poison damage calculation question

[dta]

I've read the Tao of Poison and tried out the damage calculator page too.

However, I've noted some discrepancies in the actual game compared with the Poison Damage Calculator.


Recently (single-player v1.09), I noticed the vendor selling a pestilent warscythe of venom.
"Pestilent" by itself is supposed to give 275 poison damage over 6 seconds.
"of Venom" by itself gives 21 poison damage over 4 seconds.

In the Tao of Poison, I noted that for a prefix/suffix of poison on the same item (eg. weapon or charm), the poison rate is added and so is the poison length.

Thus, 275.39 / 6 = 45.90 / sec
And, 21.09 / 4 = 5.27 / sec

The length added = 6 + 4 = 10 seconds.
The rate added = 45.90 + 5.27 = 51.17 poison dmg/sec

Therefore, the pestilent/venom weapon should be doing 511 or 512 poison damage over 10 seconds. This same result is calculated by the Poison Damage Calculator.

However, the actual pestilent warscythe of venom that I saw being sold by the vendor (I have a screenshot, unfortunately haven't gotten space to upload it yet) is 499 poison damage over 10 seconds.


=> now I'm wondering why it's 499 poison damage over 10 seconds and not 512 poison damage over 10 seconds.



Another thing would be the sample pestilent/pestilence weapon screenshot shown in the Tao of Poison page. If you use the damage calculator, it'll say 616 poison dmg over 11 seconds, but the one shown on that screen shot is only 509 poison over 10 seconds. Now, I think I've read that there's a 255 frames cap (10.2 seconds), so maybe that's the reason for the discrepancy.

But in my case above, 10 seconds (pestilent=6 + venom=4) doesn't seem to hit the 255 frames cap which affects the displayed screen calculation, maybe can someone explain how to arrive at 499 poison damage over 10 seconds?

[adeyke]

I thought it could be a rounding error and thus checked the numbers myself.

Pestilent is 470 bd/frame, 150 frame duration (275 damage over 6 seconds).
of Venom is 54 bd/frame, 100 frame duration (21 damage over 4 seconds).

Together, they'd be 524 bd/frame, 250 frame duration (511 damage over 10 seconds).

Looks like the same thing you got. I'm not sure of the reason for the discrepancy, then.

[dta]

Thanks for the verification. I'm wondering if a toxic weapon of venom (also 10 seconds duration) would display:

150.39 / 5 = 30.08
50.29 /5 = 10.06

30.08 + 10.06 = 40.14 ==> 401 poison dmg over (5+5=) 10 seconds


It's difficult to get a vendor to show up a toxic weapon of venom, but I have this feeling that maybe such an item may not show up as 401 poison over 10 seconds. Maybe there's a D2 item creation utility that can create a toxic weapon of venom and then load it up in Diablo 2 to see if it indeed will show as 401 poison / 10 seconds or not. (also to test the other combinations which have a combined duration of >= 10 seconds)