DOT builds are underwhelming

[Cocobolono]

Am i the only one that feels damage over time builds need a buff. I have worked with applying poison duration, poison pen, poison shred, 600-800% damage over time etc and still do significantly less damage than just going the typical crit build everyone uses. Armor shred them, crit them for hundreds of thousands, and keep walking isnt my style. I believe poison which is the one im currently running, needs a massive buff in order to compete at all if i were to get into arena ladders or just end game in general. Add to that that there is not one unique i have found that would benefit in any way from running dot builds as i only see like 20 unique bows and falconer uniques in the database(using the rogue).

[NotSoAngryDoinks]

I don't seem to have an issue with my current DOT build with warlock using necro and curses/damned etc etc My damage does come damage over time bonuses but it also matters how many stacks you're putting on them, if you have all this damage and duration, pen etc, but are only putting 1 or 2 stacks on them then i think that is your issue, try grabbing skill points that apply more poison stacks or things that spread it amongst the group and so on. my current build can apply upwards of 100 stacks of damned to an entire horde in the matter of seconds and they all die within a few ticks, not sure how end game you are and maybe I just havent gotten to that point yet to notice a massive falloff but im currently level 70 and still do just fine

[Astasia]

I can't speak for poison at the moment, but I know bleed falcon and bleed warlock are extremely competitive builds right now. Bleed falcon is kind of insane hitting like 500 bleed stacks pretty easily.

[Mac]

PA = Per application

Poison is easy to apply but is one of the weakest applied.
DMG: 20 pa

Bleed hits harder but is also harder to stack.
DMG: 53 pa

Electrify is the spell users way of dealing dot damage outside of ignite.
DMG: 44 pa

Frostbite is the colds ways
DMG: 36 pa + chance to be frozen

Ignote is the bleed alternative without the harder to get stacks issue.
DMG 40 pa

-----------------

Basically - Poison needs 2 applications for every 1 application of anything else, so 100 ignite applications is the same as 200 poison etc etc

You should always do poison and bleed, your bleed stacks help to off-set the lower damage of poison, in my opinion poison does not need a buff, you just need to shift your build over to include other forms of stacking applications as well, never go pure poison.

[Ashiro]

Originally posted by NotSoAngryDoinks:

I don't seem to have an issue with my current DOT build with warlock using necro and curses/damned etc etc My damage does come damage over time bonuses but it also matters how many stacks you're putting on them, if you have all this damage and duration, pen etc, but are only putting 1 or 2 stacks on them then i think that is your issue, try grabbing skill points that apply more poison stacks or things that spread it amongst the group and so on. my current build can apply upwards of 100 stacks of damned to an entire horde in the matter of seconds and they all die within a few ticks, not sure how end game you are and maybe I just havent gotten to that point yet to notice a massive falloff but im currently level 70 and still do just fine

I am running a bleed warlock going rip blood route currently hitting 150ish corruption at lvl 88 and I think what is making the DoT builds work for warlock is that it has so many modifiers working in its favor for DoTs, also increasing that based on # of curses applied. half of the warlock passive tree helps with that.

Originally posted by Cocobolono:

Am i the only one that feels damage over time builds need a buff. I have worked with applying poison duration, poison pen, poison shred, 600-800% damage over time etc and still do significantly less damage than just going the typical crit build everyone uses. Armor shred them, crit them for hundreds of thousands, and keep walking isnt my style. I believe poison which is the one im currently running, needs a massive buff in order to compete at all if i were to get into arena ladders or just end game in general. Add to that that there is not one unique i have found that would benefit in any way from running dot builds as i only see like 20 unique bows and falconer uniques in the database(using the rogue).

With Rogue, for its DoT options, I have had a hard time finding similar sources of multipliers to get the poison builds to work. Seeing only a couple options in each tree that are mainly chance on hit and only one or so that are modifiers. Means most of the scaling will have to come from gear/idols/other sources OR you will have to focus on applying as many stacks as possible as quickly as possible with duration and chance helping that. Its really just a class/mastery diff I believe, unfortunately. That is only what I was able to notice immediately, I have no expansive knowledge about possible uniques to scale that better or how it can be navigated.

[Urza]

the success of the dot build is largely going to depend on the actual support for it in your class/mastery/skills
the same can pretty much be said for crit
building in an unsupported way just doesnt have the same results

Also, the arena ladders are pretty much never going to be balanced. Build balance in general is not at all an emphasis for this studio, accessibility is. If your build can do empowered monoliths, which they all can with enough brute force stats, then the devs think its fine.

oh, also, im not a rogue expert, but specific to your case, the resistance shred thats innate to poison didnt used to have a cap, so raw %poison chance used to be its own scaling and didnt need other modifiers to be brokenly good.

I know of a number of skills and situations that did not get adjusted/buffed for the cap to poison shred when it was introduced. I could be wrong but what you're looking at may just be more of that issue.
If you're curious go look at a unique amulet called Serpent's Milk. Its an old item literally designed around poison shred not having a cap.

[kongkim]

Then you are doing something wrong.

[Quillithe]

I kinda felt that until trying them, now I feel like DoT builds are pretty solid. Both poison lich and bleed bladedancer seem to do alright.

Each stack might not do much, but you get so many hundreds.

And it also synergizes very very well with leech since it's a steady stream throughout so as you engage new enemies you're still leeching from the last ones