Pestilent Strike - Path of Exile

Pestilent Strike Pestilent Strike is an active skill gem.

Attacks with your weapon, inflicting a debuff on enemies hit by the strike. If a debuffed enemy dies while poisoned, Pestilent Strike inflicts a secondary chaos damage over time debuff on enemies around them, based on the poisons on the slain enemy. This damage is not affected by your damage modifiers. Requires a Claw or Dagger.If you die under the effect of this buff, surrounding targets will take chaos damage over time based on the Poisons on you.

Attack, Melee, Strike, AoE, Duration, Chaos. Level: 1–20. Cost: 6 Mana. Effectiveness of Added Damage: 125–160%. Requires Level 28.

  • Base duration is 1 seconds
  • Base secondary duration is 1 seconds
  • (20–113) to (30–169) Added Chaos Damage
  • 60% of Physical Damage Converted to Chaos Damage
  • 60% chance to Poison on Hit
  • 30% more Poison Duration
  • Secondary Debuff deals 50% of the total remaining Expected Poison Damage of all Poisons on the dying Enemy per second as Chaos Damage

Place into an item socket of the right colour to gain this skill. Right click to remove from a socket.

NameAdditional Effects From QualityWeight
Pestilent Strike+(0–10)% to Damage over Time Multiplier for Poison50

Buy PoE Currency Cheap

Related Gems

Level Effect

LevelRequires LevelDexterityIntelligenceBase Damage20 to 30 Added Chaos DamageExperience
1284229125%20, 30199,345
2314632126.8%23, 35285,815
3345035128.7%27, 40401,344
4375437130.5%31, 46554,379
5405840132.4%35, 53477,437
6426042134.2%38, 58583,786
7446344136%42, 63710,359
8466646137.9%45, 681,355,511
9486848139.7%49, 741,138,877
10507149141.6%53, 801,368,233
11527451143.4%58, 861,638,338
12547653145.2%62, 931,956,648
13567955147.1%67, 1013,655,184
14588257148.9%73, 1093,017,327
15608459150.8%78, 1177,759,995
16628760152.6%84, 12615,138,193
17649062154.4%91, 13626,083,825
18669264156.3%98, 14662,620,247
19689566158.1%105, 157211,708,088
20709868160%113, 169
2172161.8%121, 181
2274163.7%130, 195
2376165.5%139, 209
2478167.3%149, 224
2580169.2%160, 239
2682171%171, 256
2784172.9%183, 274
2886174.7%196, 293
2988176.5%209, 314
3090178.4%223, 335
3191178.4%231, 346
3292180.2%239, 358
3393182.1%247, 370
3494183.9%255, 382
3595185.7%263, 395
3696187.6%272, 408
3797189.4%281, 421
3898191.3%290, 435
3999193.1%300, 449
40100194.9%309, 464

Pestilent Strike is a melee strike skill that deals chaos damage and applies poison. If the poisoned enemy dies while poisoned it will inflict other nearby enemies with another chaos damage over time debuff.

Skill functions and interactions

The base debuff radius is 27.

Enemies killed while under the effect of Pestilent Strike’s signature debuff will leave no corpse. This can be useful for bypassing some monsters’ on-death effects.

Multiple debuffs can be on the same monster, but only the highest damage debuff will cause damage at any given time.

The debuff requires an enemy to die with poison on it near the enemy you want the debuff on. For solo enemy fights, Vaal Breach can spawn enemies to spread the debuff.

The debuff takes half of the poison damage left on the monster when it died and deals it incrementally over 1 second.

  • Example - A 6 second poison does 3 seconds worth of debuff damage in 1 second. In this example the debuff does 3 times the damage (200% more damage) per second than the poison damage.

Damage Calculations

Scaling

Pestilent Strikes debuff can scale poison damage in unique ways that would not be beneficial to most other poison attacks. Some examples:

  • Because all sources of poisons transfer on the debuff, spells, minions and even other players with poison, can help scale the damage.
  • Poison duration will increase the damage per second of the debuff. The assassin ascendancy passive Noxious Strike with many poisons landed per second is the largest source of poison duration.

Item acquisition

Pestilent Strike can drop anywhere. Drop level: 28.

Recipes

Pestilent Strike can be created from the following recipes:

Amount Part Description
3 The Bitter Blossom Random corrupted level 21 Chaos gem with 23% quality
6 The Fox Random level 20 gem
8 Dying Anguish Random level 19 gem with 19% alternative quality
8 The Hook Random corrupted level 21 gem with 23% alternative quality
3 Gemcutter's Promise Random gem with 20% quality
1 Gemcutter's Incubator Random gem with 1–20% quality
1 The Void Random divination card set exchange

Quest reward

This item is given as a quest reward for the following quests:

Class → Witch Shadow Ranger Duelist Marauder Templar Scion
Quest ↓
Sever the Right Hand
Act 3		 ✗ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

Vendor reward

This item can be bought at the listed NPC vendors, after completing the following quests:

Class → Witch Shadow Ranger Duelist Marauder Templar Scion
Quest ↓
A Fixture of Fate
Act 3
Siosa		 ✓
Sever the Right Hand
Act 3
Clarissa		 ✗ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Fallen from Grace
Act 6
Lilly Roth		 ✓

Threshold jewels

The following threshold jewels augment Pestilent Strike:

Item Limit Radius Stats

Related helmet enchantments

The following helmet enchantments affect Pestilent Strike.

Name Level Labyrinth Stats Spawn Weighting
Enchantment Pestilent Strike Area Of Effect 1 66 Merciless Labyrinth Pestilent Strike has 16% increased Area of Effect helmet 100
default 0
Enchantment Pestilent Strike Area Of Effect 2 75 Eternal Labyrinth Pestilent Strike has 24% increased Area of Effect helmet 100
default 0
Enchantment Pestilent Strike Damage 1 66 Merciless Labyrinth Pestilent Strike deals 25% increased Damage helmet 100
default 0
Enchantment Pestilent Strike Damage 2 75 Eternal Labyrinth Pestilent Strike deals 40% increased Damage helmet 100
default 0
Enchantment Pestilent Strike Duration 1 66 Merciless Labyrinth Pestilent Strike has 25% increased Duration helmet 100
default 0
Enchantment Pestilent Strike Duration 2 75 Eternal Labyrinth Pestilent Strike has 40% increased Duration helmet 100
default 0