Disease Dots and XP Groups

[Thade]

Disease dots as a whole (Aside from plaguewind, and now the necro runic) have always been rather lack luster outside of Raid zones. Most mobs simply don't live long enough for them to actually serve their purpose as a mana-efficient long term damage source. In raids, this is less true, mobs have enough hp that a 9 tick dot will last it's entire duration. At a certain point as a shaman they aren't even worth casting anymore because of much better alternatives which literally will take up your entire time of dpsing, and casting black plague would be a downgrade in dps, and not enough of a downgrade in efficiency to make it worth the hassle.

However, I think I have a solution. Make all disease dots into reverse splurts (starting off big, getting smaller). It makes them worth casting in xp groups (even if the mob only lives 5 ticks, it'll get a larger percent of it's damage done for the mana and time). And gives you the option of making an intelligent decision about how to spend your mana. You could recast it after 4-5 ticks for more dps , at the expense of efficiency, or let it tick it's entire duration for the full efficiency.

 

[Manguadi]

This isn't necessarily a bad idea, but is it just as much of a problem in a zone like BQ when you can just identify the main dps target and dot another one? Part of the reason I think dots are generally so efficient and powerful is because of the problem you're describing.

 

[luciferblack]

I agree with this. I find that I very seldom cast my disease based DoT's (aside from Plaguewind in AE groups/maps) because stuff often does die too fast making what is a semi-long cast time, mana efficient dps spell (if it ticks full time) into a sub par, long cast time, dps spell.

I like Thade's idea...

Alternately if the disease spells were made more like Splurt with a fast cast time, I wouldn't be against that either.

And also get rid of the DD component and spread the damage done over the ticks instead so shaman could potentially use Grasp of Spirits for an additional DoT (instead of having it get broken 50% of the time a DoT lands). If they're to remain long duration DoTs it would be nice if they didn't have the root-breaking bang factor that the burst dps poison DoT has.

Them's my thoughts.

 

[Miffy]

Or you can just fight harder mobs that give more exp per kill, Disease DoTs have their place and time to be used. If you were to change them into something that was always useful then you would have to make them weaker to balance it. In my opinion its better to have bonus dots on hard nameds and raid fights than just another poison-like DoT for exp. Don't forget about DoT weakening either, a good reason to stack the crap out of DoTs on hard mobs. Also, I am sure there are times when poison wont land and you still want to do some dps.

 

[Thade]

Or you can just fight harder mobs that give more exp per kill, Disease DoTs have their place and time to be used. If you were to change them into something that was always useful then you would have to make them weaker to balance it. In my opinion its better to have bonus dots on hard nameds and raid fights than just another poison-like DoT for exp. Don't forget about DoT weakening either, a good reason to stack the crap out of DoTs on hard mobs. Also, I am sure there are times when poison wont land and you still want to do some dps.

First off, any shaman who is dpsing and not healing on a raid mob is terrible, unless you seriously outgear it or are toting around 6-7 healers. Second off, most mobs that have high PR have high DR meaning the disease dots are worthless anyway. And while dot weakening is nice, it's not feasible for a shaman in a raid, and in an exp group, the dps advantage of torrent of poison severely out weighs the small bonus in dot weakening gained from black plague

 

[Cyzaine]

The very POINT of disease dots is that they take awhile to do. You shouldn't be casting it on mobs that die fast. If you wanna talk about improving shaman ice nukes or things along those lines, that'd make more sense. But disease DoT's are supposed to be about the long haul.

 

[Thade]

The very POINT of disease dots is that they take awhile to do. You shouldn't be casting it on mobs that die fast. If you wanna talk about improving shaman ice nukes or things along those lines, that'd make more sense. But disease DoT's are supposed to be about the long haul.

Except they still suck in the long haul, that's the problem. Unless the mob happens to be immune to poison, and not really resistant or immune to disease (this rarely ever happens in my experience) there is 0 reason to ever cast a disease based dot as a shaman.

Example. I am max tomed, 6% poison focus, 7% disease focus, Aff VII, Damage increment VII

Caress of sivyana 875*4+375/525 = 7.38 dpm 161.458 dps
Relic: Scourge of Life 966 *4 + 479/500 = 8.686 dpm 180.95 dps
Black Plague: 465 * 9 + 211/520 = 8.45 dpm = 81 dps
Torrent of Poison: 945*3/ 380 = 7.46 dpm = 157.5 dps (on a single target, double this for two targets)

Black plague is 14.49% more efficient than caress of sivyana, but does 50.16% of the dps. It's 13% more efficient than torrent of poison, and does 51.42% of the dps on a single target. Now, when you include spell gem black out and cast times, Even with cast speed VII there is ~1 second of spare time between casting Caress, Relic, and Torrent of poison. I can honestly say there are 0 situations where I would ever give up the 80 dps or so for that slight boost of mana efficiency.

 

[Cyzaine]

Then it sounds like a simple buff to the spell would get it in line with where it should be. Not a reworking of disease dots as a whole.

 

[Cinn]

Shamans are already absolutely ridiculous and you have a line of DoT's you can use if mobs are ever poison immune. I don't exactly have much sympathy for you not having every single one of your spell lines being amazing when other classes in the game have half of their entire spellset as complete garbage (read: shadowknight).

 

[Obscenitor]

Maybe the problem is that shaman rains are too good.

 

[Zurkka1]

The very POINT of disease dots is that they take awhile to do. You shouldn't be casting it on mobs that die fast. If you wanna talk about improving shaman ice nukes or things along those lines, that'd make more sense. But disease DoT's are supposed to be about the long haul.

Disease dots do have a place and time. IE plaguewind on large amounts of mobs or blackplague on mobs with large hps. While most things die to quickly in most exp zones IE anything outside of BQ, they are useful in some situations

If you wanna talk about improving shaman ice nukes or things along those lines

Now this i support 7.25 cast time / 6.2 with csi 7 and 890 base damage / 1590 with cold focus and max tomes. Anyways this is basically our only form of dps when something is pr /dr immune and is never used other wise, I am basically a weak cleric in these situations. It simply to long to cast and not worth having on the spell bar. I suggest this be made into a dot/ rain or maybe just reduce the cast time.

I know shamans appear on the God Tier of our lord and savior cinn's facts post but they could still use some love on this one spell .

 

[fuwok]

The very POINT of disease dots is that they take awhile to do. You shouldn't be casting it on mobs that die fast. If you wanna talk about improving shaman ice nukes or things along those lines, that'd make more sense. But disease DoT's are supposed to be about the long haul.

If shaman ice nukes and that one beast nuke that is a shaman ice nuke had their casting times reduced I'd be your friend forever Cyzaine!!!

 

[Manguadi]

There is nothing wrong with disease dots. Shaman simply outgrow them when they become relic'd.

 

[Glamrin]

plaguewind is awesome, it was even more awesome when there was no limit on the amount of targets, back then the shamans had a situation much like paladins do with their undead pbae dd. But yeah I don't really use Black plague at all unless mobs are completely resistant to poison and in those cases its not uncommon that their resistance to disease is quite high as well.

This is a problem that druids, for example, usually don't suffer. If something is very resistant to cold, it usually isnt to fire. For shamans though, if something is very resistant to poison, they can pretty much forget about spell dps, and go melee.

I stick with rain + poison dots atm. Adding say 60 or so base dmg per tick to black plague would probably make me use it more. If that means changing it from 9 ticks to 8, that would not be a problem.

Someone mentioned that the solution lies with our completely unused cold based nuke fury of the north and yeah, if that spell was actually ever worth casting, it would solve the situation. Problem with it is the casttime.

This has been discussed previously:

Cast time should probably be lowered to 5 or so, I don't know why it would even have such an insane cast time.

http://forum.shardsofdalaya.com/showthread.php?t=17943&highlight=fury+north

 

[huey]

I stick with rain + poison dots atm.

So, noob sham alt that I am, were you referring to the druid when you mentioned rains (I don't know druid spells, so my b if they don't have rains) or is there maybe an ikisith shaman rain?

As far as Fury of the North goes, yeah, 75% of the situations I use a nuke for I just use the less efficient poison one for the cast time. Fury could use some kind of change. As far as the dots go I actually use black plague and even pox sometimes on the longer fights. I think they're not that useless, especially compared to fury, although I do like the reverse splurt idea.

 

[Chakekik]

So, noob sham alt that I am, were you referring to the druid when you mentioned rains (I don't know druid spells, so my b if they don't have rains) or is there maybe an ikisith shaman rain?

It's called Torrent of Poison and can be bought at your friendly neighbourhood shaman spell vendor. IIRC it's a level 55 spell and it's awesomesauce.

 

[huey]

It's called Torrent of Poison and can be bought at your friendly neighbourhood shaman spell vendor. IIRC it's a level 55 spell and it's awesomesauce.

Wow, so that's a rain? (I have it...) I'm way too wiki dependent apparently (it just calls it a target based aoe, with no ticks) (I've always thought a "rain" has ticks. can one hit target based aoes be considered "rains"? The wiki seems to parallel my assumption fwiw)

 

[huey]

Per the wiki's way of displaying spells and also the Spell Parser's way of displaying spells, rains are distinguished by having an "AE Duration" of 7(.5) seconds. As does that spell.

I was just comparing it to how rains are classified on say the mage spell list where they're actually called rains. I didn't notice the ae duration part before you mentioned it now, but how does that work? (sorry, I'm a rain noob, been a monk for years and years...) Like, if a target is in the rain radius for the entire 7.5, how many times will the damage affect them I guess?

Edit: "How many times does the damage affect them?" is probably not the best wording. I'm just trying to wrap my mind around a 6 sec tick, a 7.5 sec duration, and how the damage can spread over that or whatever it does. What happens say, if you leave the area after like three seconds?

(Sorry to hijack the thread... /shame)

 

[huey]

Weird. Cool, thx for humoring my noob questions. I will use them now that I know I have them!

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