[BoberJones]

Poison isn't so much the problem as moves that inflict poison while doing damage are, as the damage of poison is slow and not remotely as much damage as some other setups are pushing in more effective ways at equal amounts of range and frustration typically. Hexer's Menov's Fang is a very strong option for poison builds to have but is not very efficient unless you were already in range to do so, as its range is very short you can open yourself up to your opponent's strong options very often enough. (Same issue that Winter's Bite always faced)

Tbh, any additional damage dealt ontop of something that essentially will hit you for 10% of your max HP at the end of the turn just seems a little hard to handle in general. I mention hexer here only for clarity's sake, by no means am I trying to nail down on hexer because of that. Poison is a very strong option for any build if you can fit it. It is a free 10% damage ontop of damage applied, and most people won't have res towards it or immunity. Fang opening you up to take big damage is good in that case then, you are left open to deal 1.5x damage and force somebody to take poison for essentially 5 turns.

Another quick note as in terms of the parameters of the testing and what my intent is: super high evade people that are super optimized dodge nearly everything and you rarely have a chance to hit are things I'd consider people in a small minority have. While it might be easy in sig to get there, most people on this game actively talk about how much they don't pvp or want to pvp, and coming from a new player I can tell you that it is easy to be discouraged when you have several hoops to get over in order to even be viable. That's not even being able to contentest people with these super optimized builds. There is a perceived skill curve banking on knowledge, but it isn't very accessible.

In short: it isn't about the damage per se, it is about the flexibility and consistency of poison, along with the little actions you can take against it that make it oppressive. The damage itself is good, I don't think I can consider 10% max health to ever be bad in any world esp when its assumed you can be dealing damage that entire time.

Is poison's average damage of 270 damage over 3 turns really as strong as someone hitting you over and over? Not even to mention that level 30 poison isn't all too common sometimes either. The real value of Poison is its consistency, and that is its strength. However adding 270 damage onto something such as Wretched Oil's boatload of scaling or Phase Fang's basic attack with a flat damage mod? That's when poison starts to see its value sky rocket, and I believe those are what need to be targetted more so (Snake Shot as an example has less poison for having up front damage)

270 damage over 3 turns is as strong as somebody hitting you over and over again, yes, because you can hit somebody over and over again after you inflict poison.
Say in this hypothetical with two average characters. You just spam Wretch Oil ig cause it has 0 cd apparently, then proceed to hit them over the 5 turns and they do the same to you.
Let's just do 110 swa, 70/70 dark earth
The other person with 120~ SWA melee attacker that is just hitting you, with say a 60% chance to crit.

Math here. It'd be very nice to have extra dmg somebody is likely not resisting at any level. May it be 1, 2, 3 or 5, esp if its 10% of their max health.
Anyone could agree that having that extra 10% damage, may it be for 1 turn, 3 turns or 5 turns will be helpful, esp if they are resistant to magic damage.
As for the melee, I'm not too sure what an average is, I took 134, assumed they always hit and had a 60% chance to crit you, but also included if they crit you every time with a base 120% crit mult. Now the numbers could be tweaked, and I think with higher crit mult, actual moves aside from basic attack used and normal average damage(?) the melee might contest the poison.

Me personally I can't see an infliction you can't get rid of that will do 10% of your max health constantly if the person can manage it, whilst the person continues to inflict it. This of course isn't going into action economy, etc. and strictly meant as an average vs average simulation with the data provided. The poison is really good because it is really consistent, I'd even say its too consistent, too sticky, even going to the point of saying so long as you can inflict it, it is impossible to get rid of so long as you can use the move again.

I disagree, the status already has so much working against it, having to go through 2 separate RNG checks (Status infliction and evade) in order to be applied. Wretched Oil is a little less burdened by this as only 1 hit needs to go through to work. This status is much less of a bother than most people think it is in my opinion, and its just bias working against it. Its allowed to be a bit strong, especially given its already been nerfed before.

Given you need 200 hit tax just to function, you are going to have high skill, and under the impression, that you are a mage it will be higher with your will. Most people also don't go status resist to begin with because it comes from faith+san, and people don't typically build san. Even with tanks that build faith for crit evade, if you are aiming to poison them, you more than likely will. This only leaves evaders, and my gripe with evade is something different entirely, however, the only real challenge to any build is evade. Literally, you can use 'well you have to get past evade' to any counter to anything that isn't an autohit, which just further presents how overturned evade is as a mechanic and what it demands of people in order to respect it. The only real thing that poison has to deal with that's a bias against it is status resist, which isn't common and something you'd build if you are going straight poison.

However, my point wasn't just only poison builds. It is the fact poison can be tact onto any build if you really want to with options that let you just do some decent damage on the side and the person has to decide: hm do I waste my turn to force them to inflict it again, which will do damage while I don't move or do damage. Or do I just take the damage and move on.

The interaction isn't very pleasant, there's no real option there, waste 3m to get inflicted again and take %health damage or just say whatever and move on. A race can bite you if they want, some items apply it, etc.

If something has a lot of options, while dealing with something pretty damn good and having a counter of A or B, with B being the objectively worse choice, it is probably overturned.

And again, if something gets nerfed, nerfed and nerfed again but still remains oppressive and problematic, that's probably a design flaw, as is, that is why I suggested a change to the design of it all. Dev can make the per Lv % be higher, add a cap, etc. The suggestion is very flexible and offers action options to facing poison and not a narrow A or B that is favored to one side, or alternatively picking a race just to shut out an entire option.

Of course, you can adjust numbers and copy the spreadsheet and make a graph to represent what you'd consider an average is, but I can attest my firm point in a sort of tl;dr, again.
10% max HP per turn is great.
poison has few options to react to it outside of a race choice or minmaxing and knowing ur enemy's build and or swapping gear for poison res
poison as it just so happens to be a design flaw, its implementation is problematic and will continue to be
every build or op thing (outside of auto hits) has to deal with evade just like poison
status resist isn't commonly built, because ppl don't tend to go san, and sometimes go faith.
a straight mage poisoner will have high enough inflict to get past your resist due to the heavy skill/will investment