Poison Nova

Emits an expanding ring of concentrated poison.

Poison Nova is the level 30 Necromancer spell at the end of the Poison and Bone tree's poison branch (requires Poison Explosion; it unlocks nothing). It fires poison bolts in every direction from the caster, and each bolt poisons what it hits: 50–90 over 2 seconds at level 1, 400–440 over 2 seconds at level 20. Unlike Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion, the length is fixed at 2 seconds, so every point goes into the rate and the damage per second is the total halved. Mana is a flat 20, and the Basin puts the ring's reach at about 11⅓ yards.

The numbers

• Poison damage is the table's poison rate multiplied by the length (50 frames) and divided by 256. The rate starts at EMin 16 and EMax 29 and rises by the same five brackets for both: +4 a level to level 8, +6 to 16, +9 to 22, +14 to 28 and +16 past that (EMinLev1–5 and EMaxLev1–5). That gives 50–90 at level 1, 175–215 at level 10, 400–440 at level 20, 818–859 at level 30. The range is 40 wide at every level, since the min and max brackets are identical.
• Poison length is ELen 50 frames with no per-level columns: 2 seconds at every level, so it is left out of the table. The Basin's tables give the per-second figure as exactly half the total: 200–220 a second at level 20.
• Mana is 20 (mana 20, lvlmana 0) at every level.

The damage reads the full skill level, so +skills count. The synergy reads hard points only (blvl).

How it works

Poison Nova is a missile cast (srvmissilea "poisonnova"): no attack roll, no weapon damage, no leech. Its casting speed is set by Casting Speed and faster cast rate. The Basin's rules for the bolts:

• Bolts are fired in all directions from the caster's position, so the Necromancer stands in the middle of the ring and the pack around him is what gets hit.
• A bolt is destroyed on impact, and the skill has a next-hit delay of 4 frames, which normally prevents more than one bolt from hitting a single target per cast.
• The ring covers a radius of about 11⅓ yards, the Basin's measurement.

The damage is poison (EType "pois"), read against the target's poison resistance (Dealing Elemental Damage, Resistances and Immunities) and applied over the 2 seconds as Poison Damage describes. A poison immune takes nothing. Because the length is 2 seconds, recasting is what keeps the poison up.

Because every bolt carries the full 2-second poison and the next-hit delay stops a target taking two, the nova is at its best against a crowd: one cast poisons the whole ring for the same 20 mana as one target.

Synergies and +skills

The synergy is EDmgSymPerCalc (Poison Dagger.blvl + Poison Explosion.blvl) × par8, Param8 10, printed as two tooltip lines:

• Poison Dagger: +10% Poison Damage per Level
• Poison Explosion: +10% Poison Damage per Level

Both read blvl, hard points only, so +skills from items do not feed them. The Basin's older value is also 10% a level, so the table and the wiki agree. Poison Nova in turn feeds Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion by hard points, as their pages show. Items with +% Poison Skill Damage apply as the stat page describes.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else; the poison is then read against the player's poison resistance and ticks over the 2 seconds. The Basin's page records no other player-versus-player rule for this skill. See Player versus Player.

Build notes

• Level 20 is 400–440 over 2 seconds for 20 mana; a level 30 nova, reached with +10 skills, is 818–859 over the same 2 seconds for the same 20 mana, since the brackets past level 22 are the steepest (+14, then +16 a level).
• A hard point and a +skill are worth the same on the nova itself; the 40 hard points in Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion are worth +400%, which no item bonus replaces.
• The 2-second length means the damage lands fast but has to be recast often; casting speed, not duration, sets the output.