Contagion Test by Stone_Swan#2717

Contagion Test by Stone_Swan#2717
Discord: https://discord.gg/NQfWmYyn

When Contagion rolls a chance to transfer a status effect to another enemy, it reapplies status effect damage. All other modifiers that go into the original status effect, such as elemental damage or global damage, do not get reapplied. Only status effect damage.

Contagion rolls multiple times until the chance isn't rolled. If you have a 40% chance to transfer a status (what 5/3 would give you), there's a 40% chance it transfers from Target A (original enemy on which you applied your status effect) to Target B (nearby enemy). Then there's another 40% chance it transfers back from Target B to Target A. And then another 40% chance to go again from Target A to Target B. And so on. At every transfer, status effect damage is reapplied. These chance rolls are calculated all at once and the dots begin ticking on both enemies at the calculated value.

For example, if you roll a transfer from Target A to Target B back to Target A, Target A's status effect will have your status effect damage in its calc three times: once on the original status effect, once from A to B, and the third from B to A. Target B will get the damage twice.

At over 100% Contagion chance, which may be possible from Buttstallion (?), both enemies will die instantly at (theoretically) infinite status damage, provided you have any status effect damage increase. Crazily enough, in this situation, if you have too little status effect damage (somewhere below 18%), the game crashes. My hypothesis is that because the transfers increment damage up too slowly, the game needs to perform too many calculations before the enemies actually die. If you have 18% or above, both enemies will poof with invisible damage numbers.

In a group of enemies greater than 2, it's possible that the Contagion transfers are not calculated vs the original enemy you shoot (Target A). If you shoot Target A, and Contagion rolls, it gets transferred to Target B. But it can choose to do its repeat transfers between Target B and Target C (also nearby), while Target A just takes the original status effect (with no re-application of status effect damage).

Vs Isolated Targets:
Contagion rolls a chance to reapply a different status effect at 50% strength on the same target - all of this is on the card and its accurate. But again, this second status effect gets status damage re-applied. If you have greater than 100% status effect damage, this second status effect can be stronger than the original. I say can be because specific elemental damage is a factor here now that we're dealing with different elements. If your original, let's say, poison status effect is boosted by poison damage, the next status effect, being different, will lose that bonus, even though it will get status damage again.

Contagion rolls multiple times here, as well - that second status effect rolls a chance to apply a third, again at a 50% reduction and again applying status damage. It can roll continuously until it doesn't roll the chance, even rolling back to the element of the original status effect and further boosting it.

Aside:
You thought over 100% Contagion chance was weird with two targets? It's even weirder with a single target. In theory, at 100% Contagion chance, even if the damage of the reprocs is ever decreasing with less than 100% status damage, you should still end up with some pretty high status damage in all of the elements before the reprocs go down to zero and cease to increase the numbers. In reality, you get 1-5 elements, all at a single proc. This is hard to explain, so here's an example. 1. You shoot poison, it gets your regular dot boosts. 2. Contagion procs another effect, this time fire - fire gets reduced by 50% and then gets your status damage again. 3. Contagion procs again from the fire, this time producing dark magic - dark magic gets a 50% reduction again and gets your status damage again. 4. Contagion procs again, this time choosing poison, but since poison already exists, it doesn't add anything, the reprocs stop, and you're left with single procs of however many elements you got before Contagion chose an element that was already there. Something about choosing the same element makes the game perform all the calculations down to zero and not add anything more.

If you have 101-117% status damage and 100% Contagion chance, your game will crash when proccing a dot on a single target. If you have 118+% status damage and 100% Contagion chance, you will proc invisible dot values over damage cap.

None of this part matters unless it's possible to get 100+% Contagion from Buttstallion. In practice, having a high Contagion chance with high status damage will result in significant boosts to dot damage vs both single targets and groups of enemies. I also recommend increasing the sheer instances of different elements and sources of damage, in order to roll as many chances at a long Contagion chain as possible.