Some Questions About Poisons

Mayanpup

I have dabbled in Alchemy but not seriously.

1) Does the application of poison from a weapon occur as often as a normal weapon enchantment (20%)? I understand the poison replaces the enchantment until the poison effect ends.
2) Are poison effects also influenced by the Charged and Infused Traits on weapons?
3) Can poison effects eventually do more damage than enchantments as your Alchemy skill grows?

dpencil1

Enchants don't have a proc chance, just a cool down. So you usually get better uptime with enchants.

I do believe Infused does effect poisons. Charged probably is too when applicable.

At max level, enchants still net more dps than poisons. Poisons can provide good proc burst or utility like resource drain.

davey1107

Ignore some of the advice in the other reply, lol

1. When poison is equipped on a weapon, it completely overrides any enchantment. Poisons have a 20% proc chance on any light, heavy or weapon ability while using that weapon. Then there's generally a 10 second cool down. Cool,down is listed on thentool tip of each poison.

2. Charged doesn't work w poisons because they don't apply what the game considers status effects. This seems counterintuitive, but it's how it works infused is for enchants specifically, so poisons aren't affected.

3. Your alchemy skill doesn't make your poisons stronger, other than the fact that you can make higher level or three trait items.

Poisons can outweigh enchants in certain scenarios. I find this especially true for stam characters. They're also more versatile, so you can tailor them to what you need. For example, my stamblade can throw a ravage stam and magic poison on for pvp, then swap for a disease poison for pve. Or in some end game trials there might be certain types of damage that are superior, warranting swapping.

Somewhat related, note that as a general rule, the fewer things a poison does, the stronger each is. In other words, say a poison does 2,000 ravage health poison damage per second. Add decrease armor, and the poison damage might drop to 1,500 per second. Add lower weapon crit and thempoison damage might drop to 1,000 per second. When mixing poisons, read the values on the tool tip.