Question: How does Reactive DoT really work?

As I understand it, most chance for DoT powers will work as such: with an 80% chance, they have an 80% chance for each tick. The first time a tick fails to go off, the effect ends and any further ticks don't even have a chance to happen.

However, it looks to me that the Reactive DoT doesn't work that way. I've seen an enemy hit only once take a tick of damage, then when the next tick would happen, nothing occurs and the flame graphic vanishes. But then another tick occurs and the flame graphic reappears.

Does the Reactive DoT actually have a 100% chance to hit, with then a X% chance for the damage to actually occur, bypassing the normal DoT rule?

I've never seen a DoT description say it works that way. Most of them read "X ticks of Y damage each". A fixed number essentially. But I admit I only ever looked at the in-game description and not in a while so my memory could be way off.

As I understand it the Reactive proc does not apply a normal DoT at all, but instead grants the target a power that debuffs their resists and/or has a chance to damage them (depending on which Reactive you have slotted). There are stack limits on how many copies of this power a target may have... I've heard four for the -resist portion and possibly five for the DoT (presumably the self-debuff and self-damage are two separate powers).

So if you have a Reactive Partial Radial Conversion, for example (50% DoT chance, 25% debuff chance) then what I believe happens when you hit someone is:

- There is a 25% chance to apply one stack of 2.5% resist debuff, provided the target does not already have four on them. This debuff is in the form of a granted self-debuff power rather than a normal debuff, so it does not scale based on AT modifiers, though it might scale based on level.

- One stack of a self-damage power is granted as long as the target does not already have five (or maybe just four) copies on it. This power has a 50% chance each tick of doing 13.39 fire damage which definitely is adjusted for level difference (but not AT since it's a granted self damage power) and it lasts five ticks. Every hit always applies a stack of this power, unlike normal DoTs... so every time you damage something (including every tick of a rain or damage aura) you always add another copy of the DoT (unless you're at the cap) which then has a 50% chance per tick of actually doing damage. The Reactive DoTs also do not cancel on miss like Fire DoTs so you can miss the first four chances and then see the last tick go off.

Note that this mechanic does limit the usefulness of the low-percentage DoT procs. Since you can only have at most five copies stacked on a target and every hit applies one, if you have one of the 25% chance for DoT Reactives slotted and you use a rain or lots of fast attacks you'll quickly cap out at five stacks of DoT that each have a 25% chance to fire per tick... you do not have a 25% chance per attack to apply a normal DoT (which would make reactive + rains absolutely broken instead of just nice). The big advantage of rain powers is that they get you to that cap fast and keep refreshing copies of the DoT that expire, but you still need a high chance for the damage to go off to make the most of them (which is why I'm going for the 75% DoT / 25% debuff Very Rare).

Stryker's post looks correct to me.
Use the RWZ dummies and monitor both the FX and the Healing Delivered chat log. You can see the DoT will sometimes stop, but then start up again. I always thought the listed percentage was the chance that the enemy received the temp power. Now I am guessing the temp power always is granted to the enemy. Interesting. The Temp Power is also granted pretty fast, if the first tick hits, it actually beats out the landing of damage of my actual power.

So is it possible to stack these significantly more than I have been thinking? For example, each different reactive can stack mutliple times, so if I have Reactive Total Radial and you have Reactive Partial Radial, the enemy could have 4 of mine stacked AND 4 of yours? Is it possible to get more than a 10% resistance debuff going from Reactive if people have a variety of the Reactive levels of power?

Reactive also is a bit odd when you check out the detailed power information. All the other Interface procs only grant one power. Most of the Reactives grant 2 powers, but the ones that just add the debuff only grant 1 power. All the others, also seem to grant the common tier power as well as their own power.

Just an aside on that: Being non-resistible doesn't apply to higher-level foes. You can't bypass the "purple patch" with the non-resist flag. In any case, the purple patch doesn't even apply to Reactive effects (or things like Achilles Heel), because they are cast by the critter on itself. So they already bypass the purple patch anyhow.

The non-resist flag would make these effects stronger against AVs and GMs. I wouldn't turn my nose up on that, but in general play, I'm not sure it would really make any of the debuffs more attractive than Reactive.

The damage for the reactive does scale to level. I am not sure how the mechanics behind the power function to make this happen though.

On an even con lvl 51 Chief Soldier, the proc damage is 13.38 per/tick.
On a +3 lvl 54 Chief Soldier, the proc damage is 8.69/tick.
On a -11 lvl 40 Chief Soldier, the proc damage is 29.44/tick.

Those numbers are consistent with the purple patch. As far as I know, only the damage portion of Reactive is treated this way, but I have not used a Power Analyzer to check the values of the other debuffs vs. various levels of enemies and I am going from hearsay.

So what is 'better' to have in the Reactive interface slot, higher chance for the debuff or the higher chance for the DoT?

Looking at the reactive int. for my DA/DM Tanker.