Poison Passive Power Slot: Enchanter vs Pestilence

beerbane

Just wanted to solicit some build guru opinions: I have a couple of toons that run predominantly ranged poison builds, and it seems to me that Enchanter offers a much higher offensive/defensive % bonus than Pestilence. I see that Pestilence has a close range poison dot aura and a stackable poison debuff, but I'm having trouble quantifying the benefits of these additional components...

I can see Pestilence edging out Enchanter on a melee/tank build where the Poison aura kicks in, but it doesn't seem worth it on a ranged build over the flat out higher numbers from Enchanter. Am I missing something? Is the Pestilence stackable resistance debuff enough of a damage increase to offset the Enchanter % difference? Please advise.

pantagruel01

The poison DoT applies to ranged attacks as well as melee attacks. In any case, the answer to this question is "set up a parser and compare in the powerhouse".

beerbane

Fair enough - I'm looking from a general build effectiveness perspective rather than an optimal poison DPS point of view, so I was just curious if anyone preferred one form over the other. I guess if the point of poisons is stacking up DoTs and debuffs, I need to look at Pestilence again to compare the extra bits against Enchanter and thus do the actual work and get a parser.

From a rotation perspective, I generally toss Will o' Wisp, spam Defile, refresh stacks with Infernal Blast and use Epidemic if things get crowded. Any other powers you recommended tossing into the mix while I'm testing forms?

pantagruel01

Assuming you build for permanent 5 poison stacks, and you're using an offensive form that's fairly well stacked on its scaling attribute, I would expect pestilence to have higher dps due to its defense debuff and inherent DoT; it's somewhat lower survivability, but there's not many relevant foes other than Eidolon that use dimensional or magic damage, and the damage there tends to be stuff you avoid rather than soaking.

beerbane

Thanks again for the responses. Quick follow-up RE: spec trees and "chip away" damage you find in attack types of this nature (poison, bleeds, plasma burn, etc). Generally speaking, is the defense penetration in places like the Intelligence tree inherently less valuable when it comes to accumulated damage in small packages (i.e. is there better benefit in "big boom" attacks than poison tics or Pestilence tics)?

Seems like spec trees don't really look to augment damage like poison/bleed/burn, other than outliers like in the Warden tree and further, these effects also don't seem to really crit. I guess I'm a little lost with poison, because bleed/burn has a rupture option for BIG NUMBERS but with poison the goal seems to be war of attrition. Am I doing something wrong, other than enjoying the occasional Defile crit? Should I just focus on more sneaky laughter as things are poisoned down to zero?

Thanks again for the build brain/game knowledge!

pantagruel01

Defense penetration does not work on DoT effects.

beerbane

Blast! Ok - that's helpful on which way to stat/spec. Thanks for the insight!

criswolf09

I'll throw something that perhaps nobody mentioned, Pestilence reduces by 2% the slashing dmg resist of your enemies per stack of Bleed, as well 2% of the enemies Toxic dmg resist per stack of Poison, I have no idea if this applies to special poisons like Debilitating and/or Noxious Poison. Hope this helps.

spinnytop

criswolf09 said:

I'll throw something that perhaps nobody mentioned, Pestilence reduces by 2% the slashing dmg resist of your enemies per stack of Bleed, as well 2% of the enemies Toxic dmg resist per stack of Poison, I have no idea if this applies to special poisons like Debilitating and/or Noxious Poison. Hope this helps.

From what I've been told literally anything tagged as a poison counts.

beerbane

spinnytop said:

criswolf09 said:

I'll throw something that perhaps nobody mentioned, Pestilence reduces by 2% the slashing dmg resist of your enemies per stack of Bleed, as well 2% of the enemies Toxic dmg resist per stack of Poison, I have no idea if this applies to special poisons like Debilitating and/or Noxious Poison. Hope this helps.

From what I've been told literally anything tagged as a poison counts.

Wait... so if I take your meaning correctly you could potentially toss 10%+ in poison dmg resist reduction on some unlucky person by combining Deadly with special poisons at full stacks? This I like...

edit: so like max of 14-16% if you can get the poison rainbow going?

roughbearmattach

Two things:

1. I use Fire Form on my Defile spamming DPS toon. Works great.

2. Not all poison damage is tagged as a poison effect. For example, Toxic Nanites do not count; they just do poison damage. Poison effects including Deadly, Debilitating, and the poison effect you can get from the Defile advantage.

beerbane

roughbearmattach said:

Two things:

1. I use Fire Form on my Defile spamming DPS toon. Works great.

2. Not all poison damage is tagged as a poison effect. For example, Toxic Nanites do not count; they just do poison damage. Poison effects including Deadly, Debilitating, and the poison effect you can get from the Defile advantage.

That's actually how I had my Poison character before the Magic revamp - Fire Form with fire snake and a couple of other fire abilities tossed in. Was really fun actually... hmmm...