XX damage over XX seconds... or is it per second?

[Terikan]

If it's the former, DoT abilities seem pretty weak, but that's how it's worded.  Can anyone tell me?

[kylania]

Does the combat log show the damage happening?  I'm still at work so can't check at the moment.

[dirigible]

The DoT tooltips are terrible. A lot of them are worded differently and they frequently give misleading information.

 

DoTs deal damage every x seconds, and deal y damage on each tick. The duration, z, is modified by intelligence.

 

A lot of tooltips say "Deals (y*z/x) damage over (z) seconds."

[Lephys]

Erm... that's how all DoT's work, in anything. I realize that the information usually given to you is just "Deals 5 damage per second for 10 seconds," but that's no different math than "Deals 50 damage over 10 seconds."

 

It's not as if how much damage it's dealing each second is more important than how much damage it's going to deal in total. The closer to 1 the seconds value is, the faster it's going to deal its damage. The higher that number, the slower its going to deal its damage. It's extraordinarily easy to compare relative damage output between DoT's this way.

 

Again, I understand preferring to see the per-second number, but it's not exactly providing you with confusing or misleading information. It's just giving you the total and the duration, rather than the per-second and duration. That's the only difference.

[Terikan]

Erm... that's how all DoT's work, in anything. I realize that the information usually given to you is just "Deals 5 damage per second for 10 seconds," but that's no different math than "Deals 50 damage over 10 seconds."

 

It's not as if how much damage it's dealing each second is more important than how much damage it's going to deal in total. The closer to 1 the seconds value is, the faster it's going to deal its damage. The higher that number, the slower its going to deal its damage. It's extraordinarily easy to compare relative damage output between DoT's this way.

 

Again, I understand preferring to see the per-second number, but it's not exactly providing you with confusing or misleading information. It's just giving you the total and the duration, rather than the per-second and duration. That's the only difference.

 

It's not just a preference to see damage per second... even though yes I do believe that would make sense, I question whether the tooltips are wording it correctly, as many abilities that sound like they should do decent damage over time, instead do almost non-existent damage based on the tooltip.  Like 17 damage over 6 seconds sort of thing.

[Lephys]

^ Could you provide a specific example? I have many "It's possible..." statements lined up, but if I could see the actual ability description in question, I'd know what wasn't possible/likely anymore, and whether or not it does actually appear to be in need of a balance tweak or something.

[Rosveen]

More importantly, higher INT increases duration of spells - so it actually makes DoTs weaker if it's total damage over time.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Rosveen

[Skor]

Yeah the tooltips are messy in their presentation and it causes confusion on high int bonuses for those dots because it makes it sound like its doing the same amount of damage, just over the course of a longer period of time, which would mean high int is a detriment to dots.  But I think thats just the tool tip and not how it actually works.

[Matt516]

More importantly, higher INT increases duration of spells - so it actually makes DoTs weaker if it's total damage over time.

 

Yup. This is something that will hopefully be fixed in a patch. Right now, INT doesn't increase the total damage of DoT abilities, just the duration (as far as we can tell, anyway) - so you end up doing less damage per second for a longer time, which is worse by any way of looking at it. Best solution (assuming they don't want to make INT actually affect DoT damage, which kinda makes sense given that's what MIG is for) would simply be to make the damage portion of any DoT affect not scale duration with INT while any debuff portion does. This would obviously require some re-coding though to split all DoT abilities into the damage and non-damage portions.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Matt516

[Lephys]

More importantly, higher INT increases duration of spells - so it actually makes DoTs weaker if it's total damage over time.

Ahh. That could be what's doing it. Yeah, that's still not really the wording's fault. Just the math-failure's fault. If it did the proper math, it'd be okay.

 

And, just for what it's worth, I haven't looked at all the ability tooltips in the whole game. I'm like 5 hours in with a party of two Wizards and a Fighter, so there may very well be a bunch of wonkily inconsistent tooltips for DoT's.

 

I only point out how the choice of wording (if consistent) makes sense, if it's done properly. And I only brought that up because the initial posts here seemed to suggest confusion purely because of the total + duration display, as opposed to a per-tick + duration display.

 

My mistake for that not being the case.

[Lephys]

Best solution (assuming they don't want to make INT actually affect DoT damage, which kinda makes sense given that's what MIG is for) would simply be to make the damage portion of any DoT affect not scale duration with INT while any debuff portion does. This would obviously require some re-coding though to split all DoT abilities into the damage and non-damage portions.

Well, the game already calculates the per-tick damage properly, initially. So, I would think that, instead of having it add your duration bonus, THEN calculate the damage per-tick, they could simply change it to go ahead and do DMG/BaseDUR, then treat the INT modifier as bonus seconds. So, if it does 50 damage over 10 seconds, but yours is going to be 12 seconds because of INT, just have it do 50/10, then add 2 to the tick counter.

[Terikan]

^ Could you provide a specific example? I have many "It's possible..." statements lined up, but if I could see the actual ability description in question, I'd know what wasn't possible/likely anymore, and whether or not it does actually appear to be in need of a balance tweak or something.

 

necrotic lance, 17 damage over 6 seconds for a secondary effect.  Most dots when you do the match have very low per-tick damage, it's just something I don't quite understand.

[Archaven]

Does DoT stacks? I hope it does if it's legit being cast on?

[Ink Blot]

Yup. This is something that will hopefully be fixed in a patch. Right now, INT doesn't increase the total damage of DoT abilities, just the duration (as far as we can tell, anyway) - so you end up doing less damage per second for a longer time, which is worse by any way of looking at it. Best solution (assuming they don't want to make INT actually affect DoT damage, which kinda makes sense given that's what MIG is for) would simply be to make the damage portion of any DoT affect not scale duration with INT while any debuff portion does. This would obviously require some re-coding though to split all DoT abilities into the damage and non-damage portions.

 

Probably not easy to change at this point, but I'd prefer to see the time value decreased with higher INT. So even though the damage would remain the same (so not raised by higher INT), it would be applied faster with a higher INT. More damage per tick over fewer ticks seems a reasonable modifier for higher INT, IMO.

[Chep]

that seems unlikely, some spells for example deal damage AND debuff the enemy at the same time. So either the debuff would be weakened (as per your suggestion) or you'd have to completely split up the spell making it incredibly confusing for the player.

 

My prefered solution is having the "per tick"-damage, so longer duration also means higher damage. Higher Might means higher damage per tick, higher Int more ticks. seems to me to be the most natural way to deal with it.

[Emptiness]

My prefered solution is having the "per tick"-damage, so longer duration also means higher damage. Higher Might means higher damage per tick, higher Int more ticks. seems to me to be the most natural way to deal with it.

 

This is how it is supposed to work now.  If it isn't, that's a bug.

 

Personally, I think they should change the way they describe dot damage from "x damage over y seconds" to "z damage per second for y seconds".  That would make it more clear that Might increases z and Int increases y and both of those are good things.

 

PS: I realize I just said the same thing you did...this is my odd way of agreeing with you.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Emptiness

[Grand_Commander13]

So DoT spells really are just that weak?

 

Does it at least calculate the DT all at once? I mean, if it did 50 damage in ten ticks of 5 damage a piece and it counted DR each time, you're pretty much guaranteed to do the minimum 20% damage with it.

 

Semi-related to the above concern, how do the +25% damage enchantments work? If I hit for 40 damage and have +25% corrosion damage, is that 10 extra damage getting modified by the same DT? Again, seems like a speedy trip to irrelevance.

[Lephys]

necrotic lance, 17 damage over 6 seconds for a secondary effect.  Most dots when you do the match have very low per-tick damage, it's just something I don't quite understand.

Well, that one in particular is a secondary effect. And that's roughly two people's attacks -- 17 damage -- depending on the foe you're targeting and its defenses/armor (couple of grazes, high DR, etc.). How many attacks could you expect to get off in 6 seconds, normally? WHILE still getting to attack that foe with other means of damage output?

 

I'm not saying it needs no adjustment at all (or that others don't), but the idea of an ability dealing 17 damage over 6 seconds is not exactly insignificant, in and of itself. Again, especially on Necrotic Lance, since it's got a primary effect PLUS that DoT. *shrug*