Poison: A Primer

Vanden:

The OP's experiences with EBs don't parallel yours, and mine don't either. Some EBs were more of a pain than they were worth to fight solo (Woodsman, Zenflower, Mynx, and Recluse come to mind). And, I did get defeated once or twice by a few others (I believe Arch A toasted my minions and then my MM once, and I think Calystix and his helpers did once or twice as well). But, every other EB went down smoothly on the first try for my necro/poison, fighting at +1 level to my MM.

I didn't have provoke or challenge, but I would habitually open boss/EB battles with weaken, envenom, and neurotoxic breath to take initial aggro. I'd send in a pet with noxious gas afterward. I typically waited because pets with noxious gas tend to draw heavy aggro and I liked taking out the small fry near the EB early in such fights, to have the EB duking it out alone with my pet that has noxious gas, and then match the EB's determination to take out the pet with noxious gas on it against my ability to heal that pet with alkaloid. That usually went very well, by the way.

When fighting bosses, I would begin by stacking envenom, weaken, and neurotoxic breath. During that time the lich and grave knights stack their -to hit (for which the lich was heavily slotted with enhancements). Bosses fought like Big Balls of Whiff after that initial volley, in most cases, and in those cases where that didn't happen a follow-up noxious gas on a grave knight that was in melee range was more than good enough to knock a couple of levels off of the boss and make them much easier to defeat.

The most difficult battles with bosses would be when there were two of them together, as happens with some missions. As part of a boss duo, consiglieres could be a real pain for my necro/poison, as their singularity knocked my minions away and kept both bosses upright longer, plus they and their pet had an annoying habit of targeting and severely damaging my MM. I definitely learned that getting hit with cars and toilets is not as much fun as hitting mobs with cars and toilets. Malta bosses can also be difficult foes, when paired up with another boss.

Incidentally, with ranged pets like mercs, you have a lot of freedom to space them out when fighting EBs. Move your tier 1s to one place, your tier 2s to a little ways away, and send in your commando with noxious gas on him. Splitting up your minions is your best defense against AOEs, in addition to taking initial aggro yourself while you stack your first round of debuffs.

PS: Echoing what some others have said, this is a helpful guide. Somebody who would like to learn about the poison set would definitely benefit from reading it. Kudos to the OP.

Recharge times are calculated by dividing their base value by 1 + buff or debuff values.

So an attack that recharges in 10 seconds with 100% +Recharge is: 10 / ( 1.0 + 1 ) or 5 seconds.

An attack that recharges in 10 seconds under a 65% -Recharge is: 10 / ( 1.0 - 0.65 ) or 28.57 seconds.

Is this not how it works? Because that's a heck of a lot more than 33% longer recharge.

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