Pob2 poison calculation
Hi all,
I am new to poe2 and pob2 and have a question about how poison damage is calculated. I am wondering if this is a bug or expected behaviour?
If I allocate the "Building Toxins" node, my total DPS goes down by ~1500, I assume this is due to "25% reduced poison duration", but since I can apply 1 extra poison stack (2 since pathfinder), the dps should ultimately go up assuming all poison stacks are applied, so obviously I would assume that this is a net positive.
I couldn't find any discussion about this related to pob2 and wonder if anyone here has some insights on this.
Thanks!
Comments
PoB takes into account the roll ranges of skills, in the sense that higher attack speed relative to duration will produce higher average poison dps due to having more opportunities to roll a high damage ailment.
Another factor is stack potential, which is basically a count of the mathematical number of poisons you can actually apply in the poison duration. If your attack speed relative to duration is too low, it will deem that your stack potential is lower than your theoretical potential, and ding you a poison stack.
Both of these stats can be seen in the Poison sub-section (near the middle) of the Calcs screen.
Do you mean the tooktip in game? Its not accurate at all. Dont rely on it
Depending on your hit rate and poison duration POB calculates the average number of active poisons. You should be able to check it in the calcs tab.
Might be that you do not reach the maximum number on average and thus lose dps.
Without any other modifiers you otherwise should see a factor of
(3 x 75) / (2 x 100) = 112.5 -> 12% more damage
Ya… the issue becomes reliably stacking… I was only getting to 3-4 stacks using a burst build before the other stacks would wear out… max stacks doesn’t matter if you can’t reliably hit max.
Once I switched to Cloud Arrow I pop 3 arrows with a dual string bow and it’s just instant 6 stacks. And then I can auto and use other skills in between before refreshing the clouds…
The issue is burst is less effective for applying poison. Even with a dualstring bow it only hits one target per shot (more with pierce but meh) so it’s not stacking enough on single targets or groups. But the dualstring effect on cloud arrow doubles stacking so its 3 quick shots to max stacks (for me) and then I can use other abilities easily while I’m still at max stacks. Plus… I run Corrosion so it breaks everything’s armour and jacks up the damage of other skills. Gas Arrow is one of the best Armour breakers in the game 🤷♂️.
Because if you can reliably stack 100% of the time then that extra stack is a proportional increase… like when I get there (I’m like 8 levels away) where I’m running a cloud build its a 33% increase in DPS… because it goes from 6 stacks to 8 stacks… all the time.
So the only thing I can figure is the algorithm must be counting how fast your attack speed is and determining you’re only able to increase your stacks higher by 11% before the duration drops a stack without being refreshed fast enough. You would have to achieve max stacks at all times to get the proportion increase you want.
Oddly enough Last Trauma was by far one of the best Nodes for my Poison build lol 👌. That node is like a 48% damage increase. And that’s on top of like a 50% increase to attack damage.
Test it out and see how many stacks you’re getting and if you’re topping out… I couldn’t get a burst build to max out… so cutting duration cuts damage badly. But Cloud 👌. This was ultimately what caused me to swap primary skills.