Poison Knives Trait

[Deleted]

I've been looking in these forums and can't find a definitive answer (found speculation in other places but nothing conclusive).

Does anyone know how the Poison Knives trait works with AP?

Poison Knives

When Fan of Knives strikes targets poisoned with your Deadly Poison, Deadly Poison instantly deals 12% of its remaining damage.

Increases the effect of Agonizing Poison's damage bonus by 6%.


Is this a flat 6% increase that is a passive permanent bonus (as Master Poisoner is), or only temporarily applied via FoK? Because if it's the former its a very good relic (better than Master Poisoner which increases it up to 3%). But I'm not sure how it could work with the latter as it'd have to calculate the bonus by putting a temporary buff after FoK which after testing in dummies it doesn't seem to do.

Does anyone know for sure how this works?

I'm asking because I just got a 910 Poison Knives relic from the weekly chest, and I'm considering replacing an 885 Toxic Blades with it (Envenom buff).

Thanks.

[Deleted]

I think you are mixing up things a little bit.

Master Poisoner = T1 Talent
Posion Knives = Trait

I have no idea what you mean by 3% and Master Poisoner, but its correct, its a flat passive 6% increase on your AP. But it is not additive, it is multiplicative, which means, if you have a 10% bonus on AP, you dont get 16%, you get 10 * 0.06 = 10.6%.

So what is your question? Do you wanna know if you should swap a 885 TB relic for a 910 Poison Knives? Yes, go for it. Although envenom is #1 source of our dmg abilities, yet the 3% increase for envenom is also multiplicative and not additive as already mentioned above. So in your case we are talking about 25 relic levels that make it worth to switch.

[Deleted]

Sorry I meant Master Alchemist, the trait... got mixed up a bit there.

And my question was, we know that Master Alchemist increases AP by a flat 3% (1% per point). Or 4% now with the extra point. Multiplicative as you say.

Poison Knives however, increases it by 6% (2% per point). 8% with the extra point.

So PK would on paper be better than Master Alchemist, which doesn't make a lot of sense. So my question was if the 6% additive bonus to AP only applied when using FoK, or was a permanent passive buff like the Master Alchemist one.

[Deleted]

Poison knives increases your benifit from mastery with ap. AP only receives half of the benifit of mastery. With the PK trait this is improved by up to 8% now. 50*1.08=54%. This is a flat 4% increase. You get 4% more benifit from mastery with AP. The base dmg of AP is not effected.

[Deleted]

All right... since I could see this nowhere (and I've searched thoroughly) I can confirm that the FoK 6% buff to AP IS NOT passively added as the Master Alchemist 3% bonus is.

I've ascertained this by un-equipping everything (except my Artifact), and then adding pieces of gear to see which one would push me over the edge from 5.1% to 6.1% AP bonus.

So e.g. when Mastery increased the effect of AP by 46.5%, plus the 3% from Master Alchemist that is 49.5%.

4 * .495 = 5.98% (displays 5.1% in the tooltip)

If the 6% from FoK was added passively the bonus would be 55.5% (46.5 +3 + 6) and in theory would push the tooltip into 6.1% as the total amount would be 6.22%, which doesn't happen.

Adding a small piece of Mastery gear does push me over that 6 level and the tooltip changes accordingly.

Therefore we can safely say that the FoK bonus isn't passively baked into as the Master Alchemist one is.

By the way, you jump to the next bracket as soon as you reach that even number. So if you total 5.99% AP per stack, it will display 5.1% in the tooltip. As soon as you reach 6.00% it will display 6.1%.

Still not sure how that 6% FoK buff is calculated, but I assume that when you apply a Poison with FoK that stack will have the additional 0.06 from the relic.

[omeomorfismo]

for ap its a better Master alchemist

[Deleted]

Still not sure how that 6% FoK buff is calculated, but I assume that when you apply a Poison with FoK that stack will have the additional 0.06 from the relic.

Its quite simple. Just read the description of mastery in your character sheet. It will show you how strong AP is effected by mastery. Its raw 50%. This means that only the half of mastery is boosting you AP poison.

Example:

3.5% AP base value*50% of your mastery value = gross dmg value per AP stack

If you have 4/4 PK the mastery bonus increases by 8% to 54%

Example:

3.5% AP base value*54% of your mastery value = gross dmg value per ap stack

[Deleted]

Didn't you read what I just wrote?? I'm fully aware that 50% of mastery is used for calculating AP values.

But the PK 4/4 8% Mastery Bonus DOES NOT count for this total. It must be counted ONLY when the poison is applied via Fan of Knives.

The 4/4 4% Master Alchemist bonus is counted.

[Blayke]

Its quite simple. Just read the description of mastery in your character sheet. It will show you how strong AP is effected by mastery. Its raw 50%. This means that only the half of mastery is boosting you AP poison.

I believe the confusion lies in the tooltip itself: "When Fan of Knives strikes targets poisoned with your Deadly Poison, Deadly Poison instantly deals 4% of its remaining damage.

Agonizing Poison
Increases the effect of Agonizing Poison's damage bonus by (4 /)%"

It seems to imply that you have to use FoK in order to get the AP bonus. I do not believe this to be the case. I think it's simply because AP is radically different from our other poisons that it warrants a separate mention in the tooltip. If you check out the link in wowhead its formatted a bit clearer; the obvious implication is that the trait does two different, separate things.

Another example of this would be Surge of Toxins and Master Alchemist, where AP requires a separate mention. But this is just how i'm reading it. Would love to hear a definitive answer on this.

[Blayke]

for ap its a better Master alchemist

Could you explain where you got this?

Tried to do some research around the net about this and came up with virtually nothing, which is odd. It seems inconceivable that this only works with fok, since you're not going to use fok with ap to begin with. common sense (yeah, i know) would tell us it's a separate buff, but there really doesn't seem to be much out there on this.

So I really want you to be right on this

[omeomorfismo]

Could you explain where you got this?

Tried to do some research around the net about this and came up with virtually nothing, which is odd. It seems inconceivable that this only works with ap, since you're not going to use fok with ap to begin with. common sense (yeah, i know) would tell us it's a separate buff, but there really doesn't seem to be much out there on this.

So I really want you to be right on this

both in wowhead page and discord(ravensomething) i found that effectively for AP the buff is the same type of master alchemist
it is counter intuitive and effectively when i put the new trait i forgot to watch if there was some change in the tooltip, but a moderator of the discord channel confirm me that it works in this way

[milkbonez]

Um, maybe this is just my ui or something, but the tooltip mouseover for both master alchemist and poison knives no longer shows the agonizing poison buffs....

[whathump]

Um, maybe this is just my ui or something, but the tooltip mouseover for both master alchemist and poison knives no longer shows the agonizing poison buffs....

Do you have agonizing poison selected as a talent? If not, it won't show up.

[milkbonez]

derp, was pvp'ing last night. thanks.

[Blayke]

both in wowhead page and discord(ravensomething) i found that effectively for AP the buff is the same type of master alchemist
it is counter intuitive and effectively when i put the new trait i forgot to watch if there was some change in the tooltip, but a moderator of the discord channel confirm me that it works in this way

Thank you for this. Of course, this begets another question: should poison knives be our 43rd trait? If it's basically a better MA, it would seem like the logical choice.

[Halobob87]

Thank you for this. Of course, this begets another question: should poison knives be our 43rd trait? If it's basically a better MA, it would seem like the logical choice.

? What? 43th trait should be Master assassin, not master Alchemist lol.

[omeomorfismo]

Thank you for this. Of course, this begets another question: should poison knives be our 43rd trait? If it's basically a better MA, it would seem like the logical choice.

i did MA->env->poison knives->ruptures

but only in the hope of a 715 shadow MA (wich will replace a 715 shadow poison knives) for 3/3MA traits, probably the right path if you have only 1 MA relic is env->poisonknives->ruptures->MA->other 2

the last will be master alchemist or mut cit, i will sim it when i'll put the 2° rupture

[Blayke]

i did MA->env->poison knives->ruptures

but only in the hope of a 715 shadow MA (wich will replace a 715 shadow poison knives) for 3/3MA traits, probably the right path if you have only 1 MA relic is env->poisonknives->ruptures->MA->other 2

the last will be master alchemist or mut cit, i will sim it when i'll put the 2° rupture

So in essence the 5% i'm getting from MA and the 8% i'm getting from PK give me an extra 13% damage to my ap, in the multiplicative sense?

[Halobob87]

So in essence the 5% i'm getting from MA and the 8% i'm getting from PK give me an extra 13% damage to my ap, in the multiplicative sense?

Lol no.
MA give you flat 1% damage per point to your agonizing, so, if AP increase your damage by 20% baseline, with 4/4 MA it will be 24% damage increase. Poison knife 4/4 increase how much your mastery scale with ap, so, istead of the baseline 50% scaling, your will get 50 x 1.08 (8%)= 54% .

[Blayke]

Lol no.
MA give you flat 1% damage per point to your agonizing, so, if AP increase your damage by 20% baseline, with 4/4 MA it will be 24% damage increase. Poison knife 4/4 increase how much your mastery scale with ap, so, istead of the baseline 50% scaling, your will get 50 x 1.08 (8%)= 54% .

Ahh, finally, all is revealed! Thank you for this. Been trying to get a handle on this for a while now. This is confusing because the verbiage in the tooltips for both are identical aside from the actual number. Both seem to imply a straight up increase.