Melee Venomancer Guide

Hasukurobi - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Attack Speed is irrelevant considering that as a Fox if you do not abuse Mist & Leech you are doing something wrong and your attack speed will be largely determined by those skills not the speed of your weapon.

That's true for arcane foxes, and maybe light foxes. But this is a heavy fox guide. Things tend to turn upside-down when you pump up your veno's strength.

At level 76 and 196 str, my phys atk is 1671-2246 unbuffed, for an average of 1958 raw damage per hit. At 1.25 attacks per sec, I do 2447.5 raw DPS. (I also have a -0.05 attack interval item, and two nice might rings waiting for me at 78, but let's ignore them for now.)
Regular attack = 2447.5 DPS

Maxed Leech is base damage + 2291, so for me it does 4249 raw damage on average. It has a 1.1 sec cast time and 0.8 sec channel time, so it'll take 1.9 sec to use. That works out to 2236 raw DPS. So Leech actually hurts my damage output. I use it only when I need it.
Leech = 2236 DPS

Maxed Mist is base damage + 1397, so for me it does 3355 raw damage on average. It has a 0.5 sec cast time and 0.7 sec channel time, so it'll take 1.2 sec to use. That's 2796 raw DPS, which technically is more than my normal DPS. However, it costs 115 mana and the accuracy debuff is bugged and doesn't work for my herc so I gain no extra advantages (aside from it being AOE). For me to make back the mana cost of Mist without consuming external resources (pots, charms, etc), I have to either use Consume Spirit, or ST + Leech.
Mist = 2796 DPS, but...

If I use Consume, that's base damage but 1.9 sec cast time. I stopped leveling mine at 4 since I give up too much DPS to use it, but for sake of argument say I leveled it up to 10, which gives 450 mana. That's enough to pay the mana cost for 3.91 Mists. So 3.91*3355 + 1958 = 15076 damage in 3.91*1.2 + 1.9 = 6.59 seconds. That's 2287 DPS. Again, less than my DPS without using skills.
Mist + Consume = 2287 DPS

The Mist + ST + Leech combo does yield a net increase in DPS, provided someone else is tanking so I'm not in any danger of dying. But it's a lot of work and risk for less than a 14% increase in DPS. So instead I usually just use regular attacks, saving my mana for Amp and ST for emergencies. As I calculated in this post, my -0.05 attack interval bracers are giving me 6.4% more DPS when not using skills. And I expect the two level 78 rings to push me close to or over the top to where my DPS with regular attacks exceeds that of even Mist. I'm actually worried about doing so much damage I pull aggro off my herc with just regular attacks. I'm already doing that after about 15 sec against mobs which don't take reflect damage.

The Sage and Demon forms of Leech and Mist do have hefty damage upgrades. But they're very rare books, and I'm still 13 levels away from being able to use them even if I got the books. When I get there I'll have to run the numbers again.

Thanks so much. The best fox guide ever.

Silly necro.

And the max -interval without weapons a veno can gain is actually -0.35

Total 0.05: 0.05 from TT99 wrists
Total 0.15: 0.1 from wrists + (insert other armor here) 99 set
Total 0.20: 0.05 from ornaments
Total 0.25:0.05 from non-arcane Nirvana leggings
Total 0.30: 0.05 from lunar cape
Total 0.35: 0.05 from pan gu, creator or love, up and down tome.

On a magic sword, that would take you from the base speed of 1.25 to 2.22.



But then again, this is kinda common knowledge now since this thread is ~6 months old.