Venom: Skill

maxicek wrote:

When Venom is active, it converts the durations of all the poison sources on your equipment match its own (0.4 seconds). Consequently, the damages of all your poison sources are reduced to how much damage they would do over 0.4 seconds (for example, a 400 poison damage charm with a 5 second duration would be converted to 32 poison damage charm with a 0.4 second duration, when Venom is active). For this reason, external poison damage sources are usually useless when used with Venom. Despite this, keep a lookout for items with a high damage/low duration ratio, which may add a decent amount of damage to Venom, in addition to +skills and +poison skill damage mods.

Also, try to look at things in terms of ratios (this doesn't just apply to Venom, it applies to many chargeups and Traps as well). While 500 damage on Venom applied over 0.4 seconds may look paltry at first, look at it in terms of seconds(1250 damage/second, or even 12500/10 seconds) and you might change your mind. The only time you have to worry about the true duration (in Venom's case, 0.4 seconds, or 10 frames), is when you're checking whether you meet or exceed the listed duration with your attack, so you're doing the most damage/time possible(10 frames or below, in Venom's case). If you're attacking slower than the listed duration, you're not getting the most out of the skill, as there are instances where Venom's duration elapses, when you're still attacking (11 frames or above, in Venom's case).

Venom can be pre-buffed with +% Poison Skill Damage (+% PSD) mods like the ones found on

Trang-Oul's Claws and the 'Bramble' runeword. The bonuses will remain after the items are removed. +% Poison Skill Damage is applied when Venom is cast, and again when its poison damage is applied by a melee attack. So if the items are removed, the +% PSD from the pre-buff will only apply once if using a melee attack. The Venom level is applied from the point it is cast, so you can pre-buff with +skills items too.

The character screen also applies +% PSD to ranged attack damage, but this does not actually happen. For ranged attacks, damage is only [Skill damage * ((100+ %PSD when cast)/100)]. Venom is only applied to the target monster when using a missile weapon with the 'Fires Explosive Arrow/Bolt' mod (e.g..

Kuko Shakaku,

Demon Machine).

• Venom overrides poison duration from most other sources, but this doesn't affect
  Poison Dagger,
  Rabies,
  Poison Javelin or
  Plague Javelin

• Poison Dagger's damage per frame is low but has a long duration

• Venom has high "bite" damage, but its short duration inhibits it greatly

Blizzard wrote:

Venom

• Buff Duration scaling per level changed from 4 seconds to 12 seconds (matching
  Burst of Speed and
  Fade)