I was wondering about how to get the most out of Niddals Hidden Hand?
Should I max Dual Blades?
Should I then choose between Belgothian Shears or Amaristas Quick Cut or Whirling Death, and max one of those together with Niddals Hidden Hand? Or all of them?
NHH affects all 3 of those weapon pool skills, so it’d be worth picking all of them up to get the most out of Hidden Hand. Get all of them to 20% and you’ve got a 60% chance to trigger NHH, which is consistent enough to be useful. I wouldn’t worry too much about Dual Blades if you’re going for Acid/Poison.
If you want, you could probably use Lethal Assault as a buff…you’d have to use it every 4 seconds to keep it up though.
Since there’s no dedicated mastery for Acid/Poison characters (yet) the Occultist is the best option for a secondary mastery: Curse of Frailty, Blood of Dreeg, and Possession. Devotion-wise, the scorpion would be a great place to start.
Are you 100% sure about that? It’s definitely not a “global” conversion. It only affects the three WPS. But I’m not sure it also converts the piercing damage provided by other passive bonuses like Dual Blades.
It would convert any piercing damage in the three skills listed - works the same was as Cadence’s transmuter in that regard.
That said if you are going Acid/poison melee investing in the dual blades passive is a terrible idea, it gives you ~1 acid damage per point invested on 60% of attacks (and yes, some pierce as well, but you wouldn’t exactly have the stats to make good use of that pierce)