Burning damage -vs- ignite -vs- fire damage over time -vs- damage over time

Any way GGG could clean up their multiple names for fire damage over time?

Its not the most unclear thing in the game but its annoying that it has multiple names.

To ignite is to create fire damage over time, which can be called ignite as well, or fire damage over time, and then you have skills which give +damage over time to bow skills.

Will that work off ignites from bow skills, or only DoTs that are part of the skill itself?

A general cleanup of nomenclature would be super nice.

Well there's not really a way to "clean it up" without removing some of the layers entirely. The damage calculations in POE have gotten so ridiculously complicated that no matter how you phrase things, you'll still have multiple different but similar forms of damage that aren't technically the same, so calling them the same thing would make things even more confusing than they already are.

You seem to have some of the terms confused, which is perfectly reasonable, so here's a quick crash course:

IGNITE is not a kind of damage, it is a status ailment that causes BURNING damage based on the hit that inflicted the ailment.

BURNING DAMAGE is a kind of damage that counts as fire damage, elemental damage, and damage over time and scales with anything that modifies any of those things.

So if you're using a bow to inflict burning damage, let's say with Burning Arrow, the "burning" part of the skill's damage will be modified by support gems (Burning Damage Support, etc), passive nodes referring to ailments (Elemental Focus), and passive nodes referring to damage over time with bow skills (Master Fletcher, etc).

Thanks!

Couldn't you clean it up by getting rid of ignite and burning damage and call it all Fire Damage Over Time?

Existing items with "blah blah if target is ignited" could be "If target has a Fire Damage Over time effect"?

You are right that there would still be Fire Damage, Damage Over Time, and Elemental Damage, plus anything scaling the base hit to consider though, but it seems clunky to have an ailment called Ignite lumped into elemental ailments, yet acting more like Fire Poison.

If anything, Ignite and poison should be a non-damaging ailment to match shock and chill, and Fire Damage Over Time and Chaos Damage Over Time should be its own thing like cold damage over time.

I get from a lore perspective that poison sounds cool, and burning does too.

No, you can't, because it's different things. You can inflict an ignite on an enemy, for example by critting an enemy with fire damage. However, Righteous Fire / Scorching Ray will always be "burning damage", which is not the same thing.

An ignited enemy also counts as burning, but a burning enemy isn't necessarily ignited. Think of it like the difference between enemies being poisoned (ignite) and being affected by Essence Drain (chaos damage over time).

This sort of complexity is what makes the game so rich and deep. Wouldn't want to see that taken away because some folks don't like reading wikis.

No, as the man above said, ignite is an elemental status effect that does burning damage which is just a fancy name for fire damage over time. So, if you have something that applies while the target is burning, it will apply if the target is burning from an ignite but also when the burning is caused by some other effect, like searing bond, burning ground or righteous fire.

The condition of 'while burning' is different from 'when ignited', the former checks the state of the target and usually applies some kind of a bonus or malus while the condition is true. The latter is an event and you can hook any effect to it, that effect can exist separately when applied and have own properties and duration.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

No, you can't, because it's different things. You can inflict an ignite on an enemy, for example by critting an enemy with fire damage. However, Righteous Fire / Scorching Ray will always be "burning damage", which is not the same thing.

An ignited enemy also counts as burning, but a burning enemy isn't necessarily ignited. Think of it like the difference between enemies being poisoned (ignite) and being affected by Essence Drain (chaos damage over time).

This sort of complexity is what makes the game so rich and deep. Wouldn't want to see that taken away because some folks don't like reading wikis.

I appreciate that and Im not trying to change mechanics (ok, one of my suggestions did).

It still seems that burning and fire damage over time are synonymous though.

Ignited causes fire damage over time and those are different, but burning damage and fire damage over time are the same, yes? Could we not get rid of one of those.

Can you be burning but not affected by fire damage over time, or vice versa?

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trixxar wrote:

It still seems that burning and fire damage over time are synonymous though.

They are, the 'burning damage' term could be removed from the game and they have been replacing it with fire damage over time where possible. Some things would be a bit of a mouthful, though, '% more damage to enemies affected with fire damage over time' isn't sounding nearly as elegant as '% more damage to burning enemies' so that's probably why they keep the term around.

And it isn't that hard to explain, after all
burning damage = fire (elemental) damage over time
ignite = elemental ailment that does burning damage over x seconds

Hmm, true.

Then could we stop saying Fire Damage Over Time and just say burning?

Then I guess the Damage Over Time nodes and supports would need to say "Damage Over time and Burning" to be clear.


I still think the cleanest way, without making the game less complex, would be to have ignite and poison not damage, but inflict status ailments. (Cold slows, lightning increases damage taken, ignite could reduce damage output, poison something else.)

Then have fire, cold, chaos, physical, lightning damage over time.

For instance, why have "bleed" AND "physical damage over time"? Then you have to clarify weird things like "Damage over time multiplier for bleeding" instead of just having a more general "Physical Damage Over Time Multiplier".

But thanks all for the clarifications, appreciate it!

Because "Fire Damage over Time Multiplier" is an actual MORE multiplier and the burning damage modifiers are just INCREASE mods. The difference is quite important and the terminology is quite to the point already. :P

For more info on this kinda matter, check out the wiki: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Damage_over_time

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trixxar wrote:

For instance, why have "bleed" AND "physical damage over time"? Then you have to clarify weird things like "Damage over time multiplier for bleeding" instead of just having a more general "Physical Damage Over Time Multiplier".

Same reason, there might be other sources of physical damage over time and devs want bleed bonuses on weapon passives to only affect bleed. It would be a bit weird to have a spell that deals physical damage over time you can boost by investing in weapon passives. When they want to give bonuses a broader use, they can be less specific, like giving a hybrid class like Shadow passives that just say 'damage over time'.