Help me understand Life Drain with virulence and Dark shackles please

[Peresans]

Hey guys started playing a few days ago and I’m doing my own stuff but I came upon something I don’t understand after researching.

I’m using Drain life with Virulence and dark shackles so it becomes a Poison damage spell.

On the tooltip of virulence it says as follows:
“Drain’s Life’s base necrotic damage is converted to poison damage. Consequently this damage scales with increase to poison damage, but not increases to necrotic damage.”

As I understand this turns the base necrotic damage to poison and then the increased poison damage is added I understand this, but here is what is bothering me, If I get the nodes that add + spell necrotic damage from the lich form or the lich passive tree the damage increases and this would make me think that spell necrotic damage is added to the base necrotic damage and then turned into poison and multiplied by poison damage so I would imagine the formula to be something like:

(Spell damage * increased spell damage ) + ( base necrotic damage (13) + spell necrotic damage * increased poison damage) + increase damage over time

So let’s say i have a wand with 60 spell power and 100% increased spell damage, and another with 60 necrotic spell power (Marina’s for example) and a 100% increased poison damage would the damage be the same?

Also drain life not having any real dot after the cast ends makes me think “increased damage over time” is added like “increased poison damage” but mobs don’t have any resistance to “increase damage over time” so it would have more value, right? I’m sorry this is such a mess but this skill is giving me such problems to understand cause it’s a dot without a dot, scales with spell necrotic damage and also scales with poison and I just don’t know if this is a bug or I’m just dumb , thanks.

[Llama8]

@Peresans

If I get the nodes that add + spell necrotic damage from the lich form or the lich passive tree the damage increases and this would make me think that spell necrotic damage is added to the base necrotic damage and then turned into poison

No, because that necrotic damage is added not base damage so isn’t converted. Any flat damage that doesn’t have an element (eg, the implicit spell damage from most wands, sceptres & staves), that uses the spell tags to determine which element it is, so that would be poison rather than necrotic.

@Peresans

So let’s say i have a wand with 60 spell power and 100% increased spell damage, and another with 60 necrotic spell power (Marina’s for example) and a 100% increased poison damage would the damage be the same?

No, the flat necrotic spell damage stays necrotic, the +60 spell damage necomes poison as that’s the tag Drain Life has.

@Peresans

Also drain life not having any real dot after the cast ends makes me think “increased damage over time” is added like “increased poison damage” but mobs don’t have any resistance to “increase damage over time” so it would have more value, right?

No, 100% increased damage over time would be just as effective as 100% increased poison damage for a skill with both the poison & DoT tags.

@Peresans

it’s a dot without a dot

It’s a spell with the DoT but it isn’t an ailment (like bleed, poison the ailment, ignite, chill, slow, etc). Not all DoTs are ailments.

Have you tried reading the in-game game guide (G by default) or this?

[AndrewTilley]

@Llama8

Have you tried reading the in-game game guide (G by default) or this ?

Best to read the in-game game guide as I haven’t updated that resource in quite some time. It’s kind of hard to find the motivation when there’s so many great resources out there that, if I’m being honest, do it better and update faster than I ever could.

[Llama8]

@AndrewTilley

when there’s so many great resources out there that, if I’m being honest, do it better and update faster than I ever could.

For numbers, I get that, they can be datamined & put out by the likes of LE Tools, but the underlying mechanics of how stuff works? Is there anything outside of the game & your thread that does that?

[AndrewTilley]

There’s definitely some things I covered that aren’t really covered elsewhere, but you can find most of it on Maxroll in the LE Resources section among other resources that are, for the most part, highlighted in this Reddit thread and its comments.

I won’t lie, I do kind of want to update the CGG…so maybe, but it’d probably be after 1.1 if I did to reduce the amount of additional work a new patch adds.