The Consuming Dark and Contagion

This:



Shouldn't Contagion also apply poison to mobs? Consuming Dark says "Your chaos damage also applies poison". Contagion is chaos damage. So what gives?

Essence Drain applies poison, but it doesn't say it has to be "on hit" which ED does and Contagion doesn't.

Or are "Chaos damage over time" and "Chaos damage" two separate things? Because Essence Drain has those two separate. First it hits for Chaos damage, then has a secondary "chaos damage over time" effect. Contagion only has "Chaos damage over time".

Is this how it's supposed to work? Is this intended?

Yeah, it'll work with ED because it has non-dot damage, but not with Contagion. It's intentional that dots don't count for applying status effects,'cause that'd be OP.

It's just that poison status does a percentage of initial hit to determine base effect strength, no hit - no poison.

Ah. Well it's a bit confusingly written then. Because Contagion deals Chaos damage, and the dagger says your chaos damage poisons. It doesn't say on hit. Maybe they should change that.

And if the poison status deals damage based on "hit" damage, then it makes sense because contagion doesn't hit and even if it would poison enemies, there would be no damage. I mean, i knew it wasn't gonna work with Contagion when i got that knife (Contagion is there only to spread essence drain), i only got it so it can work with Bino's kitchen knife. Those 2 go well together, but still i was just wondering how exactly the mechanics worked.

I'll have to wiki a bit on that poison thing. See if poison nodes are worth taking for my build. I'd wager yes. A bit more Damage wouldn't hurt. :P

Anyway, based on the wording alone, contagion "should" poison mobs, but i agree, that would be way too OP. :P

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Veprovina wrote:

Ah. Well it's a bit confusingly written then. Because Contagion deals Chaos damage, and the dagger says your chaos damage poisons. It doesn't say on hit. Maybe they should change that.

Maybe, they like to use shortened descriptions on uniques because they either sound better or they lack space for the full ones. Similarly, 'culling strike' on weapons is short for 'hits with this weapon have culling strike'.

Well, we could also argue that even 'hits with chaos damage poison enemy' doesn't tell you much if you don't know what poison does, and if you do it would be clear enough that it requires a hit. The problem is that the game generally lacks descriptions for such effects, ones like onslaught, fortify, unholy might...

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raics wrote:

Maybe, they like to use shortened descriptions on uniques because they either sound better or they lack space for the full ones. Similarly, 'culling strike' on weapons is short for 'hits with this weapon have culling strike'.

I think these are actually global effects, which I know makes no effing sense, but I've seen streamers before swap to a Culling weapon to cull an enemy with spells.

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raics wrote:

Maybe, they like to use shortened descriptions on uniques because they either sound better or they lack space for the full ones. Similarly, 'culling strike' on weapons is short for 'hits with this weapon have culling strike'.

Well, we could also argue that even 'hits with chaos damage poison enemy' doesn't tell you much if you don't know what poison does, and if you do it would be clear enough that it requires a hit. The problem is that the game generally lacks descriptions for such effects, ones like onslaught, fortify, unholy might...

True. Maybe they should have some "in depth" descriptions added, like, if you press ALT while hovering over item it displays it's item level, maybe it could display some extra info on effects as well.

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Vipermagi wrote:

"Poisons" is shorthand for "100% Chance to apply Poison on Hit". One of those things...
Additionally, outside of Damage calculation there's an actual distinction between 'damage' and 'damage over time', but that is becoming less and less relevant as time goes on :p

Yeah chaos damage and chaos damage over time are 2 different things. I mean, Essence drain has those 2 things separate, and Contagion is a "utility" spell since it doesn't have DPS tooltip regardless of it actually dealing damage.

And maybe they could do less shorthands in the descriptions. :P "Poisons" to most people who don't do deep wiki research means just that - applies poison. :P

But even so, for this case, although it's not exactly apparent, it does make sense. It says chaos damage poisons and it doesn't matter if "poisons" actually means "on hit", contagion doesn't do chaos damage. ;) Essence drain does and essence drain "hits". Contagion only deals chaos damage over time - which is still chaos damage, but apparently a different kind. :P

Even so, if Contagion dealt the same damage as essence drain, it still doesn't "hit", so by the description of "poison" mechanic (which is also not explained like it should be on the items) it still wouldn't work because of that.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, i knew Contagion wouldn't work with the dagger well before i got it, i just thought it's funny how some descriptions on gems and equipment can be a bit confusing. Oh well. :P

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XCodesLIVE wrote:

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raics wrote:

Maybe, they like to use shortened descriptions on uniques because they either sound better or they lack space for the full ones. Similarly, 'culling strike' on weapons is short for 'hits with this weapon have culling strike'.

I think these are actually global effects, which I know makes no effing sense, but I've seen streamers before swap to a Culling weapon to cull an enemy with spells.

Which spells would those be? Can you elaborate?

Because on my Arc templar, i have Culling strike and it works wonders. Not only does it increase spell damage, but has culling strike, which is far more useful and that %damage seems meager in comparison when you cull a boss. :P

But Arc "hits". Do you mean spells like incinerate or something that don't hit? Does incinterate hit anyway? I never used it.
Alos on the topic of Culling Strike, it also has a lousy description (none at all), so most new people don't know that you can't cull with damage over time stuff. :P

In any case those are exploits, and frankly, cheating, i was talking about the actual in game descriptions on how the mechanics work. By the in game description, the effect could be interpreted in a very different way. Such as Contagion applying poison in this case. By the in game description alone, this is what most people who don't know the mechanics of the skills would assume. :P

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Veprovina wrote:

Which spells would those be? Can you elaborate?

All spells that hit. Actually, anything that hits, be it an attack, spell, or secondary hit.

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Veprovina wrote:

Because on my Arc templar, i have Culling strike and it works wonders. Not only does it increase spell damage, but has culling strike, which is far more useful and that %damage seems meager in comparison when you cull a boss. :P

Culling Strike can be looked at as having an implicit 11% more damage multiplier thanks to the effect of killing enemies that reach 10% life or less, but I'm talking about Culling Strike on weapons, not the support gem.

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Veprovina wrote:

But Arc "hits". Do you mean spells like incinerate or something that don't hit? Does incinterate hit anyway? I never used it.
Alos on the topic of Culling Strike, it also has a lousy description (none at all), so most new people don't know that you can't cull with damage over time stuff. :P

No, Incinerate definitely hits. Most spells hit, actually. Contagion is one of the few that doesn't. RF and Searing Bond also don't hit. It's true that new players won't know that you can't cull with damage over time stuff, but PoE is a game with an extremely high learning curve and Culling Strike is a pretty advanced tactic. There are some things that GGG should do to make the game easier to learn (read: tooltip DPS needs to die in a fire), but they can't magically make everyone understand every game mechanic from the beginning.

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Veprovina wrote:

In any case those are exploits, and frankly, cheating, i was talking about the actual in game descriptions on how the mechanics work. By the in game description, the effect could be interpreted in a very different way. Such as Contagion applying poison in this case. By the in game description alone, this is what most people who don't know the mechanics of the skills would assume. :P

It is not cheating at all. The rules of the game allow this, and they have been part of the game for a very long time. GGG has had many opportunities to patch them out if they didn't want them in the game, but that clearly is not the case as evidenced by their continued function in this manner.

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XCodesLIVE wrote:

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raics wrote:

Maybe, they like to use shortened descriptions on uniques because they either sound better or they lack space for the full ones. Similarly, 'culling strike' on weapons is short for 'hits with this weapon have culling strike'.

I think these are actually global effects, which I know makes no effing sense, but I've seen streamers before swap to a Culling weapon to cull an enemy with spells.

They're local, also stuff like blind chance or bleed, that's why Dark Seer says 'global blind chance'. However, corrupted culling implicit is global, strangely enough.