Insidious Spores Poor Damage

[Xezom]

I've been enjoying the thorn Knight Blightcaster a lot. I've made it my new main character and been trying out different styles of builds with it.

The point Poison of the Hydra makes the Poison spell a force to be reckoned with with poison spell power investment. I thought about running a full poison DoT character utilizing the outbreak point that makes Insidious Spores an AoE spell.

Unfortunately, Insidious spores is hideously under-powered. It doesn't scale with caster levels at all and the stat damage is missing. For as expensive as the spell is (50 Spell points), it is very very weak. Personally, I'd recommend bringing it up to a black dragon bolt level at 1d10 per caster level up to 20-25. It is still massively more expensive than black dragon bolt, but that would at least make the spell worth casting.

The long and short of it: Don't use insidious spores. It's bad.

[LightBear]

I've been enjoying the thorn Knight Blightcaster a lot. I've made it my new main character and been trying out different styles of builds with it.

The point Poison of the Hydra makes the Poison spell a force to be reckoned with with poison spell power investment. I thought about running a full poison DoT character utilizing the outbreak point that makes Insidious Spores an AoE spell.

Unfortunately, Insidious spores is hideously under-powered. It doesn't scale with caster levels at all and the stat damage is missing. For as expensive as the spell is (50 Spell points), it is very very weak. Personally, I'd recommend bringing it up to a black dragon bolt level at 1d10 per caster level up to 20-25. It is still massively more expensive than black dragon bolt, but that would at least make the spell worth casting.

The long and short of it: Don't use insidious spores. It's bad.

It probably is mixed up with "Carrion Swarm".

It used to be a nice lingering AoE spell, though even then it was underperforming:
Active (30 SP activation) (12 sec cooldown) (Empower, Maximize, Quicken, Enlarge) (SR: no) Target enemy becomes contaminated with spores for 18 seconds. Every 2 seconds the target takes [6d6] Poison and Rust damage. Stacks up to [2/3/4] times. Enemies damaged by Insidious Spores become Contagious for five minutes after, spreading Insidious Spores to some nearby enemies when they die.

My question is what does "contaminated" mean nowadays.

[Firebreed]

/signed

[Villefere]

How disappointing, I was looking forward to getting this spell.

[Xezom]

It probably is mixed up with "Carrion Swarm".

It used to be a nice lingering AoE spell, though even then it was underperforming:
Active (30 SP activation) (12 sec cooldown) (Empower, Maximize, Quicken, Enlarge) (SR: no) Target enemy becomes contaminated with spores for 18 seconds. Every 2 seconds the target takes [6d6] Poison and Rust damage. Stacks up to [2/3/4] times. Enemies damaged by Insidious Spores become Contagious for five minutes after, spreading Insidious Spores to some nearby enemies when they die.

My question is what does "contaminated" mean nowadays.

Back when it was in the old ED system it had a niche, but usable place. it was funky to say the least considering it'd contaminate your summons, but at least it could stack enough to be reasonable in damage.

Right now it cost 50SP, deals only 1d10 of poison damage, and "stacking" just refreshes the duration. The base damage of Earthquake is higher than Insidious Spores.

Contaminated, as per the Alchemist, makes targets vulnerable to poison damage.