Damage Over Time Changes - Part 1

nice

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Rory wrote:

Reply to this forum post with any questions you have about damage over time mechanics or design, we'll be answering them in a third post in this series.

Will poison still be affected by skill effect duration passives?

thanks

heavy

+1 to that

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Pathological wrote:

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suszterpatt wrote:

As a semi-professional gameplay programmer, this solution seems to me... unnecessarily complicated.

What I would have done:

1. As you collect the modifiers that apply to the initial Hit, build a list of those that could possibly apply to DoT (i.e. Fire Damage and Area Damage may or may not apply, but Attack Damage definitely cannot).
2. If the Hit causes a DoT, pass this list to the calculation that applies modifiers to the DoT.
3. The DoT calculation is not allowed to apply any modifier that exists in the list.


In short, if a modifier was used to scale the initial Hit, it cannot scale the DoT as well. But modifiers that could have scaled the initial Hit but didn't, can still scale the DoT. E.g. "Fire Damage" cannot scale the Ignite from a Fireball (because it already scaled the initial Hit), but it can scale the Ignite from Ice Spear if wearing Hrimburn.

But what do I know about PoE's internals, eh?

That's no less complex than what they are doing. Your way requires comparisons of applicable terms, while theirs does not. They require only the base damage, the game intrinsically knows which multipliers to apply based on the damage type.

Pretty much all this change means is that instead of parsing 20% of the multiplied base damage, they are parsing 40% of the non-multiplied base damage.


~100 fire damage, ~20 added fire damage, 40% more spell, 35% more fire, 30% more elemental, 100% increased fire, 50% increased spell, 20% inc duration

Current system:

120*1.2*1.4*1.35*1.3*2.5 = 884.52 damage per cast
884.52*0.2*1.35*1.3*2*1.2 = 4470.7 ignite dps

New system

120 base fire damage
120*1.2*1.4*1.35*1.3*2.5 = 884.52 damage per cast
120*0.4*1.35*1.3*2 = 168.5 dps ignite

Your proposal:

120*1.2*1.4*1.35*1.3*2.5 = 884.52 damage per cast
884.52*0.2*1.2 = 212.3 dps dot


The above numbers make the change seem more extreme than it already is - the change is a massive nerf, but it required a massive nerf to reach any semblance of balance. Double dipping was far more broken than most people know.

What I'm saying is, if you want to remove double dipping, my solution is how you do it. What we have here is a complete and arguably unnecessary redesign of DoT mechanics which will incur a whole lot of balancing. I'd rather these efforts went into more pressing issues, like the abysmal melee-ranged balance. As if.

Why is this so complicated? Keep DoTs based on initial hit damage and DoT modifiers ONLY.

You don't need to calculate resistance to the DoT damage either since the initial hit will have been affected already.

Ignite= %20dmg/s for 5 seconds
Poison= %5dmg/s for 2 seconds / stacks
Bleed= %15dmg/s for 5 seconds / times 2 if moving

Assuming no additional damage over time modifiers
Fireball hits target for 100 dmg after resistance calculations, causes 20dmg/s ignite for 5 seconds
Fireball hits target for 400 dmg after resistance calculations, causes 100dmg/s ignite for 5 seconds

It doesn't matter how the fireball got boosted to 400 dmg.
To get a "double dip" like affect from a skill node have it increase both damage types.
"10% increased fire damage & %10 increased ignite damage"

They would all calculate the same way... But what about my poison you say. How can I stack increased chaos damage but my attacks do physical.

It's nearly the same. Resistance is the hiccup, but computers do simple things fast.
Just calculate the hit and poison seperate.

Assuming poison of %5 dmg/s and Chaos Resistance of %30 and %20 physical damage reduction:
Poison raw hit damage 100phys/100chaos, becomes 80phys/70chaos. initial hit of 150dmg
Poison effect calculation 80phys/100chaos, now %30 chaos resist, poison would be %5 of 126dmg or 6.3dmg/s for 2 seconds.

Again if you want to get a "double dip" like affect from a skill node have it increase both damage types.
"10% increased chaos damage & %10 increased poison damage"

Also it would be nice to add the possible ailment to the skill tool tip.
10-100 phys
10-100 chaos
2-8 poison

Maybe it's too simple.

In fact, now the calculation for DoT Start from the base damage and not the end damage you do. Seem pretty fine, but that's a NERF!

At least now, a build using COLD damage will seem ok VS a build using FIRE damage or Lightning damage VS Fire



But my question is for a GEM, Will you change Bloodlust Support so that this gem is useful? Having to do bleed on an other skill, to be able to use your main damage skill is BORING, at least for a Melee build who already have enough to have to dodge attack from the enemies, get close, try to hit, then dodge... You I dont have time to use a lower skill, so that my main skill hit for a little more.

I would really like to make a shield build but I read that 1 handed weapons aren't useful.

Hopefully this can be fixed.

WOWWWW