Daggermancer Author: darnocpdx Version: 1.10 Page 1 Navigation 1) The Stats 2) The Skills 3) The Mercenary 4) Poison Damage 5) Item Modifiers/Gear Selection 6) Strategy PvM 7) Strategy PvP This guide is being written to help those who wish to pursue a necromancer build based on the Poison dagger skill. This is a fun and unique build that requires some thought and some fairly advanced knowledge on the skill and the effects of poison damage items on the skill. To some the Daggermancer would appear to be a regular Meleemancer, and in effect it is a Meleemancer. However a pure Daggermancer is a stealth build and is only in melee range for a second or two, and as such the gear and stats should be approached in a different manner. In this guide we will discuss every relative aspect of the build. It should be noted that this is a guide that has been designed for an untwinked character. I don't personally care for builds that require a specific item to be effective. When specific items are mentioned it is done because I know it will be asked about and in a couple of cases the items are so beneficial that it is impossible to ignore them. I also keep it as general as possible so that players can adjust the build more to their specific play style. Also realize that this guide is built around the Poison Dagger spell, and as such things like maximizing physical damage and regular Meleemancer advice is not typically addressed here. Here we focus on using Poison damage. 1) The Stats Strength - Place only enough for gear. Typically 75-90 base without gear is enough, though adjustments should be made depending on your gear selection. Dexterity -You should defiantly have enough here for max block, typically you'll even need a little more than that to achieve a 90%+ Attack Rating (AR). But be careful not to over do it, there are many items that significantly boost your AR. Vitality - Everything that doesn't get put into Strength and Dexterity should go here. Energy - You typically wont be using a lot of mana so no points are needed here. Again, we have gear available to help with this. 2) The Skills The Poison and Bone Branch Bone Armor/Bone Wall - 1 point, if you feel you need a boost to it place points in bone wall, the synergy bonus of bone wall is better than points actually placed in the skill. This skill is helpful at the early level, however unless you plan on using the marrowalk bug at higher levels it's less effective unless you heavily invest in it. Especially now that it doesn't cancel one attack outright as it use to. Bone Prison - Unless you plan on boosting it a lot near useless. Though helpful for boosting Bone Armor with synergies. Personally I don't care for this skill, it requires too many points and too many casts to truly trap an opponent in it. Teeth - 1 point prerequisite only Corpse Explosion - A good supplemental spell for poison the immune and emergency situations. Also a necessary skill for one of the featured advanced techniques. Bone Spear/Bone Sprit - Not used Poison Dagger - This is what it is all about. Max it. More on point distribution in the poison damage section. Poison Explosion - Max it. Not only for the synergies but also for the spell itself. By far it is the most powerful poison spell in the game that can not be modified. Poison Nova - Max it. Though you will seldom use it you need the synergies. The Summoning Branch Skeletal Mastery/Raise Skeleton/Skeletal Mage/Revives - Those that follow the Poison Dagger path will not have enough points to make this branch effective. If you simply must have skeletons pump mastery and put one point in the skeleton of your choice. However I strongly suggest you ignore this line. Clay Golem - This is perhaps your best friend. It slows it's target, has massive hit points, self heals, and is cold resistant. Is a key factor in the safest way to kill bosses. How many points you put here is a matter of taste. Many are content with one point here and one point in Golem Mastery and Summon resist. Myself I like to boost it by about 5-10 points for greater slow target and the hit point boost. Golem Mastery - I like to pump this a little less than Clay Golem. 1-7 points are recommended. Summon Resists - No more than four points here, after this it more points become much less effective. Fire Golem - If you plan on PvP play this is a must have. Poison dagger wont kill other players, but rather it reduces your opponent to 1 hit point. It's fire aura will easily give you that last point of damage. Can also be somewhat helpful with those that are poison immune. However, because the damage is low even when pumped up be prepared for a very long battle with the immune opponents. Iron Golem - Only good if you sacrifice a good item for it. Personally, I'd rather use such gear to trade for items I'd rather have. Blood Golem - Absolutely not. This Golems life share ability will get you killed if you're not careful. The Curse Branch Amplify Damage - The true Daggermancer has no need for this other than the fact that it is a prerequisite for the other curses. If you plan on using Corpse Explosion then you may wish to boost it to the point where it's radius is the same or slightly lower than the Radius of Corpse Explosion. This way the Amp Damage wont overwrite your curses that are affecting those that aren't getting hit by Corpse Explosion. If you plan on going a more melee style play with your weapon switch then a few points here isn't a bad idea. Weaken - 1 point Prerequisite only Terror - A very handy curse in the Daggermancer's spell book. More points means those that are terrorized will flee for a longer amount of time. However base is good enough for our purposes. At a certain point you may wish to rely upon the item modifier "flees in terror". More on this one in the strategy section. 1 point here. Decrepify - Though a staple of Meleemancers and most other necromatic builds, you wont be using this one much. It's better to rely on golem and gear for slowing your target down. Though again if you plan on a more melee attack on the weapon switch you might want a few more points in it. Iron Maiden - Nearly useless. Might find it handy against certain bosses with your golem, but not with the big four after normal mode.- 1 point prerequisite only. Life Tap - A very handy spell. Used properly and your mercenary and yourself will have a full health bar most the time. Also very useful when used in conjunction with Confusion for fighting bosses and those that are poison immune. Doing this allows the surrounding confused opponents to attack them and leech life off of them, and thus making it possible for the lesser beasts to kill them for you. Otherwise you will typically cast it for only a second or two so you and you mercenary can heal then switching to a more useful curse. Lower Resists - This spell will lower the resistance of poison, fire, lightning, and cold spells. Needless to say this is a very important spell for those using Poison Dagger. But because the radius increases with more points and the fact that it will overwrite your AI curse no more than 4 points should ever be put here. I recommend 1 point, with plus gear it will get too big if you don't keep it in check. Dim Vision - Very useful curse for the Daggermancer. It makes those that are effected blind to everything around them that is outside of melee range. It doesn't work on the powerful opponents in the game though. This is the curse of choice for most Daggermancers, Most try to get it to level 15 or better since its duration is cut dramatically in Hell. Confusion - For me this is quickly becoming the curse of choice for me. It causes your opponents to attack each other. Though not all will quit attacking you while confused enough are that even the biggest of crowds becomes manageable. Champion ranked opponents will attack the confused and likewise the confused will attack the Champions. Life Tap the champions and then confuse the surrounding beasts and you wont have to deal with those champions at all (or if you do they will be severely injured). Like Dim Vision you'll need to pump this up to 15+ to keep it useful in Hell mode. If you plan on using this curse I highly recommend a few points (5 or so) also in Dim Vision or Attract for greater crowd control. Though I should warn you, confuse at high levels brings lots groups from other areas of the level. Also if you have it high enough and hit beast that it doesn't work on that is off screen it counts as a failed attack and they come at you, I've met Mephisto in the side rooms of the Durance 3 upon entering. Though knowing this can also be used to your advantage, you'll never see cows go down much faster than a high level confuse (or for that matter so many on the screen at once.) Attract - some people swear by this one, and if you are running with a large group of allies it does seem to work better than confusion. But because it is only you, your golem, and your mercenary confusion has much more practical. However a few points here isn't a bad idea since it can be used to distract the ranged opponents while you concentrate on the melee opponents. Just make sure that when you use it on the ranged that you pick your target carefully, make sure it is on one or two opponents that are near the middle of the pack of ranged attackers. Otherwise it wont have any effect. Attract can also be used to great effect if you plan on using Corpse Explosion. It will help tighten the crowds of opponents allowing you to hit more opponents with fewer points in Corpse Explosion 3) The Mercenary The selection of a mercenary is a very important aspect to this build. Most necromancer builds rely upon the stacking effect of amp damage and the Act II nightmare might mercenary. If you are gong with a Meleemancer type weapon switch then by all means continue with him. However, those of us that like to let our poison do the work will receive no benefit from this mercenary. We have three choices of mercenaries that will best suit or needs. 1) Act II Normal Defensive (Defiance Aura) - This is my favorite mercenary. He makes for a great tank, and with his aura you can easily maintain a high defense rating. With your chance to block maxed it makes it very difficult for the enemy to land a hit on you. 2) Act II Normal Combat (Prayer Aura) - This would be my second choice. The prayer aura will increase your Hit Point pool dramatically. Very useful for recovering from those hits you do receive. The best benefit though is that the aura stacks with Clay Golems high hit point regeneration rate which if you've put points in clay golem can make it extremely durable. 3) Act II Nightmare Defensive (Holy Freeze Aura) - A very powerful aura indeed. This one freezes/chills all that come near him making it very safe for you to run in, stab and then retreat. However, the other two mercenaries can obtain this with the Doom rune word. Even if you are poor and don't have the runes to makes Doom I'd prefer the above mentioned mercenaries in hopes of eventually acquiring them. Though it is possible to switchback to defiance or prayer in hell should you get the runes. It is perhaps the most useful of all the mercenaries for this build. Those running with a Holy Freeze mercenary can if they choose dedicate many less points to the AI curses in that this aura will be doing most the work. However getting to Act II nightmare will be difficult with a Daggermancer unless you are rushed. Makes sure you keep your mercenary close to your level. It's easy once you get this build down to run without a mercenary. But when you need him you're really going to need him, so don't neglect him. Also be warned you might wish to not give him a weapon or at most a weak weapon so that he won't steal your kills. If you are using +mana per kill gear this will destroy your mana regeneration. If you do this make sure you have a decent weapon in storage for him to use on bosses. 4) Poison Damage For those not familiar with it much of the information here I am borrowing from "the Toa of Poison". In this text the author goes through and explains exactly how the computer calculates poison damage. It is an impressive document and I commend him on doing a fine job with it. However, the math involved is fairly complicated and a rather long process. Here I summarize it down and simplify the math into what I hope is a more people friendly formula. Also parts of it no longer apply to the 1.10 environment, the ranged combat poison bug has been fixed. It is important that you understand these concepts so that you can adjust you poison damage to suit your needs at ant given time. Don't make the mistake in thinking that the more poison sources you carry the better your poison damage is. It is very important to understand this section so that you can determine the best items available to equip to achieve your objectives for different situations Before we start with the math it is important that you understand a few terms and concepts. First you must realize that poison damage is computed by the frame. A frame a segment of time in which that your computer redraws the picture on your screen. Diablo II has a frame rate of 25 frames per second. In other words, the image you see on screen is drawn or adjusted 25 times every second you play. Most of us are familiar with this because a number of spells work this way in the game like firewall, meteor, and inferno. Now I will be using the following acronyms and definitions for the following terms: Damage= Damage listed on the item Duration= When I use this term it refers to the duration as listed on an item in seconds. DPS= Damage Per Second FR=Frame Rate DPF=Damage Per Frame DF= Duration in Frames I=Items SD= Spell Duration The first thing we to determine when using poison items to boost our spells is the Duration in Frames. This is easy to figure to. So for every poison item you have you simply multiply the Duration by 25. Duration (in seconds)*25=DF Duration of poison damage from items (note not spells well get to that part in a minute) is averaged. So to figure how long your poison will last you simply add together the DF of each item then divide by the number of items. So For example lets say I have a dagger socketed with a Tal rune (75 poison damage over 5 seconds) a Wormskull (80 poison damage over 8 seconds) and a small charm of blight (6 poison damage over 2 seconds). It should be noted as well that multiple sources of poison damage on a single item should be treated separately, regardless of the listed damage on the item. As an example if you place 2 Perfect Emeralds in a dagger the listed damage would be 202 poison damage over 6 seconds, however when figuring your damage they should be considered as such 100 poison damage over 6 seconds AND 100 poison damage over 6 seconds . Needless to say this complicates things when using magic and rares that have both the poison damage prefix and suffix. In such cases you can never know for sure what the stats are for both those poison sources. And is part of the reason you can't rely upon poison damage calculators for this information. When using such items I recommend trying them out a little with a few different items to determine it parameters approximately. The DF of each item is Tal Rune. 25*5=125 DF Wormskull 25*8=200 DF Charm 25*2= 50 DF For the DF of the combined items we do this: [125(tal)+200(wormskull)+50(charm)=375] /3(the number of items)=125 Now the beauty of Poison dagger is that the duration of the spell is added onto this figure. So for example your poison dagger has a duration of 5.2 seconds you would add (5.2*25) 130 frames for the total FD. So we now know that our victims will be under the effect of our poison for 255 frames (255/25=10.2 seconds). But how much damage? Now we need to find the DPF. Here it gets even easier. For each object you divide the Damage/DF. So in our above example we'd get: Tal 75/125=0.6 Wormskull 80/200=0.4 Charm 6/50=0.12 Spell(level 10) 104/130=0.8 Now we just add them up. Note that the DPF of the spell is added on here. So our total DPF with items is 1.92 poison that lasts 255 frames. Total damage would be 489.6 Hit points of damage. Or 1.92*255= 489.6. Not bad considering this set up is easily possible at level 20. Now because the duration is averaged as you might have surmised that duration can have a dramatic effect on the damage we do. This is why it is important to know how the poison works, you now have the tools to adjust your poison damage for certain situations. For example if we remove the charm from the equation above we get a DF of 325+130=475 DF what does that do to the total damage. Well the DPF goes down by 0.12 so our new DPF is 1.8 however our total damage goes up because the duration has increased and we now find our dagger strike doing 855 damage total (475*1.8). As you can tell by removing one source we nearly doubled our total damage. However it's important to adjust your poison to reflect what you are doing in the game. Here I give four examples of different games and the poison types most suited for them.. 1) Meleemancers - You want the duration to be as long as possible so that you don't have switch your weapons as much while fighting. In general questing you need not worry about raising your DPF cause the poison dagger is only used to supplement your other damage. 2) Boss Runs - Here the Daggermancer wants a long lasting high damage poison. It makes for faster kills and safer game play in that you have to stab them less often. 3) Questing -Here the Daggermancer may wish to try to lower his total damage in favor of a higher DPF to kill faster and speed up play. 4) Playing with other poison characters - Be very careful of the assassins venom, you will most likely never get a DPF big enough to overwrite it. Try to explain to them that they shouldn't attempt to attack the same opponents as you since the duration of venom is only .4 seconds will cancel your dagger spell. Likewise you should be weary of Rabid Druids. However, you shouldn't have to worry too much about them, most likely your poison dagger will have a higher DPF than they do. And should you ever group with the one or two poison Javazons realize that they have the potential for the biggest damage of all, and considering there aren't many of them out there you should probably assume that they know what they are doing and that they have a higher total poison damage than you do. Regardless in group play a higher DPF is better. Most likely the opponents wont last long enough for the total duration of poison dagger. Here is a handy chart I have made with the most common Poison damage gear in the game: Item Item Type FD DPF Wormskull Helm 200 0.4 Dark Adherent Armor 50 0.48-0.68 Radament's Sphere Shield 100 0.8 Sander's Taboo Gloves 75 0.12-0.15 Venom Grip Gloves 100 0.6 Snakecord Belt 75 0.16 The Jade Tan Do Weapon 100 1.8 Blackbog's Sharp Weapon 250 1.95 Venom (Rune Word) Weapon 150 1.82 Facet Jewel 50 0.74 Tal Rune Rune 125 0.6 Perfect Emerald Gem 175 0.57 Atma's Scarab Amulet 100 0.4 Set Bonuses Infernal Helm/Belt 75 0.11 The Disciple #1 3 items 75 0.29 The Disciple #2 3 items 62.5 0.77-0.97 The Disciple Full Set 66.67 1.06-1.26 *Because the Infernal set includes a wand full set bonuses are not included.  * The 3 item Disciple#1 set if figured without Dark Adherents bonuses.  The 3 Item #2 is with * The Disciple Full set is figured with the Dark Adherent's bonus figured in. I should also say here that once you get your Poison Dagger to level 10 that you will get more DPF by investing in the synergies than the spell, however you don't get a duration bonus with points in synergies so you should try to keep it balanced in such away that compliments your style more. For example a Meleemancer may wish to only put 10 here then max the synergies before going back to Poison dagger. A pure Daggermancer will most likely keep them somewhat in check and in a fairly even ratio through out the build. I would however suggest maxing Poison Explosion before Nova. If only for the fact that it makes Baal's and Diablo's minions much easier. It doesn't take very many points to make it truly effective, and anywhere that you opponents come from a single predictable direction can often be killed quickly and efficiently with this spell. 5) Item Modifiers/Gear Selections Before I start I should remind the reader that I will only mention a few items by name here. Mostly I want to give you the tools so that you can make better judgments in gear. For the most part I like working with item modifications because as most players know rares are often better than Unique gear.  Special attention will also be given to the rune word Venom. Leech Hit Points/Mana - For the true Daggermancer who relies upon the poison to kill these modifiers are near useless, and in the case of needing emergency hit points you have Life Tap. + Hit Points/Mana per kill - For the true Daggermancer much more appropriate. My general rule is one mana per kill per level of poison dagger. Though this seems high it will also help make up the mana lost from casting curses and other spells. Faster Cast Rate - well Poison Dagger is triggered by striking an opponent, and curses are pretty much instant casts as well. Not really needed, unless you are going to be using items that grant the Teleport skill. Ignore Target Defense - You got your chance to hit at 90%+ and it doesn't work on bosses, not useful at all. -Target Defense - A much better alternative to the Ignore Target Defense. This one works on bosses too. + Defense vs. Missile - Since you don't any range in your attacks this will help protect you from those stray shots before you hit the ranged attackers busy with a curse. +Running/Walking Speed - The more the better. The faster you run the better chance you have of not getting hit while you run in to strike. +Attack Speed - Some is good, however not necessary since your only hitting everything once. And really it only applies to instances where you are going to hit things repeatedly. +Hit Recovery Rate - Very Important. This will make it so that those few times you do get hit you can still get a stab in without getting lock blocked. Target Can Not Heal - Very important in hell mode. Make sure you have this one somewhere in Nightmare, by hell it's required.  Cannot Be Frozen - Again Very important, this will save you from one of the most dangerous types of attacks for you. Terror/Howling - This is a great mod to help you keep the group sizes down. This item modifier works much like terror though it only works on opponents that are one level greater than you are and below.  This is handy in that it doesn't overwrite Lower Resists and will clear opponents that stand so close that you can not target the other. This can be quite frustrating. And it surpasses terror in the fact that it only effects the one opponent you strike. +skills - No need for summery. Resists - Since Melee combat wont be much of a problem with you since you are only engaged in it for a second, you should strive to have your resists maxed or near maxed most the time. The biggest threat to your well being is in the form of ranged elemental attacks. +cold damage - handy for slowing beasts down. Don't use this with terror/howl in that the beasts will snap out of the terror much closer to you for an extra attack or two before they die. Open Wounds - Nice physical drain that makes your poison seem much more damaging than it really is. Crushing Blow - Handy for the bosses, but not completely necessary. For the purest the fun is in the slow poison death even on the big guys. Though necessary with Meleemancers. Critical Strike/Deadly Strike - Purists don't do enough physical damage to make this worth while. Again important for Meleemancers. +Poison Damage - No brainer, though not necessary. Remember the above examples, a few really good poison items are much better than lots of lesser ones. +Attack Rating - you can never have enough AR. Of Particular interest are items that add a percentage or points per level, but don't over look those items with just a straight AR boost too, coupled with a % item and they help a lot. Knock back - can help loosen up tight groups of opponents where targeting them can be problematic.  There are 3 pieces of gear that deserve special attention. Two of them are from the Trang's Set. The gloves give a +25% poison spell damage modifier, the Shield/head gives and additional -25 target poison resist with a 3rd set item. The pure Daggermancer does quite nice with this set, there is a bug with the full set in that casting and attack rate are off, but since you only hit once you need not worry about the attack rate too much, and curses don't receive any benefit from casting rate. Also the Fire spells are an excellent addition for helping with the poison Immune. And the effect that you walk at your running speed is also a nice bonus. Though seldom do you run out of stamina by the time you can equip the complete set. Also of note is the Rune Word Bramble this item is of note only cause it has a +25-50% poison spell damage. That's huge, with this and 3 pieces of Trangs you can get -25% target poison resists and increase the spell damage of your poison dagger by 50-75%. It doesn't get any better than that.  It has recently come to my attention that items that have the Assassins Venom Charges are stackable with Poison Dagger. Though I haven't seen this in action, if true either Arachnid's Mesh (Level 3, 11 charges) and Andariel's Visage (Level 3, 20 charges) should be sought out as well. If this is true one could easily get to 75- 100k damage mark with the tip notch gear. I bring these up not so much as gear you have to have but gear you should be trying to get. Again if done right a Daggermancer can clear the entire game (though some areas will be more difficult than others) untwinked. Now for a word about the Rune Word Venom. This item will give you synergies as if you have level 18 Poison Explosion and level 15 Poison Nova. Though this is tempting, don't fall prey to the easy out. A successful Daggermancer needs to be sharp and have full knowledge of their abilities. But then again I'm very much a purest, use it if you must, personally I think there are better things to save a MAL rune for. Since this isn't a guide for other builds wishing to compensate their builds with poison damage I won't get into details on how to use this for that purpose. 6) Strategy So now you got your build, your mercenary, and you know what your looking for in gear. Time to get into the strategies and techniques of the Daggermancer. First I should say that this build is best suited for solo play while questing. The slow method of killing can be discouraging for those not use familiar with it, however if played right you can even be an asset to those groups that kill at a fast speed too, it's all in how you play it. The Daggermancer might very well feel useless next to the faster killing builds, and meanwhile unsympathetic players will feel as though you are leeching. However when doing boss experience runs you'll find you are typically very welcome you got one of the biggest damage spells in the game and you have very helpful curses that you employ, who wouldn't want you around then.  So first let's look at solo play. For general questing and leveling up you will typically want a faster acting poison. If you keep you poison dagger and synergies at an appropriate level for your character level this shouldn't be much of a problem. The general technique is basically hit and run. First you cast the AI curse of your choice then run around the mob of opponents striking each one once. For tougher or tightly packed opponents you can cast the AI curse, strike, then cast Lower resist and then terror to break up the groups. Go from one opponent to the next as fast as possible, this will keep your killing speed as fast as possible if that is what you choose to do. Remember though it's also fun to watch as they die off one by one as well.  While playing in groups it's important that you stay ahead of the pack of players. Here you will run around and cast you AI curse of choice all over the place and go through and pick off the ranged attackers. Occasionally casting a curse behind you for the following pack of players benefit. This can actually make the runs extremely fast especially if you can get a good jab in on the named and champion groups before the rest of the group gets to them. You might not kill them but by the time the rest of the group gets to them they will have dramatically reduced hit points and easy to pick off for the rest of the group. Think of yourself as a scout/sniper while in group play and everything should go well. Now for bosses, one of the biggest problems a Daggermancer has is that bosses can be rather problematic. This is why it's important to keep your mercenary to level and to have a good Clay Golem. When facing bosses make sure you keep your golem up and cast on the opposite side of the boss from where you and your mercenary are standing. Clay Golem for some reason is always top on the order of what a boss will attack if given a choice, by casting them on the opposite side of you and your mercenary you're both safe from the deadly head on attacks. If you have to, recast Clay Golem before it dies to keep it fresh. For these occasions I typically have a wand and head on the weapon switch that features any of these +skills. +Clay Golem, +Golem Mastery,+Summon resists. I also like to have plus Bone Armor on them if I don't put points in that line (which I often don't). This way for the bosses you can create a golem that will last a few attacks, here you simply run in hit with poison damage then back off and keep the golem up. You should occasionally cast Life Tap on the boss as well to help your mercenary survive. If I don't do this with a buffed up golem gear on the weapon switch I typically have a big elemental damage throwing knife to throw at he boss. This will better compliment lower resist and I use throwing daggers because I am a Daggermancer after all, and you get to equip a shield. Also for either method don't be afraid to toss a few bone walls up between you and the boss this can often be a lifesaver should things go badly quick. Advanced Techniques and Strategies Juggling- So you're in your teen levels and pumping dim over poison dagger. Your poison will kill but it needs to run it's full duration, or you might need one extra hit on them to get that kill. Here is where you can juggle the opponents. Here you strike them with poison dagger and either terror them or let your howling dagger do it for you, they'll run off and once the howl/terror wears off they will come back only to have you do it again if needed. If you practice you can actually get 3 or 4 going one returning just before the next and then add new victims as the old ones dies off. If you get really good you can bounce them off objects, extra points if you can do this and the poison wears off just before you hit them again. Even if you don't plan on using this technique you should try it a few times. Especially when you start getting items that are hard to determine what the poison damage is. It is also great practice for the next technique. The Suicide Bomber Here you use the terror to send a freshly poisoned victim towards a crowd of AI cursed. If you time it right (which is why you practice juggling.) you can drop them close enough to the crowd that you want eliminated and then cast Corpse Explosion on them. This also works great with Poison explosion as well if your aim is a little off and the corpse drops a little too far from the group. Here you simply cast Lower resist on a portion of the crowd directly on the other side of the corpse from you, so that when they come to attack you they must walk over the corpse. Then cast Poison Explosion on the corpse just before they get to it. Poison explosion is so powerful it should drop all but the greatest of opponents rater quickly, for safety feel free to cast Dim Vision on them again after they are poisoned. PvP First I should say that I don't duel or PK. However I also seldom run from a fight and have collected more ears than I have given out in non hacked PK situations. Most of this information are tactics that I have modified from other threads on PvP play. Though the defensive section I have done a few times with great success in the past. The Daggermancer has definite strengths and weaknesses in the PvP environment. First the poison damage isn't affected by any PvP modifiers, However they also don't kill other players but rather reduce them to one hit point. The weakness is that to use your dagger you must get into melee range to do so and honestly even a Meleemancer isn't typically strong enough to go head to head with others that want to go melee. However you do have other options. The type of PvP also will effect your play style as well. Here I will define two different PvP situations. They are PK Defensive, PK Offensive/ Duel. PK Defensive - This is actually probably your best chance here. That is because if the PKer will most likely assume you are a bone necromancer. Or a summons necromancer. There aren't very many poison necromancers out there so most likely they wont come equip with poison reduction gear. This assumes that they haven't watched you play, if you've been watched and selected as a target odds are they will equip one piece of 75% poison duration reduction gear. Since it doesn't kill most wont bother with real poison resistance. After all they got a bunch of hit points and you wont last long. So what to do when they hostile you? First if you know where the stairs and TPs are, try to adjust your map so that these points can be seen. In the mean time head near the largest camp you've most recently wiped out and put the corpses between you and him. Summon your clay golem now too, even if you got fire start with clay, you want to slow them down at first. Also if you can terror a few beasts his/her direction, they move faster when it wears off and is great way to confuse the PKer a little bit. Now here is were it gets interesting, and what you do next will depend on your abilities. Wall yourself in with your clay golem cast to the outside if the attacker doesn't have a spell that passes through walls/prisons. Just before they enter the screen area start casting poison explosion in the direction they are coming from. Since most people aren't familiar with Poison Explosion most wont think twice about running through it , and in fact they'll probably think you hit the wrong button in fear or nervousness. Now once they have turned green can finish them off with a fire golem, Iron maiden, or teeth. You can even start to melee them if you have made your build in such a way. Here since it is a PK situation Life Tap is acceptable, though in honor dueling it is a no-no.  Daggermancer on Offense/and the Duel This is a little trickier, first you should always stake out potential victims. If you can see how long poison lasts on them etc. Mephisto runs are good for this since the poisons there aren't so plentiful and powerful that people go out of there way to pump poison resistance, as they do on Andy and Act 2. Once you've found a target that doesn't chicken or TP to town, you now rush them and use your novas to make sure they don't have antidotes. From there you can either fight them with Poison Dagger (hit and run style), or lure them over a corpse and PE them or just continue with novas. Finish them off just as mentioned above. My personal favorite is with teeth, not sure anything is more insulting than going down to a 1 point level 1 spell. Also it always hits and even with reduction gear will always do one point (which is exactly what you need). Might not be a bad idea to either use points or item for a level one Bone Spirit to chase them should they try running off screen. Do expect people run or TP out if your poison doesn't drop them to 1 within a couple of seconds. You want the biggest possible DPF for doing this. However one thing in your favor is that the health bar kinda lags behind the actual damage when you are poisoned. So they (and you) wont necessarily know when they get to one.  In conclusion I wish to thank the many that have written on the subject of poison and poison dagger over the years. I hope you enjoyed this little romp through one of the necromancers most misunderstood spells. Enjoy and happy sticking! darnocpdx 0 Please log in to post... Please log in. Use your Diii.net Forum account. Username: Remember me? Password: Want to register?     Lost password?