Damage over time Power Set

Enough with the semantics. You guys all know what he's talking about.

That said, to the OP, they've given you a very good reason why they are against this.

I can see this working within CoX's bound but for a DoT set as others have said it needs some mitigation. I'd suggest a minor secondary effect of -Regen (so that when the DoT'ing Blaster is laying down damage that its not outhealed) and some soft controls (I'd suggest Stun and some Knockback).

The regen would keep an all-DoT build appropriately damaging, stackable soft controls would enable the build to deal with bosses. The powerset would have a role in AV fights and the like as the -Regen secondary effect would be handy. Toxic theming the set would again give it a niche.

So, for example...

Venemous Spit: Ranged ST, Low DoT, Low Rchg, Low -Regen, Chance to Stun
Toxic Tag: Ranged ST, Med DoT, Med Rchg, Med -Regen, Chance to Stun
Bileous Spray: Ranged Cone, Med DoT, High Rchg, Med -Regen
Burning Blast: Ranged ST, High DoT, High Rchg, Chance to Stun
Vile Pool: Melee Area of Effect, Foe Knockdown, Minor DoT, High Med Rchg, High -Regen
Envenom: (As per Mastermind Poison Power, for flavour rather than an Aim clone)
Viscous Globe: Ranged Targetted AoE, High DoT, High Rchg, Med -Regen
Vile Stench: Melee AoE Toggle, Low DoT, Med Rchg, Med -Regen, Chance to Hold
Toxic Meltdown: Melee AoE, Extreme DoT, High Rchg, High -Regen, Stun

... not really balanced at this stage but with three chance to stun powers (set them at a high change), a Ice Slick-esque Knockdown and a Holding/Debuffing "Armour" it should have some survivability. The -Regen component would then need to be balanced against the DoT to have it on par or slightly better than, existing Blaster sets.

The OPs general idea could work for dominators. Doms could use another AoE heavy set and have the tools to leverage slower acting, secondariless DoT attacks.

Hi:

I stand corrected with the use of DPS, I was trying to find away to contrast the damage of burst with DOT. Terminology wise, it seems impossible to do.

All I am trying to imply, is that a more powerful than 7% Defender DOT power series could be made, so its not totally lame. Sure at 7% DOT anyone would be toast and the idea is horrible, but I don't recall stating that the DOT damage was 7% over burst, I believe it was thrusted on me, over and over. It should be obvious as some posters, chose to be more positive, that the damage would have to be significantly more than 7% and that the right damage would have to be determined.

I still contend that a properly set DOT, overall DPS is superior to just continual burst DPS. And somehow, some of the posters infer that DOT killing would take profoundly longer than just straight burst attacking. This could be true, if DOT is only 7% better than burst and is defender strength. But a proper DOT set, would take a bit longer to down a minium, but less for a boss, it would be akin the Stalker assassination damage trade-off, where they do not do as well with minions and LTS, but do much better with bosses.

I will add, that I do appreciate those posters that are actually trying to work with the idea and help to turn it into something workable.

Stormy

I think I see what you trying to do, somehow your post reminds me of the Warlock in World of Warcraft, where they DOT the hell out of you, and then they dash to their next victim as they leave you out to die...

I think, something like that in CoX would be awesome and definetely a cool new tactic for the game, kinda of a Stalkerish-Blaster, you see your victim, you go DOT,DOT,DOT...fade away and laugh as your victim's life ebbs away before his very own eyes.

Come on guys, give her a break, she is trying to help make the game more fun, you should be trying to help her make her ideas more practical, but no need to be cruel or disrepectful. I bet Stormy, despite many of her less than brilliant ideas, has likely many ideas she has submitted actually been adopted by the devs; I believe we should try to encourage her and others to keep submitting ideas, after all if she only has 1 good idea in 20, its worth it.

Just to add another caveat to the "no" reasoning: Corpse-Blasting

One of the problems with DoT effects is the natural healing rate of the enemy. I can't tell you how many times I've watched my controllers (who usually have one of thier two 'primary attack' powers as a DoT) go: zap...tick...tick...tick and leave the mob with a tiny sliver of life because it got a heal tick in there during the DoT effect, where a burst attack would have dropped them.

So, in order to be certain the mob goes down when I'm busy trying to handle large groups, it's almost required that an "extra" attack be placed on the mob even though 90% of that extra attack's damage will be wasted.

The more DoT's you have, the more pronounced this effect will get.

The end result would be a lot of wasted attacks, wasted endurance, and (probably) a lot of 'sliver of health left..but just as dangerous as ever' mobs.

DoT as an 'extra' bonus to a burst attack (ie fire blast) is fine, but I think a pure DoT set would suffer badly in comparison to other blaster sets.

Stormfront:

Here is the entirety of Shark's first post:

I think the idea is workable, but it requires a bit of thinking to make it practical. In general I like any concept which would allow for new tactics in the game, that is always cool.

Perhaps your idea, reminds me too much of the WoW Warlock's ability, of a delivery of 3 or 4 DoTs and your target is dead in a round or two; that is something I did enjoy very much as a Warlock in PvP, when I used to play WoW. Yeah I do remember my victims popping a heal potion, or getting healed, and thus ruining my fun; but the player did run away from battle which is almost as good as a victory.

I would think, there has to be a way to simulate that form of combat in a meaningful manner, but I am not sufficiently experienced in this game to advice how.

If they made a set like you propose it would very quickly end up at the "least played" end of the spectrum, by a very wide margin.

"Blaster" and "Pure DoT" are 2 terms that do NOT go together well. I'll give you a test to see roughly how it would work.

Take a Fire/Fire blaster. Use nothing but Rain of Fire and Ring of Fire to defeat enemies. That gives you a rough idea of how a set like you propose would perform.

Since DoT takes time to deal all of it's damage, and you have stated that the set would have no mitigation, you end up having entire spawns shooting you to death before the DoT kills them. And it would happen all the time. With no way to prevent them from doing so you would be a sitting duck for all that return fire.

If it takes 10 seconds for a LT to be defeated, that is approximately 5 attacks it will get off before it dies. Minions will get at least 2. That's a LOT of damage coming at you with nothing you can do about it, because you already have done all you can. Fighting a boss would be an exercise in frustration. It will take 30 seconds or more to defeat (more like a minute in the case of Freak Tanks) and it will be knocking the crap out of you with it's attacks in the meantime.

A blaster's main defense is killing them before they are killed. This set completely removes that defense by forcing it to take more time to kill them.

Why do you think Fire and Archery are such popular sets? Because they can remove the threat of entire spawns at once, before they have time to deal damage in return. Your proposed set does not do that, and is in fact gimped as far as a blaster's job is concerned.

Also, what about team role? if you are on a team with a Fire blaster, the spawns you are both targeting would be killed by the Fire blaster before even a quarter of the ticks have taken effect, making you effectively useless.

A blaster's strength is it's ability to deal burst damage, this set removes that strength and gives nothing in return for it.

After reading the plethora of responses, I still think DOT can be doable, albeit in a form like Smokefire had expressed.

But judging from the many posts, either DOT is too weak or too strong and it seems really difficult to attain a middle ground with the concept.

I would have hoped, that somehow DOT attacks could have been better than burst ones over a very short time, not an excessively prolonged time as so many contends; of course if the DOT is weak, it will take an aweful long time and the power is pointless.

When I thought of the DOT attacks, I was thinking of a performance along these lines: If a normal Burst Blaster could kill a LT in say 3 blasts, I would agree the DOT Blaster would be weaker for they would defeat the LT in say the time it would take to do 4 burst blasts. But in the case of say a Boss, a Burst Blaster would need about 8 burst attacks, the DOT blaster would only need 5 DOTs to kill the Boss, yet the boss would die at the same length of time 8 Burst attacks would have occurred (kinda of a break even). The real pay-off is against EBs and AVs where the burst blaster would require many attacks to defeat their opponent and thus the DOT cycle would have the opportunity to be capitalized with. Ideally a trade-off situation where the low level creatures are a bit tougher to beat, but the higher level creatures are less tough.

As I see it now, getting a DOT to perform with the characteristics or feel described above, appears to be either too difficult or down right impossible and to make matters worse most players don't even want it, so why have the devs go thru the trouble anyway.

But in future power sets for blasters, I would like to see pure damage types such as pure energy, electric, etc with out the all too common "Energy/Impact, Psi/Smash" like versions. Secondary effects are good, no issue there.

Hugs Stormy

What if they built a mechanic that increased the AMOUNT or percentage of damage done over time, the longer a mob was in the DOT? Culminating in an end burst of damage?

Or an increase in damage in the amount each tick does once the mob starts getting below a certain percentage of health? (Someone correct me, but isn't this one how scourge currently works?)

Or a combo of the two over various attacks, like the previously mentioned WoW Warlocks?

Changing the OP's idea: I can't see such a set having no mitigation. Even WoW Warlocks have mitigation in addition to DOTs, in the form of: channeled heals, fears and threat reduction mechanics.