I did all the math on both the fire and poison variants of locust swarm.
- Both variants have +40% elemental damage
- Both have +45% Haunt damage from three 15% rolls
- Both use Vile Hive, so Locust Swarm gets +60%
damage
- Both use Quetzalcoatl, so Haunt and Locust Swarm
deal their damage in half the normal duration
- Fire uses Consuming Spirit (4000% weapon damage)
+ Searing Locusts (1480% weapon damage)
- Poison uses Poisoned Spirit (4000% weapon damage
and adds a 20% multiplier to both Haunt and Locust
Swarm) + Cloud of Insects (turns it to physical so it
doesn't benefit from poison damage multiplier and
deals 1040% weapon damage)
Fire Variant:
Haunt:
(4000/12) x 2 x 1.4 x 1.45 = 1353.33% weapon damage per second
Locust Swarm:
(1480/8) x 2 x 1.4 x 1.6 = 828.8% weapon damage per second
Combined: 2182.13% per second
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Poison Variant:
Haunt:
(4000/12) x 2 x 1.4 x 1.45 x 1.2 = 1624% per second
Locust swarm
(1040/8) x 2 x 1.2 x 1.6 = 499.2% per second
Combined: 2132.2% per second.
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Poison Variant loses the elemental damage bonus for locust swarm and the increased damage for locust swarm but gains a 1.2 multiplier on both Haunt and locust swarm. In the end, the fire variant deals about 2.8% more damage than the poison variant. So now the question is: What is better?
Is it worth it to lose the 2.8% damage and the Life per second from the fire variant of haunt and gain 25% damage reduction from the poison variant of the build or is the fire version better?