Gearing a poison nova necro

Thanks for the Insight!

I have a bunch more thoughts on the Poison Necro so here goes.

3 piece trangs is huge. That -enemy poison resistance is a major factor, so it's very difficult to go with anything else, but you will be tempted to do so because the 75 FCR breakpoint is also huge for teleporting. Dweb gives you nothing, and Enigma gives you nothing, and because you're wearing 3 piece trangs you get nothing from the

Belt or shield. This means you get FCR with

- 20% from 2x FCR rings
- Ammy
- 20% from trangs gloves
- 20% from

Circlet or 25% from griffons

This means your amulet requires 15% FCR unless you use griffons in which case you can drop it to 10%.

The stopgaps to this problem are to lose 3 piece trangs and go with a different shield (like Spirit, darkforce, etc.) or you TP on swap with Spirit (or darkforce) and CTA and then swap back for poison. The later works really well actually, and is what I recommend until you can get an FCR ammy. The FCR doesn't actually matter that much for poison casts given that multiple casts don't do much. It does matter for CE but not it's not a game changer. Ultimately an FCR ammy and some kind of FCR on the

Circlet is important. So important that it's worth running down a skill (or 2) to get.

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Bramble is great at p8, but you lose the control over your

Iron Golem and merc, so you need to be geared up to make it work and you need to be playing in an area that doesn't require a ton of TP. The optimal route would probably be a necro FCR ammy with TP charges or something. Bosses are a challenge because poison doesn't handle them super well, which is where crushing blow from Infinity can make a difference. If you limit him to big open spaces like cows, act 4, or even

Flayer Jungle where you can hit lots of stuff with big poison AOE without having to TP through walls every 2 seconds, Bramble can work really well.

For me, the poison necro is more of an offline character since the sweet spot in my experience is something like p3 with engima. I run

Iron Golem here because it works fine at this player count.

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Since 3 piece trangs is so great, and trang's wing comes with no lightning res and you'll want a poison facet in it, you'll be down on light res, so bonus points for extra lightning res on that

Circlet, caster ammy, and FCR rings.

I'd love to hear anyone's disagreement with what I wrote here, because I'm not against learning that there is a better way.

departure wrote: 11 months ago

3 piece trangs is huge. That -enemy poison resistance is a major factor, so it's very difficult to go with anything else

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

If you consider overall clear speed, odds are teleporting faster beats it by a clear margin. But even if you don't, you're then comparing 3piece trang to the actual dmg-focused alternative which is arach with a +6 head. That's an extra skill on arach. An extra facet in the shield. And a massive 4 extra skills in the shield. If you manage to also get LR on the shield, that's an extra % -res on that as well. And since

Nova scales fairly well with skills as well as the added facet +dmg and you already start out with a rather hefty chunk of -res as a necro anyways, it'll outperform 3-piece trang on absolutely everything except for immunes. Lower to mid res, the difference is (very) clear. As res goes up, they get closer together and the only time 3-piece really wins (immunes), the actual difference is not even 3%.

Or more specifically (because I apparently had nothing better to do just now):

Nova dmg naturally includes the various +dmg sources already (trang gloves, facets, ...) - trusting maxroll to get those base numbers (famous last words ^^). Also assuming Enigma over Bramble.

Added benefit is with the non-3piece, you can switch the neck for a crafted 15+ FCR and still get higher cast speed at the cost of only 1 skill point. With trang, you start dropping skill rings on top of that.

(Capping res is rather annoying in either case, if you really want to focus on dmg/offense)

Schnorki wrote: 11 months ago

departure wrote: 11 months ago

3 piece trangs is huge. That -enemy poison resistance is a major factor, so it's very difficult to go with anything else

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

If you consider overall clear speed, odds are teleporting faster beats it by a clear margin. But even if you don't, you're then comparing 3piece trang to the actual dmg-focused alternative which is arach with a +6 head. That's an extra skill on arach. An extra facet in the shield. And a massive 4 extra skills in the shield. If you manage to also get LR on the shield, that's an extra % -res on that as well. And since

Nova scales fairly well with skills as well as the added facet +dmg and you already start out with a rather hefty chunk of -res as a necro anyways, it'll outperform 3-piece trang on absolutely everything except for immunes. Lower to mid res, the difference is (very) clear. As res goes up, they get closer together and the only time 3-piece really wins (immunes), the actual difference is not even 3%.

Or more specifically (because I apparently had nothing better to do just now):
image.png

Nova dmg naturally includes the various +dmg sources already (trang gloves, facets, ...) - trusting maxroll to get those base numbers (famous last words ^^). Also assuming Enigma over Bramble.

Added benefit is with the non-3piece, you can switch the neck for a crafted 15+ FCR and still get higher cast speed at the cost of only 1 skill point. With trang, you start dropping skill rings on top of that.

(Capping res is rather annoying in either case, if you really want to focus on dmg/offense)

Well the whole point of trangs is to help handle immunes. Generally that's the point a lot of the big gear - to handle immunes, especially at higher player counts. You're not teleporting any faster with arach unless you're thinking of reaching the 125 BP somehow? I'm guessing no.

So with the +6 head and the 15% FCR crated ammy, you're doing worse on immunes compared to trangs and still hitting the 75 BP. I dunno, that's not feeling like a win. For specific instances, like cows or someplace without many poison immunes, I could see it working well. For TZs I'm not so sure.

Edit:
And for bosses the merc is doing the work.


Edit2:

Ok, hang on. Your res chart goes up to 100. For sunder charm shouldn't that sit at 95? That would make the difference.

looking on traderie the lowest asking price for a +6 head, 1 socket is 10

Jah

then there's this :

departure wrote: 11 months ago

...
Ok, hang on. Your res chart goes up to 100. For sunder charm shouldn't that sit at 95? That would make the difference.

100 res (or higher) = immune which gets sundered down to 95 and then gives you the net res shown after your -res.
95 res starting is different as that's not immune yet so while you also start at 95 before your -res counts, your LR -res actually takes full effect whereas on 100+ it only hits at 1/5th.
That's why the net res at 95 is quite a bit lower than at 100. (Anything above 100 yields the same as 100 as it'd all get sundered to 95)

You basically get <3% more dmg on immunes which I doubt you'd ever actively notice while sacrificing up to nearly 19% on non-immunes which - because that includes most bosses - you will notice quite a bit.
And since

Poison Nova does a crapton of damage over the duration anyways, you're really more interested in "does it shave off an extra cast?" vs. "do they die 3% faster?". The odds of 3% being enough to save you a cast are minimal at best. The odds of nearly 19% saving you an extra cast all over the place though...not that unlikely.

Schnorki wrote: 11 months ago

departure wrote: 11 months ago

...
Ok, hang on. Your res chart goes up to 100. For sunder charm shouldn't that sit at 95? That would make the difference.

100 res (or higher) = immune which gets sundered down to 95 and then gives you the net res shown after your -res.
95 res starting is different as that's not immune yet so while you also start at 95 before your -res counts, your LR -res actually takes full effect whereas on 100+ it only hits at 1/5th.
That's why the net res at 95 is quite a bit lower than at 100. (Anything above 100 yields the same as 100 as it'd all get sundered to 95)

You basically get <3% more dmg on immunes which I doubt you'd ever actively notice while sacrificing up to nearly 19% on non-immunes which - because that includes most bosses - you will notice quite a bit.
And since

Poison Nova does a crapton of damage over the duration anyways, you're really more interested in "does it shave off an extra cast?" vs. "do they die 3% faster?". The odds of 3% being enough to save you a cast are minimal at best. The odds of nearly 19% saving you an extra cast all over the place though...not that unlikely.

I've not tried it so I'm just guessing how it will feel based on the numbers. The non poison immunes are generally not an issue. Most of my gearing is about making the immunes feel as easy as possible - because that's where the bottleneck is. I'm not sure I care about extra damage to non immunes, but if you're doing a lot of runs that are centered around non-immunes I can see how that would be beneficial. Bramble seems like it would likely make the +6 columns look better than the trangs just due to hitting the floor on -res with trangs.

For bosses, poison is very weak. I'm not sure even a 20% boost really helps with poison on high player count bosses. Mostly you're relying on crushing blow from the merc. I suppose there's the version where you go

Thorns on your merc and rely on the boss to kill themselves, but that's more a summon thing which takes us off course.

It's possible that the +6 arrangement feels more powerful than I expect, because if everything dies around a poison immune pack, CE cleans it all up anyway.

departure wrote: 11 months ago

...
For bosses, poison is very weak.
...

That's exactly my thinking actually.

Nothing's really an issue, including immunes. Except for bosses who simply take too bloody long. And while most of the boss killing may indeed be from merc CB, waiting for him alone is just too annoying to deal with. Happy about any extra dmg on that as that's where I for one would definitely notice a difference the most.

But as with so many other things in this game...it all boils down to how you play, where you play and personal preference.

I'm actually happy with my 3 piece Trang's, DWeb, Bramble, +2 Necro-TP amu until I find that +6 head with LR on it.

Schnorki wrote: 11 months ago

Except for bosses who simply take too bloody long. And while most of the boss killing may indeed be from merc CB, waiting for him alone is just too annoying to deal with. Happy about any extra dmg on that as that's where I for one would definitely notice a difference the most.

But as with so many other things in this game...it all boils down to how you play, where you play and personal preference.

I find this an important part of the summons or not comparison. While summons can interrupt your poison damage on trash, requiring you to be more mindful of teleporting with Enigma, I personally find it worthwhile against bosses. In personal testing--which I did post here a long time ago--I found that telestomping with summons and revives and using decrep dramatically helped against bosses vs pure poison. My merc uses Obedience or Infinity, Duress, and G-face for 90% crushing blow, revives and skellies do their bit and tank for him, all is well. It's a good trade off in my opinion. But, depending on personal preference, it may not be, and anyone using Bramble won't have the minion micro capabilities of

Teleport, which also changes the equation.

krathkor wrote: 11 months ago

looking on traderie the lowest asking price for a +6 head, 1 socket is 10

Jah

then there's this :

Yea I’m ssf single player, so I’m waiting for it to drop (will be waiting a while) I’m even trying to re-roll magic heads when i find elite ones… gunna be waiting a long time

Just like a +20fcr +6

Wand for sorc

It looks like there are two +6

Poison Nova heads on traderie right now for 10

Jah. I'm curious if anyone in here has actually tried such a setup for

Poison Nova and can confirm that it is indeed a big improvement over 3-piece trangs.

I suppose I could edit it into SP and test it for myself, but I haven't edited anything in SP and kinda don't want to start.

Throwing two cents into the thread:

I play a lot as a

Poison Nova necro and i (myself, IMO) don't think that you need that much FCR.

I have 40~ish FCR (two rings and trangs glove) and that is enough for me, at least).

I would focus on gear that can stack the most -% poison res and +skills, so you can maximize your damage, and/or all resistances + life. Even if you had 100% FCR, poison damage does not stack. Its true that you can

Teleport faster, but i wouldn't

Sacrifice other stats in order to maximize FCR.

If you have the craft amulets and coronets etc go for it. But i wouldn't compromise other stats for FCR.

Icy veins has a good build, mine has a deaths web socketed with a 5/5, Enigma,

Shako with 5/5,

Homunculus with,

Eth sand treks, maras, two bul kathos with trang gloves and an arachnid for

Belt. 70 sunders and 1 poison skiller

Mercs a might aura act 2 with Insight Andy

Helm and fort.


Skills are poisons maxed, 1 off for all the curses in the middle and right side to unlock lower res, one point in

Bone Armor.

Use decrep and lower res as my curses with spamming

Nova then occasionally hitting

Poison Explosion.

I see some of Rathma's faithful have revived this thread. Interesting discussion as I'm still gearing up a

Poison Nova Necro of my own.

Anyways, not sure if it's allowed here, but might as well make a shameless plug: if anyone is interested I do have a Psn Necro Start Set for trade (Ladder, SC). It's full Trang's, +6

Poison Nova White RW, a couple useful amulets and a cheap

Rotting Fissure.

Anyways, due to the limited skill points and my inexperience with the necro I've been wondering what the best set up is. I've been maxxing skellies for safety but they don't last long against bosses. Unless I use

Decrepify over poison which is safe but they can take a while to kill. Never invested much in Golems.