Poison Damage Mechanic

[Trevor]

A friend of mine posted his concerns with the Poison damage mechanic here.

As for poison, it fails terribly as a damage mechanic. It doesn't stack and it is always rewritten by the highest damage per tick (not duration). This means having a 'long' poison is almost impossible. Any character that has a poison 'theme' (ie more than 1 skill) is pretty much wasting their time trying to use 2 skills. It gets even more complicated when PLR is coupled with resistance and as monster res creeps up so goes any attempt at an actual damage-over-time. The reality is that physical, magical, fire, lit, cold are more than enough damage options for skill creativity.

For the other modders here, are there any considerations I can do to improve the poison damage mechanic? I kinda like the poison mechanic myself but I don't really have a sound counter to his issues with poison other than I like it. What have other modders done with the mechanic to make it more meaningful?

Thank you in advance.

[kingpin]

You could recode it to allow it stack,

I have a skill on my necromancer in DA that stack x amount of times.

[Trevor]

How do I allow it to stack?

[kingpin]

either by extend the unit, use counter or additional states to track different damages. But, it will require ce to accomplish in either way.

[k0r3l1k]

Kingpin. Any chance to include improved poison damage into dreamlands?
I would say the best way to do poison damage is to simply add the existing damage remaining each time poison damage is applied to a unit, divided over the new duration.

That way each frame damage is dealt based on the current dps of the poison, and each hit adds the old dps to the new dps while resetting the duration of the poison. There's a bit of math in there but I think it's pretty simple and my point should be clear without writing out the formulas.

So, is that something you could wiggle into your plugin?

[Desocupado]

There are a few things to consider:

Poison duration (quick poison x fire and forget)
How many targets are affected - For instance your poison tree could have single target skill with a powerful brief poison (i.e. you must reapply often) x aoe long duration poison
Range - A short range poison - the proverbial poison nova - must be stronger than a poison nova

Also consider a 8 second poison a long one.

[kingpin]

Kingpin. Any chance to include improved poison damage into dreamlands?
I would say the best way to do poison damage is to simply add the existing damage remaining each time poison damage is applied to a unit, divided over the new duration.

That way each frame damage is dealt based on the current dps of the poison, and each hit adds the old dps to the new dps while resetting the duration of the poison. There's a bit of math in there but I think it's pretty simple and my point should be clear without writing out the formulas.

So, is that something you could wiggle into your plugin?

Wouldn't be an issue to add, just need make sure you can choose between existing poison calc or new one.

[k0r3l1k]

Yup. That would be fantastic. I've always thought the vanilla mechanic was terrible for reasons mentioned above.

[RobertPaulson]

Hello, apologize for necro but I didn't want to spam with a new thread on the same issue.

either by extend the unit, use counter or additional states to track different damages. But, it will require ce to accomplish in either way.

Was this ever implemented in any mod? I am very interested in extracting this feature and adding it to my mod. My knowledge is not gud enuf to do ce. If the answer to my question is no, what resources can I access to learn how to implement any of these solutions? I have a basic modding experience that ends on editing skill calcs etc, but the brief read on ce kinda flew over my head...

Thank you in advance.