Does the Bramble + Poison Skill Damage% affect the the Poison Nova Chance to Cast from BotD?

Reason I ask is about the gearing of a merc. In the party I'm with, all useful merc auras have already been achieved (with exception to Thorns). This last merc is supposed to be just damage output, but I'm trying to find out if it's worth it to substitute Bramble for Fortitude -- simply put, is the Thorns Aura plus possible boost in damage to the CtC Poison Nova worth giving up the +300% from Fort.

Thanks for your help,
X.

Its definitely not worth losing all of that physical damage for the poison damage.

lvl 20 PN deals 427-468. Bramble increases it by 50%. so 1.5(447) = 670 avg damage. Thats after your merc kills an enemy, and reduced by resists of monsters.

If it were a necro and you could synergize the poison nova, then yes. But since that level 20 nova is completely unsynergized....big no.

E: level 20 thorns isn't DICK after a3 nightmare. You won't even see it being effective. Monsters should be dead before they have a chance to actually strike you or your party a thousand times.

EE: Treach is a better armor than fortitude anyhow. And cheaper than fort and bramble. More strikes, more novas.

This post was edited by AtreyuRocks on Feb 10 2012 09:25am

And you are probably better off equipping your mercenary with a Reaper's Toll or Infinity anyway.

Do it on yourself with a necro and an andy's hat. There's a build out there that did this (but I don't think he used andy's) and he used bone armor (the runeword). After the first kill it was crazy how many times PN proc'd. And the bone armor proc from the rw bone helped him sorb lots of melee damage.