Ignite

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I just think the concept of fire causing a non-stackable damage over time effect is fine.

That's the part that makes it fundamentally terrible. It's a crit effect that weakens the better your build is.

It doesn't help that the CC component is also of a notable RNG variety, where it can just as easily result in enemies walking out of the line of fire.

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My thinking is "Well why are you trying to hit fast, repeatedly, with what you know to be a non-stacking damage over time effect? How do you expect that's going to turn out?" To me it seems like a strategy failure as much as anything else.

Yes, relying on critical hits, i.e. the primary late game scaling mechanism of spells before you even begin to consider the elemental crit effect, is a strategy failure.


That said, a non-stackable DoT is not an inherently bad idea, if a spell is balanced around the fact. Viper Strike is a fantastic example of such an attack. However, to shackle a full third of a spellcaster's arsenal with it strikes me as the opposite of healthy. From my perspective, the presence of a non-stackable DoT should an explicit player choice rather than a consequence of preferring fire damage.

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Not to mention that since crits are calculated per cast(not sure), enemies are damaged 8 times by Firestorm, but only the damage of one single Ignite(the last one) is kept.

True story.

Ignite adds 1/3rd of a single Firestorm's projectile's damage fire damage as DPS for 4 seconds. That's... quite possibly the greatest joke of all time. I suppose it's an appropriate price for this particular spell to pay for the raw power of applying flat damage supports multiple times. Buuut, I have this suspicious that that the support gem stacking of Firestorm will be fixed long before Ignite effects are made worthwhile.

Sigh. I quite explicitly pointed out that I'm not talking about the game as it stands (I tend to think that's somewhat implied when posting in a topic about changing the game, but I'll repeat it again). In a game where crits are "the primary scaling mechanism for spells", then of course you're probably going to be going for lots of crit damage and so making burn useless. I just have no interest in preserving crits as the primary scaling mechanic of spells; I think that should just be one way to play.

You're talking about changing burn. I'm talking about changing burn a bit, but also changing other things to affect burn. Of course one doesn't make sense through the lens of the other.

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konfeta wrote:

From my perspective, the presence of a non-stackable DoT should an explicit player choice rather than a consequence of preferring fire damage.

Um, choosing to use fire spells is an explicit player choice. You're talking like this is some kind of penalty. It's bonus damage. Even when it's not useful bonus damage it's hardly something you're "shackled with".

Besides, having it apply to all damage of one type isn't a removal of player choice, because not every spell need be equally good at applying it. It's already the case that some spells have higher crit chance, right? You want to crit stuff, you choose a high crit chance spell. Look at that, player choice. You want to just blast things? Pick a regular high damage spell. You want to burn things? Pick a lower damage, higher crit-chance spell.

But whatever. I think stackable burn is an incredibly boring solution, but you guys have whatever you want.

It is a penalty. It's a penalty in that Lightning and Cold spells don't share the crappiness and Fire spells aren't balanced to be inherently stronger to compensate, it's a penalty in that the ignite effect actually hurts spells like Firestorms more than it helps.

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I just have no interest in preserving crits as the primary scaling mechanic of spells; I think that should just be one way to play.

That would be difficult to accomplish, seeing as crits are a natural damage multiplier like cast speed or +spell damage; i.e. the more you have of the other two, the more powerful and appealing crit becomes.

If you make these into different build styles, you would need to first dramatically buff each one of them and spread them out so it is very difficult to get them together.

Or just completely redesign crits.

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Look at that, player choice.

Correction, you weaken choice by enforcing certain combinations. Crit must be used with spells X, Y, Z isn't adding choice, it's removing it compared to "crits are a build strategy usable with all spells."

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konfeta wrote:

Correction, you weaken choice by enforcing certain combinations. Crit must be used with spells X, Y, Z isn't adding choice, it's removing it compared to "crits are a build strategy usable with all spells."

And then it will turn out that crit (or flat damage or whatever) is the best solution and that's what people will use with all spells.

It's like in D2 lower resist obviously went with skeleton mages, amplify damage went with skeleton warriors, and iron maiden went with revives. Picking the spells that go well with each other is not 'removing choice', it is the sensible thing to do. Going lower resist with skeleton warriors is not a choice, it is moronic.

In PoE, firestorm goes with chaos damage gems and faster cast goes with lightning. This is the sensible thing to do and not a problem. If there were no best combos, then you could just combine whatever and skill/passive/item selection would be irrelevant.

This isn't about spell synergies, this is about a fundamental DPS defining attribute. That's like saying "improved physical damage doesn't work with axes CHOICE CHOICE CHOICE."

Now, of course, it's not that bad because crits are awesome enough to carry fire without Ignite, but Ignite really has no excuse to not be comparable to Shocked or Freeze.

To put this in a more of D2 perspective as you have, imagine if there was no lower resist curse. Two summons get their ideal curse, third summon arbitrarily denied one. This is the sort of thing I am talking about.

Crits isn't going to become viable with anything, since it affects the base critical chance. Fire and Lightning don't have such a high base critical chance, and thus it is not really a good build to focus on crits when going fire.

So basically you're saying all burns are applied but they take effect in a row with the strongest having priority?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Both burns are on the monster, but only one (always the one with higher damage) is causing damage at a time. You'll get the full damage from the high burn in that scenario, and when it runs out the other one will do damage for the remainder of it's duration.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

After that 3 seconds the 4 second duration of the first burn has expired, but the second burn still has 1 second left. For that second there's only that one burn, so they're taking 12 damage for the second.

Shouldn't it take 3 damage from the second burn in that second? For a total of 123 damage?
Also, why wouldn't you make it stack? I think a reduction of the duration is in order too, but making it stack and reducing the duration is obviously too strong, so what about 50% of the damage dealt over 2 seconds? When another ignite is applied, the undealt damage of the previous one is added to the new one and duration is refreshed.

Copying your example:
If you hit a guy for 120 fire damage, they'll ignited for 2 seconds dealing 30 damage per second (total 60).
If you hit a guy for 24 damage, they'll get ignited for 2 seconds dealing 6 damage per second (total 12).

If you hit the guy with the 60 damage burn, then 1 second later hit them with the 12 damage burn, then for the next 2 seconds the ignite effects are stacked into one. During that time, they will be taking the undealt damage of the previous burn(30) plus the damage of the new burn(12) over 2 seconds, for a total of 21 damage each second.

Total damage is 72 over 3 seconds.