Damage Over Time Changes - Part 1

Well, for my part my questions would be:


1) How exactly is this any less discriminatory than the current system? It's obvious that this new system heavily favors builds that can scale both hit and DoT simultaneously just like double-dip abuse builds do right now (albeit with way weaker results with these changes), while any builds that can't will be unable to make the slightest noticeable use out of poison/bleed (ignite is always going to be easy to scale both).


2) How high are these new poison/bleed/burning passives and affixes going to go? Because just the slightest bit of theorycrafting would suggest you'd need around 1000+% increased damage of one sort or another for poison just to make poison support a passable (read: passable, not good) dps amp on a typical RT physical attack build.


3) Why are you making this kinda change, instead of leaving poison/bleed/ignite based on hit damage and just making them only able to scale on damage over time and poison/bleed/burning modifiers and nothing else (not even generic damage) while ignoring resistances? That would be a much less discriminatory system while also eliminating double-dipping completely.

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suszterpatt wrote:

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Pathological wrote:

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suszterpatt wrote:

As a semi-professional gameplay programmer, this solution seems to me... unnecessarily complicated.

What I would have done:

1. As you collect the modifiers that apply to the initial Hit, build a list of those that could possibly apply to DoT (i.e. Fire Damage and Area Damage may or may not apply, but Attack Damage definitely cannot).
2. If the Hit causes a DoT, pass this list to the calculation that applies modifiers to the DoT.
3. The DoT calculation is not allowed to apply any modifier that exists in the list.


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That's no less complex than what they are doing. Your way requires comparisons of applicable terms, while theirs does not. They require only the base damage, the game intrinsically knows which multipliers to apply based on the damage type.

Pretty much all this change means is that instead of parsing 20% of the multiplied base damage, they are parsing 40% of the non-multiplied base damage.


~100 fire damage, ~20 added fire damage, 40% more spell, 35% more fire, 30% more elemental, 100% increased fire, 50% increased spell, 20% inc duration

Current system:

120*1.2*1.4*1.35*1.3*2.5 = 884.52 damage per cast
884.52*0.2*1.35*1.3*2*1.2 = 4470.7 ignite dps

New system

120 base fire damage
120*1.2*1.4*1.35*1.3*2.5 = 884.52 damage per cast
120*0.4*1.35*1.3*2 = 168.5 dps ignite

Your proposal:

120*1.2*1.4*1.35*1.3*2.5 = 884.52 damage per cast
884.52*0.2*1.2 = 212.3 dps dot


The above numbers make the change seem more extreme than it already is - the change is a massive nerf, but it required a massive nerf to reach any semblance of balance. Double dipping was far more broken than most people know.

What I'm saying is, if you want to remove double dipping, my solution is how you do it. What we have here is a complete and arguably unnecessary redesign of DoT mechanics which will incur a whole lot of balancing. I'd rather these efforts went into more pressing issues, like the abysmal melee-ranged balance. As if.

@Pathological
Firstly 884.52*0.2*1.35*1.3*2*1.2 does not = 4470.7 ignite DPS
If however you were going for total ignite damage over 6 seconds (5 seconds +20% inc dur) then you were close. the correct equation would have been 884.52*0.2*1.35*1.3*2 = 620.93 ignite dps over 5*1.2 seconds = 3725.60 total ignite damage.

Secondly the last equation you have for calculating the dot dps under suszterpatt's proposed changes is wrong for half of the same reasons. Namely that you are multiplying in the increased duration but still talking about damage per second. So the corrected values should be 884.52*0.2 = 176.90 DPS

@suszterpatt
I think you might be overestimating how complicated the new changes are.
step 1) double multiplier
step 2) move pointer for initial dot value from result of hit calculation to base damage of skill
step 3) Profit

As far as new balancing issues goes since both your and GGG's new system have similarly catastrophic drops in dps if one system needs balancing then both systems will.

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Shppy wrote:

Why are you making this kinda change, instead of leaving poison/bleed/ignite based on hit damage and just making them only able to scale on damage over time and poison/bleed/burning modifiers and nothing else (not even generic damage) while ignoring resistances? That would be a much less discriminatory system while also eliminating double-dipping completely.

This is what i was expecting them to do, but i guess my expectations were too high. This would have made things like viper strike builds actually viable, while the change they're doing will mean only builds that currently double dip with every modifier they get will get any use out of poison/ignite at all, and bleed will only be usable on minion builds and in combination with bloodlust :( .

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elvenchakra wrote:

This is what i was expecting them to do, but i guess my expectations were too high. This would have made things like viper strike builds actually viable, while the change they're doing will mean only builds that currently double dip with every modifier they get will get any use out of poison/ignite at all, and bleed will only be usable on minion builds and in combination with bloodlust :( .

Exactly what I've been saying around the forums too. Seems like a lot of people don't realize the implications here, they seem to be ignoring the part where poison/bleed won't even SINGLE-dip on attack or spell damage.

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phmn wrote:

Finally GGG you are doing what should have been done a long time ago.

People who say that this change is bad, clearly do not understand how broken double dipping is and now this cripples any other build in comparison that doesn't use double dipping.

Obviously they will need to re-balance a lot of stuff to make everything right. Maybe not in 3.0 but eventually I hope that they will get this right. This way for example, doing a cold build won't be inferior do doing a fire build just because fire can double dip via ignite and cold cannot.

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Zeleene wrote:

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Piftiuta wrote:

Increase area damage and increase damage from jewels will still work with DoT from RF?

Probably not from what I can tell.

Of course they will work, why wouldn't they work?

Double Dipping may be slightly broken, however it is not even close to as broken as most/many skills and build types. Those need fixed NOW, especcially if they are ruining DOT build in most cases.

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Shppy wrote:

Exactly what I've been saying around the forums too. Seems like a lot of people don't realize the implications here, they seem to be ignoring the part where poison/bleed won't even SINGLE-dip on attack or spell damage.

Exactly, which is really disturbing and worrisome. This is going to push everyone more into item's with certain mods, creating an itemization hellstorm for people trying to gear even with trading, feel even sorrier for the SSF players.

Question: Do you think the changes to double dipping will help slow the game down?

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elvenchakra wrote:

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Shppy wrote:

Why are you making this kinda change, instead of leaving poison/bleed/ignite based on hit damage and just making them only able to scale on damage over time and poison/bleed/burning modifiers and nothing else (not even generic damage) while ignoring resistances? That would be a much less discriminatory system while also eliminating double-dipping completely.

This is what i was expecting them to do, but i guess my expectations were too high. This would have made things like viper strike builds actually viable, while the change they're doing will mean only builds that currently double dip with every modifier they get will get any use out of poison/ignite at all, and bleed will only be usable on minion builds and in combination with bloodlust :( .

Its possible that the biggest mistake GGG made with Double Dipping was calling it double dipping. A lot of people were expecting the changes to take place like these two. But doing it the suggested way would solve just ONE of the TWO problems with "double dipping". It would also create a new problem, and it would partially ignore the main reason for the change in the first place.

GGG believes that poison/bleed/ignite is too strong and needs to be nerfed, and nerfed way more than just removing double dipping. The suggested change would leave poison/bleed/ignite builds still too strong.

The two problems with "double dipping' are that some modifiers like increased fire damage being applied to IGNITE twice (where I think the double dipping term came from) AND some modifiers like increased spell damage being applied to POISON once. The suggested change would stop increased fire damage from figuring into the calculation of ignite, but would still allow increased spell damage to effect poison, providing the poison was applied via a spell of course.

The suggested change would also create a problem by stopping things like increased chaos damage from increasing the damage of poison which is working as intended. The result of which would be either a need for 50 more passive points to get more poison+ DoT damage nodes than current builds or a complete abandonment of those nodes. Both options limit your choices when making a build which I believe goes against what GGG is trying to do here.

If they make that so the DOT still based on the damage hit but generic damage won't affect DOT anymore ( other way to remove double dipping) then I think skills like ED,RF,Scorching ray or Caustic arrow will not get enough damage modifier because Fire,Elemental or Chaos damage will not affect them anymore so unless they change the whole skill tree and nodes location....
I think they can't make everyone happy but let's hope the new keystone will fix some of the problems.

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sinmoon wrote:

If they make that so the DOT still based on the damage hit but generic damage won't affect DOT anymore ( other way to remove double dipping) then I think skills like ED,RF,Scorching ray or Caustic arrow will not get enough damage modifier because Fire,Elemental or Chaos damage will not affect them anymore so unless they change the whole skill tree and nodes location....
I think they can't make everyone happy but let's hope the new keystone will fix some of the problems.

we're not talking all DoT here, just these 3. Changes to ignite/bleed/poison functionalities specifically wouldn't change other DoTs in the least.