More on 1.07 Poison Damage from items: So, I've known for a long time that in 1.07, weapons with poison pre- & suffixes and socketed with emeralds were very effective, but I've never really looked at how multiple items that supply poison damage stacked before, mostly because there are so few other items that spawn poison affixes: rings and amulets can get 'of Blight' (2-7 poison over 3 secs), circlets can spawn 'Septic' (+7 poison over 2 secs)(blue only) prefix & 'of Blight/Venom/Pestilence' (2-7/4-14/12-28 poison over 3/3/4 sec) suffixes, and jewels of Envy (which are usually weaker than in 1.09+...instead of a flat +20 poison over 2 sec, its 9 - (9-28, rolled when spawned) over 2 sec... There are no elemental affixes on charms in 1.07, so no poison charms.
However, I've recently been using a crafted bow with the 'Pestilent' prefix (+68 poison over 2 sec)...I needed to fill all the sockets with Fervor jewels to get IAS up, so there are no emeralds socketed in it, and when I equipped a rare ring with 'of Blight', I noticed that my poison duration jumped up to 5 seconds. I dug up another ring of Blight, and her poison duration jumped to 8 seconds!
In modern patches, poison duration from multiple items is
averaged, but it turns out that in 1.07 they are
summed!! This is potentially a MAJOR difference!! Poison Bite damage rates are also summed, but compared to whats possible on weapons, most of these items provide fairly trivial bite damage... its the increase in duration they can provide that allows a good poison weapon to rack up truely impressive damage numbers.
To test this, I loaded a MP game and had my Zon shoot my Barb (I reduced his Poison Rez to 0 first)...with just the bow, he took 69 poison damage over 2 seconds, with the bow and 1 ring, he took ~178 poison damage over 5 sec, and with the bow & 2 rings, he took ~295 poison damage over 8 seconds...I also dug up a Pestilent Kris and poked him with pretty much the same results, so it appears there is no difference in whether the poison is applied with a melee or missile weapon!
I haven't tested with the Pestilent of Anthrax 4PEmerald bow with 2 rings yet, but math says it would do 2547 - 2697 poison damage over 16 seconds
I also haven't tested how this interacts with poison skills, maybe after RFL... (Poison Dagger Necro might actually get a nice boost from the poison automod on NecroHeads!)
WoRG