Tigetmp wrote:After searching through various threads on these forums, I'm not sure about certain aspects of scorpion blade mechanics and how to build around them, so here goes:
1. The new patch (1.3) states that "Poison clouds stack, so increasing projectiles adds both aoe and single target damage". Does this mean that there will be stacking instances of poison? I didn't think there would be, as I thought the base diablo II engine allowed only a instance of poison on a monster at one point in time.
2. If multiple instances of poison are stacked by stacking poison clouds, how do stacking poison clouds translate to stacking poison? Is it one instance of poison per cloud? One instance applied per cloud per second? Something else? What is the next delay per cloud?
3. If multiple instances of poison are not allowed per different cloud stacks, what advantage does the cloud provide for poison damage? Is it just that multiple clouds increase the likelihood of getting the max poison range active at any point in time(e.g. cloud 1 inflicts poison of 5dps and cloud 2 inflicts poison of 7dps, so the monster get a poison of 7dps versus 5dps were there to only be cloud 1).
4. Do the stacking clouds inflict weapon damage, or is weapon damage only inflicted by the initial knife hit and not the cloud? I saw this question asked earlier, and was answered both "yes" and "no".
5. If the answer to question 4 is "yes", then what is the next delay of poison cloud weapon damage per cloud? And would each cloud have it's own separate next delay?
6. If the answer to 4 and 5 are "yes" and the answer to 1 is "no", would it make sense to stack weapon damage (both higher physical damage on the weapon and +elemental damage) and procs, keep scorpion blade at 1 point, and max mkv and fire and lightning ways to increase weapon damage?
7. I have +8 life on attack on my throwing knife and am not noticing any life gain on hitting an enemy with scorpion blade (and I'm pretty sure I'm directly hitting the enemy and not just a wall behind him). Is there a reason life on attack wouldn't work with scorpion blade? (it's a ranged attack, it counts as a spell, etc?)
8. Would +life on striking work for either the poison clouds or the initial knife hit? Would +life on striking benefit from stacking clouds?
9. If the answer to question 1, 4, and 5 are all "no" (i.e. stacked poison clouds don't inflict additional poison instances and don't do separate instances of weapon damage), then what is the benefit of poison clouds stacking for scorpion blade?
Sorry for this being a rather long "short question", but scorpion blade does seem like an interesting skill, and the answer to each question above would fairly significantly change the way I'd build the character.
Thank you very much for any and all help.
1-3) Only the highest dps poison is affecting the enemy as damage over time, this is unchanged from Diablo 2 vanilla. Multiple clouds improve single target damage because the cloud lingers for ~1 second and during this time it attempts to poison anything under it every frame. So not only do you guarantee that your single target damage will always be the maximum listed on the char sheet (instead of average), you also deal 25 * your first frame poison damage per cloud, per second.
4) Only the knife inflicts weapon damage, the cloud is all spell damage.
7) Life on attack stat only works with skills which have the "Attack" category - see the tooltip. Scorpion blade is a projectile type skill.
8) Knives only.
mortimer_85 wrote:Quick question about Pestilence.
The skill description says, that it receives SD bonus from (str + dex). I assume that the same formula is applied as for the energy-only part of the Energy Bonus Formula and instead of ene the value of str+dex is used.
https://docs.median-xl.com/doc/concepts/energyfactor.
After playing around with EF and Energy it occurs to me, that Pestilence also receives the EF Bonus part.
Can someone enlighten/correct/confirm me?
Thanks in advance!
Your assumption is correct, substitute strength + dexterity in the first fraction of the formula instead of energy. The second part of the formula is unchanged, and thus Pestilence benefits from energy factor because Pestilence is a spell and all spells do so.