Please stop removing Damage Over Time effects from every job, add more complexity

Dots are just applied to slow. Small potency every 3 secs is just not worth it anymore given the speed of the game now. Dots can only stay in this game if they fall into one of two categories:

a) Deal massive tick dmg like Lost Flare Star in bozja, or,
b) Deal tick dmg faster i.e. one tick per second on a 10 sec duration

if goring blade is storms eye 2 a Dot / Damage buff isn't that different in terms of gameplay you will still manage it the same way

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marxam

Dots are just applied to slow. Small potency every 3 secs is just not worth it anymore given the speed of the game now. Dots can only stay in this game if they fall into one of two categories:

a) Deal massive tick dmg like Lost Flare Star in bozja, or,
b) Deal tick dmg faster i.e. one tick per second on a 10 sec duration

---

...Both are just X damage in Y seconds. And they're typically already quite high PPGCD.

Goring Blade, for instance, is 705 potency in total. Royal Authority, tied for the second strongest combo skill, is just 420 potency.

Even with the DoT devalued following level 84, a Goring Blade combo is therefore 401.7 ppgcd, while Royal Authority->Atonement is still just 363.3 ppgcd.

You'd have to lose over 5.3 seconds of the DoT for Goring Blade to not be worth it (though even then, because Royal Authority only reaches that ppgcd if it gets all 6 steps in, you'd only really drop Goring Blade from if you'd have lost more 13+ seconds out of Goring's 21... in which case you wouldn't have time to use but a single Atonement anyways, at which point it's just 335 ppgcd).

You don't need DoTs to be ridiculously OP to be useful or enjoyable. They just need to be just strong enough that their buyback period (the period after which they outperform the next best option) isn't too often eclipsed. They're already well designed for flexibility and openness to nuance (though it must still come from context) compared to other options by being, effectively (A) soft-CDs (B) with, in essence, a separate cooldown per target (up until replacement by one's AoE [combo]).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duskane

if goring blade is storms eye 2 a Dot / Damage buff isn't that different in terms of gameplay you will still manage it the same way

---

Ehhh... not quite.

If Storm's Eye still capped at only a single application's worth of duration, that'd be true, but now Storm's Eye can go up to 60 seconds between one application and the next (rather than 21 seconds), and it doesn't punish you for refreshing it more often than 1 in 4 combos so long as one has no more than 30 seconds of duration at the time. On the other hand, Goring Blade completely wastes any remaining duration at time of application, must be applied per 1 in 3 combos per target, and effectively has a separate "cooldown" per target involved up until the point that Prominence combo outpaces it.

Turning Goring Blade into a (modern) Storm's Eye (or "Surging Tempest") buff could actually change its gameplay a fair bit, especially outside of unabated-uptime single-target situations.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The effect of this is less (unique) than one might think.

The difference between the cost of uptime lost to a DoT-user and anyone else is, in essence, just the lower potency-per-execute of its otherwise high-ppe DoTs; the investment cost of its earlier GCDs. That said, the likes of a long combo would be just as negatively impacted. A boss jumping away into a CS just before RA-Atonementx3, Vorpal Thrust, or Gnashing Fang would be just as painful due to those GCDs being similar "back-loaded" in their GCDs invested.

That being said, they could always change the bosses from being invulnerable even to server-tick-based damage to merely invulnerable to wholly new damage events.

Tl;dr: Brief periods of boss invulnerability are not a sufficient reason to remove DoTs from the game.

---

Part of the issue with DoT jobs is that DoTs are sustained damage, they aren't reliable when you're having to burst down an add to prevent a wipe. DoTs are incredibly useful when there's downtime off the boss, but SE has made it so a lot of the downtime is often an invuln phase for the boss, removing the usefulness of DoTs. Short of them adding an ability that "detonates" the rest of the DoT damage as a burst, I don't foresee them ever allowing a DoT reliant job to exist again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Part of the issue with DoT jobs is that DoTs are sustained damage, they aren't reliable when you're having to burst down an add to prevent a wipe. DoTs are incredibly useful when there's downtime off the boss, but SE has made it so a lot of the downtime is often an invuln phase for the boss, removing the usefulness of DoTs. Short of them adding an ability that "detonates" the rest of the DoT damage as a burst, I don't foresee them ever allowing a DoT reliant job to exist again.

---

Right.

Despite DoTs being kind of ingenious in terms of flexible and even decently player-friendly design (though less so when you create specific penalties for letting them fall off for even a moment, such as bonus damage on filler skills to DoT-ed enemies or shit like Iron Jaws) for sustained combat, they do have an inherent weakness that can only really be offset by cleave that (A) is sustained or near enough to a multiple of the DoTs' duration and (B) isn't replaceable by AoE [combo] spam. That, for better or worse, just doesn't really happen in this game, and would still create fight-by-fight specific advantages

My point earlier, though, was that XIV is a game with notoriously little going on other than sustained damage, nor so much variance in situations that DoT classes could leverage their cleave into significant fight-specific advantages.

Most short-term dps checks are negligible and/or at least long enough for a DoT cycle or two (though it slightly helps with ease of designing for parity in encounters for DoTs durations to near enough share early common multiples, and then build those checks around those shared total durations, such as ~24 [enough for a 21s and near enough a 30s DoT] or 42 seconds [enough for 2 rounds of 18s or 21s DoTs, or for a Bard cycle], etc.).

I do think, though, that downtime at least shouldn't arbitrarily punish DoT users --as relatively insignificant as it may be-- by making enemies invuln to afflictions already applied prior to their "jumps" or "invuln" periods.

I think the same feel of DoT gameplay could be easily achieved using a gauge-focused job instead. It really just boils down to timer management, but without the risk of maxing out debuffs on the enemy and the other associated problems DoTs have in this game. I'll use a Chemist idea I've had as an example for ease of terminology:

First, a single marker/conduit is placed on the enemy, similar to RPR, or as an offensive Kardia. This marker does no damage on its own and has no timer on it. Another way to think of it would be dance partnering the enemy. As you cast your "DoTs" the target of your conduit begins to suffer damage. Like with a dance partner, only one can be active at any time. An AoE version that overwrites and is overwritten would also available to balance potencies in AoE situations.

The job gauge, which determines how much damage the conduit is inflicting, is made up of several vials/flasks/beakers (3 or 4). Each time you cast your "DoTs" on the enemy, your really just filling your vials. Each vial could have its own size/shape that helps to reflect its duration (multiple timers of differing maximums is usually desired in DoT gameplay). These vials would begin to drain into a reservoir.

The reservoir would be a secondary gauge used to do the standard DoT interactions such as refilling all vials at once, or to use that mixture of chemicals into a high potency attack. When a boss invulns, the vials are continuing to drain into the reservoir so there aren't any "wasted ticks" during phase changes. When the boss is about to come back, you could use the refilling ability, and refill each vial proportionately while consuming the entire reservoir (something like 100% full reservoir would refill every vial by 50% to encourage their future maintenance). Maybe include a vial emptying ability that lets you fully drain all vials to max out the reservoir instantly for 2min burst windows. There's really a lot of options that open up when the attention is diverted to the job gauge to create a sustained damage over time job.

What I would give for an Affli Warlock job in XIV, maybe they're nuking DoTs on everyone else to make way for this approach.

/copium

Keeping up DoTs isn't actually engaging, though. It's busy work. I dislike playing (most) classes with DoTs for the same reason I mostly dislike playing melee: Busywork upkeep timers. There's no actual need to make melee need to upkeep a "damage up debuff"; just bake a little more potency in. However, that then removes the "need" for the 2nd combo, since the typical point of said secondary combo for upkeep jobs is that upkeep just to make you press different buttons. It gets even more "fun" when the debuffs are ridiculously short and mechanics or boss downtime wrecks your upkeep.

I understand that for some people, having to upkeep the DoT or debuff is entertaining. As the OP implied for themselves, they seem to like the juggling. I'm glad that some people enjoy it. I personally find it stupid, especially when the timers are under 30 seconds of duration. I play RDM because I don't have to deal with that crap. There's also a bit of freedom in terms of being able to hold a burst for movement, or wait a few more seconds until a buff is off cooldown, etc. I'm not chained (as much) to specific timers. I personally say good riddance to most of them, in their current forms. If the whole max debuffs on a target thing wasn't a thing, I'd say bring on a job more based around DoTs; but that won't happen anytime soon. DoT doesn't play well with a singular, focused burst meta, so expect them to keep removing DoTs where possible.

All that aside, because this IS the tank forum (despite this topic being more general feedback), engaging tank play shouldn't have anything to do with DoT upkeep anyway. Unfortunately, engaging content for a tank requires either more mitigation needed, or mob management, etc. My personal hope is that in streamlining/simplifying how tanks play, they'll be able to then create more engaging scenarios come 7.x. I'm not holding my breath, but you do need some groundwork laid before you make sweeping changes to how encounters are done. Whether or not that's their plan I have no idea, but I won't cry seeing most DoTs disappear, especially if it makes way for updated skill pools and/or encounter design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Almandaragal

Keeping up DoTs isn't actually engaging, though. It's busy work. I dislike playing (most) classes with DoTs for the same reason I mostly dislike playing melee: Busywork upkeep timers.

---

As compared to...? The blank sheet of 'hit anything at any time'? Keeping solely to the far more rigid timers of combos?

Quote:

---

My personal hope is that in streamlining/simplifying how tanks play, they'll be able to then create more engaging scenarios come 7.x.

---

Except as kits have been simplified, contextual tanking gameplay has also/likewise been simplified. There's not just less to do now against a striking dummy; there's less, too, to do specific to any given modern fight.

DoTs are being removed because the system simply can't handle them. It has a maximum that can be applied to any boss at any time (mostly affected in 24 man raids.