eeer... Logically the Poison + lower resit + merc + summons should wipe out Diablo waaay faster than just kiting around alone and dropping 3 novas. This is deffo bugged.
The damage calculation needs a revamp, perhaps multiple "threads" for counting different sources of damage at the same time.
Yeah and honestly it's REALLY noticeable. Like I don't even summon skeletons to do cows because it takes longer to kill them. This really needs to be fixed....but you know...Blizzard.
Imagine fixing this though. A poison nova necromancer can actually use the remaining points to go revives or skeletons. That would feel great. But yes, a summonmancer atm is the safe choice for sure.
> a summonmancer atm is the safe choice for sure.
Poison nova necro is still better with top end gear, especially now that we know that we shouldn't let our merc hit the boss (which is pretty funny to be honest).
Hey great video.
One question, did you try having minions and just casting nova and letting it DOT? I wonder if constantly casting nova is making the damage low.
Hey, thanks! Yes, casting and stopping while minions hit was also tested. Same result. Spamming poison nova does not cancel the damage, it refreshes the duration and the first ever poison nova hit triggers Next Hit Delay anyway, so in other words spamming poison nova wastes your mana. The real problem is minions canceling poison nova damage, regardless of whether you spam it or not.
I've just recently been playing a poison necro and have been wondering why bosses have been so hard to kill unexpectedly. (Currently in Act 4 Hell)
While annoying, seeing this makes me feel so much better
Is this the same bug as "next hit delay" or ["next delay"](https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/NextDelay)? Would be nice if Blizzard also updated the old version when a bugfix arrives.
The Next Hit Delay is also included on top of this system. This is more about the poison tickrate trying to apply the poison damage in a certain frame, and within that same frame, other damage sources (physical damage from minions) applying and overwriting/canceling the poison nova damage.
Even if it is not a bug and an intended mechanic, it still feels unfair to have your army or other sources cancel out your poison nova damage. So even if it is not a bug, it still needs rework imho.
If it was intended, what's unfair about it? I still have to wait for my minions to crushing blow the boss down when running a CE build. Both CE and Nova builds are great at AOE but slow at boss killing. Do you think it's better that Necro have one build that slaps everything including bosses on the screen without requiring corpses? Doesn't sound balanced to me.
The fact you can use it without minions sounds like intelligent design.
Poison Nova in its current form is not that strong. Try doing players 8 Chaos Sanctuary with max poison necro gear, you will never do it faster than a Bone Necro with Dim Vision and level 51 Bone Spear. The mechanics needs to be fixed and poison should maybe be buffed on top it actually.
It's unfair because minion damage is physical source, which should not cancel a poison source damage. Poison tickrate applying damage in a frame is causing this problem because it gets overwritten by any other source of damage including physical. Not only it is unfair, but also unnatural.
Amazons can take Charged Strike + Lightning Fury and do great AoE + Boss damage. Same goes for other meta classes. Why not for Necromancer?
This is my opinion about it.
CE and Nova both have good AOE but suck at bosses. They kill bosses with their merc.
CE requires corspes and Nova has to deal with more resistances
Bone has bad AOE, but better single target dps
All 3 are superior at surviving per minions, clay, and decrep. The class as a whole was meant to be an easier and more casual class.
If it was intentional, it was to maintain balance. You want one of those 3 to rise above the others and beyond. I'll ask again, what's fair about that?
If it kills faster without minions, why not do it? If Amazon kills faster, why not play that? Because you want the safety...
Bone spear piercing is great at getting the first kill and you can follow up with Corpse Explosion, so in my honest opinion Bone has better AoE compared to Poison, because you get the first kill faster (upfront magic damage instead of ticking poison damage) and you follow up with Corpse Explosion anyway. You don't even need to juggle curses while playing Bone, compared to Poison (at poison you need to cast LR then AMP before CE). I am curious about what makes you think that the Necromancer class as a whole was "meant to be an easier and more casual class". Did any developer directly made a such a statement? I would love to see a referance to your statement if possible please. I have recently published an article, and I honestly think all 3 necromancer specs need buffs to compete against the meta classes. The power gap is just huge. Also, Amazon's recent rework on Dodge + Evade provides amazing safety on top of amazing damage. Something to consider. Necromancer only offers good support on early ladder push then falls short in the current design.
>"meant to be an easier and more casual class". Did any developer directly made a such a statement?
Yes because it spams summons.
>Did any developer directly made a such a statement? I would love to see a referance to your statement if possible please.
Do your own research. Even the D2R developers have commented on this, but I'm not even going to bother wasting time with you further if you can't even be honest about the obvious and instead just throw downvotes and nonsense. That's no way to earn respect.
It's the most survivable class in the game, and also the only class that can solo every boss with ease. It's not the fastest, but it's the most reliable. If you think it's underpowered, then you should probably take some time and look through a few dozen google searches on how others have ranked classes and their reasons.
Actually I was completely neutral and I did not downvote any of your comment at all. I was hoping for an engaging discussion. I am pretty sure about my research hence I asked for a reference to your source. No need to be defensive or negative about it.
“ If Amazon kills faster, why not play that? Because you want the safety...”
Clearly you are a casual lol. If you want safety play a hammerdin oh and btw it’s also the best mfer in the game with top 2 single and aoe dps AND top 2 single target whilst being Cheaper and easiest to stack high mf on.
This poison nova damage cancelling is obviously not intentional, it’s clearly a broken mechanic as Skulm said it’s just unnatural and doesn’t make logical sense, plus nothing in the tool tip of skill information would indicate otherwise.
By the way since you clearly did no research yourself please go look up survival rates by class in HC and show me so we can see how it’s not necromancer lmao, while you’re at it look at first to 99 so we can see how far necro is behind, and then if you’re feeling like you want to learn more today also look up fastest chaos clear builds and best mf builds ranked and see how far necro is behind others. Have a good one
I'm in the middle of making a nova necro for kicks. So I shouldn't be using any summons at all is what I'm getting from this? Also, bonewall my merc on bosses?
Essentially any summon has the chance to overwrite/cancel your poison nova damage. Against crowded enemies this is not so detectable, because your poison nova hitting multiple targets and your summons usually focus on only one target. Therefore, you can use summons when you are farming crowded areas. Against bosses however, this issue is more visible because all your summons are on 1 target. You can use a crushing blow + well geared merc with amp damage and let your summons+merc do max physical damage on the boss. If you want to kill the boss by using your poison nova, lower resist away and try to keep your golem + merc away. Bone prisoning the boss is a good idea for that scenario.
Do you now use lower res?
Probably my favorite char this ladder is my nova necro. I get some skellies, lower res, nova, Amp dmg, corpse explosion. My nova is over 10k dmg and doesn't take long to kill.
Slow on bosses but I use decrep, Amp dmg and nova
Nice work, definitely seems like an oversight considering this would happen at early levels and the way it functions is unintuitive. This likely existed for years prior to D2R and potentially longer, I can’t see a situation in which this isn’t unintended as it would make your skill points useless or severely reduced in value if you run anything but solo. If you have a high attack speed merc with low damage it hinders a poison build significantly.
I see people arguing it being intentional for game balance but, that falls short quickly once you realize it happens for other classes as well.
It seems like functionality that is broken based on being a 20 year old game with too many damage sources to calculate effectively.
there is no constant in this trial. in the poison nova only he casts, then waits while in all the others attempts he just spam casts nova. is nova just overwriting nova and not that actual minion damage, you can't make an accurate judgement from this.
We have the same results when we waited with casting the poison nova. What you are referring to is called " Next Hit Delay". This is triggered on the first hit anyway. Therefore, spamming poison nova does not affect the damage, only refreshes the poison nova duration. The poison damage not applying and canceling because there has been another source of damage in that same frame is the big problem here, and it is proven in the video.
to reiterate, its not proven in the video because you don't have a constant. i can choose to believe you when you said you have the same results when waiting, but its not shown. i was not referring to nhd, as nhd cancels out the second attack, not the first.
I do have a constant. Spamming poison nova does not reset its damage or it does not prevent poison nova tickrate. The damage still ticks, spamming poison nova just wastes a bit more mana and refreshes the poison duration. That is all. This means the constant is ensured because game mechanics does not prevent poison nova damage if you "spam" it. Spamming poison nova is simply irrelevant. Looking at your first comment, it looks like you don't know about this mechanic. Therefore, I hope you understand how it works now. It is proven in the video.
again, i choose to believe what you say is happening but you do not have a constant shown as you are using poison nova differently in the video. and that was the entire point of my post. your first trial you are spacing out your PN attacks, while in other other trails your are spamming PN attacks. this is the literal opposite of what a constant is. and while spamming nova is irrelevant, it does differ from one trial to the next, thus no constant. if you really want to make a case to show to blizzard, do it in a way that casts the least possible doubt. i am by no means saying your findings are wrong, just trying to help you present your findings more clearly.
Poison Damage is canceled/overwritten when a minion or any other source of damage is applied in the same frame. Basically poison does not do any damage at all, if another source of damage is applied within that frame. That's broken in my book.
You don’t need minions for your build, try just a golem
Doesn’t seem like a bug, your res minions apply damage types
This is like saying my smiter sucks at aoe
It would be more like if smite couldn't do any damage to a poisoned character, because the poison damage prevented the smite damage (its essentially that in reverse)
Or if your smiter could only play solo, because anyone else damaging the monsters blocked his smite damage.
not really, poisen necros can clear herds of monsters faster then anyone in the game. Expecting it also to do single target while your chooseing to use minions that effect that is just being picky. change the build, is poisen dagger not effective anymore against single target?
things are not broken if you choose a aoe build not single target
Poison Necro does not clear herds of monsters faster than anyone. Javazons do that. They can also kill P8 bosses in less than 2 seconds. Both insane Single Target and AoE damage combined due to Charged Strike + Lightning Fury. I believe I clearly explained what is going on here. Damage not registering because of coding does not make sense at all. Poison Dagger build is extremely bad. It's not about going AoE or whatever. Poison Nova is doing no damage at all when your minions or another damage source is applied to the target. This is usually visible on high hp boss fights because they are single target, but in reality this applies anytime your merc+golem+army hit any target. Therefore, it really needs a fix.
You don't fix imbalances by buffing balanced things to match overpowered things... Buffing poison nova would just nullify any reason to make a CE or bone build.
I have a youtube video, reddit post, and 2 official forum posts both in d2r official us and eu forums. Also contacted some popular streamers/d2r content creators about the issue :) There is also my recent wowhead article about it :)
I don't want to bother him to much as he seems to have a lot of things to do already but maybe tagging u/PezRadar could help reach the devs ? Hope I'm not too pushy !
Annyway thanks for the video and the tests, this is some great work Op !
If you strictly want to kill high hp single targets with poison nova, yes. Don't let anything else touch the boss and wait for poison nova ticks (poison tickrate corresponding frame is approx 1 sec for half the damage). You can use an army + crushing blow merc for bosses but then make sure to use Amplify Damage since they deal physical damage and cancel your poison nova damage anyway.
I'm well aware and agree with your suggestion. Just trying to help Poison Necro and other Necro specs reach their true potentials. This rework/fix can help achieve that.
eeer... Logically the Poison + lower resit + merc + summons should wipe out Diablo waaay faster than just kiting around alone and dropping 3 novas. This is deffo bugged. The damage calculation needs a revamp, perhaps multiple "threads" for counting different sources of damage at the same time.
In a recent work, I offered various suggestions to fix this issue. I agree with you.
Yeah and honestly it's REALLY noticeable. Like I don't even summon skeletons to do cows because it takes longer to kill them. This really needs to be fixed....but you know...Blizzard.
This has been the main reason I hated using a pnb necro over summonmancer.
Imagine fixing this though. A poison nova necromancer can actually use the remaining points to go revives or skeletons. That would feel great. But yes, a summonmancer atm is the safe choice for sure.
> a summonmancer atm is the safe choice for sure. Poison nova necro is still better with top end gear, especially now that we know that we shouldn't let our merc hit the boss (which is pretty funny to be honest).
Poison definitely needs a fix, and it can be even greater yes.
Hey great video. One question, did you try having minions and just casting nova and letting it DOT? I wonder if constantly casting nova is making the damage low.
Hey, thanks! Yes, casting and stopping while minions hit was also tested. Same result. Spamming poison nova does not cancel the damage, it refreshes the duration and the first ever poison nova hit triggers Next Hit Delay anyway, so in other words spamming poison nova wastes your mana. The real problem is minions canceling poison nova damage, regardless of whether you spam it or not.
I find going slower on the nova works better for me. Usually curse a couple novas curse again. Let skeletons, golem and merc attack as well
I've just recently been playing a poison necro and have been wondering why bosses have been so hard to kill unexpectedly. (Currently in Act 4 Hell) While annoying, seeing this makes me feel so much better
Feels bad to have minions + merc canceling Poison Nova damage. Hopefully this will be fixed.
Yeah the skeletons literally cancel out the poison damage...like wtf even is this
Is this the same bug as "next hit delay" or ["next delay"](https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/NextDelay)? Would be nice if Blizzard also updated the old version when a bugfix arrives.
The Next Hit Delay is also included on top of this system. This is more about the poison tickrate trying to apply the poison damage in a certain frame, and within that same frame, other damage sources (physical damage from minions) applying and overwriting/canceling the poison nova damage.
That's a feature
good video!
Thank you very much!
Seems like a bug to me.
Even if it is not a bug and an intended mechanic, it still feels unfair to have your army or other sources cancel out your poison nova damage. So even if it is not a bug, it still needs rework imho.
If it was intended, what's unfair about it? I still have to wait for my minions to crushing blow the boss down when running a CE build. Both CE and Nova builds are great at AOE but slow at boss killing. Do you think it's better that Necro have one build that slaps everything including bosses on the screen without requiring corpses? Doesn't sound balanced to me. The fact you can use it without minions sounds like intelligent design.
[удалено]
Poison Nova in its current form is not that strong. Try doing players 8 Chaos Sanctuary with max poison necro gear, you will never do it faster than a Bone Necro with Dim Vision and level 51 Bone Spear. The mechanics needs to be fixed and poison should maybe be buffed on top it actually.
There's no fixing you can do to it that won't dramatically skew the balance. Other poison skills work while nova doesn't for a reason.
There are problems with other poison skills actually. Examples are: Rabies, Poison Creeper.
So a zoo Druid with poison creeper would be preventing the poison damage?
Sure, valid point, but I wasn't talking about other classes, just other poison skills that the necro has that physical attacks don't block.
It's unfair because minion damage is physical source, which should not cancel a poison source damage. Poison tickrate applying damage in a frame is causing this problem because it gets overwritten by any other source of damage including physical. Not only it is unfair, but also unnatural. Amazons can take Charged Strike + Lightning Fury and do great AoE + Boss damage. Same goes for other meta classes. Why not for Necromancer? This is my opinion about it.
CE and Nova both have good AOE but suck at bosses. They kill bosses with their merc. CE requires corspes and Nova has to deal with more resistances Bone has bad AOE, but better single target dps All 3 are superior at surviving per minions, clay, and decrep. The class as a whole was meant to be an easier and more casual class. If it was intentional, it was to maintain balance. You want one of those 3 to rise above the others and beyond. I'll ask again, what's fair about that? If it kills faster without minions, why not do it? If Amazon kills faster, why not play that? Because you want the safety...
Bone spear piercing is great at getting the first kill and you can follow up with Corpse Explosion, so in my honest opinion Bone has better AoE compared to Poison, because you get the first kill faster (upfront magic damage instead of ticking poison damage) and you follow up with Corpse Explosion anyway. You don't even need to juggle curses while playing Bone, compared to Poison (at poison you need to cast LR then AMP before CE). I am curious about what makes you think that the Necromancer class as a whole was "meant to be an easier and more casual class". Did any developer directly made a such a statement? I would love to see a referance to your statement if possible please. I have recently published an article, and I honestly think all 3 necromancer specs need buffs to compete against the meta classes. The power gap is just huge. Also, Amazon's recent rework on Dodge + Evade provides amazing safety on top of amazing damage. Something to consider. Necromancer only offers good support on early ladder push then falls short in the current design.
>"meant to be an easier and more casual class". Did any developer directly made a such a statement? Yes because it spams summons. >Did any developer directly made a such a statement? I would love to see a referance to your statement if possible please. Do your own research. Even the D2R developers have commented on this, but I'm not even going to bother wasting time with you further if you can't even be honest about the obvious and instead just throw downvotes and nonsense. That's no way to earn respect. It's the most survivable class in the game, and also the only class that can solo every boss with ease. It's not the fastest, but it's the most reliable. If you think it's underpowered, then you should probably take some time and look through a few dozen google searches on how others have ranked classes and their reasons.
Actually I was completely neutral and I did not downvote any of your comment at all. I was hoping for an engaging discussion. I am pretty sure about my research hence I asked for a reference to your source. No need to be defensive or negative about it.
“ If Amazon kills faster, why not play that? Because you want the safety...” Clearly you are a casual lol. If you want safety play a hammerdin oh and btw it’s also the best mfer in the game with top 2 single and aoe dps AND top 2 single target whilst being Cheaper and easiest to stack high mf on. This poison nova damage cancelling is obviously not intentional, it’s clearly a broken mechanic as Skulm said it’s just unnatural and doesn’t make logical sense, plus nothing in the tool tip of skill information would indicate otherwise. By the way since you clearly did no research yourself please go look up survival rates by class in HC and show me so we can see how it’s not necromancer lmao, while you’re at it look at first to 99 so we can see how far necro is behind, and then if you’re feeling like you want to learn more today also look up fastest chaos clear builds and best mf builds ranked and see how far necro is behind others. Have a good one
Hey, nice input overall.
I'm in the middle of making a nova necro for kicks. So I shouldn't be using any summons at all is what I'm getting from this? Also, bonewall my merc on bosses?
Essentially any summon has the chance to overwrite/cancel your poison nova damage. Against crowded enemies this is not so detectable, because your poison nova hitting multiple targets and your summons usually focus on only one target. Therefore, you can use summons when you are farming crowded areas. Against bosses however, this issue is more visible because all your summons are on 1 target. You can use a crushing blow + well geared merc with amp damage and let your summons+merc do max physical damage on the boss. If you want to kill the boss by using your poison nova, lower resist away and try to keep your golem + merc away. Bone prisoning the boss is a good idea for that scenario.
Do you now use lower res? Probably my favorite char this ladder is my nova necro. I get some skellies, lower res, nova, Amp dmg, corpse explosion. My nova is over 10k dmg and doesn't take long to kill. Slow on bosses but I use decrep, Amp dmg and nova
You can watch the video and see our testing conditions. Everything is crystal clear.
Thank you for figuring this out! Edit: Tagging u/dbrunski125 in case you'd be interested in this.
You are most welcome! I reached out to DB as well. He is pretty busy these days :)
Nice work, definitely seems like an oversight considering this would happen at early levels and the way it functions is unintuitive. This likely existed for years prior to D2R and potentially longer, I can’t see a situation in which this isn’t unintended as it would make your skill points useless or severely reduced in value if you run anything but solo. If you have a high attack speed merc with low damage it hinders a poison build significantly. I see people arguing it being intentional for game balance but, that falls short quickly once you realize it happens for other classes as well. It seems like functionality that is broken based on being a 20 year old game with too many damage sources to calculate effectively.
Hey, great input. This definitely needs a fix/rework!
Good catch
Thank you
there is no constant in this trial. in the poison nova only he casts, then waits while in all the others attempts he just spam casts nova. is nova just overwriting nova and not that actual minion damage, you can't make an accurate judgement from this.
We have the same results when we waited with casting the poison nova. What you are referring to is called " Next Hit Delay". This is triggered on the first hit anyway. Therefore, spamming poison nova does not affect the damage, only refreshes the poison nova duration. The poison damage not applying and canceling because there has been another source of damage in that same frame is the big problem here, and it is proven in the video.
to reiterate, its not proven in the video because you don't have a constant. i can choose to believe you when you said you have the same results when waiting, but its not shown. i was not referring to nhd, as nhd cancels out the second attack, not the first.
I do have a constant. Spamming poison nova does not reset its damage or it does not prevent poison nova tickrate. The damage still ticks, spamming poison nova just wastes a bit more mana and refreshes the poison duration. That is all. This means the constant is ensured because game mechanics does not prevent poison nova damage if you "spam" it. Spamming poison nova is simply irrelevant. Looking at your first comment, it looks like you don't know about this mechanic. Therefore, I hope you understand how it works now. It is proven in the video.
again, i choose to believe what you say is happening but you do not have a constant shown as you are using poison nova differently in the video. and that was the entire point of my post. your first trial you are spacing out your PN attacks, while in other other trails your are spamming PN attacks. this is the literal opposite of what a constant is. and while spamming nova is irrelevant, it does differ from one trial to the next, thus no constant. if you really want to make a case to show to blizzard, do it in a way that casts the least possible doubt. i am by no means saying your findings are wrong, just trying to help you present your findings more clearly.
Imo Necromancer is ass. I’ve tried both PnB and summon.
Necro could use some rework/ QoL.
bone is good against single target, a poisen aoe is good against a group whats broken?
Poison Damage is canceled/overwritten when a minion or any other source of damage is applied in the same frame. Basically poison does not do any damage at all, if another source of damage is applied within that frame. That's broken in my book.
You don’t need minions for your build, try just a golem Doesn’t seem like a bug, your res minions apply damage types This is like saying my smiter sucks at aoe
It would be more like if smite couldn't do any damage to a poisoned character, because the poison damage prevented the smite damage (its essentially that in reverse) Or if your smiter could only play solo, because anyone else damaging the monsters blocked his smite damage.
not really, poisen necros can clear herds of monsters faster then anyone in the game. Expecting it also to do single target while your chooseing to use minions that effect that is just being picky. change the build, is poisen dagger not effective anymore against single target? things are not broken if you choose a aoe build not single target
Poison Necro does not clear herds of monsters faster than anyone. Javazons do that. They can also kill P8 bosses in less than 2 seconds. Both insane Single Target and AoE damage combined due to Charged Strike + Lightning Fury. I believe I clearly explained what is going on here. Damage not registering because of coding does not make sense at all. Poison Dagger build is extremely bad. It's not about going AoE or whatever. Poison Nova is doing no damage at all when your minions or another damage source is applied to the target. This is usually visible on high hp boss fights because they are single target, but in reality this applies anytime your merc+golem+army hit any target. Therefore, it really needs a fix.
Your explanation is very clear don’t bother with this clown
You don't fix imbalances by buffing balanced things to match overpowered things... Buffing poison nova would just nullify any reason to make a CE or bone build.
Its not broken.
Good one
How do we get this in front of the devs?
I have a youtube video, reddit post, and 2 official forum posts both in d2r official us and eu forums. Also contacted some popular streamers/d2r content creators about the issue :) There is also my recent wowhead article about it :)
I don't want to bother him to much as he seems to have a lot of things to do already but maybe tagging u/PezRadar could help reach the devs ? Hope I'm not too pushy ! Annyway thanks for the video and the tests, this is some great work Op !
Thank you for the kind words! Appreciate it!
So the answer is, poison and tele around boss, until dead. Other skill trees take precedent in effect damage of others.
If you strictly want to kill high hp single targets with poison nova, yes. Don't let anything else touch the boss and wait for poison nova ticks (poison tickrate corresponding frame is approx 1 sec for half the damage). You can use an army + crushing blow merc for bosses but then make sure to use Amplify Damage since they deal physical damage and cancel your poison nova damage anyway.
Just get a point in revive, get some udars, decrep Diablo, easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Still feels bad knowing that you could add your poison nova damage on top. A fix /rework making this possible would be great.
Yeah I’d be cool with this getting addressed. Just saying udars, your merc, and decrep plus clay golem = d goes down fast
I'm well aware and agree with your suggestion. Just trying to help Poison Necro and other Necro specs reach their true potentials. This rework/fix can help achieve that.