The seasonal greetings

[xspeedballx]

Nevermind, tested it, drains even when at max health. All well was hoping for a new paradigm!

[Lujo]

Shame...

@Darvin: Well, for casters it requires B2P, and for meleeing sorcerers it should actually be decent. Saying it's worthless is worrying as it's by far the most powerfull poison effect in the game. Also, it should work ok with %res stackers, and even getting a full HP pool per cast is pretty decent - it's a blackspace fueled CYDSTEPP variant, sort of.

[Darvin]

It still works at higher levels, sure, but I really can't imagine holding on to it for long enough to reach that stage. For Human or Elf Assassins especially, I think grabbing those CP right off the bat is more valuable. The big problem is that this has effectively killed APHEELSIK's niche - allowing you to take down very strong monsters if you're willing to invest the tiles to do so. With this nerf, that mechanic only becomes viable around level 8 when exploration is mostly depleted anyways. As a result, APHEELSIK has little to offer that other glyphs don't already do much better.

[q 3]

Although if poison doesn't go away except by running out, then an Assassin can use their +40% damage boost a lot more often. You can cast APHEELSIK once and then attack several times or lob some fireballs without losing the attack boost. (What if the Assassin's attack boost increased along with the amount of poison on the monster?)

[Darvin]

Although if poison doesn't go away except by running out, then an Assassin can use their +40% damage boost a lot more often.

Maybe in normal-difficulty dungeons, but unlikely in higher-difficulty ones. The problem is that you only get 4-8 tiles worth of regen before poison times out. In vicious dungeons, this may not even be sufficient to allow you to survive even one additional attack.

Fireball + poison is thoroughly dead with this change, since regenerating 13 MP between combats is effectively impossible.

[q 3]

True, relying on APHEELSIK for early high-level kills seems more or less dead. I was thinking more of my personal favorite Assassin strategy, using Tikki Edge and Goblin conversions to level up fast, relying on mid-fight level ups and then taking on the boss with poison with plenty of black space left. For that approach, having the attack bonus nearly always on is a much bigger gain than the nerf to poison. (And I should note, I've beaten most of the vicious dungeons purist with that strategy. It was very powerful before, and looks to be even more powerful now.)

On a similar note, an Assassin could grab the venom dagger but ditch poison tactics, making them a net +20% damage, 100% HP, first striker - basically a more balanced Rogue.

[Darvin]

Wow... a level 1 Assassin struggles to beat 2nd level monsters in Den of Danger with poison. That is sad...

Functionally speaking, regen-fighting with poison now feels more-or-less identical to regen-fighting with HALPMEH. The same factors (attack damage, resistances, and level) are in play here as are in standard regen-fighting, and the glyph effectively ties up your mana pool so other glyph combos are out of the picture. It's a little more tile-intensive, and offers additional leverage as you gain levels, but overall I can't advise anyone to hold on to this glyph if you find HALPMEH.

Sadly, I found that most of the time I was just using APHEELSIK as an expensive version of BYSSEPS for my Assassin. The boss I was fighting was undead so I'll have to play another round later to see how it fairs against boss-fights, but for power leveling this glyph stinks. Unless you intend to use it in the boss fight, convert on sight.

[The Avatar]

I think they need to just change poison back to what it used to be. They've tried to change poison before, and it just doesn't work. They've unnecessarily hurt the assassin, made poison needlessly complex, and turned the best boon into the worst boon. I think all they really needed to do was raise the piety on poison to 75-100.

[xspeedballx]

Honestly I think making poison not remove stacks when monster is at full health would bring back power while embracing the new form. It would create a different playstyle from the spell but that isn't necessarily bad?

Edit: Well that is to address apheelsik, for TT's boon a reduced cost for stacking purposes would probably be called for.

[Darvin]

As far as venom dagger and tikki's poison are concerned, I don't have a problem with this new system. If venom dagger was 3 stacks per level and Tikki's poison boon was 3 stacks per level at 25+25 piety (with 10 gold) then I think we'd be in business. It's APHEELSIK this doesn't work for, since the entire basis of the glyph is being able to funnel an arbitrary amount of exploration space into utility spells so long as you can pay 7 MP between bursts. It might be workable with a sufficiently high stacking amount (say 50+20 per level) that it's unlimited for all intents and purposes, but let's not mince words: APHEELSIK did not need a nerf and any meaningful reduction in its power needs to be matched with a meaningful improvement in another aspect.

Honestly I think making poison not remove stacks when monster is at full health would bring back power while embracing the new form. It would create a different playstyle from the spell but that isn't necessarily bad?

It wouldn't be feasible unless you also had BLUDTUPOWA, since you're wasting health-based regeneration while stacking up poison, making it an inefficient and fundamentally non-viable approach.

Second of all, we already have superb prebuff utility glyphs in the form of GETINDARE, ENDISWAL, BYSSEPS, and CYDSTEPP. I don't feel we need more.

Finally, I feel this suggestion has the potential to be a number-crunching nightmare, forcing players to do some pretty intensive calculations ahead of time regarding how many tiles they'll need for a takedown. Regen-fighting techniques are already pretty crunch-heavy, and if poison worked like this it would cross the line.