Dev Question: Are DoTs Intended To Be Weak?

Draehl · October 2014

I ask this in not a snide manner, but I can't help but notice in most cases DoTs are actually pretty weak and I wanted to bring it up before the skill balance pass is done. There are definitely some good ones- Crippling Grasp & Velocious Curse for example- but in many cases the DoTs don't do enough DPS, overall damage, can't be cast on multiple enemies, or are prohibitive in some other way (such as cast time). They're often just barely stronger than a comparable direct damage skill, and simply do not warrant taking up a slot on your skill bar.

I've always played DoT-casters in several past MMOs and typically the strength of these types of skills are that they do a rather large amount of damage in comparison to a nuke and can be placed on multiple enemies, but with the weakness of doing damage over a longer period of time (typically in excess of 10 or even 15 seconds) and are susceptible to removal via cleanse type spells. Obviously, ESO isn't beholden to the design of past MMOs, but it begs the question of several skills in the game that just don't have a place on a skill bar, and could potentially contribute a lot of attrition builds if they were in a better state.

If I might make a suggestion: Soul Trap would make an excellent skill to look into buffing for the purposes of providing everyone with a pure DoT- no other slows/cc/heals/frills needed. ~4x overall damage compared to a Funnel Health, 15 second duration, castable on multiple targets. Either rework one of the morphs or flat out buff the core spell. It would go a long way towards rounding out DoT builds that are quite frankly lacking at the moment.

Crescent · October 2014

LOL. Velocious Curse is good? You realize it's a spell that does less damage than crystal fragments or crushing shock (which is also instant), and yet takes 6/3 seconds morphed to activate.

The only place velocious curse is kinda used is in PvP for backloading burst. And once crushing shock was buffed everyone kind of forgot this spell.

The problem as well with dots in this game is a lot of them are bleeds, and a majority of endgame monsters in this game are, you guessed right, immune to bleeds.

Also some mechanics are plain obsolete. Like velocious curse's cleave damage or mage's fury cleave damage. The damage from the explosions is so pitiful, it might as well not even exist since it's barely a scratch in any mob's HP bar.

Teh_Husky · October 2014

Dots are efficient because of the overall damage they do relative to their casting cost. They are about doing high OVERALL damage in a long fight, not about bursting down enemies as quick as possible.

They allow you to construct a semblance of an ability rotation, because you eventually need to recast them to refresh the dots.

They allow you to weave other abilities / actions into your rotation without stopping DPS entirely.

Obviously they arent great for PvP, because players can easily heal/clease; but not every ability/morph has to be applicable to PvP.

Draehl · October 2014

Teh_Husky wrote: »

Dots are efficient because of the overall damage they do relative to their casting cost. They are about doing high OVERALL damage in a long fight, not about bursting down enemies as quick as possible.

They allow you to construct a semblance of an ability rotation, because you eventually need to recast them to refresh the dots.

They allow you to weave other abilities / actions into your rotation without stopping DPS entirely.

Obviously they arent great for PvP, because players can easily heal/clease; but not every ability/morph has to be applicable to PvP.

In concept, yes, but look at Crippling Grasp for example- it only does ~50% more damage than a Funnel Health. If it weren't for the crowd control/speed buff considerations I can tell you it definitely wouldn't warrant a slot on my bar. Even if it double the damage of Funnel Health wouldn't be worth a skill slot. That's the "problem" (I love this skill system and wouldn't change it) but with skills in ESO is you don't have them all on your bar at once. They all have to be competitive in their own way. We're lacking a long duration high dmg DoT to fill that type of spot on the skillbar.

And at least as a light armor NB I really don't care about the skill cost unless it is ridiculously expensive. Damage per skill use is the admirable trait of DoTs at least in application in ESO. Even if it were over 20 seconds it would be fine so long as it were enough to break through the opportunity cost of an extra utility skill on your bar.

Baconfat79 · October 2014

One of the main reason DoT abilities are great is Ultimate gain. If you have a high crit chance, you can gain Ultimate very fast from DoTs. Each time a DoT ticks for crit damage, you gain Ultimate. I use them for this aspect moreso than for their actual damage.

Francescolg · October 2014

TE is 100% right, DoTs in this game do by far not enough damage and even the complete damage is laughable if you compare the total dmg to any bigger DD spell. Most DoTs are not worth to spec in.

You reggen ultimate faster by combined dot + ae spells but most easily just with a resto staff and the gtae hot / hot. Nonetheless, dmg is by far (not excusable) too low.

c0rp · October 2014

I hate to say this...but WoW did DoTs WAY BETTER than ESO does, after they made the effort to make them matter. ESO needs to do the same.

Pmarsico9 · October 2014

c0rp wrote: »

I hate to say this...but WoW did DoTs WAY BETTER than ESO does, after they made the effort to make them matter. ESO needs to do the same.

No, WoW did DoTs terribly as soon as they made them crit and especially when they scaled with haste.

DoTs in ESO are done better simply due to Ultimate Gain, which is your bread and butter for doing damage.

I'm not saying one class shouldn't have more usage than currently with their DoTs as a primary damage source. I believe it would work well for Templars based upon how non-threatening DoTs in ESO are in PVP. It would be a great way to address Templar PVE DPS issues.

But to ask for WoW style ignites or Unstable Afflictions is dumb considering that game killed how awesome their DoTs were when they simply provided sustained high damage.

Draehl · October 2014

I've just been trying to re-create the playstyle of amazing classes I've loved in past MMOs like Bloodmage (Vanguard), Shadowpriests (WoW), and Zealots (Warhammer) but if this playstyle isn't meant to be represented in ESO I guess I'll have to deal with it.

DK has strong DoTs for sure, but that's really more of a melee/aoe build rather than the ranged/healer dark caster "tormentor" style build. Between the lack of DoTs and Frost Staff being such a letdown in regards to CC I've turned to the Resto Staff + Crippling Grasp + Mass Hysteria + Funnel Health spam which admittedly works wonders. It's just lacking a certain depth and playstyle that a more DoT focused build can provide.

I suppose my ultimate point is that ideally Zenimax should buff the less powerful skills (Agony and/or Soul Trap for example) in ways that open up builds (such as this) to be valid options.

Cody · October 2014

they are good for PvE, save for the endgame monsters, because, like already mentioned, they are immune to bleed damage, and bleed damage is what most DoTs in this game are.

for PvP they may as well be almost worthless because most players are busy spamming self heals while blocking, making it hard to see any kind of damage DoTs can do.

Kego · October 2014

Dots are really way to weak in this Game.
I tried a DoT Build with

- Crippling Grasp (NB - Siphon)
- Soul Trap (World Skill)
- Degeneration (Mage Guild)
- Path of Regeneration (NB - Shadow)

Fazit: with all 4 Dots ticking, you can`t even Kill a normal VR 1 Mob and you even cast ~40-50% of your Magicka for those.

Francescolg · October 2014

You can't even hinder an NB to go back into stealth with a DoT, DoTs are worthless and summ up to so many reasons, why players have quit PvP..

guybrushtb16_ESO · October 2014

It's because of balancing.

Dots work differently from direct damage skills in that you can have an infinite number of direct damage skills available, without them interfering at all. Disregarding utility, players can chose to fill their entire bars with 10 different direct damage skills, or they can just bring 1 and it wouldn't matter at all.

The situation is different for dots, as long as their total activation time is smaller than each dot's duration, your dps gets higher with each dot you add.

What follows is that if we had good dots readily available, the perfect dps build would be 9 different dots and 1 spam skill to fill the interval when none of them has to be refreshed.

In essence, we can't have good dots and good spammable skills in the same builds without making every build requiring slotting lots dots, and this apparently is not what the designers wanted for the game. The only way we could maybe have builds with strong dots, is if those dots would at the same time be associated with something that would lower our direct damage, like a "dot stance" maybe, but even that is hard to implement because it creates so much potential for interaction for both existing and future skills.

Kego · October 2014

And how will you manage to cast 9 Dots if the DoT duration is only 8 Seconds? Right, it is not possible.
The current situation isn`t good as well. With only 10 Active Skills we have to make decisions and this will maximum be one DoT Skill for Ultimate Gain and nothing more, cause every DD Spell deals 3-4 times the Damage over 8 Seconds than the DoT Spells in this Game.

Cody · October 2014

they do seem way to weak. They are the one thing we have to get thru blocks atm, and they cant even do that well.

guybrushtb16_ESO · October 2014

Kego wrote: »

And how will you manage to cast 9 Dots if the DoT duration is only 8 Seconds? Right, it is not possible.
The current situation isn`t good as well. With only 10 Active Skills we have to make decisions and this will maximum be one DoT Skill for Ultimate Gain and nothing more, cause every DD Spell deals 3-4 times the Damage over 8 Seconds than the DoT Spells in this Game.

Obviously a DD spell being cast 8 times will beat a dot being cast 1 time, and obviously any spammed skill will do more % of your dps total than any individual dot, this is absolutely trivial and inherent to the principle of dots.

The entire point of dots is being low cast per minute with relatively high damage per cast. In 1.5, stamina builds will do this: swap to bow, apply dots, swap to 2h and spam until the dots fall off.

Thrymbauld · October 2014

While I agree that they give a semblance of a rotation, they really are too weak. Giving ultimate in no way equalizes the poor performance of DoT damage.

A good example of how pathetic DoT damage is, on the whole, is the bleed from Axe in two-handed. Players fairly universally opt for the percentage increase from sword not so much because things aren't immune to it, but because this percentage is more damage than the bleed on the axe, even before reasonable scaling considerations kick in!

DoT spells should, quite simply, be significantly more powerful than direct damage on a per-cast basis.

The reason for this is REAL balance. DoT spells can be cleansed, and can be healed through. Even the most powerful DoT can be survived, whereas spike damage of the same magnitude could not. On top of this, DoTs are not efficient to reapply---doing so while the same DoT is in effect is simply wasted ticks.

Balancing around this concept creates a situation in which damage over time is a threat, requiring sustained healing in PvP and consistent execution in PvE--right now missing your DoT in a rotation barely matters in most cases. It also gives more significant importance to abilities like purge and purify.

On top of this, offering this dynamic alleviates the need for massive spike damage to attain lethality---while people certainly complain if they get stuck with a long lasting DoT and sit in a keep and helplessly die, they complain even harder if they stand on a keep wall and the kill dynamic means double cast lethal arrow crits utterly flatten them in the time it took for them to apply a DoT that does......300 total damage. Sigh.

Pmarsico9 · October 2014

Thrymbauld wrote: »

While I agree that they give a semblance of a rotation, they really are too weak. Giving ultimate in no way equalizes the poor performance of DoT damage.

A good example of how pathetic DoT damage is, on the whole, is the bleed from Axe in two-handed. Players fairly universally opt for the percentage increase from sword not so much because things aren't immune to it, but because this percentage is more damage than the bleed on the axe, even before reasonable scaling considerations kick in!

DoT spells should, quite simply, be significantly more powerful than direct damage on a per-cast basis.

The reason for this is REAL balance. DoT spells can be cleansed, and can be healed through. Even the most powerful DoT can be survived, whereas spike damage of the same magnitude could not. On top of this, DoTs are not efficient to reapply---doing so while the same DoT is in effect is simply wasted ticks.

Balancing around this concept creates a situation in which damage over time is a threat, requiring sustained healing in PvP and consistent execution in PvE--right now missing your DoT in a rotation barely matters in most cases. It also gives more significant importance to abilities like purge and purify.

On top of this, offering this dynamic alleviates the need for massive spike damage to attain lethality---while people certainly complain if they get stuck with a long lasting DoT and sit in a keep and helplessly die, they complain even harder if they stand on a keep wall and the kill dynamic means double cast lethal arrow crits utterly flatten them in the time it took for them to apply a DoT that does......300 total damage. Sigh.

This is a good post. But as I mention earlier, allowing them to critically strike does more to hurt them than help them.

The purpose of a DoT should be guaranteed high damage and perhaps provide a set amount of Ultimate per tick.

Base damage then gets suppressed by the fact that they can deal bonus damage through crits. I'd rather see a strong DoT for at least one class and perhaps a weapon setup for Dual Wield or Two Hander be more focused on DoTs.

Then you encourage at least some people to not blindly stack critical strike and make gearing much more of a decision.

Thrymbauld · October 2014

I agree---placing critical strike on DoTs puts too much spike damage potential there. Far better that they have a substantial amount of damage.

capcody · November 2014

i tried out a build of going full glass cannon stam/weapon damage so high.. and bleed damage from poison arrow is just to weak.. and if he/she is blocking forget it, there health regain will heal more then your bleed. wich beats me how can u hold up your shield and block damage when your poisoned/bleeding out