gems on an essence drain build

i'm currently playing a low life essence drain build with ~30k chaos dot using the supports:

void manipulation
rapid decay
empower
controlled destruction
poison

i've read a lot about poison being nerfed so i was wondering if poison is still the best support gem to go with. i know slower proj has a good dmg multiplier but the slow projectiles are a bit annoying.

as far as i understand poison, it does 10% dmg of the initial hit over 2 seconds every second, which increases dmg-wise for example by chaos dmg nodes and links and which increases duration-wise for example by incr skill duration nodes. apart of temp chains i get ~50% skill effect duration from the tree (which adds up to 3 seconds * 10% = 30% psn dmg).

fyi: i dont reach the fatal toxins node in the tree :(

Poison wasnt nerfed, it was fixed. It is still great for single target, increases boss kill time buy a lot.

what was the problem with poison before the "fix"?

The above bow single target skill is massively broken; adding poison to it makes a 8 minute atziri run, 5. She melts. Poison is super strong here.

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The above bow single target skill is massively broken; adding poison to it makes a 8 minute atziri run, 5. She melts. Poison is super strong here.

interesting

can anyone plz explain to me how poison worked before the "fix" and what changed after?

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Perz wrote:

can anyone plz explain to me how poison worked before the "fix" and what changed after?

Before the fix, the DoT portion of Essence Drain and Caustic arrow were also counting in the poison damage. That was not intended.

so how does poison actually work with essence drain? it says poison on hit. since dot doesnt count as a hit i assume the poison applies to the x-y dmg initial hit of essence drain. my inital essence drain dmg is about 3000-4000, so 3500 average. this means i do 2*350=700 times the multiplier by passives etc..pretty low, isn't it?

€: did some testing and the result is: poison support gem kills 38% faster than slower proj

For clear speed, other gems are far better than poison. Poison doesnt proliferate unless you are using binos.

For bosses, just swap in your poison.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1550898

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SkyCore wrote:

For clear speed, other gems are far better than poison. Poison doesnt proliferate unless you are using binos.

For bosses, just swap in your poison.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1550898

That is not true. Poison is also good for clear speed. U need to kill that 1st mob as fast, as u can, to spread essence with contagion. And poison is great for it. So at the end it doesnt matter much time wise, if u kill 1st mob very fast and than the rest a slower, or u kill boths witht he same speed, which is in the midle of the 2.

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1337fun wrote:

That is not true.

What i have said is correct.

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1337fun wrote:

Poison is also good for clear speed. U need to kill that 1st mob as fast, as u can, to spread essence with contagion.

This is true

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1337fun wrote:

And poison is great for it.

This is also true... But any 30% more multiplier is also great.

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1337fun wrote:

So at the end it doesnt matter much time wise, if u kill 1st mob very fast and than the rest a slower, or u kill boths witht he same speed, which is in the midle of the 2.

If you use poison while clearing and all the mobs melt, sure feel free to use poison. But it's likely you have the damage and dont even need that poison in your links in such a case in order to melt the screen. A utility would be suggested instead, such as lmp, pierce, or faster projectiles.

But if you dont quite have the damage needed to melt the entire screen with a single combo, i recommend something like empower or slower projectiles instead. You see poison does not deal damage to secondary targets, as iv already explained.