Poison and Weapon Enchantments Mechanics

Mr_Arce88 · August 2020

Ok, so it is ridiculous to me that this game provides 0 explanations for how it works. I tried finding info online, but most of it was quite old. Everything could change 5 times by now, judging by various patch notes for previous patches. I will post below what I found and could some kind soul either prove them right or wrong? I play on PS4 so I have no addons to test anything, not to mention that this should be info provided by game creators, not extracted by players...

Poisons:

Cooldown: 10 sec
Applies: 20% on LA, HA, weapon ability
Only one poison can be up (so no firing back bar poison via endless hail while on front bar)

Enchantments:

Weapon enchantments share cooldowns. If a player is dual wielding, and both weapons have the same enchantment, only one can be activated at a time.
Cooldown: 4 sec for damage enchants
Cooldown: 10 sec for buff/debuff enchants
Applies: 100% on LA, HA, weapon skill for damage and debuff enchants
Applies: 0% on weapon skill for buff enchants
Applies 100% on LA, HA for buff enchants
Two enchants can be up at the sime time (firing back bar enchant via elemental blockade while on front bar)

Questions:

How does two different enchants work on dual wield? Can they both fire at the same time, or is it: first LA fires main enchant, weapon skill/second LA fires second enchant?
Because only one poison can be up, second weapon when dual wielding should never have any poisons, only enchants?
Can you fire encahnt on back bar, swap to front and still have this enchantment up or is the only way to have 2 enchants up at the same time is to proc it with DoT (elemental blockade, endless hail)?
Does infused on one weapon from dual wield affects second weapon that does not have infused trait (I seen info that it affects cooldown but not potency)?

Mr_Arce88 · August 2020

And one more question:

Some sources states that 'weapon ability' must be a non single target DoT ability. Any other weapon ability will not proc poisons/enchants. Is this true?

Mortiis13 · August 2020

So Things like bladecloak on backbar arent able to proc poison when I am on frontbar?
I am a bit confused now.

YandereGirlfriend · August 2020

I made a post in the PTS Forum about how Poisons should be guaranteed procs every 10 seconds on "valid hits (e.g. Light Attacks or Weapon Abilities) rather than relying on RNG which ZOS is allegedly trying to move away from in this patch.

Alas, it was quickly forgotten about. But it would go far in leveling the playing field across weapon types and spammables and demystify much of the confusion about poison proc conditions. It would also save some server calculations!

zvavi · August 2020

Applies: 0% on weapon skill for buff enchants

this is wrong, people run wall with berserker enchantment (452 weapon damage & spell power) for 100% uptime With wall/hail. Now to your questions.

1. How does two different enchants work on dual wield? Can they both fire at the same time, or is it: first LA fires main enchant, weapon skill/second LA fires second enchant?
2. Because only one poison can be up, second weapon when dual wielding should never have any poisons, only enchants?
3. Can you fire encahnt on back bar, swap to front and still have this enchantment up or is the only way to have 2 enchants up at the same time is to proc it with DoT (elemental blockade, endless hail)?
4. Does infused on one weapon from dual wield affects second weapon that does not have infused trait (I seen info that it affects cooldown but not potency)?

1. Fire at the same time.
2. Poison front bar is useful, the main issue with poison backbar (which is btw used in rare cases like some zen healers in vAS) is that enchantment backbar with an infused weapon is just so much better. Like, much much better.
3. You theoretically can keep bar swapping all the time... As long as you hit with the light attack cooldown for these enchantments you can keep up high uptime, but that means a lot of wasteful time on backbar (for PvE).
4. I am 90% sure it does not affect 2nd enchantment at all.

Mr_Arce88 · August 2020

Zvavi, so what about the Dual Wield? Best combination is Glyph + Posion (due to poisons sharing cooldwon)? If so, what should be on main hand an dhwat on off hand?

zvavi · August 2020

Mr_Arce88 wrote: »

Zvavi, so what about the Dual Wield? Best combination is Glyph + Posion (due to poisons sharing cooldwon)? If so, what should be on main hand an dhwat on off hand?

Poison take the whole bar, so for dual wield it will override both enchantments.

Elvenheart · August 2020

I apologize if this question is slightly off topic, but I keep forgetting how to start a new one 🙂

Do enchantments that buff your damage buff your light and heavy attacks too? Specifically, when you do a heavy attack with a destro staff while wearing spell damage jewelry and using a weapon spell damage enchantment is the heavy attack buffed? Or would you need weapon damage jewelry since it is an attack with a weapon?

zvavi · August 2020

Elvenheart wrote: »

I apologize if this question is slightly off topic, but I keep forgetting how to start a new one 🙂

Do enchantments that buff your damage buff your light and heavy attacks too? Specifically, when you do a heavy attack with a destro staff while wearing spell damage jewelry and using a weapon spell damage enchantment is the heavy attack buffed? Or would you need weapon damage jewelry since it is an attack with a weapon?

Destro staves damage scales from spell power, not weapon damage

YandereGirlfriend · June 2021

To put a fine point on poisons:

You can activate poisons from the back-bar using any ability that will allow the same functionality with an enchantment. This includes, Destro Ultimate (many people do not know this works), Wall of Elements, Stampede, Endless Hail, and Blade Cloak.

Poisons can activate off of the initial tick of damage from a single-target DoT (like Elemental Grasp) but they cannot proc off of the subsequent ticks of the DoT.

Editorializing: It is prima facie unfair that poisons are limited to one per 10 seconds no matter if you have two different poisons equipped on your front- and back-bars. Glyphs circumvent this restriction which illustrates the clear double-standard.

Additionally, poisons should no longer require a RNG calls to activate; rather, they should behave like enchantments and proc off of the first valid hit from a weapon or a weapon ability. As it is, ZOS has relegated poisons to second-class augmentations compared to enchantments.

Lastly, can we please get Snakeblood to increase the length of poisons (to mimic the effect of Medicinal Use on potions) rather than its current completely useless functionality?