Pestilent Strike

Hello!
Sorry, i'd just copy the whole thread from steam.
It was made by other person.
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So I'm just curious about this skill. I've been using it on my Assassin to great effects, but I'd like to confirm with other people if my analysis is correct:

1) Any gems the skill is linked with will influence the dmg of the attack, but not the dmg of the secondary debuff that spreads to other enemies,

2) If you inflict poison with Pestilent Strike, 50% of the dmg of that poison will be transferred to other enemies in the radius as well, if the enemy you hit with it dies before the debuff on it expires,

3) Any poisons you inflict AFTER using Pestilent Strike will also be transferred at 50% of their expected dmg to other enemies if the enemy you hit with it dies before the debuff on it expires,

4) It is possible to hit more than one enemy with 1 Pestilent strike attack, in which case the enemy that dies first will transfer 50% of the poison dmg remaining on it at the time of death to any other enemy that is still alive and that new enemy will, in turn, transfer 50% of the poison dmg remaining on it at the time of death to all other enemies in the radius. In short, the more enemies you hit, the more value you get out of Pestilent Strike to the point where hitting many adds in close proximity to a rare/mini boss/boss will result in that hard enemy either dying almost instantly or losing a very solid chunk of its life,

5) Skills that affect area will work on Pestilent Strike's secondary debuff, giving a higher chance of spreading to more enemies,

6) Skills that increase skill effect duration will affect how long the secondary debuff on an enemy lasts, but I'm not 100% sure if it will increase the duration of the transferred poison,

7) As the skill itself states, the raw poison damage that is transferred by the secondary debuff cannot be changed , meaning anything that increase/decrease poison/chaos damage will not influence it in any way,

8) Pestilent Strike is a great gem for waveclear in a chaos/poison build and works quite well without the need for many linked gems so it is perfect to use in a 3-linked weapon or shield, for example. Suggested gems to use it with would be those that allow you to hit more enemies at once, that increase the area the secondary debuff covers or gems that increase the duration.

If anyone has anything to add, suggest or correct, let me know.

©Mindtroverted
Last bumped on Nov 18, 2019, 6:36:45 AM
I'm playing pestilent strike as main skill.

The glaring issue is 6/7. Duration does not directly effect the 2nd portion of the skill. It does however boost the damage since the ability collapses all remaining damage into the 1sec debuff.

This ability loves multistrike. High application rate, improves wave clear and single target all at once.

With enough duration/aoe this skill explodes screens. Currently demolishing T8 maps in shit gear very casually w a 5L setup.

The weirdest thing about bosses Isis the die faster when you attack the adds and the boss gets owned by the Debuff, very strange but bosses die instantly this way.

If I can smooth out the build and grind to T16 and Uber shaper I'll probably make a full guide.

Cheers

I'm the original poster from Steam forums.

My approach was to have Viper strike as main skill bosskiller and Pestilent Strike for mapclear.

I'm using Pestilent Strike + Ancestral Call + Melee Splash + Increased AoE in my 4-link Embalmer Gloves. I've read that Melee Splash also applies Pestilent Strike's debuff so the whole point of that 4-link setup is to get as many enemies hit with the debuff and proliferate the dmg on as big an area as possible.

When mapping or delving or doing anything that requires clear, I just use Pestilent strike once and then use Viper Strike once or twice. Normal packs die before I even use Viper Strike. Magic and Rares usually take a couple of Viper Strike hits, but only if they are isolated. If the regular enemies spread the dmg debuff to the Magic and Rare monsters, they usually die all by themselves.

Still haven't gotten to Shaper but I did finish a T16 without dying so I'm assuming it should be able to go the distance.
A few notes on your post:

4) (De)buffs don't stack with themselves unless it's specified that they do. Pestilent Strike says nothing about its debuff stacking, so I don't think you can assume you can do mass damage to a boss by killing multiple enemies near it.

6) Pestilent Strike doesn't "transfer" Poison. The debuff it applies isn't Poison, it's just a Chaos Damage over Time debuff that's based on the expected outgoing Poison damage. Increased Skill Effect Duration will increase both the window to kill the monster and have Pestilent Strike do its thing, and the length the damaging debuff lasts (and thus the total damage it deals). This is how it should behave, anyway; if it doesn't, that's probably a bug.

7) This is a bit misleading. First of all, as stated above, Pestilent Strike doesn't transfer Poison. Second, modifiers to Poison damage (specifically, or by modifying Chaos Damage, Ailment Damage etc.) already apply to the "expected" Poison damage. These modifiers don't apply directly to the debuff's damage to prevent them from applying a second time i.e. "double dipping". Modifiers to Damage Taken (e.g. Withered and Despair) do apply directly to the debuff damage, because they're not counted in expected damage.
4) No, the debuff definitely doesn't stack. That wasn't what I meant to say. I might have expressed myself inadequately. The thing is, if you hit several enemies with Pestilent Strike and kill them fast, 50% of the remaining poison dmg on those enemies will be inflicted on any enemies in radius. That's what I meant by stacking. For example, if a boss is surrounded by 20 enemies and I 1-hit the 20 enemies with PS, the boss would get 50% of 20 poisons, meaning the boss would get damaged for 10 PS attacks with only 1 PS attack.

6) Correct, PS doesn't transfer poison, it transfers 50% of the expected poison dmg, meaning it isn't poison. I don't know because I haven't tried, but I think the duration of the damaging debuff can't be changed. I might be wrong on this one, but it would make sense since if it was like that, skill effect duration and Temporal Chains would "double dip" because they would increase the duration of the poison and then increase the duration of the damaging debuff.

7) Yes, chaos/poison/physical/ailment dmg modifiers will indirectly or directly affect the dmg of your poison, thus indirectly affecting the dmg of PS's damage debuff.

P. S. What curse would you use on a PS Assassin? I've been using Despair but I don't know if maybe Temporal Chains would be better.
Last edited by Mindtroverted on Nov 11, 2019, 9:00:04 AM
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Mindtroverted wrote:
4) No, the debuff definitely doesn't stack. That wasn't what I meant to say. I might have expressed myself inadequately. The thing is, if you hit several enemies with Pestilent Strike and kill them fast, 50% of the remaining poison dmg on those enemies will be inflicted on any enemies in radius. That's what I meant by stacking. For example, if a boss is surrounded by 20 enemies and I 1-hit the 20 enemies with PS, the boss would get 50% of 20 poisons, meaning the boss would get damaged for 10 PS attacks with only 1 PS attack.

P. S. What curse would you use on a PS Assassin? I've been using Despair but I don't know if maybe Temporal Chains would be better.
I'm not sure I follow you. No hit can apply more than one poison, so if you kill an enemy in one hit, it can't possibly have more than one poison on it. If you kill 20 enemies this way near a boss, that boss will have 20 DoT debuffs on it, but only the strongest of those debuffs will deal damage at a time, and that one will deal only 50% of the expected damage of one poison.

As for which curse is better, that's a complicated question and depends on your existing gear, passives, and skills; Path of Building could probably answer better than I could which works best for a given build. I'll note that all three of Despair's effects are on point for a Poison build, but Temporal Chains adds a defensive layer which a squishy melee Assassin would probably appreciate. Ideally, you'd take Whispers of Doom or whatever +1 curse source and use both.
I believe poison is a stacking debuff, so multiple applications apply, unlike something like ignite where only the strongest does damage.
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GreyLensman wrote:
I believe poison is a stacking debuff, so multiple applications apply, unlike something like ignite where only the strongest does damage.
Yes, Poison stacks with itself, but the debuff Pestilent Strike applies on kill is not Poison and, unless I'm mistaken, does not stack with itself. And since it's not Poison, Pestilent Strike doesn't carry it over to the next monster on kill. PS applies a debuff based on the expected Poison damage of the killed monster, not (expected Poison damage + existing PS debuff).
Gotta love all the nuances. I'm sure the devs loves dreaming up this stuff!
I do not think that poison can spread to enemies that die from the same hit, but if you do not onehit a pack with Pestilent strike and have another method of spreading the poisons, then it is possible that the poisons being spread among the pack would ramp up in number and both spread to a rare mob / boss in the vicinity as well as applying the highest Pestilent Strike DoT based on the last one to die with 20 active poisons.

So while I have not tested Pestilent Strike and do not know how feasible it is to apply poisons that way, it should theoretically be possible to achieve a similar effect to the one described, though not through the same mechanics.

It is possible that poisons that have already spread to a target cannot spread to the same target from another source, which would mean that you actually need to hit and poison several targets at once to achieve a similar effect (one hit causing 1 stack on poison on each target that can all stack when proliferated rather than relying on only the proliferation of a single instance of poison from one target hit). I vaguely recall a statement that debuffs could not be proliferated several times, but I do not know whether that includes proliferating through different targets first.

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