Game Mechanics [Proposals included] Not a fan of the Poison Rework, even though my DPS more than tripled

The title sounds insane but please let me elaborate.

Spoiler: 2.2.5 changes to Poison

To my understanding, in a nutshell, the Poison rework turned poison damage into two components: one part is applied with melee attacks and can stack wit itself, with a much higher dps than old poison; the other part is applied with spell and has similar dps with old poison.

Version 2.2.5 changelog: https://wynncraft.com/news/blog/718

Spoiler: My expeirence with and understanding of Poison builds

I have been playing poison builds since version 2.0, but mostly on the warrior class(I favour the high ehp, Battlemonk's passive abilities and Paladin's ID boost). I quit the game at version 2.1 but recently returned to try out some of the Fruma Expansion content and the reworked ability trees.

In 2.2.4, my Poison Warrior build has no problem at all with combat in Fruma content (although I am only at lv112). The poison build actually dealt comparable damage to my current (underoptimized) Mythic lightbender builds, since I am lacking aspects and have trouble optimizing powders; but it also ignores damage, performs better at range and basically cannot die. Other advantages include being mechanically unintensive and is very good at dealing with evasive enemies

Spoiler

Sovereign Zhiraok

My build before the update: https://wynnbuilder.github.io/builder/#CZ0L3XJB4L4gx0B0O1mw4Qdm3k5E8PWmrUSfr-e4Ke7

Later in the game poison builds do fall off a bit compared to non-mythic builds even before factoring in powders and aspects, but still maintains its advantages of not requiring frequent attack on the enemies and being easy to deal full damage as long as you have large area damage abilities.

The 2.2.5 update more than tripled poison dps even after factoring in the Radiance nerf. Endgame poison builds can easily reach 200k true damage dps with self healing and comfortable ehp, without a single mythic, powder, nor aspect.
https://wynnbuilder.github.io/builder/#CZ0L3XZJ4L4gxmhHUDIpHQdm3EWS1YNxnbM-Bg4Aq3


Tldr is that poison builds was not as bad as people made it out to be. Maxed out Poison builds are not as powerful as maxed out non-Poison builds, only because there is only 1 mythic that actually has high poison (Toxoplasmosis) and that aspects and armor powders don't buff poison and are hard to balance.

Problems with the Poison rework:

Spoiler: 1 - It Destroyed Poison Builds' Identity and Unique Playstyle

Poison builds had had a unique playstyle. Being simutaneously causal-friendly and able to open up unique playstyles for advanced builders.

Since poison builds are straightforward to build(just maximize one ID), does not require activating Armor powder specials(imagine having to stay at 1hp), does not require grinding aspects to reach full damage potential, and most importantly: could deal almost full damage with just single passive ability tick, it was a wonder addition for

Poison builds also provided some very interesting and unique playstyles. Just I myself alone had invented Cavalryman poison build that uses Cyclone nad Counter to deal poison damage while mounted (which was annihilated by the horse rework and removal of Cavalryman major ID), and a weapon-less fist build that solely relies on counter to proc poison.

The 2.2.5 update, instead of preserving and expanding on Poison's already existing and unique identity, just turned Poison builds into a more powerful version of melee-spell hybrid builds. Melee-spell hybrid build players are incentived to switch to the new poison builds since its just better and has functionally identical playstyle. But for poison build players? They either lose their unique playstyle, or have to spend a lot more for the very same poison items, if they are even avaliable in the first place. (I would talk about this in problem 3) Both became more powerful, but didn't really get what they wanted.

Spoiler: 2 - It Didn't Increase Build Diversity Like It Claimed To

The 2.2.5 changelog claims that one of the goals of the rework is to promote build diversity. Presumably by requiring the player to not only invest in the Poison id, but also mana related ids to spam spells.

The problems are that:
(1) Poiosn builds before 2.2.5 are already incentivised to have enough mana to sustain spell usgae especially if they don't have Plague, since spells have large aoe and long range to proc poison + provides mobility.
(2) The highest poison builds already have enough mana regen to sustain using spells to apply poison constantly.
(3) Some classes have automatic or damage over time abilities that can apply poison(e.g. cyclone), and many of them that don't even require spellcasting (e.g. counter and sparkling hope).
The strongest poison builds before and after the update, at least for Warrior, are therefore identical.

Both max Poison builds and hybrid Poison builds already exist and are actively being played prior to the update. Poison is just another damage boost in non-full-poison builds. Requiring the use of both melee and spell damage doesn't change poison items' role in non-full-poison builds, in fact, it makes melee only or spell spam builds unable to fully utilize poison, discouragung adding in poison items and hurting the build diversity the update claims to promote.

Overbuffing poison also leads to people ditching regular builds espeially melee-spell hybrid builds in favour of poison builds, which doesn't really solve the lack of build variety problem and only leads to more power creep.

Spoiler: 3 - Poison Items in Shortage

Since already functioning Poison builds suddenly gained triple dps, Poison builds have became broken especially for players who don't have aspects or aren't good at tryharding.

Poison items being broken and losing its identity also led to their shortage, with players flocking to replace their obselete melee/hybrid builds with powerful poison builds of similar playstyle. Since the update was dropped, many powerful Poison items are either at mythics price or straight up unavaliable on the in-game trade market.

Proposed Solutions:
1 - Split Poison into at least two stats, some functioning like new poison stacking only on melee hits, and some functioning like old poison.
Allowing Items to have either one of them, or both. This way we keep the best of both worlds.

Spoiler: 1.1 Splitting Poison into Two IDs

Venom: It works like the stacking melee component of the new Poison. It is associated with the Earth element and are more common on Strength items.

Fuming (or Burning/Pestillence/Poison): Identical to the old poison stat. It would be found on various items but usually Strength, Defence and Agility items. It can be associated with Fire or alternatively Air element.

Their damage can stack with each other. Current poison-focused items should be adjusted again to mostly have high Fuming and only occasionally venom, although with much lower venom dps than the 2.2.5 poison rework. With new items added specifically balanced as Venom.

Spoiler: 1.2 Each element getting its own damage over time id

Another way is to have even more dot ids, with each assigned to an element and havimg different activation conditions. This might increase build diversity but risk overcomplicating the game. If these alternate damage over time mechanics are any good they can alternatively be implemented via Major IDs, without needing 5 different types of Poison.

Spoiler

Earth - Venom: New Poison.

Thunder - Shock: It applies stacking damage over time only on critical melee hits. Can even make it able to tierstack for more uniqueness, if that can possibly be balanced.

Water - Miasma: Deals damage related to how much you overheal yourself, a more direct way to convert healing into damage. It would be much rarer and probably only appear on Wands and Reliks.

Fire - Burning: Burning is a non-stackable damage over time that is only applied on most fire ability effects

Spoiler

including Flaming Uppercut, Boiling Blood, Collide, Sparkling Hope, Buried light, Lightweaver(only lasts 1s), Burning Sigil, Fire Creep, Vigilant Sentinels, Basaltic Trap, Flaiming tongue etc and any ultimate with fire damage conversion; excluding unupgraded fire damage spells, Shield Strike and Cyclone

and Fallen Warrior's melee attacks during Corrupted. It introduces a new unique playstyle that requires the player to focus on these less direct abilities that are harder to consistently trigger (e.g. Burning Lightbender having to maintain distance to apply burning with lightweaver, Acolytes have to keep facing their target unlike ordinary shaman that relies on aura, Archers having to keep enemies in fire creep or trap) or take risks(Warriors having to go melee instead of applying poison by spamming spells at distance), in contrast with typical spell builds that lose little dps by nit utilizing these abilities.

Air - Plague: Old poison but can also be applied with reflection/dodging. Being easy to apply fits the Agility build's playstyle of staying evasive. It can also reward the player for taking risk by standing staying near the mob to activite Dodge powder special, if it can be increased by elemental damage% the problem is having elemental damage boost it would be a balance nightmare and defeats the purpose of Poison not relying on powder specials.

2 - Ability Tree Adjustments
Adjust the Ability Tree effects by either 2.1 adding synergies with Poison (like how Paladin boosts Poison damage) for different archetypes especially squishier ones, or
2.2 give squishy classes more defense options.
This makes each archetype's Poison builds more unique in gameplay and makes it possible to balance poison damage of high dps classes without making Poison builds OP for Paladin.


3 - Aspects
Aspects(especially Mythic ones) provide significant damage boost to non-Poison builds and 0 damage boost to Poison. They are partially responsible for the power creep of non-Poison builds.

While Raids are a key gameplay element, they already provide unique benefits in the forms of tomes and charms. No need for aspect to be a reward that is simutaneously exclusive and powerful.

What's worse is that Aspects takes a ridiculous amount of playtime to grind and the types you get depends on the date. And for some reason also takes much longer to queue raids nowadays (not sure about the Fruman one) and the game occasionally freezes.

Spoiler: 3.1 Allow Aspects to be obtained through ways other than raid, such as high lv Dungeons

With more and more content including raids, lootrunning camps and recently time trials introduced, Dungeons especially Corrupted Dungeons and EO need some love. While they have unique loot via Dungeon Merchants, most of them don't ahve much to offer once you get the gears (and tools) you want. Let Forgery chest and maybe EO completion reward Aspects.

Please keep silverbull out of Dungeons though, it completely ruins immersion and storytelling when applied to anything other than lootrunning camps. Just look at Raids, Silverbull was completely uninvolved in any of the quests that unlocks Raids, and should be impossible to organize and profit from one-time events.

Spoiler: 3.2 Nerf Aspects damage along with Poison damage

Self explainatory.

4 - Other simpler proposals
4.1 - Nerf Poison damage on Melee stacking.

4.2 - Revert to old Poison but make Poison deal 1.5x to 2x damage to Bosses (lower than current peak poison dps, but does not require constant attacking).

4.3 - Add more Poison Mythics, instead of giving regular Poison items mythic levels of damage. This combined with 4.1 or 4.2 not only balances Poison builds, but can also alleviate the shortage problem.



Thanks for reading.
If you have any ideas or noticed that I got anything wrong, please tell me in the replies.