Introduction

I tried out the Poison Dagger skill with my second necromancer way back when on Realms. This was my character to play on USWest when East was unavailable. I didn't get very far, but I had some fun goofing around with him.

Single player is better suited to the Poison Dagger necro, especially for someone like me on 56k dialup. I'd have to keep attacking to make sure I got a hit and would often either hit the same creature more than once (wasting mana) or miss and not realize it for a moment. Either way it was made inefficient due to lag, and this was when lag was "good" (for bnet).

By contrast, in single player I could trust the feedback I would get. I could listen for a hit and instantly know when I had or hadn't gotten one. I could then move on to the next target or retreat to let the poison do its work.

Poison in Diablo 2 does not function intuitively. It will not stack, meaning that once something has been poisoned, it does little good to keep trying to repoison it until the first poison runs its course. On the other hand, poison modifiers (on weapon, from Uniques or from rings/belts/boots much later in the game) combine in a strange way. Both the poison/second damage rate AND the durations are added together, making for a vastly increased total damage. Let's say your poison dagger does 45-75 damage over 10 seconds (just an example). That's an average of 6 per second. If you get the Snakecord belt which does 3-7 over 3 seconds, that's 1.7 per second on average. The game adds these to get 7.7 per second over 13 seconds! So instead of averaging 60 damage, you would average 100! Just for adding that little belt. Now imagine having an emerald dagger, or even better a rare with the Pestilence suffix, which I believe does 12-28 over four seconds. Eventually if you get +poison on all possible slots you could do astronomical damage from one hit, it would just take half a minute or so to run its full course.

So it's valuable to know how the poison works. Other possibilities include chilling effects on weapon or other items, knockback, monster flees, and so on. And then there is the need for defense, as well, so while there are some items or affixes to strive for, there is no perfect set of gear for a poison dagger necro. One must pick and choose and try to balance as best they can.

An obvious skill combo for the PD necro is adding Bone Armor to the mix and carrying it to higher levels. Since the PD necro must increase dexterity (probably at least to 88, to use the best daggers, although one could get some of that from items with luck) there is less to put to other stats. The PD necro still needs mana, unless he gets a really high damage dagger and plenty of mana steal. Then there is the need for strength, and being an up close sort of character, even if not continuously so, adding to Vitality would be prudent. Bone Armor can't protect you from magic!

Then there is the fact that if PD is your ONLY focus, you will have serious troubles with a few specific foes that resist poison heavily (Venom Lords come to mind) and generally increased difficulty with undead (which all resist poison a good bit). To that end, the Lower Resistance Curse would seem attractive. A couple levels there would do more to increase your total damage, especially when you need it most, than those same points would gain you in PD itself. But there are so many prereqs to Lower Resistance that it only pays if you plan to use some of those other curses, too. Terror and possibly Decrepify come to mind, and there might be situations where Iron Maiden and a level one Clay Golem could buy you time or serve as a ranged attack when you are really suffering for one. Amp Damage could help early on, when you can't yet afford to Poison everything, and could help with nasty poison resistance foes until you can survive to reach Lower Resist, which is a level 30 skill!

It seemed reasonable to me that I would only need as much PD as it took to kill something in one hit. Normal monsters. Champs and bosses could be handled in a few hits. Therefore, it would be impractical to pump PD nonstop. It would be too much (and too costly) of offense, and no defense. It seemed a reasonable proposal to raise Bone Armor and PD in equal proportion, and I could adjust that in game as I went along and the need arose.

ACT ONE

Vilehand started out with that wand and I used it as a club until something dropped a bigger club, a spiked club. I used that until clvl 6. Why restrict myself to dagger? I could have, but there was no strategic value in doing so yet. I did switch to dagger once Vilehand reached clvl 6 though.

Bone Armor left me pretty safe, especially since it got an early boost as a level one skill, waiting for PD (level six skill) to catch up. I hotkeyed A and Z to standard attack and poison attack, and switched between them liberally. Weak opponents I would just slay, and save my mana. Stronger opponents got poisoned, and I would run around waiting on the poison, or I'd stand there and poison a whole mob. Only magic attacks could penetrate the bone armor and I would usually renew that before it expired.

This can lead you into laziness, though, almost to a place where you forget you can be hurt. The red potions accumulated like mad, yet blues got used as they dropped. Well, not quite, but I used more in Act One than I ever have with any other character. I never ran out of them, because I didn't waste them, but I used a lot.

Mana was the biggest issue. PD uses a lot more than most necro strategies and skills, at least at first. I did not add much to my Energy or Vitality either. I wanted to get both Strength and Dex up high enough to use daggers as new types became available and to do the same with armors and shields. I figured I could rely on Bone Armor to carry me through most spots for now. However, the need to refresh the armor, sometimes after only a couple fights, also cut into the mana. So there were actually times when mana potions were on the thin side that I went without the armor and used up some of those extra red potions.

As such, I made the decision to use my skull chips in a socketed helm, to help with mana and life recovery. Might as well, they'd only go to make rejuvs otherwise. I also turned up an emerald chip but saved it for act two.

By the time Vilehand reached the Dark Wood, I found it best to just poison everything. Some things that did not die from one poisoning, I would finish with a nonpoison melee strike.

At the time I faced the Smith, he was still highly poison resistant (buggy, v1.03) and I had to maul him straight up. Bone Armor made the fight one sided, though. I took lots of damage, but it didn't get through and I could just recast. Eventually that's not going to hold up to the rigors of the enemy, but for now it works quite well.

My plan for Vilehand is simple: complete game clear, once through each area. I may re-evaluate the full-clear provision for Hell Difficulty if things grow particularly tough and repetitive in NM, though.

All the magic attacks in the Catacombs led to the drinking of several red potions and I had close calls with some enchanted bosses. Lightning Enchanted were not as troublesome as you might guess because I didn't have to hit them a lot. And what I did hit, I would mostly try to hit from directly to the left of them on the screen, where there is always a sweet spot right next to them that sparks don't hit, if you can position yourself precisely in that spot. If not, you eat some sparks but not too many. Rather, it was the cold enchanted bosses that stung the most when I got caught by the blast, and one almost killed me. There's a down side to having low health even when you've got complete damage protection from nonelemental attacks. Combine a CEB with a roomful of spitters or shaman boss pack and it's not to be trifled with. You have to watch what you are doing.

I think the teleporting shaman boss on level one was the worst. I wasn't caught unprepared, but even just rushing in there to hit him and getting shot by so many minions with Vilehand having no resistance... I had to drink a whole belt of minor reds.

Andariel was not so bad. Antidotes for her poison and bone armor for everything else, use a few blues a few reds, and stay away from her while the poison does its work.

ACT TWO

Upon arriving in Act 2, I immediately bought a socketed kris and stuck my emerald chip into it. This increased my total damage a bit (2 damage over 3 seconds? Not much, but in reality it worked out to much more than that in total increase, as I explained earlier). I also bought a gold kris in case I might need lots of AR boost. I liked keeping my to-hit percentage very very high to minimize misses and increase the reliability of "swing at it and it dies" tactics.

The burning dead archers in Act Two were a Real Threat in large numbers. Their fire arrows automatically hit if they collide with you, I don't think they can be blocked, and they ignore bone armor. I had to be careful and to be liberal with the healing potions. Radament was another problem, and I had to lure away all his minions. There is a problem with resurrectable monsters when it takes you several seconds to rekill them. It didn't help that the one doing the resurrecting had a ton and a half of life and plenty of poison resistance.

The Halls of the Dead was an exercise in letting bone armor protect me while I made a beeline for any Hollow Ones. They would take more than one hit to kill, too, so there was lots of mousework, lots of happy feet and pied piper. This was a definite change of pace from any other Diablo 2 character I've played and it was fun. Get one hit, then come back shortly to get another if that one wasn't enough. Strike at minions and wait for them to die. Very different stuff. As often as not, I'd poison the Hollow Ones on the first swing, then stand there and swing normal swings a few times as the skeletons and mummies caught up to me, and not run until I'd hurt the Hollow One enough for the poison to finish him off. It was often better than having to circle around for another pass with PD. Terror would rescue me the times I actually got swarmed.

By the time I reached the Lost City, my poison was strong enough to cut through the resistance and sturdiness of Plague Bearers to kill them in one hit. It would take them a while to drop dead, but they would. This brings up the point that as Vilehand progresses, it will take longer and longer for poisoned enemies to succumb. A hit might be a death sentence, but the wait on death row is going to grow. What adjustments will that require? Should be fun to find out.

The same held true in Arcane Sanctuary: one hit would kill a specter or ghoul lord, as well as the goats. I had four skill points in curses (Terror, Iron Maiden, Weaken, and Amp Damage), one in Clay Golem which I only used very rarely, and the rest divided between PD and Armor.

Clearing the False Tombs, even Ancient Kaa, was not a problem. Vilehand is not a fast killer, but death at his hands is certain.

While working on the tombs, I was also gambling in town, and the first time I saw a Blade offered for gamble, I meant to click on it to see the price. Instead I right-clicked by mistake and bought the thing for a hefty 40-something thousand gold! Bad deal, right? Wrong! Luck smiled on me and it came up rare! What's more, it's a darn fine rare at that. 6-34 base damage (blows away the low damage on my Kris), +176 AR, -14 Monster Defense per hit (great for bosses!), and Increased Attack Speed (it's quite speedy!) The damage blows away what I could get even from the boost of two emerald chips in a socketed kris. Sometimes fate plays tricks on us, and even Murphy takes a day off now and then.

With this weapon in hand, Duriel was frankly no problem. Oh his hits stung well enough and I used a good many potions and he got past my bone armor more than once, but it just didn't take all that long to kill him and I just went toe to toe and outmatched him. The uberdrop was a rare bone shield with -2 magic damage, Fastest Recovery and several minor resistances and such. I was tickled just to get a useful uberdrop for once.

So to end act two, I had a really nice rare weapon, a really nice rare shield (nice for this early, and not twinked), a life leech ring with +AR, rare boots with faster run and several minor resistances, rare chain gloves with all minor bonuses, and a helm with two skull chips providing some light health and mana recovery.

- Sirian

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