Fall of DoT-iath?

First of all, the documents in question"
Damage Over Time Manifesto, P1
Damage Over Time Manifesto, P2

So I don’t normally make these kinds of posts, given that the constant deluge of “THE SKY IS FALLING EVERYTHING’S RUINED FOREVER!” caterwauling on all the various video game forums I frequent gets on my nerves. That said, the recently posted updates to the game’s Damage Over Time handling have me wondering if a number of builds I’ve enjoyed in the past and (am attempting to) enjoy now are going to continue to work going forward.

DoT effects no longer scaling by initial-hit damage is harsh but acceptable, as it removes one of the Dips from Double Dipping and eliminates the compounding screwballery that caused the Poison Meta in the first place. The second manifesto, however, decouples Bleed/Poison/Ignite from skill duration, which removes a huge scalar for ‘ailment’-style DoT builds. Yes, this means Bleedquake works again (did it ever really work in the first place, though?), but it also means Poison loses one of its primary scalars.

DoT effects also no longer inherit damage type modifiers from their parent skills. The fact that they did so in the first place seems a bit silly, and in isolation I’m in favor of that change, but when included in the same patch as the loss of hit-based scaling and the loss of duration scaling, it seems as if we don’t really have any way to scale ‘Ailment’ damage anymore. Yes, they added weapon modifiers to specific base types that increase damage with a given ailment, but I incredibly doubt those modifiers will be significant enough to warrant the loss of damage that not having more typical modifiers inflicts on a weapon.

The new Keystone, ‘Ailment Crit’, reduces hit damage. As we’ve seen with the Elemental Proliferation Support gem, not a soul is willing to pay in initial-hit damage for a beneficial aftereffect, especially considering the language specifically indicates that even after paying whatever significant ‘Less’ penalty modifier you pay for taking the Keystone, not all of your own crit multiplier is converted to work on ailment damage.

A final judgment must of course wait for final numbers, but I’m starting to wonder if we’re going to end up back in the days of pre-Poison Path of Exile…i.e. the days where ‘Ailments’ were things critters occasionally did to you but were otherwise completely forgettable nonentities that didn’t really help a build at all. I cannot remember the last time I saw a Bleed build that actually attempted to kill with Bleed, rather than using Bleed as a means of enabling Bloodlust or Gladiator Ascendancy passives. So far as I know they don’t really exist.

Even non-ailment DoT skills seem to be getting the axe. Grinding Gear specifically mentioned that Essence Drain’s damage was being increased because, and I paraphrase: “ED is taking it square in the asspipe in this build and we’d like to keep selling Arcane Skill Effect packs”. Given, however, the gutting of ‘Ailment’ damage, and the gutting od Decay damage with it, Essence Drain is set to lose most of its single-target ability no matter how much extra damage it gets. Caustic Arrow is in much the same boat, losing a number of scaling factors, and unlike Essence Drain, CA has never really had the option of stacking up a bunch of other sources of degen to cover its weak single-target damage.

The removal of boss ailment immunities sounds like a boon, and indeed I’ll be thrilled to be able to hit bosses with cold damage and have it actually mean something, but I find myself regarding the changes with an unusual degree of trepidation. Normally I like it when Grinding Gear flips the tables on us, it always leads to interesting new ideas but, and pardon me for saying it…where are the interesting new ideas that both massively reducing the base damage of all current DoT sources and removing virtually all ways to scale DoT sources enables?

Where’s the upshot here, outside of finally putting paid to the Assassin All Day Meta?

Dumpstered.

"

1453R wrote:

DoT effects no longer scaling by initial-hit damage is harsh but acceptable, as it removes one of the Dips from Double Dipping and eliminates the compounding screwballery that caused the Poison Meta in the first place.

As far as i understand, DoT damage scales with initial hit just as it always did. The main difference is that the actual damage of your hit (after resists, armour etc.) does not influence the damage of the damage over time portion.

As far as i have understood the manifesto, general damage increases still double dip, projectile/totem nodes will not. Area damage only plays a minor role, with maybe prolif and CA.

It is all speculation at this point in time, but what i gathered from the whole manifesto was that they aim to not actually gutting DoT style builds, but make it an actual investment you need to specialize in, instead of just beeing the best way to build everything.

They're removing double dipping... so stuff that was too powerful is no longer going to be.

Tough.

If you played it, rejoice in the time you spent with it. Something else will come along that will allow you to keep playing.

Now, it wont be DoT or "you suck". It will be something else or "you suck". You'll have to find out what, or... guess what... you'll suck.

I really wonder how the the crit ailment passive will work out together with emberwake/elemental overload... there might be some nasty ignite stuff hidden in there.

It'll be interesting since they're boosting the effects of DoT buffs in the passive tree, maybe there'll be new builds for DoTs that don't work off of the double-dipping stuff.

Blight traps for the win?

"

FCK42 wrote:

I really wonder how the the crit ailment passive will work out together with emberwake/elemental overload... there might be some nasty ignite stuff hidden in there.

There is also the way it works with 'The Taming'.

Changes sound good on paper. Now remove Vinktar's from the game and we are good to go.

If they make poison DoT an actual investment you need to specialize in i really hope GGG ads some new decent Chaos DoT Skills because Essence Drain, Blight and Caustic Arrow suck.

And there are no other chaos skills. I really don't see anyone picking up Chaos Damage Passive Nodes only for DoT damage to be used on those 3 super clumsy skills. Two of them have really low AOE DoT and one is a projectile that is super hard to apply without contagion.