Poisons ActivationFollow

To use a poison make sure you equip it into your "Activatible" slot. Once there, right click on the poison, then left click on "Use". This will apply the poison (you will see a yellowish progress bar that takes about 2 seconds). You should now see the poison in your "Buffs" bar. It looks like a little green tinged dagger I think.

As a side note, there is a bug that currently will force you to unequip, and reequip activatible items (including poison) in order to "use" them.

In Qeynos, poisons can be purchased at the Alchemist shop in South Qeynos. Bring up your map with "m" turn the "fog" off, and the shop is listed when you bring your mouse curser over it.

Make sure you check, and compare your poison skill to the ones being sold by the vendors, to insure that you can use what they sell.

As Wrake mentioned, make sure to check your skill numbers against the poison you're buying. I believe the big patch bugged poisons a few tiers up from my swashy's current poison abilities. I bought one because it had blue text in the name, only to find out that it was some 100 skill points higher then what I could use.

There is a very good in depth post on poisons in Sony's site but I can't reach it. I'll make sure to come back and post it when I can get to it. In the meantime, here you go:

All poisons come in one of four types, based on how big the initial hit is, and how big the DOT (Damage Over Time) component is. I believe this is true even for player made poisons but don't quote me on that. Testing was done that confirms that the purple colored poisons will outdamage the other three types in almost all circumstances (and come in a close second in those few circumstances when they're not number one).

Poisons will proc off of any weapon you use, once they're activated (I've gotten my poison to proc off of both hits from Strangling Shot).

Two poisons of the same color will not stack so if you're grouped with another poison user, make sure you switch the type of poison you use.

You can activate as many poisons as you wish but only the most recently activated poison will work.

Store bought poisons go in gaps of 50 skill wise (50, 100, 150, 200). Player made poisons tend to fall in between these number gaps. What this means is that if you rely on storebought poisons alone, there will be times when your poison works well, and times when it does not. The flip side of this (unless this changed since the last time I checked prices) is that the COMPONENTS for player made poisons cost several times what store bought poisons do. You can take your pick depending on how much cash you have. You can use a poison that cons grey to you but it will proc at a lower rate.

Poison will proc more often on One-Hand weapons then they will if you have two Dual Wield weapons. So, when you decide on weapons, the choice concerning poison is more poison procs, or more melee damage from Dual Wield.

Store bought poisons are two uses per vial. Player made poisons can have as much as four uses per vial, depending on what you buy.


*edit: I found that post. Here you go: *

Edited, Fri Jan 21 11:13:55 2005 by arcainyx

Edited, Fri Jan 21 11:15:47 2005 by arcainyx

There is another aspect to this.

If you use a poison with a large DoT (Damage over Time) element then proccing too frequently is wasting the poison since it simply over-writes the existing DoT. The poison lasts 12 hours or a fixed number of procs (100 iirc). Having a slow poison proc all the time will run you out of poison for little extra damage.

The recommendation is Purple poisons for highest damage total but they are mostly DoT damage. Perhaps it is worth switching to Yellow poisons when going to 1-handed. They are mostly DD with small DoT.

For example I'm using Catacomb Sludge which does a feeble 8 initial DD then 44 per tick for a total of 184 damage. I dual-wield so this is fine.

Perhaps for 1-handed I should use Caress of the Spectre which does 62 initial damage and 13 per tick for a total of 114 damage.

Let's have a look

Now I don't know how much less the proc rate is for dual wield but in a two minute fight (20 ticks) I know I get several procs dual-wielding. Each lasts 24 seconds (4 ticks).

Maximum damage from Purple is 184 x 5 = 920 damage without overlap.

If I, dual-wielding, proc 4 times without overlap I will do 736. (4 x 8 initial plus 4 x 4 x 44).

If I go 1-handed and proc 8 times I can still only do 944 because of the overwriting. (8 x 8 initial plus 20 x 44)

If I switch to yellow I do 8 x 62 initial plus 20 ticks of 13 for 756 damage

Red interestingly would do 8 x 45 plus 20 x 20 = 760.

Player made Hateful Indulgence does around 988 in the same 1H fight if you can a) find it and b) use it.

Now if the proc rates are widely different from my 2x assumption then these figures don't help. However my gut feeling is that they are between 1.5 and 2. The higher the proc rate the more it is worth having a heavy DD.

Personally I'll take the slightly lower damage and add it to the extra melee damage from dual-wielding. I also make my poisons last twice as long

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*all info drawn from the thread on SoE boards and personal experience

I hope you didn't think I meant one handers were better than duel wielding, quite the opposite. Duel wield weapons are usually the fastest out there, and along with there being 2 of them hitting at a time, doubles your chances for a poison proc.

Duel wielding combined with poison will always be the most efficent, and damaging sort of melee there is. The only time I've EVER not duel wielded (other than using my bow) has been for fun when I was showing off my Weakend Ghoulbane to a Pally buddy of mine =0P but promptly switched back when we were killing mobs.

Its a waste of potions, Only the most recent one activated will actualy proc.