Recursive Toxin or Lingering Blackvenom?

[The Fountaineer 🖋]

I'm just tooling around with Thorn after finally being able to play as her after all these months. I would assume Lingering is better for crowd control, where as Recursive is better for single targets?

[RNG_Wizard]

Just as you said; Lingering for hordes, Recursive for single target.

Also keep in mind that weapon choice matters. Weapons with high cleave like the spear or dual sword don't really need the poison spread on crit, while weapons that can strike twice at once like any of the dual weapons can apply the two stacks of poison in a single attack.

[These stairs go up!]

Recursive to beat down bosses and singles faster as its damage buff of 12% stacks to 24%

Lingering to deal with Everything else more reliably as you still get 12%

[The Fountaineer 🖋]

Originally posted by RNG_Wizard:

Just as you said; Lingering for hordes, Recursive for single target.

Also keep in mind that weapon choice matters. Weapons with high cleave like the spear or dual sword don't really need the poison spread on crit, while weapons that can strike twice at once like any of the dual weapons can apply the two stacks of poison in a single attack.

Good point.

[The Fountaineer 🖋]

Originally posted by These stairs go up!:

Recursive to beat down bosses and singles faster as its damage buff of 12% stacks to 24%

Lingering to deal with Everything else more reliably as you still get 12%

Even with this rework I still feel like Thorn melts down bosses just as easily as WHC at times. However her leaf dildo ult isn't as obnoxious as it used to be, so I'm happy for that.

[These stairs go up!]

Oh also her poison and bleed both apply on 0 damage hits.

So its actually better to just go sword and dagger and spam light attack than to do charge attacks.

[HunApo]

Lingering venom is sorta a trap talent imo.
Yes, it does spread the poison in an AoE (not a very big AoE btw) and you need to crit to trigger it.
For guaranteed crit, you sacrifice the bleed, which is a big no-no (since the lvl 10 bleed talent is stronger than WHC's infamous Flense talent which is one of the most broken talents) since it boost the damage output insanely for any weapon.

Also, spreading the poison for lot of thresh is nice, but really unnecessary.
Rather have double stack poison with recursive, (which stacks with WHC tagging btw) and you can melt monsters and heavy elites/patrols like butter and there the double stack will make a huge difference.

[No emaN]

The problem with Blackvenom is its application is rather limited to melee or with Thornwake's Blackvenom Thicket. You don't get to play Sister of The Thorn at range that often

Recursive Toxin requires you to be applying two melee strikes or double dipping Blackvenom Thicket. If you are using primarily your melee then this is clearly a better single target choice. It offers the most damage on the board which honestly is the biggest con in terms of the versatility of this "rework." It's the easy no brain option if you flat out more damage for applying blackvenom.

Lingering Blackvenom at face value is meant for spreading blackvenom to hordes. However, the elf has 6 weapons with additional critical chance bonuses on her melee so activating a proc isn't too difficult as it's made for low cleave weapons to spread the Blackvenom debuff. But remember it applies blackvenom on a crit that means any crit. You can now spread blackvenom to hordes at ranged with Lingering Blackvenom for every crit. Briar's Malice can be taken for ranged sustain on her ammo dependent weapons or to fuel more disables on Deepwood Staff, or to proc a Hunter bonus or other crit based effects. The value of this talent scales with density and utility to apply the debuff and the range on this baby is large enough to not be dipping hordes in this debuff.

We're talking a more ranged focused or hybrid build on SoTT not a pure melee one that doesn't utilize Blackvenom Thicket. Ironbark Thicket rewards preemptive placement and longer walls to allow for cleanup. Tanglegrasp Thicket allows for you to stagger most elites in front of you and pushes all trash enemies away for easy pickings. Use this to pick elites out of a horde and this is useful for allies that are temp hp on kill centered. A happy team is a happy thorn in their side.

If you say took a Deepwood Staff you would easily have 4 shots you can spread across a horde to cover multiple enemies in blackvenom without having to use melee. A 12% increased dmg taken for using a ranged weapon that covers packs of enemies. Most hordes will be weaker as it tackles density over your melee or ult's ability to cover blackvenom. You're mixing stagger + debuffing + CC a strong defensive loadout that allows for your team's offense and your own. Elf has plenty of finesse weapons to scale her damage well with crits.

I'm not going to debate that Atharti's Delight is the BEST THING EVER. The bleed is great for taking units down it has its job. The guaranteed crits is here to boost our ranged sustain, versatility and single target output with Kerillian's finesse multiplier weapons. Isn't the bleed DoT stacks capped at 3? Both Flense and Atharti's Delight the only difference if I can recall is that Flense is a shorter duration. Hell if you want you can stack the bleed with the Deepwood staff's m1 with the blackvenom applied.

[Combine00]

Originally posted by HunApo:

Lingering venom is sorta a trap talent imo.
Yes, it does spread the poison in an AoE (not a very big AoE btw) and you need to crit to trigger it.
For guaranteed crit, you sacrifice the bleed, which is a big no-no (since the lvl 10 bleed talent is stronger than WHC's infamous Flense talent which is one of the most broken talents) since it boost the damage output insanely for any weapon.

Also, spreading the poison for lot of thresh is nice, but really unnecessary.
Rather have double stack poison with recursive, (which stacks with WHC tagging btw) and you can melt monsters and heavy elites/patrols like butter and there the double stack will make a huge difference.

main benefit imo, to lingering, is that it allows ranged crits to trigger it. good for halescourge boss for example if you have beam or some other ranged to dps, and youre holding the corner.

[Emilia Tempest]

Originally posted by These stairs go up!:

Recursive to beat down bosses and singles faster as its damage buff of 12% stacks to 24%

Lingering to deal with Everything else more reliably as you still get 12%

and it stacks with the likes of Witch hunts and Shrapnel, multiplicatively, and thats intended
So you can make a boss feel pain if you want.

[BloodM3ss]

2x stacking poison IMO is a lot better pick than any other as hordes really are no threat in most ocasions... 24% power vs elite enemy helps you build stronger stager or just simply kill it faster. If you have a WHC in teamwith 20+5% more dmg to taged enemy it just melts any special/elite/boss.

The after crit spreading is more like for moded solo runs.

I even dont remember the 3rd one on this talent level as I never change from Recursive :P

In most ocasions you dont want to kill hordes to fast if you or your teammmates got talents for stager heal or multiple target hit heal... making them die faster just don't benefit anyone.