Problem with 20s dots is the DPS has to be lowered to compensate.

Imagine it kept the same standard of 1.5x over 10s, so 3x over 20s... Any class without a purge would be walking around being constantly melted by 10 dots stacked on top of each other with not nearly enough heals per second to account for them.

This whole thing is a mess. Only way for stronger DPS dots is to reduce their duration.. They didn't account for any of these issues. It doesn't feel right.

Personally, I think it makes more sense for "sticky" DoTs having short-duration and high-damage. And for ground DoTs to have long-duration and low-damage.

x1 cast of Endless Hail, for 30s
x3 casts of Poison Arrow, for 10s
Spammables in between.

I think what ZOS did with 8.1.3 is very smart. Having short and long abilities makes the combat more engaging. It means rotations are more varied, as opposed to 1 loop where you refresh all buffs and DoTs one after another.

I guess ZOS decided to do it the other way around because AoE DoTs are inherently harder to use. So they left the timers on sticky DoTs long, so less able players can just avoid AoE DoTs altogether.

Firstmep wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dot procs were untouched, so I guess that's where we are headed once again.
Tbh they could tweak battlespirit, so it passively reduced the duration of dots on you, but they also deal increased damage. I'm talking about skill sourced only ofc, not proc sets.

Using BattleSpirit to make skills behave differently in PVE and PVP... BLASPHEMY.

Pretty sure pve players don't enjoy the state of sticky dot scaling either at this point.

Also... Why are self applied sticky dots treated the same way as targeted applied sticky dots? They require more risk/reward, it's not fire and forget. They should at minimum be 10-20% stronger than applied sticky dots.

If we're sticking with their logic on the PTS:

Standards should be:

• Self applied sticky dots. = More than single target.
• Single target sticky dots. = Middle Ground
• Aoe target sticky dots. = Less than single target.
• Static dots. = More than all of the above, but over 10-15s instead of 20-30s.

Well theyre trying to simplify pve rotations, hence the longer sticky dots. They made ground aoe dots shorter with more dps, beacuse those dont stick to the target and you can miss dps if the enemy moves out.

Ofc in the end, we went full circle with variable dot timers not actually making rotaions easier, beacuse lets be honest people will use whatever gives them the most dps.

I dont even know why dots were targeted in the first place, like, if you want to make it easier for people to keep their dots up than change the ui(the default ui) so it tracks it better. Heck they have pulled addons into the base game before, plenty of dot/hot tracking addons out there they could use as a baseline, and none of them would require any changes to dps.

Yeah uhm.. nothing is easy about DK's getting 24s instead of 20s along with an 18s aoe dot instead of 10-15s, NB getting 22s instead of 20s, Mages Guild doing 24s for Degen and I think... 26s for Rune. Templar's at 24s for their fire dot if I'm not mistaken.. Warden is back to 12s instead of 10s or 15s.

Echoing Vigor at 16s.. uh why?

It's all over the damn place, so what was the point of making a standard that doesn't apply across the board. I'll tell you why, because this is a half baked idea that they didn't have enough time to adjust. All of those duration passives should of been overhauled, but they just did a blanket pass.

Now rotations are more complicated than ever.. instead of focusing on dots to help us look less at our bars, they could of adjusted low duration self buffs like they did with Channeled Acceleration.

Why do we need to apply Grim Focus/Bound Armaments at all just to use the damage portion of the skill? Why are they 40s base? Why are self buffs around 20-30s, why not 60s across the board. Does it add to combat? No, it's just a headache.

I've played with lower skill cap players and the easiest thing they manage is applying 5 dots that are 10-12s each. The hard part they have is casting buff skills like Surge or Molten Armaments too early or too late. These abilities shouldn't be a chore. ESO is basically rebuff online at this point. The combat is what should be active for us, not buffing.

Applying dots at 10s fealt natural, what doesn't feel natural is the self buffs and 20s-30s timers that force you into 10 more spammables.

BrentBlemish wrote: »

They are incredibly bad. I PvP in no CP and ive been doing some testing on the PTS by removing all my CP and going into Cyro and even on resource gaurds the damage is so ungoldy bad. Especially for classes like a stam DK. Nox Breath, Venom Claw, Poison inject ect are all doing absolute horrible damage. I even threw on sets like Swamp Raiders to try to ramp the DoT damage up and it's still so horrible. 20 second dots that dont even reach 1k per second. which means when they tick every 2 seconds they are less then 2k on sheet.

Now I get not everyone wants the pressure of DoTs against them in PvP, but DoTs are a staple of a stam DK are their current state is soooooo bad i cant even recommend THINKING about using them.

I dont care if you want sticky DoTs to last 20+ seconds or whatever, but their current damage is not good. Even when stacking as much DoTs as you can. a simple spammable is far more effective then several sticky DoTs.

The problem is that long durations also leads to more pressure over time and thus leads to more sustain issues for the affected target. Yes, purge can negate this issue completely but not ever class has access to a cheap purge to deal with DoT's.

Don't get me wrong I am on your side with this. I actually do not like the fact that DoT's have standardized durations. Having all sticky DoT's be 20 seconds and all ground DoT's last 10 or 12 seconds and doing the same damage per tick ruins diversity.

There should be variable durations, variable tick rates and variable damage. The push towards static rotations is dull.


Following assuming optimal setup.


If it were up to me I would look at each class and skill line and decide which DoT's last a short duration and hit hard:

8 seconds, hit every 0.5 seconds, hit hard for about 2.5k per second (1250 per tick).

Searing Strike, Lotus Fan, Spear Shards, Liquid Lightning, Shocking Siphon, Rending Slashes, Carve.


DoT's that last a medium duration and hit moderately:

12 seconds, hit every second, hit moderately for about 1.8k per second.

Fiery Breath, Fetcher Flies, Cripple and Crippling Grasp, Lightning Flood, Sun Fire, Unstable Wall, Boneyard, Stampede, Volley.


Dot's that last a longer duration and lower damage.

20 seconds, hit every second, hit lower for about 1.2k per second.

Eruption, Arctic Blast, Twisting Path, Lightning Form, Solar Barrage, Deadly Cloak, Mystic Orb, Caltrops.


DoT's that I would give special mechanics.

20 seconds, hit every second, start off low damage for about 750 per second. Damage increases by 6% per tick leading to about 2.5k on the final tick.

Entropy, Poison Arrow, Debilitate.

Winter's Revenge

12 seconds, hit every second, hit very high for about 2.8k per tick. (Supposed to be the granddaddy of DoT's as was intention of ZoS. It should keep that title.)


Not saying these numbers would be exact, but the whole "DoT coefficient system" is not good for the game at all. Each DoT should be looked at on a case by case basis and then decision made on its damage per second, not its overall damage. This way classes feel more unique and bring different things to the table.

The long duration is extremely useless in PvP, and the dps nerf simply makes the majority of sticky DoT skills go from marginal to unplayable. Since they don't want instakills (and neither do most players), we need to be able to pressure HP bars down into a reasonable 2-3 gcd burst range. Without usable pressure damage from skills, players are forced to rely heavily on weaving, the exact opposite of ZOS's stated goals. These DoT nerfs make PvP less accessible and more sweaty.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The long duration is extremely useless in PvP, and the dps nerf simply makes the majority of sticky DoT skills go from marginal to unplayable. Since they don't want instakills (and neither do most players), we need to be able to pressure HP bars down into a reasonable 2-3 gcd burst range. Without usable pressure damage from skills, players are forced to rely heavily on weaving, the exact opposite of ZOS's stated goals. These DoT nerfs make PvP less accessible and more sweaty.

And I don't want the solution sold to us via a mythic or 5 piece set bonus either

Excuse my confusion but what good are 20 second dot durations when time to kill is less than 2 seconds in PvP?

Firstmep wrote: »

I dont think pve players like the 20 second weak dots either, but.. If they must stay, than please put a modifier into battlespirit, so that player sourced dots deal more damage but with much lower duration.

ill take that, at this point ill take ANYTHING. I've been doing some dual testing on the PTS with a friend and no matter what we seem to do, "sticky" DoTs just do no damage. its awesome seeing a 400 dot tick after 2 seconds and then at 4 seconds another 400.

But yet you can run sloads and it ticks 1k+ every second. lmao MAKES NO SENSE!!!!

Its getting to the point where status effects and procsets will far out damage skill based dots.
Although it be fair, with Maras balm, dots might as well do 100x more damage it wouldn't make a difference in pvp next patch.

mzprx wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

...It's all over the damn place, so what was the point of making a standard that doesn't apply across the board?

this. oh so much. their idea behind all of these DoT changes was to "simplify the combat", yet they made it even more confusing and harder to use. instead of DoTs being DoTs we now have to differentiate between sticky and ground ones, different DoTs and buffs have different timers, for a new player (or even just an average Joe) this is even worse to understand than before, thus completely negating their intended result. as some people have mentioned this is a spreadsheet/dummy parse balancing effort. from my point of view devs don't even play or know their own game..

The splitting up of sticky DoT's and Ground DoT's is a good move.

What is not a good move is how it was done.

Ground DoT's should serve strong zone control in PvP thus the logical course is high damage per second for a shorter duration.

Sticky DoT's should serve gradual pressure which they kind of do right now in the PTS, but they serve more of a resource nuisance rather than something deadly to worry about. To be honest the live DPS was fine for the sticky DoT's. Spreading that damage over a longer duration just kills their lethality not that they were particularly lethal before.

Like I said, overall damage on DoT's does not matter. It is the damage per tick which ultimately dictates a DoT's value.

A good DoT build is about having a stack of longer DoT's mixed with short lived one that deal the main damage. However, in ESO there is no 'true' DPS DoT skill. Jabs and Flurry is about as close as we have. Until their is some kind of AoE static DoT that deals damage every 0.5 seconds and only lasts like 3 seconds but equates to the same DPS as a spammable. A real true DoT build will be impossible without sacrificing a lot of damage.

this is why dots should be changed in battle spirit.