Does guardian’s gaze poison stack?
Yes, because all dot damage from different sources stack together whether it be procs from skills, skills from mastery, skills from components, skills from gear, craftable potions, buffs, and of course, devotions.
Thank you for your reply. but does poison from each eye stack on top of each other? say if I have six eyes circle around me and all of them hit the same enemy.
Will the game think it come from the same source?
I’m sorry bankaikiller, you are technically correct that Guardian’s Gaze poison stacks with other sources of poison, but it does NOT stack with itself. Even if you have 5 eyes floating around, your poison damage will stay the same, not get multiplied by 5. This is because each eye is a different instance of the same skill/source.
Testing this mechanic is pretty simple, just get a Shaman with 1 point in Wind Devil and look at the damage numbers on a target dummy with 1 Wind Devil out vs. 2. The numbers will be the same.
Thought you ment the skill itself. Of course each eye ball from the skill itself dont stack.
It’s not very clear what exactly are different sources of DOT, and what are the same.
If I have:
- FLAT 10 frostburn for 3secs from my main hand sword, and
- FLAT 20 frostburn for 3secs from one of my rings, and
- FLAT 30 frostburn for 3secs from some devotion buff, and
- FLAT 40 frostburn for 3secs from Elemental Awakening skill buff, and
- 230% Weapon Damage from Execution skill
Are these 4 different sources of damage or only 1 (weapon damage)?
If I proc Execution on an enemy, does the enemy receive 230% of the sum of the 4 DOTS, or just 230% of the highest?
Edit: After testing for a few hours, I discovered the answer:
These are 4 different sources that stack, so you would get 230% of the sum of the 4 DOTS.
All Flat sources of DoT stack because they all combine to form weapon damage. This is true for non-DoT damage types as well.
In your example, Execution would indeed do 230% of the sum of all 4 Flat DoTs. This is quite powerful, and is the reason why DoT builds don’t HAVE to be caster builds that use tons of different skills to stack sources. You can just stack a ton of Flat DoT damage instead and use a large weapon damage magnifier to boost it all to big levels.
As an aside, if you’re using Execution it means you’re hitting with BOTH weapons at 230%. Each weapon (or shield) is it’s own source of weapon damage, meaning you’re doing the sum of all 4 Flat DoTs x 2 
Thank you for the information. I have a follow-up question though:
Consider the same scenario that I posted before (2 posts above this).
What happens if quad-wield 4 swords, by using weapon-switching?
I equip 2 swords in the main-slots, and 2 other swords in the alt-slots. Then, I:
- Hit the enemy with Execution with the 2 main swords
- Weapon-switch to the 2 other swords in the alt-slots
- Hit the enemy again with Execution with the 2 alt swords
Does the second hit of Execution:
- REFRESH the Main-Hand + Off-Hand DoT sources from the first hit?
- STACK with the of Main-Hand + Off-Hand DoT sources to the first hit?
So does this result in 2 x 230% x flat DoT sources, or 4 x 230% x flat DoT sources?
Edit: After testing for a few hours, I discovered the answer:
Neither. DOT is not affected by dual-wielding. You would only get 1 x 230% x flat Dot Sources, no matter what.
Also, weapon-switch would have no influence, it would just refresh the DOT sources and not stack.
(For more info look 3 posts after this one)
That’s a great question, and I have no knowledge of it being tested. My gut tells me though that it would refresh/replace main hand/off hand damage. Should be simple to test though, just whack, weapon swap, whack, and see if damage doubles =P
First of all thanks for this amazing guide, i learned a lot!
I still have some questions though about this part:
As far as i can tell the flat DoTs only apply once.
I’ve tested it with a new character which i made a nightblade. I got him shadow strike and the 2nd of the rat devotion for some flat poison dmg. On a training dummy the DoT ticks were exactly the same when i used 1 or 2 weapons.
I also switched the rat to the fox devotion to test with bleed and i got the same result.
Then on a different character i tried with merciless repertoire and got the same result.
Am i doing something wrong or is dualwield DoTs not really a thing?
You are correct. I’ve been testing several things for almost 3 hours now.
DOT is not affected by dual wielding.
It is also not affected by weapon switching.
If you have a skill that deals 300% Weapon Damage, all of your flat DOT sources will be multiplied by 3.
If you have a skill that deals 300% Weapon+Off-Hand Damage, all of your flat DOT sources will be multiplied by 3.
It’s exactly the same thing.
It also doesn’t matter if you’re dual wielding, wearing a shield, or any other off-hand item (focus/effigy/book/whatever).
This means that a maxed Cadence (420% Weapon Damage) is BETTER for DOT builds than a maxed Blitz (325% Weapon+Off-Hand Damage).
You’ll never get 325% x 2. Sorry… 
Yeah i have done some thinking and the main benefit you get for dual wielding is that you can get 2 components on there and get the flat DoT of each of the weapons.
For poison this helps a lot since Vitriolic Gallstone is amazing for flat poison damage. Especially since if you put it on both weapons you got 2 aura’s adding flat DoTs. Combine that with Plaguebearer of Dreeg and a Venomslash (if you use nightblade, the +3 merciless repertoire is really really good) and you get a lot of flat poison.
For bleed it’s a good option to take the 2H Guillotine since the components aren’t that great for bleed. For applying the damage Blade arc is a really good option. The gear for bleeding damage gives a lot of +Blade Arc and if you get it +10 (26) the weapon damage is 175% *2.75 = 481% if you get the mutator, while it also has a very good base bleeding damage itself. The mutator and the laceration upgrade gives it a lot of +Crit damage as well which is great for your DoT crits and makes it so you hit quite a lot of enemies.
Combine that with a shaman who has Devouting swarm for the -bleed resist, primal bond, blood pact on the totem. Then savagery, feral hunger and upheaval for some more bleed sources and i think you got a very strong bleed build. I’m gonna try that for sure.
Those sound like very good options indeed. The same thing happens with frostburn builds: it’s a nice advantage to dual-wield in order to get 2 coldstone components whose 2 auras also stack. So both hand equipments contribute with their own bonuses and buffs. But otherwise the weapon damage % from main-hand and off-hand does not stack. Sometimes a shield might be a better option for survivability.
Thank you both Cyrim and Coincident for confirming this for us. I’ll update OP accordingly.
ty for this
very detailed thank you
Since it’s somewhat related, i’ll just ask here: does anyone have any idea how multiple of the same pet and DoTs interact with one another, i.e. If 2 Hellhounds use Infernal Breath on the same target, will the Burn from both stack or will they just refresh the same Burn? I’m not sure if they count as the same source or not. Similarly, i’de like to know if the same applies to celestial powers attached to a pet.
AFAIK each pet is its own source for flat DoT purposes (which is why IEE with Overload is supposedly great for lots of pets). The Infernal Breath situation you’re describing seems to be similar to if there were 2 Soldiers playing multiplayer, if both Blade Arcs would deal their DoT damage as opposed to replacing each other. Again, my gut tells me they don’t replace each other, so the 2 Infernal Breaths probably stack.
For the devotion on pet question, if you’re talking about putting something like Guardian’s Gaze on Skeletons so there’s a chance there’s several ones floating around doing Poison damage, I’d imagine they don’t stack since it’s basically the same skill, just applied to different bodies. The Hellhound/Soldier example is different because those skills come from those characters, but the devotion skills are applied to the characters so it’s the same skill. Again that’s just my educated guess, but the fact that multiple Wind Devils/Blade Spirits don’t stack with each other (their damaging effects come from you but are applied to their bodies like devotion skills) makes me think this is the case.
Now that AoM is out, are there any changes as to what the best sources of DoT for each damage type? I am checking Grimtools and it looks like Rune of Hagarrad>Chillsurge has better dps than Nightfall and it would be interesting to know if there are others that took top spots too.
Hey! Yes there are some definite changes that need to be made to that section now that the expansion is out. I’ll try and get around to it ASAP.
EDIT - Updated the OP for the expansion.