Doesn't earth ability add poison to all earth spells? Wouldn't that offset the lack of straight posion skills? There's also grenades. If you're the tank than it's kind of mandatory you take Zombie in your situation to avoid all the poison your team puts down without your input. Either that or make it a point to avoid bless and use fire from distance to ignite poison and close in.
There's no good way to make up lack of team coordination except to fall in line with the other persons tactics or gear yourself to defend against them.
And I'd say a straight melee with zombie would be strong if you have a Magee casting poison around in the back. Then you can stack resistances so your find while damaging enemies and burning up magic armor with fire to soften them up for CC from magic and mags damage.
Yeah, but my problem is that I really, really really don't want to take zombie, as I view it as severely underpowered. As for geomancy, no, it does not add poison damage to earth spells, and if it does, it's so minor that it wouldn't be enough to total a net heal. Also, are there poison grenades? If there are, I'm not aware.
As for straight melee zombie idea with caster in the back, it sounds good on paper, but at the moment there is only Deadly Spores (a source skill, and three memory), Contamination and Magical Poison Dart. So, at level 7, you have about 100 points of healing on a 4 turn cooldown for 4 AP, I believe? It also does damage, but many enemies in the second half of Act I are poison immune, with all the undead around. That, and again, it's incredibly vulnerable to fire, and blessing is straight out, which you could do with any other surfaces you put down, if they were not a zombie.
Take, for example, this combination: Rain, Electric Discharge, Armor of Frost. It causes an AoE stun on the water puddle plus two specified targets, and if your tank was in it, Armor of Frost cleanses the stun. If he was not in it, you can bless it instead of casting Armor of Frost, causing the water to no longer be electrified and to heal instead, while still leaving the stunned enemies stunned. The zombie alternative just seems so weak in this comparison. As for stacking resistances, the highest I have seen anyone get by the end of act I is 50% using the Demon talent and fire resist gear. But the gear is so few and far between, that even that takes decent RNG. But, like I said earlier, I'm willing to give it a try anyways.
