Questions about Chaos & Poison Confusion

I'm confused about the difference between these two damage types. I know they are different somehow, but I'm not sure how.

Let's say I have a 4-link with Blade Vortex, for example. If I add 3 support gems:

a) Poison, keyword "Chaos" - "Supported skills Poison on Hit", "Increased Damage with Poison"
b) Rapid Decay, keyword "Duration" - "Reduced Skill Effect Duration", "More Damage Over Time"
c) Void Manipulation, keyword "Chaos" - "Reduced Elemental Damage", "More Chaos Damage"

From this I understand the following:

1) When Blade Vortex hits, it will Poison
2) The amount of Poison damage will increase as the gem levels up
3) There will be "more" Damage Over Time, but the Duration of Blade Vortex will be reduced
4) Blade Vortex will do "more" Chaos damage.

When I equip each of these 3 support gems, a little icon appears on the Blade Vortex skill icon on my tooltip which, ordinarily, tells me that the support gem affects this skill. But the tooltip does not show any change in the Blade Vortex damage.

Since the Poison gem has the keyword "Chaos", I assume that it inflicts chaos damage. And since both Poison and Chaos inflict Damage Over Time, I assume that Rapid Decay is concentrating that to make it more damage over less time. Finally, I assume that Void Manipulation is increasing the amount of Chaos damage that Poison is doing.

Am I correct in these assumptions, or am I missing something important?

Thanks,

Hey there

first off: Void Manipulation reduces the elemental damage the skill does and increases the Chaos Damage it does (more multiplier)

If your BV does not deal any chaos damage at all, using Void Manipulation is kinda useless. Because there is no chaos damage which can be increased.

thats why your Tool Tip isn't inceased. Try a "Added Chaos Damage Support" Gem instead and you'll get a so called double dipping increase. Added Chaos Damage for your initial BV hit and chaos damage which increases the poison itself.

Info:
Poison deals 8% of physical AND Chaos Damage as a 2 second Damage over Time debuff to the inflicted target. (its stackable)


edit: Typos

Double Dipping - What is that?

The Double Dipping is the reason why Poison in the actual meta is so overpowered.

To get you a clearification:

Lets say your BV does 100 Damage as Physical and 100 Damage as Chaos without any other increases your poison would do 16 damage over 2 sec (32 Damage total).

If you now add the Void Manipulation gem (lets say it has a 25% MORE Multiplier) your BV would deal 100 physical and 125 chaos damage, if it now inflicts poison it would deal 16.96 damage over time. but Wait! Poison Damage is Chaos Damage, so the 25% more multi apllies AGAIN. So the real Poison Damage would be 21.2.

Got it? Thats the Double Dipping.


I hope this clarifys your questions :)

Ah, what I missed was that Poison damage = chaos damage. Also, the "more" multiplier doesn't add, it just increases whatever is there to begin with.

That makes sense. Many thanks for the clarifying answer!

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Winterfury wrote:

I'm confused about the difference between these two damage types. I know they are different somehow, but I'm not sure how.

Let's say I have a 4-link with Blade Vortex, for example. If I add 3 support gems:

a) Poison, keyword "Chaos" - "Supported skills Poison on Hit", "Increased Damage with Poison"
b) Rapid Decay, keyword "Duration" - "Reduced Skill Effect Duration", "More Damage Over Time"
c) Void Manipulation, keyword "Chaos" - "Reduced Elemental Damage", "More Chaos Damage"

...

Thanks,

Going over this in particular...:

In this set-up, Blade Vortex hits Poison enemies, correct. 'Poison' is a separate element of the skill which, once inflicted, has its own keywords that determine which support gems will and will not work on it. Poison, by default, has the 'Chaos' and 'Damage Over Time' keywords.

Poison also inherits certain keywords from whichever skill is used to deliver it, but I don't know the exact particulars of how that works. In this case I believe Poison would inherit the "Spell" and "Area of Effect" keyword from Blade Vortex and would thus also be scaled by modifiers to spell damage and AoE damage, but it would not inherit the "Physical" keyword from BV. In practical effect, Poison inhereits the delivery type keywords from whatever skill delivered it ('projectile', 'spell', 'AoE', 'melee', and the like), but it is always 'Chaos' and only 'Chaos'.

Your Blade Vortex tooltip damage doesn't change when you add Poison Support to BV because the tooltip doesn't report Poison's DPS it says "hits cause Poison" and "+X% increased damage with Poison", but the actual poison damage is unreported. Rapid Decay, similarly, doesn't change your BV tooltip damage because BV tooltips don't take blade duration into account. Blade Vortex deals purely physical damage, and so neither of Void Manipulation's effects work on it.

The Poison that your Blade Vortex inflicts has the following keywords (if I've got the keyword inheritance thing down properly): 'Chaos', 'DoT/Duration', 'AoE', 'Spell'. Its base damage is 8% of the final damage inflicted by any given single BV hit on an enemy, for 2 seconds base duration.

Void Manipulation More's Chaos damage, Poison is Chaos damage, therefor your Poison damage will be More'd. Void Manipulation reduces elemental damage, but Poison can never be of any damage type other than 'Chaos', so the elemental reduction from Void Manip is ignored.

Rapid Decay reduces the duration of Duration effects, and Poison is a duration effect, so your Poison suffers a 15% duration penalty. Poison is a DoT effect, however, so Rapid Decay also More's its DoT damage as per RD's RD-ness.

***

This general behavior set is why Poison is busted as hell, by the way. Because Poison inherits many of the keywords of whatever skill delivered it, and because Poison's base damage is dependent on the damage the delivery skill inflicts, you get the "Double Dipping" effect. Consider the case of that same 4L Blade Vortex linked with Controlled Destruction, Concentrated Effect and Poison.

BV has the 'Spell', 'AoE' and 'Duration' keywords, and it gives 'Spell' and 'AoE' to the Poison it inflicts. Our Poison, therefor, once again has the following modifiers: 'Chaos', 'DoT/Duration', 'AoE', 'Spell'. Remember: Poison's base damage is based on the damage a hit actually delivers to an enemy.

In this case, Controlled Destruction is a large 'More' modifier to Blade Vortex's damage, increasing BV's damage significantly. This also increases the base damage of your Poison, since Poison is based on damage actually delivered to the target. However, Poison also shares Blade Vortex's "Spell" keyword, and so Controlled Destruction also More's Poison's damage. In effect, Controlled Destruction has boosted Poison twice - once when it boosted BV's damage and thus increased Poison's base damage, and once again when it More'd that boosted base damage.

Concentrated Effect is the same - it boosts BV's damage, which boosts Poison's base damage, and since Poison inherits the "AoE" keyword from Blade Vortex, Conc. Effect applies a second time to the Poison effect itself.

This effect swings both ways, though. If you used, as an example, Greater Multiple Projectiles with some skill or other to deliver Poison, then the "Less" modifier from GMP would reduce the damage the skill delivers to a target, reducing Poison's base damage. GMP would then itself also 'Less' Poison's damage, even though Poison did not benefit from the extra projectiles of GMP because Poison is poison, not a projectile. So GMP, Fork, Chain, Elemental Proliferation, and all other 'Less' gems are very bad ideas with Poison, because they reduce Poison's damage twice.

This whole double-dibbing, inherited-modifier effect is why Poison is so uncontrollably powerful. Blade Vortex Pathfinders using Vessel of Vinktar get to double the damage boosting effects of practically everything they have - all your Spell damage in the tree and on gear applies to Poison twice, and Shock from VoV also applies twice - it increases the damage targets take from Blade Vortex, which boosts Poison's base damage, and then targets take 50% increased damage from the ongoing Poison effect itself, as well.

it's a great deal of compounding madness that means Poison is going to see some very, VERY big nerfs in the future. Just as soon as GGG figures out precisely how to go about doing it.

"

In this case I believe Poison would inherit the "Spell" and "Area of Effect" keyword from Blade Vortex and would thus also be scaled by modifiers to spell damage and AoE damage

The Poison that your Blade Vortex inflicts has the following keywords (if I've got the keyword inheritance thing down properly): 'Chaos', 'DoT/Duration', 'AoE', 'Spell'.

...

BV has the 'Spell', 'AoE' and 'Duration' keywords, and it gives 'Spell' and 'AoE' to the Poison it inflicts. Our Poison, therefor, once again has the following modifiers: 'Chaos', 'DoT/Duration', 'AoE', 'Spell'. ... However, Poison also shares Blade Vortex's "Spell" keyword, and so Controlled Destruction also More's Poison's damage.

Spell doesn't double dip on Blade Vortex. It's on the same categorical level as Attack, Damage over Time, and "secondary damage." Damage over Time can't be Spell Damage, which is why Essence Drain, Contagion, and Vortex have a specific exception that does allow Spell double dip.

"

adghar wrote:

Spell doesn't double dip on Blade Vortex. It's on the same categorical level as Attack, Damage over Time, and "secondary damage." Damage over Time can't be Spell Damage, which is why Essence Drain, Contagion, and Vortex have a specific exception that does allow Spell double dip.

nitpick time? alright here we go:

what you call "double dip" here is the interaction between generic modifiers and skills that use initial hit to set the base for the DoT. Neither of skills you mention does that, except the poison based on ed initial hit

Play nice, Lud. I was mistaken and Adghar corrected me, that's all. Thanks, Ad.

"

1453R wrote:

Play nice, Lud. I was mistaken and Adghar corrected me, that's all. Thanks, Ad.

yeah, I know adghar is posting quality and knowledgeable helpful posts here, and that he knows how this works. Thats why I nitpick on him. Not meant as offense..

"

Ludvator wrote:

"

adghar wrote:

Spell doesn't double dip on Blade Vortex. It's on the same categorical level as Attack, Damage over Time, and "secondary damage." Damage over Time can't be Spell Damage, which is why Essence Drain, Contagion, and Vortex have a specific exception that does allow Spell double dip.

nitpick time? alright here we go:

what you call "double dip" here is the interaction between generic modifiers and skills that use initial hit to set the base for the DoT. Neither of skills you mention does that, except the poison based on ed initial hit

I assume it's also the case with ignite when you cause one with those skills. So, he's right, the listed skills would treat spell damage as a DoT-compatible modifier, if that's what he was getting at.

Which could be interesting, ignite Vortex would have an extra double dipping multiplier in Controlled destruction. Though not interesting for long, I hope, we got some preliminary fixes in 2.4, there probably wasn't enough time to remove double dipping properly but seems they're working on it.