Why pick Caustic Poison over Hemotoxin?

[Vatec]

Is there any reason to pick Caustic Poison other than our AA line that enhances it?  In my experience, Hemotoxin does almost twice as much damage.  Does the INT AA line improve Caustic enough to make up for that?

[Ajek]

My reason, and I assume that of others, is that Caustic is a single DD hit, and can proc a lot! Hemotoxin does not stack with itself, therefore if it procs more than once before the first hit of it has worn out, no more damage is done. If caustic hits multiple times in a fight, you are guaranteed (poison resists aside) the full damage of the poison every proc. Especially considering the fact that many fights dont last more than 10 seconds, hemo's DoT is worthless in short fights, whereas 1 or 2 caustic procs will do some heavy damage in that short time. Hope this makes sense.

[Vatec]

<cite>CendienEQ2 wrote:</cite><blockquote>My reason, and I assume that of others, is that Caustic is a single DD hit, and can proc a lot! Hemotoxin does not stack with itself, therefore if it procs more than once before the first hit of it has worn out, no more damage is done. If caustic hits multiple times in a fight, you are guaranteed (poison resists aside) the full damage of the poison every proc. Especially considering the fact that many fights dont last more than 10 seconds, hemo's DoT is worthless in short fights, whereas 1 or 2 caustic procs will do some heavy damage in that short time. Hope this makes sense.</blockquote>Good point.I may have to add Caustic Poison to my arsenal.  However, Hemotoxin is good for my playstyle.  I solo a lot and often pick fights with groups of enemies.  Hemotoxin works beautifully for this because I fight one enemy until I see the Hemo icon, then switch to another one.  Repeat as needed.  And yes, I'm also working my way down the STA AA line ;^)I know Rangers are supposed to specialize in single-target burst DPS, but hey, I like to be different.Still, very good point on why Caustic Poison would be better for kiting and grouping.  Thanks for the reply!

[Deterre]

Hemotoxins are rubbish for soloing aswell, I find. But then again I don't melee.Also, we have an AA skill that increases caustic damage by 10%

[Webin]

I'd say that the DoT poisons are a good strategy for the way Vatec is killing mobs.  As for me, I usually use caustic because I prefer the quick hits.  I "only" use poisons while raiding, and for the most part, the fights don't last long enough for hemotoxins to really work their magic.  In the raids I do (Labs, Lyceum, DT), only a handful of mobs in each zone will stay alive for longer than 30 seconds.  It would be great to turn hemotoxin on the named fights, but then I feel like I'm wasting it on the trash around it.

[Vatec]

<cite>Webin@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'd say that the DoT poisons are a good strategy for the way Vatec is killing mobs.  As for me, I usually use caustic because I prefer the quick hits.  I "only" use poisons while raiding, and for the most part, the fights don't last long enough for hemotoxins to really work their magic.  In the raids I do (Labs, Lyceum, DT), only a handful of mobs in each zone will stay alive for longer than 30 seconds.  It would be great to turn hemotoxin on the named fights, but then I feel like I'm wasting it on the trash around it.</blockquote>Since I raid infrequently and solo groups almost daily, I'll probably keep my weapons coated in Hemotoxin for now.  But I'll buy a stack of GM Caustic Poison now that I've gained a better idea of why people use it.  I'll just save it for raids and challenging instances.

[spammy]

in T7 soloing id probably use vitality breach.t7 duoing with a healer friend id use mental breachlong raid fights (most of them are long in EoF content) ill use hemotoxinpvp i usually would use vitality breach, switching to caustic sometimesregular groups caustic works just fine.

[Vatec]

<cite>spammy wrote:</cite><blockquote>in T7 soloing id probably use vitality breach.t7 duoing with a healer friend id use mental breachlong raid fights (most of them are long in EoF content) ill use hemotoxinpvp i usually would use vitality breach, switching to caustic sometimesregular groups caustic works just fine.</blockquote>Yeah, I haven't had a chance to play around with the Breaches yet (they only just became available to me at level 50).  Vitality Breach looks particularly useful for soloing, yes.

[TaleraRis]

I usually keep vitality breach up. It can save my amphibious behind once the mob is in melee.

[Vatec]

OK, I've found that "common wisdom" usually has good reasons behind it, but sometimes is based on bad assumptions.  So I decided to take a closer look at Hemotoxin versus Caustic Poison since at least two Rangers have stated strong opinions that Hemotoxin sucks.I am going to start by ignoring AAs.  Yes, I know "everyone" goes AGI/INT and "everyone" goes with some variation of Multishot, Extension, and Conservation.  But that's an =assumption= not a fact.Since there aren't any higher-level Caustic Poisons on the broker, I'm going to use the level 40 Superior stuff for comparison purposes.  One very good argument that has been made is that Hemotoxin overwrites itself, so you might not get the full damage.  Let's examine that briefly.  Superior Caustic Poison does 261 damage.  Hemotoxin does 1 to 7 pulses of 117 damage.  In other words, if the Hemotoxin manages to last 4 seconds before overwritten, it will do 234 damage, i.e. almost as much as the Caustic.  If it manages to last 8 seconds, it will do 351 damage, blowing Caustic away for effectiveness.  Does it really matter if it gets overwritten after this point?  So what if it's not doing "full damage?"  It's still out-damaging the competition by almost 40%.  And if it lasts the full 24 seconds?  Ouch.But it procs a lot, you say?  Well, maybe.  But according to the description, it's supposed to proc 4.9 times per minute.  In other words, it should proc on average every 12 seconds.  Assuming a normal distribution and making some reasonable assumptions about the standard deviation of the curve, 2/3 of the time it should proc within an 8 to 16 second window.  That means that 2/3 of the time the Hemotoxin will get to pulse =at least= twice (I'm rounding in favor of Caustic Poison here, if you're following closely)  So, 2/3 of the time Hemotoxin will do 234 compared to Caustic's 261.  The other 1/3 of the time something extreme will happen.  We'll split that remaining third in half and say that 1/6 of the time Hemotoxin will proc again in significantly less than 8 seconds.  With a 7 second bow and haste, that's not totally beyond the realm of possibility.  We'll go one step further and say that it will proc so quickly that the first dose only got to pulse once.  So 1/6 of the time the Hemotoxin only does 117 damage.  But what about the other 1/6 of the time?  Well, that's when it takes more than 16 seconds for Hemotoxin to proc again.  In those cases, it will almost always go the full 7 pulses for 819 damage.  1/6 x 117 + 2/3 x 234 + 1/6 x 819 = a heck of a lot more than 261 damage.  And if you're mathematically inclined, you'll see that I'm making assumptions here that make Hemotoxin look a =lot= worse than it would if I did the math carefully.  But it's 6am and I'm not in the mood to fire up Excel :^PSo, given these numbers, (and the fact that Caustic Poison generally costs twice as much as Hemotoxin) why on earth would anyone pick Caustic Poison?Well, here's one thought:  because Hemotoxin is a DoT, it's more likely to break snare or root than Caustic Poison.And, of course, there are the AA lines.  The EoF line enhances Caustic damage by up to 10% and is needed if you want to get to Conservation.  And the INT  line includes a nice Poison mitigation debuff and a <b>huge boost to poison-based crits</b>.  I will assume that these two lines make Caustic the superior choice.  Because it's either that, or the "common wisdom" is wrong ;^)  And that's certainly not possible.  Right?  I mean, all the experts have parsed this stuff out and found that, when you take the "obviously superior" AA lines, Caustic Poison beats Hemotoxin.  Right?FWIW, I've also parsed a fair number of my fights using ACT.  And that "useless" Hemotoxin sure seems to be doing a lot of damage.  Sometimes it accounts for almost 50% of the parse, especially when I'm fighting a group of enemies.  But it also adds up quite well on single ^^^ mobs as well.  And I've never noticed any DPS problems.  But I'll probably go buy a stack of Caustic Poison to test out.  Assuming I can find any on the broker :^PI appreciate everyone's input in this thread.  It's been my experience that, no matter how well we know our classes, there's always room to learn something new. P.S.:  I'm probably going to switch over to Vitality Breach for any serious soloing.  For non-serious soloing I generally don't bother using poison at all.  Heck, half the time I don't even bother eating or drinking ;^)

[jarlaxle8]

<cite>Vatec wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Because it's either that, or the "common wisdom" is wrong </p></blockquote>Ages of human history have shown that "common wisdom" is not always the best wisdom... <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[Arleonenis]

<p>your counting here is wrong becouse you do one assumption: you can proc poison only few seconds and this assumption is wrong really, you can proc poison 3-4 times in matter of few seconds, especially in raid situation. I burn through poisons like fat kid through candys than. If hemo wouldnt overwote itself than it would be superrior, but not the way it work now. Caustic hitting for 1700dmg few times in a row or twice on double attack or auto attack and CA is nice enough imho. In shorter fights when you kill monster in 7-9sec hitting with hemo at 6th second is great waste also.</p><p>Also you told poison dmg do almost 50% your dps... i assume its when you melee? really if you like melee and hemo you should go assassin, nothing about you here, but ranger in melee is poor man assassin. Saw it in raids a lot too, odding rangers that have eh bow and fully fabled by 50% with raincaller? True? Yes. And possible only becouse they dont know they class. As ranger you should concentratre on bow, its the center of universe for rangers, melee weapons are just for buffs/stats. Like blade from castle that increase haste by 28 points.</p><p>You cant really take assumprions about all rangers when you dont play class as its designed, if you have fun than sure we all happy, but basing your entire assumption on how you play your class? Nah it really isnt best idea... also if poisons would do 50% of my zone dps than i would probably shoot myself with that bow<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Vatec]

<cite>Arleonenis wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>your counting here is wrong becouse you do one assumption: you can proc poison only few seconds and this assumption is wrong really, you can proc poison 3-4 times in matter of few seconds, especially in raid situation. I burn through poisons like fat kid through candys than. If hemo wouldnt overwote itself than it would be superrior, but not the way it work now. Caustic hitting for 1700dmg few times in a row or twice on double attack or auto attack and CA is nice enough imho. In shorter fights when you kill monster in 7-9sec hitting with hemo at 6th second is great waste also.</p><p>Also you told poison dmg do almost 50% your dps... i assume its when you melee? really if you like melee and hemo you should go assassin, nothing about you here, but ranger in melee is poor man assassin. Saw it in raids a lot too, odding rangers that have eh bow and fully fabled by 50% with raincaller? True? Yes. And possible only becouse they dont know they class. As ranger you should concentratre on bow, its the center of universe for rangers, melee weapons are just for buffs/stats. Like blade from castle that increase haste by 28 points.</p><p>You cant really take assumprions about all rangers when you dont play class as its designed, if you have fun than sure we all happy, but basing your entire assumption on how you play your class? Nah it really isnt best idea... also if poisons would do 50% of my zone dps than i would probably shoot myself with that bow<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" /></p></blockquote>Interesting.  Never had that problem.  When I solo a group, I frequently have to spend three or four ticks before Hemotoxin procs on that mob and I can move on to the next one.  As for "short fights" ... I generally do those with no poison on my weapons and without eating or drinking.  In fact, in those short fights, hitting with Caustic Poison at the 6th second is also a "great waste."  So, I'm not going to say you're =wrong= I'm just going to say that I haven't experienced what you describe when playing my Ranger the way I normally play him.I'd have to look at old parses to figure out which ones had the highest % of damage from poison.  But, since I like fighting groups, odds are lots of melee was involved.  If I wanted to be efficient at that, I'd just use my Swashbuckler, not my Assassin.  But I don't care that much about being efficient when it comes to my characters' abilities, only their gear.  I don't intend to keep STA line when I get to level 70, but it allows me to level the way =I= want to.  Also, I can imagine several reasons why a Ranger might bring Raincaller to a raid:  A. They don't want to go through the hassle of getting something better when they solo most of the time (for which Raincaller is one of the best choices).  B. They're using Raincaller and going on raids hoping to =get= a better bow.  C.  It doesn't matter because they're sure they're still going to top the parse.  In any case, telling a Ranger that they're dependent on their bow is roughly equivalent to when I pet my cat and tell her she's very fluffy.  It's cute and amusing, but rather pointless ;^)  Only the newest of Rangers aren't aware of how much their bow determines their effectiveness.Anyway, my point is that it might not hurt to re-examine Hemotoxin.  I've found it works just fine for me even when I group and raid.  Maybe I'll be inspired to buy both and parse them out.  After all, the original reason I started this thread was to figure out why Caustic Poison costs twice as much on the broker, when it's available at all.  Hemotoxin seems like the better choice on paper and it's worked well for me in practice.  But I never discount "common knowledge" without asking about it first.  There's usually =some= reason the majority of the player base does something a certain way.  In this case, it may simply be that my playstyle differs so substantially from everyone else's that I'm the only one who really benefits from using Hemotoxin.  If that's the case, lucky me, because I can buy it dirt cheap ;^)

[Arleonenis]

<p>Exactly, caustic is better for our primary role as dps.</p><p>And raincaller, well there isnt really much bow choices till you get something better from raid zone. Even unrest bow with t7 dps adorment is below it in parse. With DT summoned ammo it might get above it but with just fieldpoints raincalller do quite a bit more dps</p>

[Vatec]

<cite>Arleonenis wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Exactly, caustic is better for our primary role as dps.</p><p>And raincaller, well there isnt really much bow choices till you get something better from raid zone. Even unrest bow with t7 dps adorment is below it in parse. With DT summoned ammo it might get above it but with just fieldpoints raincalller do quite a bit more dps</p></blockquote>*boggle*I just said that Caustic might =not= be the best choice and you're agreeing with me and then repeating that it is.There appears to be some miscommunication here.Also, you said the only reason a Ranger would bring Raincaller to a raid was because they didn't know their class.  Are you still saying that or have you changed your mind, because it is not at all clear from your post?

[Deterre]

Vatec, I think he is agreeing witht he post above yours.

[Vatec]

<cite>Deterrent wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vatec, I think he is agreeing witht he post above yours.</blockquote>Quite possible.  That's why I quote the post I'm responding to....  Clarity of communication is the responsibility of the one trying to communicate, etc., etc.Hey, if people can tell me how to play my character, I can tell them how to post properly on message boards.  Right?  Right?Ah, phooey....

[Vatec]

OK, I did some quick parses in Feerrott comparing Hemotoxin to Caustic Poison.  Being lazy, I decided to pick on the level 40 ^^^ Bouncers.  The zone was essentially empty, so no named bouncers were stolen from anyone, in case you were worried.All fights were with the same equipment (pristine imbued ironwood long bow, Short Sword of Ykesha, Serrated Bone Dirk, summoned junk arrows) and using the same tactics (Hidden Fire, Leg Shot, Debilitating Arrow, back up, Triple Fire, back up, Sharp Shot, Trick Arrow, move as needed, snare as needed).  The first set of results are using Apothecary's Caustic Poison, the second set using Apothecary's Hemotoxin (because I couldn't find level 50 Caustic Poison for sale :^P).CAUSTIC POISONa Greenblood bouncer (1:02 minutes) - 225 DPS, 13956 dmg, 32% (2979) of non-melee from caustic poison which proced 8 timesa Greenblood bouncer (0:55 minutes) - 255 DPS, 14020 dmg, 30% (2513) of non-melee from caustic poison which proced 7 timesBouncer Fug (0:56 minutes) - 250 DPS, 13974 dmg, 35% (3231) of non-melee from caustic poison which proced 9 timesBouncer Fug (1:10 minutes) - 201 DPS, 13848 dmg, 22% (1902) of non-melee from caustic poison which proced 5 timesHEMOTOXINBouncer Fug (1:07 minutes) - 207 DPS, 13848 dmg, 37% (3381) of non-melee from hemotoxin which pulsed 21 timesa Greenblood bouncer (0:47 minutes) - 286 DPS, 13848 dmg, 38% (289<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" /> of non-melee from hemotoxin which pulsed 18 times *a Greenblood bouncer (1:05 minutes) - 219 DPS, 14261 dmg, 35% (3220) of non-melee from hemotoxin which pulsed 20 timesa Greenblood bouncer (0:35 minutes) - 253 DPS, 8851 dmg, 36% (1932) of non-melee from hemotoxin which pulsed 12 times **a Greenblood bouncer (0:56 minutes) - 247 DPS, 13842 dmg, 32% (289<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" /> of non-melee from hemotoxin which pulsed 18 timesa Greenblood bouncer (1:03 minutes) - 220 DPS, 13860 dmg, 36% (3381) of non-melee from hemotoxin which pulsed 21 times* A passing mage saw me kiting and thought I needed help, so he tossed a Plasmatic Pulse which did 408 damage.  I suspect that included a heat debuff, because the numbers are quite a bit higher for this encounter.** I'm guessing this was one of the ^^ bouncers that occasionally spawn :^PSo, what does this completely unscientific test tell me?  Well, let's summarize:   - 4 fights with Caustic Poison, 201 to 255 DPS, average 232.75 DPS, average poison damage 2656.25 - 4 fights with Hemotoxin, 207 to 247 DPS, average 223.25 DPS, average poison damage 3220This isn't a large enough sample to be statistically significant (need at least 30 of each, go take a graduate level course in Business Statistics if you don't believe me), but it's somewhat informative.  The DPS ranges are very similar, with the Caustic Poison parsing 4.25% higher.  Conversely, the Hemotoxin actually did 21% more damage even though the parses ended up lower.  The fights took about the same amount of time (0:55 to 1:10 minutes).  And, interestingly enough, Caustic Poison proced 7.25 times per fight (slightly more than the stated 4.9 times per minute, but a heck of a lot less than "every few seconds"<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" /> while Hemotoxin pulsed an average of 20 times per fight.  In other words, for every proc of Caustic Poison, there were 2.75 pulses of Hemotoxin.  So, on average, Hemotoxin is overwriting itself after 2.75 pulses.Short version:  Caustic Poison is slightly better (4%).  Hemotoxin costs half as much.  If 4% extra DPS is worth that much to you, by all means use Caustic Poison.  If you spend most of your time raid-buffed, use Caustic Poison (more frequent procs and crits).  If you've taken the EoF AA Enhance:  Caustic Poison, well, duh, use Caustic Poison.  If you're working your way down the KoS INT AA line, you too should probably use Caustic Poison (more frequent crits should benefit the poison that hits less often for more damage, just like it does with two-handers and bows).  But if you're skipping the INT AA line, Hemotoxin will probably work just fine for you.What a surprise....Discuss amongst yourselves, I'm done.

[Webin]

I think we should promote you to official Ranger Number Cruncher.   Could you go stand next to Effidan, please?   From you analysis, my opinion is that it doesn't really matter which you use.  It's all a wash to me, since I get my poisons for free (if I try to pay for them, I get a mail refunding my money), and as long as I'm doing damage, I'm doing fine.

[Vatec]

<cite>Webin@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think we should promote you to official Ranger Number Cruncher.   Could you go stand next to Effidan, please?   From you analysis, my opinion is that it doesn't really matter which you use.  It's all a wash to me, since I get my poisons for free (if I try to pay for them, I get a mail refunding my money), and as long as I'm doing damage, I'm doing fine.</blockquote>Nah, Effidan is =way= more thorough.  I only did enough parses to convince myself that it won't matter to me unless I'm in a good group or on a raid.  Kind of a moot point anyway, since I can use Vitality Breach now :^P