Damage Over Time Changes - More Information Part 2

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liama wrote:

What about iron will dot builds? Bonus from strength should apply to dot damage. Or these builds would be gone.
And it's already been said: bv poison builds are screwed with current 3.0 changes. What you gonna do about it?

Honestly, what do you think they should do about it? They are changing a current system in the game to make it more balanced. If they do so without actually affecting the metagame, then the balance of that metagame cannot really change, can it?

If your build relied on quadratic scaling to be viable in 2.6, it will not be viable in 3.0. End of story. Note that that says 'relied on ... to be viable', not 'relied on ... to trivialize content'. And yes, GGG gets to determine what 'trivialize content' means.

Asking for a build to be exempt from this change 'because you want it' is not going to work.

The only skills that are more or less exempt from this change that we know of currently are Viper Strike and Puncture. And even they are not exempt from quadratic scaling; only that more modifiers will apply to the DoT than currently apply.

I am not sure people realize exactly how bad quadratic scaling is here. They could likely let DoTs inherit tags and thus get all benefits to their damage that impact the initial hit, and it would still make a lot of current builds 'non-viable'.

As an example of the latter, let us take the following assumptions.

Base Hit (of whatever skill): 1000
Total Effective Increased Damage: 1000% (so 10x)
Damage Mitigation: 25%

Old Way (with quadratic scaling):
Hit after Mitigation: 7500
DoT after Mitigation: 11,250 per second

New Way (w/o quadratic scaling):
Hit after Mitigation: 7500
DoT after Mitigation: 3000 per second

IOW, even if all modifiers from your hit applied to your DoT, your DoT damage would still be lowered by a factor of 4.

Asking to save one build or another is, in effect, asking for them to undo this balance change. That is of course your right, but just realize what you are actually saying to GGG.

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Harsel wrote:

How will those changes interact with Earthquake? Will "Aftershock deals 50% more damage" apply to damage over time effects?

And how it will affect Rapid Decay?

Rapid decay and less duration affects bleed/poison earthquake even now lol. The bleed and poison lenght are shortened. But in current state of 3.0 preview, we're gonna loose dmg output from those factors. I'm very curious how and what changes will be adjusted to melee nodes to recompensate that.

DPS Calculation for Righteous Fire, please. I mean seriously, please make one.

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NemisCassander wrote:

I think that something people are missing is that GGG never intended for all combinations of skills and supports to be viable. BV + Poison builds, as we know them, are very likely dead as a doornail.

Really, given how quadratic scaling affected everything, high-end builds really seem to boil down to 'choose a skill that is the delivery vehicle for your poison/ignite/bleed' (CaStitDVfYPIB). BV apparently was one of the most efficient vehicles, and as such was the popular vehicle to apply the poison.

With these posts, it seems very clear to me that GGG's response has been to change the CaStitDVfYPIB meta to one where DoTs are not just the 'incidental primary damage source' for your build, but a deliberate and appropriately-costed-for-its-return choice for your build.

So yes, socketing one or two gems into your setup to quadratically scale your DPS is dead. Doesn't matter if you're doing this to BV or any other skill. Asking them to not do this is, in effect, asking them to not change the meta at all.

Having said that, if you want to play a DoT-focused BV build, I am sure the tools will be available... for a more appropriate cost (from GGG's perspective). One obvious ramification of GGG's posts is that if you want to use DoTs, your original hits will suffer. So if you're okay with BV doing virtually no up-front damage, it may be possible to still have the DoT side of your build.

Your passive tree is likely to be very different than the current one, though.

Hope this helps.

I agree with you about quadratic scaling, it was too unbalanced!
But with 2 simple modifications:
1) DoT calculates from BASE damage.
2) Poison inherits ALL TAGS of SKILL.

With those 2 small changes any modifiers would be calculated in scaling ONLY ONCE!
But you went forward and made it more complicated, from "double dipping" to "ZERO dipping", where you can't scale primary and secondary damage, while elemental alignments scales with primary damage!

Yes there are different BV builds which are viable, but that doesn't mean you should neglect other variations, especially when it is primary choose! PHYSICAL already suggests you can group it with Poison/Bleed!

From my point of view any type damage has to have viable build for secondary effect if invested enough! But what i see with BV/Poison is that you have to choose only one, concentrate on primary damage or Poison damage! Furthermore BV damage per hit is LOW, so there are NO secondary effects which could physical grant such as STUN.

So i hope you will not discard this possibility, which will be NOT OP, but not lower than any other damage types with their alignments.

Look for example:
Vulnerability curse, i think it was made for Both Primary (PHYSICAL) and DoT damage at same Time! But now only half of this curse will be useful!

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NemisCassander wrote:

Honestly, what do you think they should do about it?

For the BV part: I wouldn't be surprised if BV gets changed similar to flameblast, in that the stack modifier (stage modifer for FB) is generic instead of spell damage. This reverts a previous change which would be possible now due to double dipping/quadratic scaling gone.

Not a word about Righteous fire? If I understand this correctly, Righteous fire is going to get a massive damage buff without any consequences.

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neurolergic wrote:

I wonder if with the dot changes, new passives and what not, will it be possible to build around Voretx's dot to do the "main damage". That would be a build I would like to play.

I am experienting with exactly that build right now in Legacy 2.6 with what we got in the old system.

Leveling with only CoC Cyclone -> Vortex is quite painful. Not to rely on the main damage will be hard in 3.0. I took 2/3 of the "damage over time" nodes already and it is still not there with level 53. You either go crit / DoT centered first aka negelect your defence or vice versa.

Since I don't know how difficult the upcoming content will be, this is not advisable in probalby overtuned act 5-10 running around slow with no damage (=tanky) or completely go glascannon. With out the right items such builds feel sluggish and underpowered. Endgame they may shine, but till then it's another self-torture.

To be honest, I am already disapponted. The same build was running like a charm with the double-dipping mechanic and the still enabled 1st hard-hit to DoT transaction. Vortex is in a strange position since its DoT effect also gets enhanced by spell-damage. If I understood the changes correct, this will no longer double-dip in 3.0. Scares me to no end!

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Nicksiren wrote:

You did an excellent job of of saying nothing useful. People learn in different ways and part of playing complex RPGs like PoE involve learning the game's mechanics. What happens when you don't understand something in school? You ask questions. What you just wrote wasn't just elitism, it was a waste of time.

As it turns out Mark, a developer of PoE understands this and posted a useful graphic just regarding requests to help explain things better. Key word is help.

Thanks for those graphics Mark, they do a good job of explaining DoT conversions with the new system now.

I feel like you're taking butt hurt and using it as an excuse to dismiss the truth of my post.

I have no problem with Mark explaining as much as he wants to but there's a point where hand holding becomes a waste of developer time and explaining things becomes redundant and pointless because the people being "reassured" are in many cases just trying to object to any change through the use of purposeful obtuseness the same way kids scream "no I don't wanna, I'll never eat cake again I hate cake!!!!" when they wanted cookies but didn't get their way, ofc they will want the cake, they just have to calm down enough to realize it still better then no dessert at all.

In short some people are obstinately insisting this new thing is confusing because: "I don't wanna!" when in fact it's far less complicated and will now work like every other damage scaling system that doesn't scale the flat by 10% fire then scale that scaled number by another 10% using the exact same 10% 1 point passive investment twice.

Where is the line drawn between "base damage" and "multiplied damage"?

What contributes to base damage? What is the extent to which your damage can be modified and still be considered base damage?

- Flat damage provided by Attacks:Weapon / Spells:Spell gem (or explosive arrow or DD or elemental hit)
- Flat damage added by Rings, amulet, gloves, quiver etc., support gems eg. added lightning, cold, chaos, auras eg. envy, wrath, anger...
-Your damage is then multiplied by "increased" modifiers from passive tree, gear (rustic sash etc.), strength bonus to melee, fortify etc.
-Your damage is afterwards modified by "more" multipliers from support gems, pain attunement, point blank.
- Damage crits, multiplied by crit multiplier
- Your damage is then multiplied by "increased damage taken" on monsters eg. Augury of Penitence, vulnerability, frostbite, flammability, conductivity, proj weakness...
- Damage subtraction by monster mitigation eg. resistances, phys reduction.
- Final damage is calculated.

If I understand it correctly, having to scale DoT may mean that you have to sacrifice "increased" hit damage modifiers in the tree, which results in less leech from having less hit damage. As everyone knows, leech with vaal pact is the current meta for instant full ES/life. This may pose a problem to melee DoT builds that are already having problems with leech, like my Terminus flickerer. I'm not sure how the nerf will affect the build, but I am really curious to know.