[435] Tooltip for damage over time effects should accurately display the damage remaining

[roguelike]

Currently, DoT effects inaccurately display the amount of total damage done, something that the player can keep track of in the combat log (or ought to be able to, if DoT effects were recorded there), but do not indicate how much damage will be done in the future, something far more useful to the player.

 

Every DoT tooltip is different, but lets look at a few and see how they can be confusing.

 

1) Necrotic Lance.  

Necrotic Lance is a pretty typical DoT spell, it applies a damage over time effect that ticks the moment it's applied and then every 3 seconds thereafter.  Necrotic Lance claims to do 16.7 damage over 5 seconds, but of course it ticks every 3 seconds, so with an intellect of 10 what it actually does is 2 ticks of ~8 damage over 4 seconds and then nothing for the last second.  With a high enough intellect to get to 6 seconds of duration, it will tick 3 times.  None of this information is conveyed in the tooltip.  The tooltip correctly calculates the number of times that a normal hit will tick and displays the total damage that will be done by the DoT, however for grazes and crits, instead of recalculating how many ticks of damage will happen, it simply multiplies by .5 or 1.5, producing a confusing and inaccurate number.

 

Even on a normal hit, If the player does not know the original duration, which the tooltip unhelpfully rounds to the nearest second, obfuscating exactly how many ticks there will be if that second is a multiple of 3, or when the next tick is, they have no way of knowing how much more damage remains to be done.

 

2) Deep Wounds.

The tooltip for Deep Wounds predicts that it will do exactly 1 damage per second and does not compensate for Deep Wounds ticking once every 3 seconds in any way.  In addition, unlike Necrotic Lance, Deep Wounds reapplies itself on hit, the duration is refreshed, however the time until the next tick is not.  The tooltip keeps a running total of the total theoretical damage that will be inflicted.  This running total not only bears little resemblance to reality, but even if it were completely accurate it would not be what the player wants to see, which is the amount of damage that deep wounds will do. 

 

3)Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon.

Ticks every 3 seconds, however unlike Necrotic Lance, the tooltip does not compensate for the number of ticks and simply displays 10 damage over x seconds.

 

 

At a very minimum, DoT tooltips need to accurately display something.  If they are to be most useful to the player, they need to find a way to communicate how much damage is left to be done.  This could be done by displaying how much damage a tick does and how many ticks are left or by simply stating how much damage remains.