Dipping into Dots

One thing I would like to see is a pure damage over time (dot) based job. I am also curious if anyone else would potentially be interested in it as well.

Summoner's poison mage phase had the beginnings of a class in that field, which drew me to the class in the first place.

• Apply dot(s) [bio, miasma/tri-disaster]
• Spread dot(s) [bane]
• Interaction with dot(s) [fester]

As well other classes have/had cool dot interactions that could be possibly migrated into a dot specific class.

• Bard- Dots criting causing an effect.
• BLM- Thunder procs allowing for full damage of the dot.
• BLM(pvp)- Having Astral Warmth stack up to 3 times that allowed for increased damage from Superflare and applied Burns which had its duration increased based on the number of Astral Warmth stacks.
• NIN- Doton interacting with certain weapon skills procing Hollow Nozuchi.
• DRK- Salted Earth allowing for Salt and Darkness to be used.
• Aurum Vale- (Not a class, but still cool idea) Has a stacking dot (gold Lung) that increases the damage with the more stacks you have.

As of now the only class we have to come close to that playstyle is SCH in PvP.

I don't think it sounds very likely – not because it couldn't be interesting but because as I understand it, they're edging away from DOTs in general because it causes issues in large-scale battles where a boss can only have so many status effects at a time, so jobs reliant on applying statuses can't perform to their full intended ability.

I vaguely recall YoshiP saying that was one of the biggest concerns for such a class during a live letter. It also seems that has also been an issue for a while.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/475325

I guess i'll go play Sch in PvP while I wait for 8.0.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't think it sounds very likely – not because it couldn't be interesting but because as I understand it, they're edging away from DOTs in general because it causes issues in large-scale battles where a boss can only have so many status effects at a time, so jobs reliant on applying statuses can't perform to their full intended ability.

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This is so wild to me because while this is an issue every MMORPG had to tackle a long time ago, they all solved it. And FFXIV is >10y old, it really has no excuse not to have solved it so far.

An easy one if your engine is hard-limited in how many timers it can possibly track is to "cheat" DoT timers on raid targets (and ignore the issue of DoT pushoff on trash mobs because it's really not that important, usually an upside of a DoT class is that they keep a large percentage of their damage when fully mobile which helps on bosses and is balanced by their lower AoE/trash damage): You don't actually have the server track a DoT that deals damage every 3s or so. The GUI shows the applying DoT caster their DoTs, and damage numbers are shown as if the DoT is ticking. In reality, all of this is done in a single serverside function though with some efficient external code that simply tracks DoTs in aggregate, and adds to the total DoT-potency or deducts from it as debuffs are "applied" (they're not) or fall off (they don't). Usually as an actual external software piece that can in-realtime increase or decrease the value of this single, "aggregate", DoT.

An even more extreme version an old MMO I played did was: When you apply a DoT to a boss, it doesn't deal any DoT damage. Rather the server has an invisible combatant that will, in say, 18 seconds, deal the total of the DoTs damage to the target. It would also do this on re-application, cut by the remaining time on the delay-timer of course. This works because bosses have so much health that it's virtually impossible to know whether your DoT didn't deal all damage at once at the end. The combat log would say "Your XYZ did a total of ABC damage to OPQ", which is in fact mechanically exactly what the server did, it never bothered tracking a DoT.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

This is so wild to me because while this is an issue every MMORPG had to tackle a long time ago, they all solved it. And FFXIV is >10y old, it really has no excuse not to have solved it so far.

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Neither of what you have said is actually the issue here.

Every enemy is hardcoded to be able to support a maximum of 60 status effects. Of those 60 effects, only 30 are shown on the HP GUI.

If your DoT ends up in one of the spots past 30, you will not be able to see it, even if you only track your own status via the option in the settings, if it ends up in the last 30, it will not show.

If you refresh the DoT and it is part of the last 30, it stays as part of the last 30, even if there is theoretically space for your DoT to be visible.

This was an issue that only really reared it's head in Alliance Raids up to HW and to a lesser extent, SB. On those expansions, the number of debuffs a single party can inflict with 100% uptime was already quite high (basically every job had at least 1 DoT and many had either damage downs or resistance downs, it adds up quickly). Multiply that by 3 for an Alliance raid and it quickly extends into the over 30 debuff slots. This is one of the reasons why so many DoTs have been removed from jobs over the expansions, along with other debuffs.

Now, why this cannot be changed, I do not know. I am not a programmer and I do not know how it is all programmed, but if it was a simple thing to solve, you would have thought they would have solved it. Especially since it does also affect hunt mobs and it can have an effect on players too, with fights like TOP having so many buffs/debuffs, player buffs were being deleted to make room. This was also an initial concern for Viper when it was released as it too has a lot of buffs just to do it's rotation.

Man, VPR could have been solved (RPR too even though they kept theirs) just by allowing all RPR and VPR to benefit from one Noxious Gash (Dark Design).

Didn't even have to look at other MMOs for this solution either, they already did this with MNK, WAR and NIN's interactions with blunt/slashing resistance down through Stormblood

They may have debuff issues but they're sure as heck not choosing holistic solutions, just doing their normal scorched earth strategy of wholly removing aspects.

To use YoshiP's old analogy of an MMO being like a country, it's like they're politicians just using the excuse to do what's expedient (or cheap and easy) and not what's right by their citizens.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

This was an issue that only really reared it's head in Alliance Raids up to HW and to a lesser extent, SB. On those expansions, the number of debuffs a single party can inflict with 100% uptime was already quite high (basically every job had at least 1 DoT and many had either damage downs or resistance downs, it adds up quickly). Multiply that by 3 for an Alliance raid and it quickly extends into the over 30 debuff slots. This is one of the reasons why so many DoTs have been removed from jobs over the expansions, along with other debuffs.

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It's still a notable issue with players, made worse in DT by the slew of '-ready' buffs being procced by raid buffs and the like. They really need to raise the number of slots somehow

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Neither of what you have said is actually the issue here.

Every enemy is hardcoded to be able to support a maximum of 60 status effects. Of those 60 effects, only 30 are shown on the HP GUI.

If your DoT ends up in one of the spots past 30, you will not be able to see it, even if you only track your own status via the option in the settings, if it ends up in the last 30, it will not show.

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Oh no I understood that part (granted I was thinking more about the hardlimit of 60, not the UI-limit of 30).

But yeah it's annoying because like you say, it should have been changed long ago.

The status-hardlimit is solved like I said, by effectively only having one big DoT serverside that usually runs on a separate machine and interfaces with the main game code by applying direct hits of damage every 3 seconds and updating the time left on various DoTs to sync out to the players (the server never actually tracks the DoTs, it just sends those times to the clients).

The UI limit is even more easy to fix. Your client knows that your DoT has 18 seconds once applied. It knows that when you re-apply it with 11 left, that number goes up to 18. Especially if the server never wants to track the actual DoT anyways (as per above) then there's no reason to ever make DoTs an actual debuff, as in, the entity on the server actually has "Combust" on it or so. Rather what happens is:

1. A signal "Player has applied Combust on target X" is sent to the server. As per above the server sorts this out, never puts it into the debuff tracking, and instead forwards it to the DoT tracking engine.
2. The player's client, completely independent of any actual effect, starts showing an icon and counting down seconds, ensuring this is always shown before actual debuffs as synced to the server starts.
3. If the DoT tracking engine sends an update about remaining duration to the client and it differs, the client sets the remaining duration on the shown icon to that and keeps counting from there (just to re-sync when the effect ends).

And this is a fairly basic optimization, you can do much better but this can essentially be transplanted into an existing system at no cost.

In another world...

The devs fixed the game code's DoT issues ahead of DT and instead of Pictomancer, we got a DoT-driven Green Mage that picks back up all the players who dropped SMN that had liked its older DoT-focused style of gameplay and has a lot more synergy with the game's lore and aesthetic than Pictomancer does.

Besides a brand new Green Mage that can apply multiple DoTs, spread them, explode them, and other things (debuff? mutate into stronger potency?) I'm not creative enough to think about with them, the other jobs received new DoT support like BRD being able to spread their DoTs, MCH Assemble adding crit or damage boost to Bioblaster crits for AoE pulls, and maybe something more interesting to healer DoTs like a small passive heal-over-time for the DoT-afflicted's main target to allow less maintenance for healers and newer more interesting green DPS abilities or even a return of Cleric Stance. Going back to SMN, instead of the Solar Bahamut we received, we instead got a rotation after Phoenix that is Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh that have different mechanics from the original trio, with Ramuh potentially bringing lightning DoT and being a mini-version of old SMN gameplay.


Since that world did not come to pass, it feels like a lot of the older jobs going into 8.0 are limping along until combat can be overhauled. It wouldn't surprise me if we get just 1 new job or even none at all and the devs concentrate on redoing everything and figuring out how to do levels in a post-100 world.

If we do get a new job, I can see it being ranged phys, which would allow the devs to balance that section better. I can see them making DNC and BRD more buff-oriented supporters while MCH and the new one (trapper, like 1.0 ACN?) being debuff-oriented. MCH already has the wrench so it's just a step more to add other types of debuffs that would make it more enticing, like its own version of Dokumori that instead of buffing just your party damage makes enemy receive more damage which is better for Alliance content and now Chaotic.

The game used to have more interesting DoT effects, Bard used to have procs tied to them, but that was pruned out in favor of a flat 80% tied to the songs and not the DoTs. Summoner used to be the games DoT job before again, it was changed in favor of a much simpler but flashier rendition of Summoner because players didn't like that it was a DoT job. SCH was also a healer that had a variety of DoTs to manage and could spread them to adjacent enemies, which felt extremely rewarding, but was removed when they made all healers damage kits the same, one nuke, one 30s DoT. Other jobs had a DoT or two tied to their kits that were nice, like NINs shadowfang and mutilate, MCHs Lead Shot, old Goring Blade, etc, all gone now.

Its unfortunate, DoTs are an archetype I adore in these kinds of games, something about applying a lot of detrimental effects and watching them all tick down, causing large damage over time is appealing, but this has been removed from current XIV, which used to have fairly cool and fun interactions with them, but pretty much all of it is gone, even BRD's DoTs are more vestigial and don't interact with its kit anymore and a lot of DoT effects like Sonic Break are more for flavor than anything to manage.

It would be nice if one job was built on managing a bunch of DoTs, alas, we cannot.

With how allergic the Devs are to anything that's not builder-spender coockie-cutter 2 Minute burst design...
Yeah sorry, that's not gonna happen.

If anything BRD can be 'lucky' they got to keep their DoTs and not have them reworked and removed till now...

IMHO Caustic Bite should be BRD's only DoT. Stormbite should be reworked to not be a DoT, and Iron Jaws should be replaced with a new attack (maybe an aoe version of Caustic Bite).

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Originally Posted by mallleable

IMHO Caustic Bite should be BRD's only DoT. Stormbite should be reworked to not be a DoT, and Iron Jaws should be replaced with a new attack (maybe an aoe version of Caustic Bite).

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I can definitely see where this request comes from since outside of the initial application BRD currently goes from ‘two DoTs’ to ‘one DoTs with two timers’ lol. So making Stormbite do something else would kind of ‘clean up’ the rotation of unnecessary part(s).

At the same time though I do like that Bard still has both its DoTs, even if as mentioned above the maintenance is entirely done through Iron Jaws. Though maybe it’s just like, being attached to something because it’s been around so long lol. I’m not really sure how but I’d prefer to see them do something that makes both DoTs feel ‘valuable’ if that makes sense lol. But then as others say with things like ‘debuff limits’ and the like in play it’s hard to see much future for DoT-centric gameplay.

Seems kinda sad to me that a job’s gameplay is held back by such technical limitations. I’d assume the opposite also holds true that they don’t want ‘buffer/support’ type abilities/jobs outside of 120s raid buffs because of the buff limit (because all those Skill Ready buffs they added totally helped with that lol.)

I really miss the old song procs from dots honestly. Maybe it wasn't as reliable or overcapping 'felt bad' but the way the skills worked off eachother was really neat and made having multiple dots hold meaning.

I think they could do a DoT class in the current game architecture by having a class that just puts a single Reaper-style mark on an enemy but tracks a bunch of distinct curses or poisons or whatever on its own gauge. Each game tick, the server processes how much combined damage everything on the job's gauge should be putting out and delivers it to the marked target. Then there'd be some Fester and Wildfire-type stuff you could throw directly at a marked target or enemies close to one.

You'd need some thought to figure out how to balance such a setup for AoE, but I don't think it's unworkable.

Don't DoTs snapshot? So as long as a DoT job is built so it refreshes the DoTs during the buff window, we're all good, no?

I think BRD and Iron Jaws is just a few steps away from doing DoTs right. It would be neat if different abilities were capable of condensing the damage from wind bite or venom bite by specifically reducing the duration of one of them and causing that damage to be done instantly instead. That way the long timer on the DoTs would be eaten by the rotation. Balancing the dots so that you don't accidentally cause one to fall off would be fun for me personally and cause Iron Jaws to see more use.

One thing I've wondered in general tho is why we don't see any transformative DoTs. Like Scholar having too many Dots could have been solved by allowing the Bio to upgrade into Miasma if that is applied next and let it do the damage of both combined. Just use a single debuff icon that changes based on which GCD is applied becoming stronger if the rotation is done correctly.