About DoT

[Smiley]

In my experience, I hardly ever wished that my party members had more DoT... It's quite the opposite. I wished so many times that the 3 damage per tick DoT were 6-damage normal attack.

The way I see it, in a game like DD, DoT is an oversight. Normally, DoT deals more damage over time than a comparable frondload damage does, but the problem is, time is almost always against the player, thanks to the core game mechanic.

Despite what the narrator tries to convince you (something like giving your enemy a slow and painful death for what they deserve), you want to give them a singular strike that saps their life force away instantly. Watching enemy softies in the third or forth row slowly dying out with your DoT is really a bad choice since they will have plenty of time to throw nasty things at you before they perish.

Please give DoT more incentive, like inherent debuff, to justify using it over straight damage, not the underwhelming corpse removal effect.

[El Zoido]

OTOH damage over time is reliable against high-prot enemies and can be stacked.
If you'd like to avoid DOT attacks, you can do so, too - choose heroes/skills that do direct damage/debuffs instead of DOT (which is the majority).

[GriP]

Relative weakness of DoT and buff/debuff versus direct damage has been an issue for literally the entire development cycle to date. Either the devs don't think it's a problem or they fundamentally have no idea how to address it.

[algothi]

Bleed/Blights are in a much better place then they were in the early EA. They great for High Protection enemies, especially if you have more then one source. In addition, they often give you dead turns, where your enemy will die from a bleed/blight effect without having to waste a action killing him. Which allows you to use heals without needing to risk artificially extending the fight. I tend to run teams with at least 2 DoT sources, and I have had a lot of luck where all the members have them as well.

That said, they are a lot more fiddly. Turn order is more important when running a Bleed/Blight heavy group. If an enemy goes before you apply the DoT, you delay the damage by a round (Since they happen at the creatures turn order). They are also a lot less useful in short fights, where the enemies may not last the entire duration of the effect, and thus a Direct Damage effect would have been more effective.

Also, I feel the base damage and scaling in many of the DoT attacks are off. 5 blight at max rank for a Plague Doctor is really not great when you compare it to the HP of most Champion monsters, even when you consider stacking. You also have extreme damage penalties on most DoTs. In the PDs case, it feels like a waste to even invest in weapon upgrades. You are only paying for speed, since crits and damage increases are almost wasted on attacks with -90% damage penalties, from rank 1 to 5 you will only ever see 1-3 points of direct damage.

[Smiley]

Yes, you are right, maybe I am tired of watching enemies who have 1 HP left after a tick of DoT giving me a huge crit as a good-bye present...
Or maybe it's because my stage coach is full of gravediggers, plague doctors, and jesters...

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Nah, DoTs actually got nerfed by the patch that allegedly buffs them. You're right, it's common sense delayed damage should succeed instant damage otherwise no one will wait. Common sense isn't so common, and so the game presents 50 damage or 5 as if it were a legitimate choice. "High protection"? Doesn't matter, direct damage is still better.

[nuther]

A DOT is really good, blood or disease. Put two DOTs on the back rows and you can forget about them and use your turns for something else. Its an art form, mixing and match your heroes. Sometimes you need to give the monster 1 dd attack so the tick times just right. Then you can wait until they die while you spot heal.

I like to load up bleeders for the Warrens and make a real blood bath out of it. 'If it Bleeds' is such a powerful attack.

[Tycrus1]

If it bleeds isnt a powerful attack for his dot more like for the hellions damage and attack range. Yes sometimes you ll be lucky that the bleed kills the last HP but the 99% direct damage on the 3rd rank enemy is what makes the attack powerful. Ever tried to count damage of direct damage and non direct damage on IF it bleeds? Mod monsters to useful numbers like 2k hp and watch if the dot can ever outmatch the direct damage. Spoiler it wont. Than go back to those petty HP numbers in derpest dungeon and try to verify the use of dots.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

No need for relevant stats on enemies. DoTs can't kill things NOW, when enemies have no stats.

[algothi]

Honestly if you look at the math DoTs are not terrible, though they are far from optimal in most circumstances. They are decent at High Prot, especially when stacked two or three times.

If you check the pastie link below, you will see a simple chart with DoT Values (reaching 15 to show 3 stacks of 5) vs Protection Values and the amount of Direct Damage you would need to do to match the DOT. The next column shows which heroes and thier minimum weapon rank required to exceed the DD Equivilant with the average damage value.

http://pastie.org/10463185

Now, fotunately +75% protection is not common, however that means DoTs trail behind in most circumstances. DoT's also have no direct way to increase the pulse damage, where Direct Damage has a multitude of ways to increase, most of which are very very easy to come by.

[Tycrus1]

Well this chart ignores resistances, trinkets and i think its ignoring camp buffs as well and most 2slot enemies with higher HP dont even have protection maybe the bone commander.The problem where dots fail is the mechanic to stack and the missing ability to increase dot ticks to be valuable to wait for the damage to kick in if you think about the base HP it i ll take multiple successful dot attacks and good trained direct damage dealer can do that with 1 or 2 attacks. Quirks, damage trinket and camping those are the huge difference where dots lose more power even if you could bring bleed chance to a good amounts with trinkets its still a ton less than with a full damage direct dealer since the fight ends very fast that you wont even reach 3 dot stacks.Its like the equivalent of wanting 5 dot damage over 50 direct damage ... if the stack would go up much quicker and the mechanic would tick twice a turns or dot damage increase able i d consider playing them. As it is the fights are rather short with the current dot mechanic and the prot being not as high as 75% dots cant outmatch DD. I already made a suggestion about trinkets that can increase the base dot tick or dot quirks but non was really used or you make dots as a bonus damage alignment to other attacks that get those stats on bleeding enemies. The current place of dots is rather sad to be honest. I am not saying you cant win with dots of course you can with the enemy being that weak but it feels heavier than DD.

My key criticism about dots is that its not matching the killing speed of direct damage even if you would reach dds numbers in the current system direct damage would still dominate dots with the enemies low HP numbers. The chart shows where it starts to match direct damage the stack size is that high that the actual fight ended maybe 2 rounds earlier with pure DD. But this chart ignores too many aspects that buffs DD like i said trinkets quirks and now you ve to imagine what now would be 2 rounds will be like 3 or 4 rounds with all buffs accumulated.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Direct damage does 160 a round every round at 90% accuracy vs all enemies.

DoT spam, meanwhile is at best 20 with a much higher failure rate. As nothing has ever had 87.5% Protection, much less the 95% required after accouting for the DoT's high fizzle rate direct damage is always superior in all situations.

"But what about the second and third round of it stacking?" Well first of all the target's already dead, and second even if you have a 500 life punching bag the result is that it's dead from direct damage in 3 rounds and only lost about 20-25% from DoTs... again assuming they all hit (sub 90% accuracy), and all land (high fizzle rate).

Protection debuffs look even worse than DoTs by the way as debuffs always have the highest fizzle rate and then the net effect is protection (and thus effective life) reduced by a small amount. HM Protection debuff is at best a random attack from a real class at 30% accuracy and much worse against anything not named "Swinetaur".

And then I look at a real game and watch an enemy get critically hit for 120 then take 150 bleed damage, 300 burn damage, and 60 poison damage... Turns out DoTs can easily have a place if you don't have one round combats and do have some math sense.

[anaid]

DoT is supposed to be used together with direct damage, from the way I see it. You have a high PROT enemy? Don't just DoT him. Use DoT and stuns, for example, or try and do enough direct damage so you can do a bleed splash on the whole team AND kill him.

DoT is great for finishing off enemies or putting down a debuff at the same time if the skill has it. Like Direct damage - like stuns and debuffs etc. you have to use it in a smart way in combination. In the early stages of the game DoT was hopelessly underpowered because it was just damage over time. Poor damage at that.

The only think I can imagine making just a bit more viable, is if a crit with a blight attack, for example, turns the 3pts/rnd into 5 or 6pts, or extend the duration from 3 rounds to 6.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

If DoTs were 100 rounds the only net effect it would have is if they get a random lucky hit on you before you annihilate the screen with your real (non DoT) characters, that character will die about 20 or 30 rounds later, which might or might not happen before the dungeon ends.

So why exactly would anyone think adding a second set of three rounds when they already don't last the first set would do anything?

[Tycrus1]

Originally posted by HiP\\ ANAL'D:

The only think I can imagine making just a bit more viable, is if a crit with a blight attack, for example, turns the 3pts/rnd into 5 or 6pts, or extend the duration from 3 rounds to 6.

Where is the Point in giving it more duration if the fight ends at round 2 with direct damage? and the other crit idea increase RNG more than already exists in derpest dungeon. But if you had actually read the thread you would already know that the idea isnt helpful.

If you had read the math for dots you wouldnt even consider taking dots but here in a game with minimal life / prot casuals get away with using dots which are in a poor state.

[Smiley]

You missed the point, HiP\\ ANAL'D.
My posting is not about DoT having no uses. My point is, the devs failed to address the inherent weakness of DoT (slow damage) in this game.

DoT would be a meaningful alternative to DD only if the game offerred tools to buy time without dire consequences, for example, kiting.

However, there are only two viable strategies in this game: 1) focus-fire and disruption and 2) pure firepower. DoT (I am talking about skills that rely heavily on the DoT component such as Plague Doctor's) does not belong to those strategies.

And that's why I am asking the devs to give players more leverage to use DoT, well, because it's there in game.