How does VIper Strike interact with Melee Splash ?

Hi there,

I was planning a Viper Strike dagger build for Talisman but while I was gathering info about the skill (never played it even though I'm playing PoE since 2012...) I read somewhere that Melee Splash doesn't apply the DoT damage to the ennemies, only the initial hit does. Is that true ? If yes I will just change my plans, since having only the initial target being under the affect of VS poison seems really weak.

Thanks for your help !

No, it isn't true, splashed hits will also poison.

However, the way splash is right now, because it has 'less damage' penalty it will apply to those hits and then it will apply again to poison, making VS a poor AoE choice.

I asked a few times to change the penalty to 'less attack damage' like multistrike has, which would help a bunch with Infernal and Puncture which are also underused at the moment.

Ok thanks. You're right, even if the "new" melee splash doesn't have any penalty on the initial hit anymore, it will still apply to the splashed poison, which makes it really bad. I'm going to plan something else.

Right now going for normal melee attack with some AoE + "poison" support gem seems to be better than viper strike + melee splash. Maybe Reave + poison ?

i have a thread about these questions. and i've been thinking about this a lot.

Viperstrike has the potential to be very good if the mechanics around it were done right. the thing is,'being done right' is hard to do with dots it should be an ability that hits VERY hard in a single hit and the poison does the rest in a short duration if the mob takes 8 seconds to die that's way too long, but if the initial hit kills the monster whats the point in having a dot on it? for bosses? again the dot is going to have to hit hard to make any difference on a boss. to me the dot should do a % of the monster HP depending on the monster type. White's 50%/s, blues 35%/s, uniques 10%/s and bosses 2.5%/s. Of course i'm talking about a single dot. Obv this becomes retardedly op on bosses for every stack you get, which is why i think a single stack or a stack of 3 should be good. and make the duration 3 seconds

Yes the numbers could use some balance, but its just a theory


Example: (disclaimer: this is if reave and viper strike had the SAME GEAR on a white monster)

Viper strike initial hit should be 40-60% hp (this is only if the build is correct obv the ability shouldn't just auto hit for that much) and the poison needs to hit for the remaining hp in 1 second or less.



Reave goes like this(all under 1 second), press ability, Reave reave reave(multistrike), shit dies. (its also midrange ability)

The dot on viperstrike is going to have to be VERY good to make the skill worth taking. It needs to go like this, Press ability, initial hit, Dot does rest in the time Reave's multistrikes hit the target.

Anything less then this viperstrike and the poison nodes in the tree will be wasted development time by GGG.