So, I have read from multiple sources (albeit most a couple years old) that poisons contribute very little to overall assassin dps. I have only just betrayed to assassin and last played 2 1/2 years ago as a ranger. What are the mechanics behind this? Is this a difference between ranger/sin. A change in game design? What game mechanics contribute to low poison dps for sins? Currently I use caustics on my noob, just raiding sin. Some say Hemo. Some say metal breach. Some say it doesnt even matter
Because of how dps has scaled up over the last few years, poison dps is fairly low comparatively. The level 90 and level 92 poisons got a decent boost, but they're still of a minimal effect when compared to the rest of your dps. Mental breach is only suggested because it may help with power drain fights to some degree. Unless they go back to letting poisons crit, or allowing them to be affected by potency at least, they're not going to be a substantial part of your dps.
Basically This ^ I just run mental breach full time. DPS gained by poisons? Maybe 5k. DPS lost by having no power? Well over 5k.
Yeah I also run Mental Breach full time now. I also still use Bliss and one of the Debuffs but honestly they don't matter much anymore either. That reminds me I need to respec my Shadows tree since I think I still have the +poison dmg one.
i use heal and debuff poisons in bg's but that's about it. when you get mana drained mental breach isn't going to do anything unless you get crazy lucky on procs from auto attack and running out of mana from spamming ca's just doesn't happen anymore and hasn't for quite some time. poisons, all of them are useless outside of pvp
Posion not useless the 3 i like to use outside of raids are the lifetap one the slow mob attack speed and the resist debuff, wich makes your posion do even more damage. Lifetap posion heals my character for 7k on crit heal and even more with the resist debuff posion on mob. It amazing what i can fight single player now. With attack speed debuff makes huge differance how much i get hit. For alt advancement i spec everything that increase my posion damage, but not the over time stuff at all. Why wait for damage over time. Assasin have alot of skills that are posion damage based so having your AA max out damage with posion is good idea. In groups if i dont have my hit point lifetap posion on i die alot more i notice as assasin the healers of course heal main tank and i have been doing good at keeping my Health up by myself, lifetap posion and mark of assasin wich you can add a heal effect to also. Also for your aa on heroic you can make your Assasinate skill go off 2x if you max one out (bottom right) Dang good class even get touch of nightshade a lifetap skill. Good self buffs also. I am doing over 600,000 on best skill assasinate and it goes off 2x when used. Should be able to increase that to over 5 million with best gear in game. DPS does increase alot with posion if you want can get strongest posion at lv 95 to do over 18k damage per hit easy and go off during the entire fight. Have fun, myself i think assasin best class in game easy ^.^
With or without AAs assigned to poisons, they still results in less than 1% of your total DPS even in entry level raiding. There is some merit to Vitality Breach poisons and Stun poisons for soloing/grouping, but in a raid setting it wouldn't matter if you actually ran out. You probably wouldn't even notice. The problem is, with so many AAs available, even if you spec out of poisons, you're only picking up other very minor utility that nets out about the same DPS, so again, spec it or don't, it doesn't matter. I have a love/hate relationship with poisons. If they were extremely useful, or even contributed enough DPS/Utility to matter at end-game, the prices would probably go up substantially because Preds/Rogues would be handicapped without them. I've never agreed with having to buy your DPS, and I feel rangers' pain when it comes to arrows, because those do make a difference, and look at the cost of the top-tier arrows right now. You either have to craft them, have a guildy craft them, or go broke.
As Eileithia said ...we are lucky if dmg from crafted poisons equals 1% of total DPS even with the related AA buffs. I would be happy with forking out the plat for crafted DMG poisons if their DMG contribution was made meaningful. I have no problems keeping stocked with Dragon Bone Arrows(since the fix to MA/Flurry burning thru ammo its a non issue), raid food/drink, raid DEX potions. Adding one more worthy consumable in the mix would not only be fine but welcomed if it mattered.
Difference between Dragon Bone Arrow in terms of DPS vs other type of arrows is more or less what Caustic Poison parses. (for Rangers) So if you fork the money for Dragon Bone Arrow, no reason not to spend it on Poisons. Also Mental Breach does nothing, if it's a power drain fight you are going to run out of power with or without it unless you have other sources of power regeneration. So running with Mental Breach is not worth it in a raid setting, you might as well run a damage poison. However I do wish for poisons to be revamped and become a little more essential than they are at the moment.
True. But as I see it.....ranged dmg without arrows = ZERO so we have to have arrows........if I have to have something i'm gonna have the best. For me the cost of Dragon bone -vs- anything else is insignificant so why not. DMG without poisons is essentially equal to DMG with poisons. I don't have to have poisons........and since they are so crappy since i don't have to have them i'm not gonna worry if I even have them or not. I run all 3 types of poisons mostly out of practice not because it really matters.
I use all 3 potions/poisons, red,blue and purple. I put them on auto consume. Why? Because you can! Everything you can do to help your group/raid out DO IT. Yes they don't add a lot but can be handy. Blue potion can debuff/detaunt depending on what you need. Reds can DOT/DD. Some of your skill depend on target being poisoned in order to work, So they are necessary! Purples are debuffing. They all can be used at the same time so Why Not?!
Dark Elf or Freeblood assassins with maxed out Poison perks actually do get a decent use out of them. You can easily get just as much dmg per trigger of poison as you do per (non-crit) melee hit at high levels, and at lower levels you're gonna do more with poisons period then you do with melee. Best combo I've found is the mastercrafted versions of Ignorant Bliss to reduce aggro (on raids this does make a noticeable difference as your major stealth/flank attacks can generate a ton of aggro), Warding Ebb (drops all resistances so both your poisons and your casters spells do more), and Hemotoxin (Dmg plain and simple). Still isn't going to be as much dmg as your end game abilities or crit attacks do but you'll notice enemies losing HP a lot quicker especially on solo.
poison does not do "decent" damage unless you're parsing 50k. poison damage has not scaled and will not scale properly until they allow them to be modified by stats again. even if they fixed the damage to be relevant with out being modifiable all that would do is make poison damage OP for lesser geared players.
This is a rare occurrence and I wouldn't expect to see it again, but Dav is correct. Also your big qualifier is actually non-crit melee hit. By the time you get to 95, if you don't have enough critical chance to critical on every hit in solo and heroic content, you're not trying hard enough. Solo, most mobs won't live long enough for you to really tell much difference. Ignorant bliss doesn't do enough. I'd still use caustic over hemotoxin, hemotoxin's biggest issue is you'll very rarely ever get the full value out it, because you'll get another proc coming up close behind to overwrite the one you just had land.
Aran try a spec used by top raiding assassins and you'll see your DPS improve tremendously. INT line is a huge waste these days. Maybe with your gear it won't make as much a difference, but you should at least have Steward's armor if you can. Mental breech has helped my ranger quite a bit. I'll be drained but an auto attack will proc some power and it will give me enough to cast at least a couple more CA's, gives me at least some power until mana flow kicks in.
This is probably a dumb question and should be posted somewhere else, Assassin or Ranger for pvp, I dont mind one is close combat one is ranged, which is the least dependent on gear
