What Poison Cloud Does in RAID: Shadow Legends

Learn how Poison Cloud works in RAID: Shadow Legends. Discover how this formerly Hydra-exclusive mechanic affects your team, why it can drastically reduce damage output, and the best ways to counter it.

Poison Cloud is a powerful defensive buff which causes every attack to land as a weak hit while also totally nullifying all Poison damage.

Weak hits cannot crit, do 30% reduced damage, and cannot land debuffs or offensive effects, making this incredibly strong at protecting from damage as well as from debuffs and effects.

The effects of this buff are disabled if a HP Burn debuff is also present, making it a powerful counter–though note that champions who need to land a hit to place the HP Burn will fail due to weak hitting.

Poison Cloud is currently an extremely rare buff.

This buff was first encounter in Hydra Clan Boss, where the Head of Blight can placed a protected version on all the Heads.

Only 2 champions have this debuff at time of writing:

1. Yncensa Grail-bearer
2. Tekteon Fissureflesh

Both of these are void legendaries, and are therefore very difficult to acquire. Yncensa is rarely used for Poison Cloud, but Tekteon is a menace in PvP with this buff.

Arena and Siege

As we mentioned earlier, turning enemy crits into weak hits absolutely cripples enemy damage dealers in PvP.

A champion with 200% C.DMG%, for example, would lose that 200% bonus damage. On top of this, weak hits deal 30% reduced damage.

By putting damage numbers with these stats: if they initially crit for 90,000 damage, it would be lowered to 30,000 for no longer critting; then it would be further lowered to 21,000 by being a weak hit.

As you can see, going from taking 90,000 damage to a mere 21,000 damage is massive.

On top of this, denying debuffs and offensive effects that rely on landing hits can be even more useful, protecting your team from control effects that could otherwise cost you the fight.

PvE Content

This buff is very powerful for PvE content, unlike its sister debuff Enfeeble: while all bosses are immune to Enfeeble, very few can deal with Poison Cloud.

Poison Cloud will massively increase the survivability of whoever you put it on by denying the rare PvE crit and by–more importantly–protecting them from most debuffs and negative effects.

The main limitation here is that there are barely any champions who actually have this buff.

Grim Forest

One bonus way to get Poison Cloud is through one of the Curios in Grim Forest.

This is a decent curio which can provide strong protection against tough waves in Grim Forest, and it should definitely be considered if you are struggling.

It can also help protect you from the Poison boss, since it denies all damage taken from Poisons.

HP Burn

The intended counter for Poison Cloud is to place HP Burn, which disables its effects.

Although this is an excellent counter, many champions can only place HP Burn when landing hits–and Poison Cloud forces weak hits, thereby preventing these champions from landing burns. You will need champions who land burns without needing hits.

This is also awkward against the Hydra, since the Head of Decay can Remove Debuffs, which can be a nasty combo if Poison Cloud is active.

The Neutralise Blessing

The epic nature Blessing, Neutralize, gives champions a chance to land debuffs even against enemies with Poison Cloud.

At time of writing, this Blessing is so laughably weak that you should never take it in any circumstance.

Prevention Strategies

The actual easiest counter to Poison Cloud is to use Block Buffs to prevent Poison Cloud from being placed at all.

Against Hydra Clan Boss, this prevents a nubmer of other nasty buffs (e.g. Reflect Damage) as well, making it an easy fit for any team comp.

Guaranteed Crits

Some champions, such as Solanar the Gleaming, or the Deathdealer Relic allow you to land guaranteed crits, effectively countering this buff.