I love the visuals of flat damages. Fire, Aether, Lightning - Burning and Electrocution everywhere.
But when it comes to DoTs, the game is far too humble in my opinion:
Why does an enemy not turn into a walking torch when he suffers from Burn damage?
Why is there not some more indication of Poison Damage?
I cover the battlefield with Grasping Vines and Rend, expecting a BLOOD BATH and yet… enemies go down quite tidy (exception: Bloody Pox!)
And also my toon itself: Did the following situation not also occur to you: “Shit, I seem to suffer from some severe DoT - what is it?” And you PAUSE the game in order to check the icons that indicate the Dot you suffer from.
Wouldn´t it be nicer to just SEE that you´re on fire, or simply SEE that you are bleeding like sh*t?
In other situations the game spills its visuals to such an extent that I have to tone down the particles to “low”. But a handful more of VISUAL DOT INDICATION would go a long way for the playing experience.
In principle it’s a good idea, but I think it would be hard to implement in a consistent way that’s also readable by the player and not just comical. It’s not impossible for a character to end up dealing 6-7 different DoTs at once, mostly in very minor amounts, from devotions, skills and random bonuses on gear. What would an enemy, or the player, look like if it was hit with frostburn, burn, electrocute, bleed, internal trauma and vitality decay all at once?
I do agree that DoTs aren’t very visually exciting, though. Maybe some special, on-death graphical effects would help for that?
I agree, would be much stuff on the player…
I do like the idea of on-death-visuals, so that I at least see what kind of DoT killed the enemy.
Status Quo is especially frustrating with Bleeding Builds, since their main damage is a DoT… Maybe bleeding should receive some visual pimps, at least on monsters?
I can attest that enemies get a fx specific for the DoT they are hit with. Bleeding enemies will have a blood fx on them and enemies hit with frostburn will have an ice mist.