Question for those of you using the Venom relic

Oakenshield

Which rune have you found to be most effective for Venom/symbiotes specifically?

Trying to make sure I’ve got it optimized for my 7* Venom.

_Newfty_

Well- I used the venom relic on my 7* Gorr, and added the Bleed Vulnerability because Gorrs bleeds would last a little longer and hit a tad bit harder. So I would recommend the same towards a 7* Venom

Oakenshield

_Newfty_ said:

Well- I used the venom relic on my 7* Gorr, and added the Bleed Vulnerability because Gorrs bleeds would last a little longer and hit a tad bit harder. So I would recommend the same towards a 7* Venom

Thanks @_Newfty_ . I had originally been using the same, but there is also an option that results in a 5% increase in the rate of buff additions for Venom/Venompool, which when combined with the other rune (I have the 5* version) could be significant.

I guess I’ll just need to do some testing of the various permutations short of someone having any data.

Oakenshield

Coming back on this, today I did some testing by spending some quality time with all of our favorite punching bag.

My general methodology was to do 5 fights of each ‘test cell’, throw out the highest and the lowest, and average the rest. I kept the fight consistent as possible - pretty much all 5 hit combos, hit SP1 whenever it was available, use striker to establish bleed vulnerability whoever it was off cooldown. There is even more RNG than normal with Venom between random buffs and random application of bleeds, but doing it this way should weed out any RNG strangeness. I ran suicides, so no deep wounds. No boosts, no synergies. So, non optimal set up for Venom and it possibly understating the benefit from the bleed runes. I may do some more testing without suicides and with deep wounds on to see if it makes a significant difference.

All that said, I tested 4 ‘cells’:
Merciless Strike with Mutation Timer
Ravenous Strike with Mutation Timer
Ravenous Strike with Bleed Potency
Ravenous Strike with Cruelty/Fury/Precision potency

The result for me was that Ravenous Strike with Mutation Timer was fairly significantly stronger than any other combo. On average about 10 hits better and 15 seconds less time (so about a 13-18% improvement). The other three test cells were more similar.

Yes, I realize I probably should have done two more rounds of testing with Merciless Strike + Bleed Potency and Merciless Strike with C/F/P Potency but frankly got bored.

Also, recognize that this result holds for Venom and Venompool given their mutation timers, but not for Gorr etc. that you might be using the relic with so take it in the right context.

I’ll come back to this thread with more data if I decide to do some more testing.

Oakenshield

Ok so decided to run the other two permutations, and we have a new winner.

Merciless Strike + Bleed Potency is about is about 8-10% better than Ravenous Strike/Mutation timer. I went ahead and re-ran the other ‘previous best’ and it came in pretty close to the first run, so think this is definitive.

While this testing is obviously Venom only and with all the specific notes above, I’d suspect this is potentially the best combo for non Symbiotes also since it doesn’t rely on the mutation timer.

Welcome any other data from anyone else who does some testing with other champs.

I’ll probably test the top 2 again without suicides and with deep wounds, but suspect that will only make the bleed potency runes do even better.

Oakenshield

Just an update on this - I had Suicides off this weekend so re-tested the top two options. As expected, Merciless Strike + Bleed Potency was again the winner, so that seems like the optimal choice for Venom players using the Venom relic.