Poison/Acid/LitAura Damage[G5]

[Slariton]

...appears to be pretty constant, regardless of the strength of the attack that caused it. At any rate, my tests with 3 Battle Magic and 17 Battle Magic produced exactly the same results. Stronger attacks just make the condition last longer.

 

This suggests that these effects are more useful at low levels, but also that they are very useful for all singletons, including those who are not magic-oriented. On the other hand, it suggests that high-level status-inflicting creations may not be the best way to inflict them; replacing your artila with a wingbolt and just casting searer once will definitely be more efficient.

 

Damage for poison is around 30, acid is around 55, and lightning aura is around 90.

[Alorael at Large]

The value of the various damage at the end of the turn effects goes up as battle length goes up. That means they actually do better than other kinds of damage as you raise the difficulty, because over more rounds of combat you'll do more damage. Less proportional to total enemy health, maybe, but all your attacks suffer from that shortcoming.

 

Poison and acid and lightning aura therefore shine in boss fights, but they're also surprisingly good against swarms. Instead of picking off enemies one by one you can try to poison many, particularly with haste or rotdhizons. Against one foe, the most damage you can do with acid per turn is around 55. Against 10 foes, you can hope to do 550 damage per round.

 

—Alorael, who also much prefers to have enemies with almost no health left poisoned so he doesn't have to waste attacks finishing them off. This isn't a real or distinct benefit of poison and poison-like effects, but it help keep him happy.

[Slariton]

Correction: the value of the *first shot* of that effect goes up dramatically. The value of additional shots is much lower on any difficulty setting since it doesn't increase the damage much. So Acid Spray is always very useful, but a Searing Artila whose attack does 80 less direct damage than a Wingbolt's, will still be less effective than a wingbolt -- even ignoring the fact that you can cast the acid yourself. Taking that into account, a vlish will be better than the searing artila.

[Randomizer]

Linger damage spells and attacks are more damage and go onto the next target. This allows you to have targets taking damage in later rounds while you work your way through a group so even on torment they start to reach the point where they flee from damage or drop completely instead of taking them out one by one.

 

Jeff did tweak the damages some so acid is more effective than in early betas.