Since I am a new player with roughly 100 hours played I am not sure if the mechanic that I noticed is as intended by the developers, or a bug so it would be nice if someone could explain why things are the way they are in the following scenario:
My main char is a vitality dmg Conjurer with most abilities (totems, sigil, chaos bolt) having cooldowns. However it is not a problem at all to get the procs from items or devotions, because most abilities deal damage over time. Not Dots directly, but simply damage ticks in an area or individual attacks like the storm totem. In fact this leads to a SHITLOAD of procs. The most extreme example however is the Devouring Swarm that deals innitial vit damage and some bleed over 4 seconds. EVERY bleed tick can proc a COH ability from devotions. In my case I use the Wendigo’s Mark and with a 25% COH it’s needless to say that it procs all the time on pretty much everything.
Now for my second char I decided to go full poison with a witch hunter build, because hey, Dots seem to be fun right? Well… no. After testing for quite a while I concluded that poison Dots do NOT trigger COH Devotions. I don’t know why, but it’s a fact. So bleed ticks do proc Devotions, but poison ticks dont… what kind of logic is that?
Fun fact: The only poison damage ability (which i found so far) that actually triggers procs is the Poison Bomb ability provided by the Mutagenic Ichor component. And that is only because this ability creates an actual DoT-Area similar to the Sigil of Consumption. Also this ability sucks balls which is why its not realy a solution to the problem at hand.
As a result of this I don’t see myself maxing out my witch hunter, since COH Devotions have some of the best late game scaling and it’s just stupid that you can make a bleed build with 24/7 procs while with a poison build you can wait for days until you get 1 lousy proc.
Dreegs Evil Eye definitely definitely Procs Devotion Procs. Not sure if it’s only the initial hit or if the dot portion can also as I didn’t test it.
But as you see in the Video DEE procs Guardians Gaze
I wouldn’t say posion is usless … you do have to build around it though. It’s not nearly as supported as bleed but there are 3 or so witch hunter builds that use posion.
I just finished ultimate with a 2h poison blademaster using night shades reach. Was a different build than you usually see for blademaster but I found it very effective and ultimate was a breeze. Farming rep to test on nemesis while leveling other chars
The way I see it, for DEE it’s working as intended because it’s not duration skill. What I observed is, there are 2 kinds of DoT damage in this game: there is duration damage type (like poison, burn etc), and there are duration skills. First one doesn’t proc devotions, because it doesn’t hit. Duration skills proc devotions because they hit every second with whatever is listed.
For instance: DEE is not duration skill. It hits once, for 7 acid damage and apply poison DoT: 9 damage over 3 seconds. Devotions can proc once. Poison dots won’t proc additional devotions.
Devouring Swarm is duration skill. It lasts for 3 seconds. Every second, it will hit for 3 vit damage and applly bleeding DoT: 3 damage over 1 second. Since the skill hits every second, it can proc devotion every second. However, bleeding ticks are duration damage type, not hits, and will not proc additional devotions. (like, if enemy is still bleeding after Devouring Swarm had faded off, the bleeding ticks will not proc devotions)
I forgot to specify that I use DEE with focused gaze which gives the skill a 4 sec CD. I am aware that the innitial attack does proc devotions, but the applied DOT doesnt. So if you cant spam that skill you won’t get as many procs which I think is stupid.
If you hit something with DEE all of the damage is basically done.
If something steps into your sigil of consumption, it can step out if it and not be damaged further. Same goes for the poison patches created on the ground by poison bomb.
These are two different concepts of spells. With that in mind DEE works just fine.
You need to hit with the initial spell to get all the possible damage done. Same thing as it would be a lightning bolt.
Therefore it gets one chance to procc per cast.
Other pure direct damage spells can have a cooldown and won’t get multiple chances for proccs just because they can’t be spammed either. That doesn’t make poison bad by any means, in fact my poison based witch hunter is a procc machine that makes the whole screen green all the time.
The real question to me is, why bleeds can procc stuff on every tick. But whatever the answer might be: Something having a cooldown is no argument for it having multiple procc-chances during that cooldown.
I agree with you, but as you said it should be the same mechanic for ALL DOT abilities. Maybe it is devouring swarm only, i dont know, but Devouring Swarm also only hits once with its vitality damage, after that the bleed is applied which ticks like any other DOT, however that shit procs everything possible. Now since you can get like 20 enemies with Devouring Swarm and have bleed ticks on all of them ALL of which proc COH stuff, either this is broken or other DOTS should do the same is all I’m saying.
It applies the vit damage and the dot damage each seccond. so with Dev Swarm you are actually applying 5 1s bleeds and 5 hits of vit damage. Very different mechanic
Mechanically, Devouring Swarm is not a DoT. It calculates attack damage every second and is basically a series of separate attacks. That’s the difference.
Edit: what Cryodacry said
Found what I was looking for. The thread was created by Ceno on March 8th and was called “[v1.0.0.1] Critting DoTs Can’t Proc Crit Procs”. you will have to look at a cached version to see it. The following quote is from Kinree:
This isn’t a bug, it’s intentional.
I will clarify how On Critical Attack auto-casts are determined in hopes of alleviating the confusion. The key word to look at is “Attack”. When a skill attacks, any auto-casts attached to that skill are looked at and it’s determined whether the proc will happen at that time. If that skill happened to be a critical attack then an On Critical Attack auto-cast has a chance to go off. Any duration damage that this skill attack may have applied will be calculated as critical damage and then spread out over the duration it has. What you’re seeing in your screenshot is that duration damage ticking. The chance for the On Critical Attack auto-cast to proc was already calculated upon application of that duration damage when the actual skill attacked.
The way it works differently for debuff skills is in the way they attack. Every 1 second they perform a fresh attack calculation where their chance to be a critical attack can change. Each of these separate attacks has a chance to proc any auto-casts attached to the debuff skill.
At the moment I have a Witchblade in Elite that is focusing on Acid and Poison. Poison and Acid are only useful if you focus alot of buffs and % gear into it. Blood of Dreeg and Curse of Frailty along with Dreegs Evil Eye buffed with passive from the tree definitely made it worked.
Right now at lvl 56 I have closed to 900% + Acid and 1k% Poison. It comes with gear and devotion as well. Manticore, Guardian Gaze, Rat, Etc
Bruh, if an ability deals damage every second for five seconds on a target after one cast it is the literal definition of damage over time. Because otherwise I could also ask “why doesn’t DEE apply 1s poison dmg every sec over 5 sec like devouring swarm does?”… its just stupid and not a very different mechanic.
