Poison Creeper

Summon a vine that spreads disease to all it contacts.

Poison Creeper is the Druid's level 1 vine (Summoning tree, no prerequisite), the root of the vine line that unlocks Carrion Vine. The table calls it "Plague Poppy". It is a single summon that travels underground and poisons whatever it reaches; its one real number is the poison, 12–18 over 4 seconds at level 1 and 300–331 at level 20, which Rabies hard points raise by 10% each.

The numbers

• Poison length is a flat 100 frames (ELen), 4 seconds at every level; the tooltip's length line never changes, so it is not in the table.
• Poison damage is the EMin/EMax columns with their five brackets, in the table's own per-frame units: EMin 16 at level 1, then +16 a level to level 16, +32 to 22, +64 to 28, +80 past that (EMinLev1–5); EMax 24, then +16 to 8, +18 to 16, +36 to 22, +68 to 28, +84 past that. The tooltip multiplies by the 100-frame length to print the damage over the full 4 seconds. The bracket steps show as the jump from 187–204 at level 15 to 300–331 at level 20 and 775–837 at level 30.
• Mana is a flat 8 at every level.
• The vine's life is calc1 = Param3 × (lvl − 1) = +50% a level over base; the Basin's D2R table prints it as 50 at level 1 and 525 at level 20. Its level is calc2 = ¾ of your character level + the skill level.

Every line reads lvl, so +skills from items raise the damage and the life.

How it works

The vine attacks with "Vine Attack" (sumskill1) at the vine's level. The Basin's page describes the attack as a static size-3 missile laid on the ground: any hostile unit standing on it takes the poison, each mat normally applies to a target once, and the mats last longer as the skill levels. Its D2R table lists min(2 + slvl, 24) mats of 3 + slvl seconds each. The damage is poison, so it is reduced by the target's Poison Resist and ticks over the 4-second length rather than landing at once; see Poison Damage and Dealing Elemental Damage.

What the vine is not: the Basin says it cannot be damaged while underground, auras, buffs and debuffs do not apply to it, Knockback does not apply and it cannot be put into hit recovery. Its drain effectiveness is 0%, so it never leeches. The row carries item_pierce_poison_immunity as a passive, which lets the caster's Monster Poison Immunity is Sundered apply to its poison; the Basin's page states the same for D2R.

Only one of Poison Creeper, Carrion Vine or Solar Creeper can be out at a time; summoning another vine dispels the one you have.

Synergies and +skills

One synergy: EDmgSymPerCalc = Rabies.blvl × Param8 with Param8 = 10, +10% poison damage per hard point in Rabies. It reads blvl, so only placed points count. Poison Creeper in turn appears on Rabies's tooltip as a synergy of its own; see Rabies for that line.

Against players

The Basin's page says nothing about Poison Creeper against players. A player's own hit on another player is cut to 17% (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer), see Player versus Player; the vine's poison is a pet's attack and the page adds no rule for it.

Build notes

• The damage brackets widen late: level 1 to 15 adds about 175 damage, level 15 to 20 adds about 115 and level 20 to 30 adds about 475, so +skills past 20 are worth more per level than the early points.
• 20 hard points in Rabies are +200% poison damage on the vine; the Rabies points also pay off on a werewolf.
• Mana is a flat 8, and the vine cannot be hit underground, so recasting is cheap and rarely needed.