
Another question
Chaos suwayyah should be on first hand or second ?

Quote (Spectre_187 @ Nov 7 2009 01:11pm)

You're a very awesome helpful guy.. but I have one last question.  I managed to get all the gear you suggested except for two discrepancies.. #1 is that my fools claw is also a suaina (SP? LOL) meaning it has [0] base speed.. and #2 my circ is missing the visionary mod.  Would you say that these 2 descripancies would cripple the build and I should DEFINITLY upgrade, or will it just make me slightly "nerfed".  I know with using 2x slow claws my ww breakpoint may be horrid.. but also without visionary on the circ, my ar might be horrid.  What should i do.  When I say I have everything else I mean litteraly Everything else to include 9x +45 shadow lifers, 5x 3/20/20, 5x 20/5 20/20 torch and anni.. the chaos swuahna (SP again LOL?) is also like so perfect..

I just.. don't know if I should try to match your build 100% though I don't want to distributue my gear and then realize yeah.. my flawed build sucked so bad I needed to remake and get grushed and spend another 2 or 3 months looking for the last 2 items i need

Quote (Spectre_187 @ Nov 7 2009 02:16pm)

Yeah here's just a picture to show the only two discrepancies..
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/8996/whatihave.jpg

I guess I should look into upgrading that claw for sure.. it seemes.. horrid somehow, I'm really just curious abut the circ alone.. it took me a while to get that CAN I get by without vis mod?