DoT and Procs

It might be a long-held misunderstanding of mine. But I kept thinking that DoT powers (like those in Fire Melee) have a big chance of triggering a proc.

Recently I am levelling up a Traps/DPs. I slot a +smashing damage proc into Empty Clips to see the effect. But it does not go off as often I originally thought. I thought as a DoT (with fire ammo too) it would go off almost every time I use it. But it only goes off once in a while.

So, it is not true that DoT powers trigger Procs more often?

Thanks for the clarification.

Last I heard rain powers do fire procs more often, but that could have changed.

You're mixing up procs, scourge and powers that make repeated ToHit rolls like Rains.


Basically Scourge (and Interface it seems) are tied to ToHit checks, if you make a ToHit roll then you also make a scourge check. However most DoTs don't do that, just Rain of style powers.


Procs would do this too, but as far as I know there's a 10 second inhibiter on them to prevent them doing what Interface is currently doing which is checking on every pulse.


I'm unsure if its an inhibiter (so procs will actually check the next pulse after the 10 second interval) or it may be that procs just have a once every 10 second rule, I'm not actually sure. Conventional wisdom is 1 per 10 seconds, but it's kinda hard to test.


The best case for Procs is summoned entities which then cast powers (rather than just pets/pseudos which have an aura), such as Pets and things like Carrion Creepers, Volcanic Gases and Lightning Storm. But the power the entitiy casts needs to be affected by that IO Proc type for it to work (so Achilles Heels procs only check if the pet / pseudo casts a power which does -def).

Also, DoTs only make one hit check (as opposed to rains, which make a new hit roll every tick). If they hit then they do multiple ticks of damage which can either be guaranteed (like Empty Clips) or have some percentage chance of occurring (like the extra damage DoTs in Fire attacks), depending on the power. Procs can only go off on an actual hit... whether that hit applies damage once immediately or multiple times over a period of time doesn't matter, either way the proc checks when the hit first lands.

Oh, and since you're DP you should know that Hail of Bullets is a DoT, not a rain. Each tick has a 60% chance to fire but it only affects the enemies that were first hit when you fire it off (even if they move away it still keeps ticking on them, it can't hit enemies that wander into the area mid-attack and it can't trigger multiple procs (even Reactive). Also, Bullet Rain is a DoT rather than an actual rain, despite the name.

That seems insane.

Well, remember that TheNet is QA and not the Powers team nor Development. So, it's WAI, as far as he knows.

I'm sure all the Incarnate powers will get a datamined evaluation at some point and several adjustments will be made.

Interesting; this doesn't apply to things like the Fire DoT attacks which have a chance of occuring after things like Blaze, does it? My impression was that those don't make tohit checks, its just "% chance of occurring" if the original attack lands.

Well, these rain powers might be quite nice when soloing but that doesn't really seem to be the case when teaming. Sure you let that rain power keep going off for a while and that mob will be dead. But when you are teaming other attacks likely have already killed the mob before any insane massive dmg was dealt, not to mention team members might have their own reactive going off which means targets are capped out even without that rain power sometimes.

Yeah, my fire/dev is crazy. Caltrops and rain of fire is just insane. Think i'm going to roll a fire/traps corrupter so i can have some scourge going too.