I am new to the scout class. I see we can use poisons. Do they make much of an impact that I should ALWAYS keep them on and up to the highest lvl I can get? What is the difference bewtween them? Can I use TWO poisons (since I have two charm slots)? Should I go Alchemist and make my own (crafting is long and tedious for me)? What poisons should I be using? Is this just a skill that is passive or do I work on it? Any help is most appreciated.
ok, first, never equip the poison in your charm slot 2nd, what poisons you use depend on what class you are, in general you will want to be using caustic unless you are an assassin and have AAs towards the hemotoxin one. (I think one of the rogues has AAs that improve vitality breech but not sure as I don't play one) You can have 3 different types of poisons running at a time, red (damage) Blue (utility) and purple (stat debuffs) Red see point 2 Blue depending on what you are doing and what you have available will change fairly often, fettering is useful if you have to kite mobs for some reason, turgors slows the mobs attack speed, ignorant bliss decreases your threat, and stupifying stuns the mob (not available till high level) Purple you will probably want to use gracelessness (reduces mobs defense) for damage or enfeebling (reduces mobs physical attack) for survivability. Other options are warding ebb (reduces mobs magical resistances) and cerebral ebb (reduces mobs magical attack) oh yeah, almost forgot, right click on the poisons you are wanting to use and select turn auto consume on, much better then doing it manually as it will reapply mid fight
Well the previous poster already covered the basics, so I'll just further expand on things. Red Poisons Unless you're a Brigand which can get an additional +25% effectiveness out of the Vitality Breach poison, you'll want to use Caustic poison. Period. Even top Predators who can upgrade Hemotoxin don't use it. The issue is that the Hemotoxin is only more worth it if all of its ticks go through. Yet because of the high proc rates on upper level Red poisons, Hemotoxin has a tendency to always proc again mid tick cycle of the previous proc. This causes the old partially complete cycle to end and the new one to begin. As a result, you lost poison based dps by using Hemotoxin. Now if you're on a PvP server, there is a power draining poison called Mental Breack (which Swashbucklers can upgrade) that you might want to look at. But that's a specialized application. Blue Poisons For grouping, people use Ignorant Bliss for the hate loss proc. But for soloing, it's a mixed bag. Rangers use the snare poison (whose name I forget) and some Battlegrounds playing scouts also use it for battle field control. Yet my personal choice for soloing is the level 62 stun poison called Stupefying. The Stupefying poison never gets upgraded further, but free stuns are never a bad thing. Purple Poisons Now this is a really opinionated subject. My first suggestion is to see what kind of Purple poison your class specific AA tree upgrades. If you're not sure what to use in a group setting, then the upgraded poisons are never a bad choice for your class. However each poison now has a special function after the stat consolidation system of SF. Each one of these poisons will lower the main ability score for one of the class archetypes. This may influence your decision. As a Brigand, we upgrade Gracelessness poison by +25%. This is my personal poison of choice. It lowers a target's defense, which is good for Heroic grouping. Yet it also helps me get away with using my Defensive Stance on blue content and lower while still having an excellent hit rate, which is good for Soloing and Battlegrounds. As if this isn't enough of a reason, Gracelessness also penalizes Agility. My targets of choice in the Battlegrounds are scouts and mages, so this poison can even lower incoming scout dps for free as a side effect. If you've got a lot of casters running around with you, then the poison that lowers a mob's resist scores can be a good thing. It's like the pro caster version of Gracelessness. Yet there are also poisons which lower a mob's offensive combat skills or offensive casting skills. Both types of Purple poison also have their place, but I really only use them when soloing very specific named mobs.
For Red poisons there is also Di'Zoks mental strike, for longer, mana intensive fights I usually have some on me. It's power feed is less than mental break but it's still keeps me close to full unless there's a power drain and it has a damage component that helps because dropping caustic is tough with the damage it can put out in higher levels.
