Poison Nova Necro vs. Bosses Test

I wouldn't bother with "bad" or the like. I'd agree that your gear is at least solid mid tier. Probably upper mid tier for that matter, especially considering the rather high end -res. Given, you're off quite a few skill points from BiS but that's pretty much it so yeah.

I was merely curious so I could sort your results into the gear range more accurately and hence know if your testing is still likely somewhat relevant to BiS or if it remains inherently more of a pure mid tier test.

Though I did forget one question for that, now that I think about it. Since you're obviously not a pure poison necro but are using at least some skill points for summons, what's your base level of

Lower Resist for when you did that comparison? Are you using that as a one point wonder or actually have it capped?
Given, even with 1 pt you should be relatively close to capping against dia with your gear (should be ~10% off, give or take) so the difference wouldn't be massive either way but hey.

intresting topic!
i use merc + army + amplify to get rid of that problem
i also put 20 points intro

Skeleton Mastery.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Though I did forget one question for that, now that I think about it. Since you're obviously not a pure poison necro but are using at least some skill points for summons, what's your base level of

Lower Resist for when you did that comparison? Are you using that as a one point wonder or actually have it capped?
Given, even with 1 pt you should be relatively close to capping against dia with your gear (should be ~10% off, give or take) so the difference wouldn't be massive either way but hey.

When I first built the char, I maxed

Lower Resist, but currently, it's a 1 point wonder. With my +to skills, I'm at -61% all resist (level 16 curse). Going up to level 35 with +19 more skill points only gets it to -66% all resist, and I figured there were better uses of that many skill points than eeking out another -5% resistance. It would be interesting if that made a difference though! My next plan is to test 3-5 again with no golem to see if the

Tal rune in my original IG's Insight was screwing me over, but if I collect 2 tokens while doing so (which is likely given the number of runs) I might redo S2 with maxed

Lower Resist to see what that 5% poison damage does, if anything.

On another topic, I did a dumb experiment last night just for the laughs, but it actually seems slightly relevant here. I ran Ubers with this Poison Necromancer. Overall, compared to a Smiter or even a True Summoner, it was not very effective, but it worked and was a fun challenge. Surprisingly,

Poison Nova was quite effective against Uber Diablo and

Über Baal beyond just stopping their regen. Against

Über Baal, it was enough to quickly kill all of his summons, which helped my pets stay on target. Uber Diablo's megademons are immune to poison even with

Lower Resist, but once enough of them spawned that my minions started having issues staying alive and on target, I just teleported around him and

Poison Nova 'd him until he went down. It was pretty smooth. This build only really struggled against

Über Mephisto, where the choice between

Decrepify and

Lower Resist was harder with his poison immunity. But since when has

Über Mephisto not been the thorn in

Uber Tristram?

So, even if all of this investigating of the video and the bug ends up being trivial, it at least opens up a ridiculous new Uber Strategy.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

When I first built the char, I maxed

Lower Resist, but currently, it's a 1 point wonder. With my +to skills, I'm at -61% all resist (level 16 curse). Going up to level 35 with +19 more skill points only gets it to -66% all resist, and I figured there were better uses of that many skill points than eeking out another -5% resistance. It would be interesting if that made a difference though!

Well, it won't make a massive difference or even one you'll really notice at all. It is merely one more thing to add to others.
At least on dia, who starts at 50% res, you currently take him to -93 res or 193% of your normal

Nova dmg. Adding 5 more -res would take that to -98 / 198% of normal dmg, meaning it gives you a relative damage increase of just over 2.5%. That's certainly not massive by any means but it also isn't nothing.

It would make a bit more of a difference in ubers though.

Lilith is always going to be a pain because you can't break her immunity. Meph you can break (and already do at your lvl, that only needs -55res on LR) and your gear -res will add significantly after that but extra -res on LR won't do too much more due to the 1/5th rule for immunes. The others however start out at 75 res for the most part. So you currently have them at -68. Going from that to -73 would offer a slightly larger relative increase of just under 3%.

Tip: if you have some large charm inventory space left and just need to add some points in LR, instead of re-speccing you can add some curses charms that no one wants, they'll come cheap

Just for testing purposes

Alright, I promise I won't keep dragging this thread out forever, but have a slight update.

Earlier, I mentioned that I was wondering if my

Iron Golem was screwing me up with the poison damage from his Insight. After doing my tests, I have decided that if he is, it isn't significant enough to change my kill times. So, effectively no, but maybe still?

My next test is to build an absolutely perfect Poison Necro in Hero Editor for Offline, full skillers, perfect Dweb, the whole bag, and run the same tests to see what the times work out to be. Since BIS merc will have Infinity, Gface, and Fortitude, I expect all strat times will be lower but we'll see how the relationship between them is in the end. If the results are interesting, I may also crank up the player count to see if that makes a difference too.

I did a significant amount of testing with poison damage in general in my live stream today if it can help any of you here feel free watch the video, or just use the Data. I pasted all the Data into the description of the video.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Earlier, I mentioned that I was wondering if my

Iron Golem was screwing me up with the poison damage from his Insight. After doing my tests, I have decided that if he is, it isn't significant enough to change my kill times. So, effectively no, but maybe still?

Depends on how you define significant. Turns out he actually does interfere a fair bit.
(I admittedly forgot that Insight had poison dmg when I suggested keeping the golem around)

When your golem has poison damage and attacks a poisoned-by-your-

Nova target, his poison damage will remain for 1 frame exactly, overriding any other applied poison for that frame. After that, the better poison (which should definitely be your

Nova) wins out and the lower one is lost. Sadly, they don't just stack when applied by player sources so you do lose that 1 extra frame but that's it.

Your golem attacks once every 30 frames, plus or minus a frame, depending on the Insight base. Let's say 29 to account for a faster one (i.e. worst case).
Against Diablo, he has a surprisingly high hit chance, actually closing in on 95%. Let's go with 95 flat just for the sake of sticking with the worst case.
That means on average, he actually hits Diablo once every 30.5 frames (rounded).
When he does hit, you lose 2 frames of

Nova damage. One in the frame where he hit because the golem actually did damage to Diablo. And then the subsequent frame due to the 1-frame poison override. As such, you lose 2 frames every 30.5 frames.
That all averages out to 1.64 (rounded) frames lost per second (25 frames).

In terms of actual

Poison Nova DPS, that's a loss of about 6.5% which is actually quite a bit.

Essentially, if/when you do keep an Insight golem (or any aura stick golem) around, you want to keep their attack speed and hit chance as low as possible. So use the slowest base you can find and ideally don't put extra points into

Golem Mastery to avoid giving him more AR. It won't help too much but it'll help a bit at least.

Teleporting your golem away over and over is of course an option if you only use

Nova. But if you also want your merc to attack and add CB and whatnot, then that obviously isn't an option. Though you could try getting used to positioning setups where your merc gets there before the golem does at which point you could use

Bone Wall to lock out your golem and keep him from attacking entirely. That may not always work but when it does, it'll be your best option.

Alrighty, and perhaps for the last time:

I made what I would call a maxed poison necro in Hero Editor for offline play. All items are perfectly rolled as far as is relevant.

What does my interpretation of a maxed poison necro look like?
3 piece trangs with Gloves,

Belt, and Sunken Head. The sunken head is socketed with a +5/-5 facet.
2x SOJ
Engima
+2/20%fcr amulet
+2/20% fcr

Diadem with 2os, both with +5/-5 facets.
Dweb with a +5/-5 facet.

Waterwalk, because

Boots don't really matter in this dps test. I suppose I could have weighted the minion strats heavier with perfect marrowwalks, but I chose not to.
CTA with Spirit on Swap.
Torch
Anni
9x Poison skillers.

All of this gives:

Lower Resist level 37 (20 skill points), -67% all resist.

Poison Nova level 48, 12460 - 12755 damage on skill tree.
+45% to poison skill damage (though that already counts on paper theoretically).
-95% to enemy poison resistance.

Merc Equipment on relevant strats: Infinity in

Eth

Cryptic Axe, Fortitude, G-face.

Army stats on relevant strats: level 17

Skeleton Mastery (1 hard point). Level 36

Raise Skeleton (20 hard points). Level 17

Clay Golem (1 hard point) for 60% enemy slow. I didn't run IG for these tests to remove all variables from possible IG component interactions. Level 17

Revive (1 hard point) for 16 monsters revived. I was reviving random crap from Durance 2 for

Mephisto, Doom Knights and Venom Lords for Diablo, and random crap from Throne for

Baal.

All tests on P1, since even on Bnet I play solo.

Results:

Strat 1 (

Skeleton army, golem, Merc, revives, with

Decrepify, no

Poison Nova) -

Mephisto average 7 seconds, fastest individual was 5. Diablo average 8 seconds, fastest individual was 6.

Baal average 18 seconds, fastest individual was 17.

Strat 2 (

Poison Nova only, no merc, minions, revives, or golem) -

Mephisto average 10 seconds, an improvement of 3 seconds over my legit Bnet character. Diablo average 12 seconds, 4 second improvement over Bnet.

Baal average 41 seconds, a 22 second improvement over my bnet character (WOW!).

Strat 3 (

Lower Resist and

Poison Nova with Merc, nothing else) -

Mephisto average 8 seconds. Diablo average 10 seconds.

Baal average 30 seconds.

Strat 4 (

Decrepify and

Poison Nova with Merc, nothing else) -

Mephisto average 8 seconds. Diablo average 10 seconds.

Baal average 23 seconds.

Strat 5 (Ampylify Damage and

Poison Nova with Merc, nothing else) -

Mephisto average 8 seconds. Diablo average 12 seconds.

Baal average 26 seconds. This strat still has the widest range of numbers, due to the fact that without decrep or

Clay Golem or other source of slow, the bosses can be erratic and screw with the pull (Looking at you

Baal.....).

So, for a summary and takeaways, since I know that last message is a wall of text, links, and numbers:

All times were faster with BIS necro, as could be expected.

Strat 1 with full army and decrep was still the best, and occasionally had crazy fast kills presumably based on the RNG of chance to hit and CB.

Strat 2 with

Poison Nova only was still the worst, though by much less of a margin!

Strats 3-5 were much closer to Strat 1, with Strat 5 being a bit janky just because of unhindered bosses being obnoxious.

----

At this gear level, the closeness of 1, 3 and 4 specifically means that if you don't want to invest skills into skellies or revives on a poison necro, just having a good merc can definitely do the job.

However, those points do pay off.

For me personally, I will keep my current build of 20 hard point skellies and 1 point

Revive with 1 point

Lower Resist and just keep working on improving my gear. Since poison necros have extra skill points after maxing the core skills for the build, I don't think there's any cost to having good skellies and 1 point revives, so the faster kill times and tankiness are worth it to me.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the advice throughout this! I may do more tests and variations, such as higher plevels, but I think I'm content with this for now.