Power level weapons and spells cont effects.

[Noes631]

Hello!

Can you explain following to me:

As a druid i cast relentness storm and insect plague, while having in my hands weapon that have + pl to those spells.

After it is cast i shapeshift or summon rot skulls, so the + pl weapon is replaced.

How that will affect damage and accuracy of those spells i cast beforehand?

[Boeroer]

Hi!

For both spells the duration will not change (it is determined when you cast the spell). Relentless Storm is a pulsing spell while Insect Plage is a Damage over Time (DoT) spell that has so called "ticks"- both behave differently:

Relentless Storm when you lose the bonus PL: the pulses of the storm all do individual attack rolls vs. the enemies' defense, so they will lose ACC and damage bonus from the lost PLs immediately. If you regain the bonus PL (for example ending the Spiritshift) they will regain the bonus damage and accuracy.

Insect Plage when you lose the bonus PL: the ticks will lose the bonus damage. But since the spell only does one attack roll at casting time and then applies the "status effect: damage over time" the loss of the PL bonus will have no effect on the accuracy. If you regan the PLs the damage per tick will go up again.

Tl;dr: Relentless Storm will lose daamage & accuracy per pulse, Insect Plague will only lose damage per tick.

Spells that only do one attack roll at casting time and then apply a CC effect with a duration (see Nature's Mark or Sunbeam for example) will not suffer from the PL loss at all. 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Boeroer

[Noes631]

Thank you. Is there anywhere a list of continous spells with several attacks while it lasts? Seems like they are a lot stronger. Like chill fog, shining beacon etc.

Always thought insect plague working like that (several attacks while it lasts)

 

 

[dgray62]

By "a list of continous spells with several attacks" you mean pulsing spells, right? These are spells like chill fog, returning storm and relentless storm that proc multiple times, with an attack roll each time. This is nice because even if you you miss with the first attack, you may hit on subsequent pulses. Insect Swarm and Plague of Insects, on the other hand, are damage over time spells. They "attack" only once, and if the attack is successful, do damage over time. But if you miss on the initial attack they do nothing at all.

[Boeroer]

It has its pros and cons. For example with DoTs you can time it with powerful but short buffs/debuffs so that the attack roll of the DoT has an easy time landing. The ticks also don't count as attack rolls so they won't make you visible (while you are using Shadowing Beyong/Smoke Veil) and don't remove Takedown Combo (but still get +100% damage bonus) and little tricks like that. Also DoT often do raw damage which completely ignores armor. You can also prolong DoTs on enemies with "Enfeebled" (+50% duration) or by debuffing the RES of the enemy - because it's a hostile status effect on the enemy. Pulsing spells' duration cannot profit from that (but if a pulse applies a status effect -see Chillfog- that effect can).

Besides the multiple chances to hit, pulsing spells are nice in combination with stuff like Confounding Blind or Combusting Wounds and such. 

I don't know a list that separates between DoT and pulsing spells, but usually the ability description is enough to tell them apart. I could go and compile such a list, but I'm with my kids visiting my parents and only have my smartphone with me. Maybe later, will be back home tomorrow evening.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

Note that pulsating spells duration isn't affected by PL, only by INT.