Critical DoTs: Should we use them, or should we stick to front-loading DoT damage for Crits?

[Bopper]

Hopefully before you vote, you will read this. 

 

Backstory:

Back when the game was on Live, there was a limitation to how to handle Critical Hits. Each effect in an attack can be given a % chance to trigger (a Critical roll, essentially). However, when an attack has multiple effects, such as half the damage is smashing (that's one effect) and half the damage is energy (that's another effect), there would be no way to tie a single Critical roll that would execute both of those effects. So the work-around was to combine the effects and just do one type of damage. So let's say originally you did 50 Smashing damage and 50 Energy damage, your Critical hit would become 100 Energy damage.

 

That was no big deal as it effectively made no difference. You still did double damage.

 

When it came to DoTs, the problem was the same. You could not tie a single Critical roll to both an upfront damage and an accompanying DoT effect. So the work around became simply to add up all the damage and make it one Critical effect. This practice became so standardized that even attacks that are only the one DoT (Freezing Touch) still had the DoT damage summed together and created a single front-loaded damage Crit.

 

But Times Have Changed:

We no longer are limited by the mechanics that existed on Live. We now have something called Effect Groups that executes multiple Effects, and that Effect Group can be activated off of the one Critical roll. So it is entirely possible to now go through the game and change all of the Critical Hits from being a single front-loaded damage to actually executing all of the effects of the attack a 2nd time. So now we can have split damage types. We can have DoTs. If the Devs wanted to..they could even do extra secondary effects (but don't count on it). 

 

One of the reasons having the Effect Groups handle Crits for each effect is the fact some powersets come with mechanics that might scale their damage, and one of the old-timey ways of doing this front-loaded damage was to assume the lowest possible damage and add that up. For example (and this one doesn't pertain to a DoT), Street Justice uses a combo system that will increase the damage of their Finishers based on the Combo Level when the attack is cast. However, because the Critical Effect is programmed without knowing your Combo Level, you don't get boosted damage on your Crit. So you may do Combo 3 finisher, but you get a Combo 0 crit. Savage Melee uses Critical DoTs, so this does not directly apply, but it is able to retain the Blood Frenzy stacks on its Critical DoTs so you keep the damage you deserved.

 

Anyways, that's the Backstory and the education on what we can do now with the current game engine. I would like to gauge the Scrapper community's interest on how they would feel if the Crit system were to change. Thanks for your time.

[Krazie Ivan]

someone deserves a pat on the back for (re)coding this to function properly. but, i'm just not entirely sold due to already missing some dmg output when a target dies before the DoT completes. it'd be interesting to see the maths on how much of a difference it makes to front-load, but that's a huge project in-itself, and would be subject to too many variables to give an accurate representation.

[ScarySai]

Yes/no/yes.

 

Critical DoTs would be cool in a few cases. It works really nicely for stalker hemo, for instance.

 

That does not mean I think we should make everything with a DoT work that way. I rather like how midnight grasp and lotus drops work and don't like changing things people are attached to if they are fine otherwise.

[Bopper]

I am appreciating the comments and I would love more feedback from everybody. I'm working on some analysis now to see how many DoTs there are (Primary only), the durations, and looking for any discrepancies between normal and critical total damage.

 

Anyways, I would like to know, what is TOO long of a DoT? For instance, a 5 second DoT, obviously it's long and having the crit be front-loaded by any means is demanded. But what is the cutoff? Is a 1s DoT too long? Is a 2s Dot? 2.5s? 3s? I'd love serious thought and serious answers to that question. I'll want to incorporate that into my analysis.

[JayboH]

I think 2.5 s is long enough - basically the idea is to avoid corpse blasting and wasted endurance right?  That goes for kill steals too.  2.5s should be a decent max for many animations a player gets locked to - so the only thing to watch is if you queue up another attack.

[Bopper]

4 minutes ago, JayboH said:

I think 2.5 s is long enough - basically the idea is to avoid corpse blasting and wasted endurance right?  That goes for kill steals too.  2.5s should be a decent max for many animations a player gets locked to - so the only thing to watch is if you queue up another attack.

I'm trying to look at which DoTs are actually long enough to be noticed over front-loaded damage. Like, a 1s DoT nobody would notice. 2s DoT you might start noticing. 3s DoT you definitely notice. That's what I think anyways.

 

2.5s feels right because that's the DoT duration of Freezing Touch (and the only one I've seen so far that has a duration of 2.6s). 

[JayboH]

Yeah exactly, and it looks great too (minor thing but yeah I think it looks good.)

 

EDIT:  Oh, the one downside is that layering various DoTs is usually pretty sweet, which this would be hard for an individual to do if the length is that short, but I guess we just look at Savage and see how that one plays.

Edited July 2, 2020 by JayboH

[Bopper]

3 hours ago, JayboH said:

Yeah exactly, and it looks great too (minor thing but yeah I think it looks good.)

 

EDIT:  Oh, the one downside is that layering various DoTs is usually pretty sweet, which this would be hard for an individual to do if the length is that short, but I guess we just look at Savage and see how that one plays.

Oddly enough, Savage is one of the longest DoTs and it has a crit DoT (well 2 actually...for now anyways). So if there was a power that folks would like to see front-loaded, it'd be Hemorrhage.

[JayboH]

Agreed

 

[Frosticus]

9 hours ago, Bopper said:

Oddly enough, Savage is one of the longest DoTs and it has a crit DoT (well 2 actually...for now anyways). So if there was a power that folks would like to see front-loaded, it'd be Hemorrhage.

Can't speak for how hemo works on scrappers, but I gave a lot of insight on how the power works for stalkers in my savage guide. 

Ultimately, you have tons of overkill on most enemies as a result of the critical dot being such a long duration. You have to get comfortable walking away from bosses  and just letting them die to the dot. 

 

I like the way it is set up because it is unique and it works more or less correctly with the blood stacking mechanic in terms of final damage (a bit too much at 0-4 stacks, but pretty much right on for 5 stacks) and the dot nature suits savage. That said, it probably kills slower up to EB's because you will often launch another unnecessary attack (or two) before the dot finishes.

 

I'd fairly happily trade hemo for upfront damage provided it still scaled (reasonably well) with blood stacks, which we don't see happening with combo points for better or worse. 

[Bopper]

30 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

Can't speak for how hemo works on scrappers, but I gave a lot of insight on how the power works for stalkers in my savage guide. 

Ultimately, you have tons of overkill on most enemies as a result of the critical dot being such a long duration. You have to get comfortable walking away from bosses  and just letting them die to the dot. 

 

I like the way it is set up because it is unique and it works more or less correctly with the blood stacking mechanic in terms of final damage (a bit too much at 0-4 stacks, but pretty much right on for 5 stacks) and the dot nature suits savage. That said, it probably kills slower up to EB's because you will often launch another unnecessary attack (or two) before the dot finishes.

 

I'd fairly happily trade hemo for upfront damage provided it still scaled (reasonably well) with blood stacks, which we don't see happening with combo points for better or worse. 

Good points, my mind is usually on Stalker Hemorrhage, I actually could be wrong that Scrappers even have a crit DoT. If I recall, Stalkers have a bugged Hemorrhage doing multiple DoTs from one effect (while PvP has no DoTs) and a non-hide Crit that doesn't even do crit damage. I'm not sure what the differences are between that version and Scrappers.