Items or jewels that add psn skill damage add psn skill damage. Rabies is psn skill

i guess not - same as traps

This. Facets, TO gloves, bramble etc all work.



With traps your traps attack not you, hence facets you use don't impact their attack anymore than they would impact your merc's attack.

ur minions do not benefit from any -res% or +damage% your character has

I think you both are in same conclusion just some misunderstanding of the quote.

Thanks anyways!

Rabies Mechanics

The practical implications of what follows will already be known to anyone who's read any of the Rabies guides in the sticky, but hopefully it should still be of interest. This is a summary of an investigation posted last year in the Technical Discussion forum of the Amazon Basin (where I have the same forum name as here).


A rabid bite from a Werewolf does two things: it applies Rabies' poison damage rate and the Rabies state, both for the displayed length. The Rabies state in turn applies two things to its target: the rabiesplague overlay and missile. When a target is described as a host, infected or infectious, it means that the Rabies state has been applied to it.

Once the Rabies state has been applied to a target, it cannot be overwritten i.e. if a target is bitten with level 14 Rabies and then bitten again with level 21 Rabies, the state will still last for the remaining length of level 14 Rabies.


Rabiesplague

The rabiesplague overlay is the graphic displayed when a target is infected i.e. the orange 'aura'. The invisible rabiesplague missile is attached to a target for the length of the Rabies state: it fires one rabiescontagion sub-missile in a random horizontal direction every 4 frames, each of which travels for 20 frames before expiring. This is why Rabies can result in lag and being dropped from the game when many monsters are infected (although this isn't something I've experienced in single-player).


Rabiescontagion

Rabiescontagion can (and does) hit the host but also pierces, so a single missile can hit multiple targets if they are all within range. Rabiescontagion is auto-hit and cannot be blocked by monsters.

When a target is hit by rabiescontagion, it applies Rabies' poison damage rate and the Rabies state, both for the remainder of the initial bite's displayed length i.e. if a target is hit by rabiescontagion one second after the original host was bitten, both the rate and the state will be applied to that target for one second less than the displayed length.

In this way the infection spreads: the Rabies state will expire simultaneously on all targets whose infection was a result of the same initial bite.


Interaction with Other Poison Sources

The poison applied by Rabies abides by the same rule as all other poison sources: a poison damage rate (poison damage per unit of time (frame or second)) that is equal or greater will overwrite any previous poison, applying its equal or greater rate for its length instead. However, the mechanics of Rabies result in certain... peculiarities.

While Rabies applies its poison and state with a weapon, the poison from items and Venom also applied by that weapon does not combine with that of Rabies; this is unlike Poison Dagger and the javelins of Poison and Plague Javelins.

Instead, Rabies is treated as a separate and thus competing source; if it has a lower poison damage rate, Rabies will not overwrite another poison source. However, if the other poison source has a shorter length than Rabies, poison can be re-applied by rabiescontagion once the other poison has run its course.

Furthermore, Rabies applies poison multiple times to its targets; as mentioned earlier, once the Rabies state is applied (whether by a bite or rabiescontagion), rabiesplague fires rabiescontagion every 4 frames, and rabiescontagion can hit the host as well as other targets within range. This explains why Rabies is the only poison skill that can kill rather than simply reducing an opponent to one hit point when duelling: even if the most recent rabiescontagion applies a lower rate, a frame of that rate will still be applied each time. This also has implications for maximising Rabies damage.

An infected monster's own rabiescontagion missiles apply a frame of poison damage with each collision instead of any current poison: however, rabiescontagion missiles from other monsters apply a frame of poison damage as well as any current poison, which can result in higher damage with infected mobs. If a single target is infected, it won't take additional frames of poison damage.


Modifiers

Level 1 Rabies has a length of 4 seconds (100 frames) and increases by 0.4 seconds (10 frames) with each additional skill level; the poison damage rate of Rabies also increases as the skill level does. Aside from placing points in its synergy (Poison Creeper), Rabies' poison damage rate can also be enhanced by the following modifiers:

Lower Resist Curse
+% to Poison Skill Damage
-% to Enemy Poison Resistance

All three of these modifiers are applied before poison damage rates are compared, and only need to be active when the poison is applied. Lower Resist applies Poison Resist -%, reducing a target's poison resistance by the displayed percentage; +% PSD enhances poison damage by the displayed percentage, and is multiplicative with the synergy bonus; and -% EPR effectively applies PR -% (to targets that aren't Immune to Poison) and Poison Length Reduced by -%.

Since monsters normally have no PLR % (the only exceptions are Ancients whose magic equipment spawns with PLR % suffixes) this means that -% EPR increases poison length by the displayed percentage. -100+% EPR thus doubles poison length (both PR -% and PLR -% are capped at -100%).

Since Rabies applies variable poison damage rates multiple times with a diminishing length each time, -% EPR can result in varying poison lengths. While the Rabies state spread from a single bite will always end simultaneously, targets will remain poisoned for varying lengths depending on when equal or higher rates were applied.


Maximising Damage

Ideally, you (but preferably a Necromancer) would first cast Lower Resist; however, you have to shape-shift to use LR charges (making you more vulnerable), and the only % Chance to Cast modifiers are either too low level or awkward and unreliable.

Rabies' skill level is set when it is first applied, so changing it by switching weapons after biting won't affect the poison damage rate being applied i.e. applying level 21 Rabies and switching weapons to reduce it to level 14 (and vice versa) will have no effect. However, note that although the Rabies state cannot be overwritten, the poison can be; this means that if a target is bitten by level 14 Rabies and then level 21 Rabies, the higher rate (and accompanying length) of level 21 Rabies will overwrite that of level 14 Rabies.

Since Rabies' poison can be applied multiple times and skill level is set when first applied, Rabies' damage can be maximised by applying the maximum skill level possible (Plague Bearer Rune Sword's +5 to Rabies (Druid Only) and a Spirit 'TalThulOrtAmn' shield's +2 to All Skills apply the maximum +7) and then switching to a weapon and shield with +% PSD and -% EPR to enhance the poison damage rate and length as much as possible. These modifiers will result in the poison applied by the next Rabies contagion being greater and thus cause it to overwrite the previous poison.


Rate Versus Length

The longer you apply Rabies with the same modifiers, the more likely the rate will increase: subsequent applications could have a higher rate that will overwrite previous ones (at worst, the last will have a rate equal to the first). However, since -% EPR increases rate and length, the longer you apply Rabies with the same modifiers, the more likely the length will decrease: subsequent applications could have a higher rate that will overwrite previous lower rates, and in doing so will apply a shorter poison length. The choice is between doing more damage per second over a shorter length, or less over a longer one.

However, the variation in damage rate is only due to the difference between minimum and maximum rate at level 1; both minimum and maximum rate increase by identical amounts as skill level increases, so the damage range becomes increasingly small as skill level and total damage increase. For example, a fully synergised level 57 Rabies applies up to 61,287-62,047 Poison Damage Over 26.4 Seconds, a range of just 760; the minimum total damage is approximately 98.8% of the maximum. This means maintaining +% PSD and -% EPR modifiers for the entire length would only improve the damage rate by approximately 1.2% at best.

Thus to maximise total Rabies damage, you would cast at the highest skill level possible, then switch to the combination of +% PSD and -% EPR that maximises rate and length, then switch back again once you're certain those modifiers have been applied (this ensures that the poison isn't overwritten by one with an equal or slightly higher rate (but potentially much shorter length).

Rabies does not benefit from added elemental damage from sources like jewels or pgems, whether its lightning or more poison.
Rabies is actually a bunch of invisible poison projectiles, like fireballs, each dealing poison damage

When you hit an enemy with the rabies attack, they get the debuff that follows them around, shooting an invisible poison projectile with 100% chance to pierce in a random direction every 4 frames, which also almost always hits the unit whos shooting the projectile. Each projectile deals the listed poison damage on the skill when you used it, which can be further modified by +% poison damage or -% enemy poison resists, then chooses a random value from its range and applies that poison. It always applies 1 frame of poison damage, which can be fatal, then if the bit rate is higher than the poison already on the target, it overwrites their current poison with that bitrate, and with a base duration of the remaining length of rabies (which can be modified by % poison length reduction / cleansing or removed with an antidote). Naturally it will be reapplied 4 frames later.

The rabies effect is not a minion in the d2 system, but a very roundabout way to remotely launch projectiles, and unlike traps which are considering minions, the rabies shoots projectiles that directly look up your damage, not its own.

Rabies = Skills + Psn% facet

this

a few points missing from that big wall of text are that because the poison is hitting every 4 frames and applying its 1 frame of normal damage each time, its effectively dealing 125% of the normal poison bitrate. Its not "instead of" even for the single infect unit, D2 doesn't skip applying poison damage when you're infected with rabies. This is also why rabies is fatal while other poisons are not, because that damage instance every 4 frames can kill you. Duration is a total nonissue for rabies, PLR will have basically no effective because the random range means further applications will overwrite the earlier ones 99.999% of the time with that many instances in the random range, so it doesn't matter if you lose duration by overwriting with a higher -% resist setup, it would going to overwrite at random anyway, rabies rarely lasts more than a second after its last damage instance anyway, often just a couple frames, and the only effect PLR has is making the last few instances flicker you green a few times, and since rabies has such a long duration and will almost certainly be fatal long before it could expire anyway, the total damage over duration is meaningless, only the bitrate matters.

as a rule of thumb for poison in D2, PLR is meaningless for long duration poisons because you can reapply them before they'd expire anyway, and matters a lot for short durations like venom- PLR is actually counterintuitive in this manner. Since nobody bothers with PLR in pvp and enough -poison resists will negate any incidental PLR to -100% like the base hell, everyone is going to have -100% PLR anyway. And for rabies this is even more true than normal poisons because not only is it a super long duration, but constantly overwritten, making its actual poison duration meaningless

This post was edited by Goomshill on Oct 10 2016 06:09am