Poison Mechanics

[where-fore]

• [x] What are the proc rates for all poisons? Instant Poison is close to 8.57ppm, and Deadly is 30%, niche poisons untested.
• [x] How are those proc rates increased by Improved Poisons talent, Envenom Buff, and Bloodfang 3pc? Deadly bonuses are flat additive onto the base proc rate, and Instant bonuses are first added together, then multiplied onto the base proc rate. Bloodfang unknown at this time.
• [ ] How do they scale with spell power?
• [ ] Does Power Infusion affect poisons or Envenom at all?
• [x] Can you snapshot an application of Deadly Poison with Killing Spree? Nope, Deadly recalculates upon refreshing.
• [x] Do poison crits scale with the damage bonus from Prey on the Weak talent, or Relentless Earthsiege Diamond meta gem? Yes, multiplicatively. See Critical Damage Formulas

[simonizeshow]

Can you snapshot an application of Deadly Poison with Killing Spree?

No. Posted in the Killing Spree thread more detail.

[where-fore]

We've gotten some strange data about the instant poison base proc rate which differs from what we expected. We expect 8.57 base ppm, but a test with the improved poisons talent fell outside that range. Envenom proc rates were also not what we expected. Collecting data here, conclusions to come soon, hopefully.

[simonizeshow]

Collected some more data in this log here: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2bBVqYFPzgcdZ3np/#fight=last&source=4&type=damage-done&start=779&end=5714586

2x Misplaced Servo Arm 2.8 speed, no talents at all.

I went afk and poisons faded then it auto logged me out. If I clip the log to before the last instant poison proc I get 4247 hits, 1673 poison procs (1658 hits, 15 resist). That gives PPM mean of 8.441253 and 95% confidence interval 8.126312 to 8.756194.

WCL reports your resists under "miss" for instant poison, but that is still a proc. Gotta be sure to add "hits" and "misses" of instant poison to count total number of procs.

[where-fore]

Good shout - I doubled checked that my custom parser was checking for resists, and it was bugged in a way where it was ignoring resists. All data in the above linked spreadsheet has been updated, and the proc rate is generally slightly higher - which is good, considering the observed data was generally slightly lower than we expected.

The data so far tells us:

• We don't have decimal precison for instant poison proc rate, but the largest sample size shows 8.38-8.65ppm, which supports the 8.57ppm we expect. All other tests have fallen into this range as well, including the above test from Simon.
• Improved Poisons talent seems to work as expected: Deadly proc rate went up to 48.47-50.68%, where we expect 50%. Instant proc rate went up to 12.38-13.01ppm, where we expect 12.855ppm.
• Envenom buff is a little more questionable. The Deadly proc rate went up to 64.14-67.23%, where we expected 65% - good! Instant poison, however, lines up into an additive formula, where we expected a multiplicative one. We saw a 18.55-19.53ppm, where 8.57ppm 1.5(talent) 1.75(envenom) would be 22.50ppm. Additively, 8.57ppm * (1 + 0.5 + 0.75) = 19.28ppm, which is where our data lies.
• Bloodfang 3pc data is unfortunately inconclusive due to sample size.

These basic poison mechanics are essentially case-closed. We could gather more data to hone in exactly the base ppm of Instant Poison, and we could gather data for other poisons for reference - but the priority work is complete.

[where-fore]

If anyone has a source on whether Envenom buff should affect Instant Poison in a multiplicative or additive way with Improved Poisons talent, please post it.

Envenom buff is a little more questionable. The Deadly proc rate went up to 64.14-67.23%, where we expected 65% - good! Instant poison, however, lines up into an additive formula, where we expected a multiplicative one. We saw a 18.55-19.53ppm, where 8.57ppm 1.5(talent) 1.75(envenom) would be 22.50ppm. Additively, 8.57ppm * (1 + 0.5 + 0.75) = 19.28ppm, which is where our data lies.

The only evidence we've been able to source so far is this forum post on mmo-champion, but the post was made two weeks before the 3.1 patch even went live, so its reliability is in question.

[vigo2]

From https://web.archive.org/web/20100613004106/http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t51426-depth_mutilate_cycle_analysis/p11/#post1510284:

With a 1.8 speed MH using IP, we have a 1.8/1.4 * 45 = 57.86% chance to proc poison; with a 1.4 speed MH using DP, we have a 65% chance to proc poison.

Where 45[%] = 20% x (100% + 50% + 75%), and 65% = 30% + 20% + 15%. So "additive" is definitely right.

[where-fore]

Good sleuthing! I couldn't find any sort of tests or otherwise reasoning for them asserting it is additive - they could be guessing just as much as our last source was. Either way, good to have two sources saying the same thing, even if they are not conclusive.

I did notice an interesting tidbit about the Envenom buff in there though... "the poison proc from an envenom checks proc chance/rate after the envenom buff for that attack is applied"... to be tested on our live servers.

--From the future: this is confirmed: https://github.com/where-fore/rogue-wotlk/issues/32

[where-fore]

That forum posted inspired the following test which confirmed the additive nature of Improved Poisons and Envenom buff:

With a base ppm of 8.57, a 2.7 speed weapon has a theoretical proc rate of either Additive: 8.57 PPM (1+0.50 Talent + 0.75 Envenom) 2.7 Speed / 60 PPM = 86.77% proc chance per hit. Multiplicative: 8.57 PPM 1.50 Talent 1.75 Envenom * 2.7 Speed / 60 PPM = 101.23% proc chance per hit. If I can attack with these circumstances and not get an Instant Poison proc, then it is confirmed to be an additive process.

With Instant Poison on my main hand 2.7 speed weapon, with Improved Poisons talented and Envenom buff active, I cast sinister strike and did not get an Instant Poison proc. Log 8/28, game ver 3.4.0.45327

[vigo2]

Anecdotally, when testing double WP on Siphons (2.8 speed), I got 347 procs in 349 hits, so pretty much 100% (50% x 2.8/1.4), as expected. The two missing procs might have been "Siphon Essence" interferences.

I think it's worth noting that additional DP procs at 5 stacks cause the other weapon's poison to apply, not just to trigger (i.e. have a chance to apply).

[where-fore]

A test on 12/23/2022, on live game ver 3.4.0.47168, found that at 5 Deadly Poison stacks, your other hands poison triggers regardless of whether the Deadly Poison application failed or succeeded the hit chance roll. This has no bearing on damage output compared to the previously assumed 100% application chance, since to trigger your other poison you simply need to succeed one spell hit roll. This is especially marginal given being above spell hit cap is often optimal for damage output.

Log An Instant Poison application missing, after a 5-stack-refresh of Deadly Poison landing

An Instant Poison application landing, after a 5-stack-refresh of Deadly Poison missing

[where-fore]

A test from @vigo2 found discrepancies from our assumed damage formulas, notably found on Wowhead. While we thought Instant Poison dealt 300 + 0.1 AP damage, in practice it deals 300->400 0.09 AP damage. Deadly Poison, instead of 74 + 0.03 AP, deals 74 + 0.027 AP damage.

It is unclear whether this is historical, and I could not find any sources confirming or denying the AP scaling or base damage of poisons.

To quote their post: most poisons's tooltips (or wowhead's advertised scaling) are wrong: IP is actually 300-400 + 0.09 AP (instead of 300 + 0.1 AP), WP is actually 231 + 0.036 AP (instead of 231 + 0.04 AP), DP is actually 74 + 0.027 AP (instead of 74 + 0.03 AP). or shorter: all these poisons scale 10% worse than advertised, but IP has better (average) base damage (300-400 = 350 vs 300).

https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/y4YrGP3b6wVFDvmc#boss=-3&difficulty=0&type=damage-done&source=1 that's with 3,427 AP throughout

trying to find some old videos whether this is working-as-intended or not for IP: https://wow.tools/dbc/?dbc=spelleffect&build=3.4.1.47720#page=1&search=57965 - (EffectBasePoints = 299, EffectDieSides = 101, BonusCoefficientFromAP = 0.09) and https://wow.tools/dbc/?dbc=spell&build=3.4.1.47720#page=1&search=57965 - the "10% scaling" seems to be hardcoded in the {Description_lang}...