kwikster wrote:
Here's the problem with that. Show me a zon who can stand toe to toe with hell Baal and live without a healer spamming hb. In order to get enough dr/sorbs/res to do that they give up a ton of dmg. Also making DS hit for that dmg and using current 6 sec time period would equate to some massive dps numbers. Using my current psn zon, which is lvl 74, (my gear sucks) I'm at 100k plague over 8.1 sec. That's about 12k dps. Swapping it to DS without changing duration would net 17k dps. Unacceptable. While I agree some poison builds need a tweak, this isn't a good one.
Poison Necromancers deal with the same issues (being an extremely frail character having to pop into a bosses face), yet they're still a very strong build. They also do more damage than a poison zon and receive ~50% free pierce that can possibly break immunes.
You could actually argue Zons have better survivability than Necromancers given Strategy, Perfection, and better FHR breakpoints and waaay better FBR breakpoints.
Even if switching Disease Spray & Plague Javelin damage did increase a Poison Zon's overall damage, it brings it more in line with a Necromancer as far as risk and reward is concerned. (A lower duration poison, while more damaging, is also much riskier with the need to apply it more often)
The number one problem with Poison Zon's is that they have extremely high damage with ZERO repercussions. Just about every other build has some sort of limitation or repercussion for attacking, be it ranged counters, having to get into melee range, or requiring the boss to be static and not move. Forcing them into melee range changes the entire dynamic of the build, but doesn't absolutely destroy the build. Plus, you have a ranged, safe option if getting into melee range isn't safe or plausible for a given situation.
Personally, I think its a great idea that brings the build in line with other Poison builds, and a decent alternative to Poison Absorbs being implemented. The damage would may still deserve a slight tweaking, but not a big one.