That is very true. I did not realize some of those issues till you pointed them out.
Maybe if DOT, such as bleed or poison, scaled with each level whether it’s a +4% thing similar to what you get when upping a stat like int or dex or a +base damage like you were mentioning it might help.
The fact that most DOT doesn’t have an option to increase base damage through gear does seem like an issue. Especially since you can increase every other type of damage through both percentage and base so it’s possible to scale them better.
Would love to know if you had any thoughts on changing DOT mechanics for different types of DOT such as I mentioned earlier for poison or bleed.
Ah you are right. Should have looked it up more thoroughly before I made a fool of myself by saying what you mentioned was the same as the dark dagger thing.
Ya, I think the consuming of bleed stacks should be its base mechanic.
Overall I think the main issue is that when compared to Hit-Crit builds, DOT builds fall off hard in end game content (empowered monos & High level Arena Push). Hit-Crit builds can increase their damage by building to 100% crit chance and 300%+ crit multi, which allows them to do 3X damage. In comparison DOT builds don’t have as many ways to incorporate more damage into build/item rolls outside of certain skill specific affixes, which are not always available depending on the build. This is supposed to be balanced by the differences in defensive mechanics in the game like dodge chance, glancing blows, etc which should favor damage output for DOT builds. However, after playing both DOT and Hit-Crit builds, it definitely doesn’t feel like the defensive mechanics make a noticeable impact in favor of DOT builds. Cuz if your HIT gets dodged or glanced, what do you do? Oh, you just hit again and again and again until they die. In my gameplay experience, those mechanics only matter when you are pushing end game monos and choose certain modifiers.
Obviously there isn’t a “quick” way to remedy the damage difference since there are so many stats that impact damage output between different classes. However there needs to be either some sort of damage modifier added to benefit the BASE damage of DOT builds to compensate for Crit Multi OR the defensive mechanics need to be more emphasized in such a way that they are more impactful. I personally would favor the former rather than the latter.
I know one of my main issues with poison/bleed is the insanely short duration and hard scaling after a certain point.
Personally I think DoT builds are missing one of the most important benefits of the build archetype: Being able to do consistent damage while mostly focusing on dodging and defense. This is as opposed to normal builds where all of your damage comes from active attacks, which put you at a higher risk.
Right now it doesn’t even have that benefit, because you’re forced to constantly keep your stacks up and they last a dreadfully short duration so not only are you doing less damage but you’re also needing to be in just as much danger as a build that has to actively always be attacking to do damage.
Out of curiosity, are you thinking of area or monolith when you make that statement? I’m not sure I would agree with it for poison given its inherent resist shred mechanic.
But I do kinda agree with you on the view that dot builds are traditionally about maintaining damage while manually dodging mechanics. It would be interesting to see whether the devs agree.
Current iteration of DOTS ruines the class phantasy a little.
The way it currently works allows you to make bleed builds with elemental skills or apply elemental ailments with physical skills.
I guess lots of people like this early and very flexible way to apply dots but for me it looks unfinished and needs proper tuning to make it work in a way that would make sense for the various classes.
As mentioned, base damage of dots is the same no matter the weapons unless you specifically scale dot-dmg with affixes. But that is not even needed as weird it sounds.
Explained below.
The best way to scale dots without sacrificing hit damage too much is to increase dot chance and attack/cast speed. And i would rate speed above DOT-chance once you reach a certain threshold.
There is a reason why the rotating chakram of the Rogue is so strong without much investment in dots. Its mainly the speed that matters which shoehornes dmg ailments in one boring way to play.
I hope the devs make it more interesting in future patches, but personally i dont think it will change much or at all, since lots of people here seem to be happy how it works now.
I’ve only really played a self-made bleed bow and a poison-based lich. The bleeds in particular were SUPER short, 4 seconds I think. Both in monoliths. Poison seems ok but I do have to keep recasting, I haven’t experimented much with poison shred.
Given the shred that poison has by default, there’s not much point in trying to get any elsewhere.
I kinda agree that it would be nice to be able to more easily increase the duration of the DoTs while maintaining the total damage (so the effect would come with a reduced damage effect as well).
They could make ailment damage scale with the primary attribute, strength or intelligence and such, same scaling as damage skills. This would alleviate the dps falloff at higher levels.
If a skill applies ailments the damage of ailments inflicted by that skill will scale with the attributes of that skill.
But in the grand scheme Attributes do not grant a majority of the damage for alot of builds.
Even on a build that heavily goes for a certain attribute (for example a armour/str build), even having like 60-80 str would “only” give 240-320% increased damage, which is alot, but not the majority of all increases for many builds.
I don’t feel like they’ve put out enough base items yet for some DOT builds. Some do really good others fall off super hard. I think bleed is the hardest fall off. After a certain point it gets really hard to get higher bleed damage base and it takes too long to stack that many bleeds to get to high enough damage for it to matter later in the game.
There are alot of rare and powerfull affixes that for example grant “Bleed Duration” or “Increased Bleed Effect” (especially present on class specific affixes).
Those both serve as a MORE multiplier for bleed.
While i am always in for more items and overhauling older items (I am looking at you 2H and 1H Axes), i think it’s not as bad as you described it.
You might not have discovering everything at your disposal yet.
I’m not sure that bleed does fall off “late game”, but then it probably depends on what you mean by that. Monoliths? Empowered monoliths? 400+ Corruption empowered monoliths?
well i started having issues around lvl 75, bleed just didn’t seem to be working all that well. Plus I found that crit was working better for me and i was finding more items for crit build and my bleed build was starting to fall off hard, like i fought one of those shades and it utterly destroyed me, bleed did like zero damage.
There is a pretty cool interaction that should be a part of this equation:
Maelin’s Hubris gloves can turn bleeds into ignite - which changes base damage from 53 down to 35. Why do this? Well, it means we can also use torch of the pontifex, which gives us some AOE to our DOT. It also means we have some legitimate choices on the items and tree to ramp up fire damage and damage over time - which bleed currently does not have. The net result is a fun synergy between items, skills, passives, discussed more in this thread.
This makes me think that with the potential release of a few more items, DOT is in a good space. It is only when you compare it to crit that it falls behind. Hence, I find the below post super spot on (with just one exception: I think all this is evidence for a nerf to crit, rather than a buff to DOT).
I mean I seems like it could be a good mechanic, I just think the way the character sheet is currently, and the way bleed stacks and other stacks don’t tell you the stack rate per hit or how many stacks are currently on an enemy, it makes it hard to min/max bleed builds.
The other thing is with bleed you HAVE to consistently hit, but with a crit build even if they occasionally dodge you still get big damage. If they dodge too many hits with a bleed build your stacks start falling off and your damage takes a massive hit.
