Raise Spiders' Viper Strike's Duration Tag Is Not Working As Intended

A Spider minion from Raise Spider (via Arakaali's Fang) uses a Viper Strike attack that has a base poison duration of 4 seconds and is effected to modifiers to skill effect duration.

Two things should follow from this:

1 - Increases to the player's skill effect duration should NOT effect the poison duration of Raise Spiders' Viper Strike. (Though it would and does effect the duration of the Spider Minions themselves.)

2 - Increases in skill effect duration via auras, buffs, or from support gems socketed in the Arakaali's Fang unique SHOULD increase the poison duration of Raise Spiders' Viper Strike.


Number one is true and holds true as you would expect.

Number two however, is wonky and inconsistent, as I will explain some of below.

Supporting Raise Spiders with the "Increased Duration Support" gem socketed in Arakaali's fang gives no increased skill effect duration to the spiders. This can be verified in the stat window for the Spider Minion and I have verified by measuring poison duration in recordings.
(This behavior was also mentioned here in this archived thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3257453)

HOWEVER, Supporting Raise Spiders with the "Efficacy Support" gem, DOES increase the skill effect duration of the spiders. Which can both be verified via the stat window for the Spider Minion and via video analysis of the skill.

The difference between these two support gems is that "Efficacy Support" does not require a skill to have the duration tag to give its benefits. It gives both of its bonuses based on EITHER of its conditions (a skill that hits OR has duration) being true.

The final evidence that this is true comes in the form of gem tag inheritance.
(Devs definitely know what this is already but I'll briefly explain what I mean for clarity.)

If you support a skill gem with "Summon Phantasm Support" it actually GIVES that skill gem a sort of "Duration" pseudo-tag, since that skill now summons Phantasms which have a duration. So effects from the duration supporting gem that is linked to "Summon Phantasm Support" are also inherited by the skill gem it supports.

This has been a known effect of a few support gems and has been around for a while.

Using this method for science, we can socket a "Summon Phantasm Support" gem that is supported by "Increased Duration Support" (these two must be linked) and place those into our Arakaali's Fang and theoretically, the spiders should gain the effects of the "Increased Duration Support" gem...

AND THEY DO! Meaning that Raise Spiders' Viper Strike is a skill that has a duration AND can be effected by modifiers to skill effect duration AND DOES NOT HAVE A PROPER "Duration" TAG IMPLEMENTED!

My reason for meandering and excessive testing here is to show that this is not intended behavior and is a bug. Or at the very least is inconsistent with how the user should expect the skill and gem interactions to work as things are "written on the tin" so to speak.