DoT/HoT Snapshotting - yay or nay

Snapshotting is a game mechanic where you can buff yourself up and in the short duration of having all the buffs you unleash all of your damage over time(dot) skills on your enemy and those dots are buffed for their whole duration even though the buffs ended a short time after the dots long before those dots finish doing dmg.

example:

your bleed ticks for 20dmg every 2s for 14s total (7ticks in total= 140dmg), but you have a short duration buff that increases your damage by 50% for 5 seconds. which makes the bleed tick for 30dmg instead for 20dmg. Snapshotting makes the bleed uneffected if you use the cooldown after applying the bleed, but if you use the bleed while you have the buff active then all 7 ticks are going to do 30dmg (210dmg total)

Since Ashes wants to have giant mass pvp battles I think they will have snapshotting in the game, because the alternative is to recalculate the damage based on the casters current amount of stats every time the dot makes dmg.

But what is your opinion on this skillbased "hidden" mechanic where players are rewarded for using their skills in the right order at the right time.

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Comments

daveywavey

That's why you buff up beforehand, right? If you cast the DoT, then buffed up, you wouldn't expect it to take your new buff into account, as you didn't have it active at the time of casting.

So, similarly, buffing up beforehand, you should expect your DoT to carry on with the buffed figures, as that's how you cast it at the time.

Wandering Mist

Snapshotting is one of those mechanics that allows highly skilled players the chance to really shine, but at the same time makes balancing the game a lot harder, which is why it was taken out of WoW.

Tragnar

well idk how it would influence ashes, but in wow the lack of snapshoting(which is recalculating every dot tick every time it makes dmg) and the amount of random procs makes 20v20 in open world literally unplayable lagfest (4-10s lag delay).

also snapshoting became a problem in wrath, because blizz gave dot classes powerful damage cooldowns, when you count into that on use trinkets and damage potions then a skillful player would dumbster damage.

Also the "balance" problem is totally arbitrary one, because cooldown based dot builds should be acknowledged being a high skill floor so the damage would be balanced around proper snapshotting.

I am completely fine with creating builds that have high skill floor, because they need several things to align in such a way for the build to actually shine

Songcaller

I don't even know what DoTs and HoTs we will have access to or even if said DoTs and HoTs can be buffed...

mcstackerson

I don't know if I consider stacking buffs then applying dots as being high skill. If people weren't doing this in the past then I'd expect it to be because they didn't understand how it worked.

Not 100% against this as variety in spec can be fun but I'd hope there would be more thought put into it than just allowing this. Maybe buffs that are designed to affect DoT/hots in more ways than making it do more damage/healing.

FuryBladeborne

Personally, I am in favor of snapshotting. Consider if snapshotting did not happen. Player A cuts Player B, inflicting a bleed doing X per second over time. A few seconds later, something changes in buffs on Player A and all the sudden Player B starts bleeding less from the wound that is already inflicted.

What?
I don't like it.

The fact that snapshotting is lighter on resources is just a bonus that would be great in the 500 player (or possibly higher) battles intended for Ashes.

Irohnic

ya snapshotting sounds absolutely necessary to facilitate large scale pvp and just makes sense immersion wise. It also adds a little more strategy to dealing damage. What should not happen though that I've seen in games before (think it was WoW but can't remember 100%), is that after snapshotting a strong dot using powerful cooldown abilities, the player is able to maintain that dot "indefinitely" by simply recasting the ability before the dot expires. if you recast it without the buffs, the dot needs to change back to normal, not remain extra powerful.

The other option to still facilitate large-scale pvp is just have dots always do the same amount, non-modifiable by buffs/stats, but that just sounds boring and hard to balance as dot-based classes would not scale well with gear.

Maezriel

Neurath wrote: »

I don't even know what DoTs and HoTs we will have access to or even if said DoTs and HoTs can be buffed...

W/ 36 different types of classes it'd be wild to not have at least one centered on maintaining DoTs and (at least to me) equally wild if you couldn't buff them.

Caeryl

Snapshotting is needed simply to avoid destroying the severs in large scale PvP. It’s not feasible to have the server check for buffs every time a DoT ticks. It would at best double the checks made on every DoT ability.

Songcaller

Maezriel wrote: »

W/ 36 different types of classes it'd be wild to not have at least one centered on maintaining DoTs and (at least to me) equally wild if you couldn't buff them.

Most Buffs will be on a Bard Class. It would take skill to time skills with Bard Buffs. I'm not sure if other classes will have buffs, I don't believe the buffs would be extensive. In terms of Damage Efficiency and Bard Buff synchronisation, I'd be a tad perturbed if my biggest and best buffs were used for DoTs and not Bursts.

CROW3

Huh. I didn’t realize this now had a label, we just called it ‘playing your class well.’

Either way, if you can stack buffs and/or chain dots to effect big numbers (even for a few secs) - this should absolutely be included.

Irohnic

CROW3 wrote: »

Huh. I didn’t realize this now had a label, we just called it ‘playing your class well.’

Either way, if you can stack buffs and/or chain dots to effect big numbers (even for a few secs) - this should absolutely be included.

i believe the term came to use when I think it was WoW allowed you to super buff your dots and then maintain the buffed dots for the entire fight by renewing them before they expired despite your temporary buffs wearing off. in that way it was actually a different playstlye/rotation than the traditional "playing your class well" because normally playing your class well means letting the buffs use their entire duration before re-applying (unless it has a stack component). I hope dots can be buffed for sure but the snapshot mechanic of letting you maintain buffed dots with unbuffed re-casts is dumb imo and hopefully does not work like that in AoC

CROW3

Irohnic wrote: »

I hope dots can be buffed for sure but the snapshot mechanic of letting you maintain buffed dots with unbuffed re-casts is dumb imo and hopefully does not work like that in AoC.

Egh. Agreed - if that’s how ‘snapshotting’ is defined.

Being able to really think through a rotation to build up intense damage is one thing. What you’re saying above reminds me of all the unintended consequences of having downranked spells in other mmos. I like complexity, but complicating complexity only results in pain.

Tragnar

To my knowledge refreshing a dot recalculates its damage - all you did with snapshotting is prolong the duration of the buff from few seconds up to half a minute (some dots had this duration)

I would consider refreshing dots/hots without recalculation of new value as a bug anywhere

also people that play good are a minority to my experience. The vast amounts of players just have no clue about how stuff works and they just press every button they have available

Sathrago

Im 100000% down for Snapshotting. I really miss it from back in the day when i played wow as a warlock. I think it makes sense and promotes skilled combat.

Tragnar

I agree, because it quite nicely compliments the design philosophy of "easy to pickup, hard to master", because this is not automatically obvious to new players, but when you play long enough you notice that it is the best strategy to cast dots during some buff.

This might come as "easy" to some players, but we don't know what the rotations are going to look like so it is entirely possible that there might be a too much of things to track

PlagueMonk

A simple solution (but one people will probably not like) would be to make any applicable buffs much less extreme. So instead of having a buff that boosts your damage x3 for 10 secs, make it x1.5 for 15 mins.

Caeryl

PlagueMonk wrote: »

A simple solution (but one people will probably not like) would be to make any applicable buffs much less extreme. So instead of having a buff that boosts your damage x3 for 10 secs, make it x1.5 for 15 mins.

You just halve the effectiveness of buffs for no reason then. Buff uptime is key for skilled players, and there’s no need to balance for the lowest common denominator.

PlagueMonk

Caeryl wrote: »

PlagueMonk wrote: »

A simple solution (but one people will probably not like) would be to make any applicable buffs much less extreme. So instead of having a buff that boosts your damage x3 for 10 secs, make it x1.5 for 15 mins.

You just halve the effectiveness of buffs for no reason then. Buff uptime is key for skilled players, and there’s no need to balance for the lowest common denominator.

I TOLD you, you wouldn't like it.

As our Mod above, Wandering Mist mentioned,, snapshotting is much more difficult to balance against other classes that don't have it.

So w/o it there is absolutely NO skill required to play any class? Snapshotting is the defining ability, otherwise you are just pushing a single button and remaining stationary??? Or maybe, just maybe, you can find other ways to be skillful with your class.

Caeryl

PlagueMonk wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

PlagueMonk wrote: »

A simple solution (but one people will probably not like) would be to make any applicable buffs much less extreme. So instead of having a buff that boosts your damage x3 for 10 secs, make it x1.5 for 15 mins.

You just halve the effectiveness of buffs for no reason then. Buff uptime is key for skilled players, and there’s no need to balance for the lowest common denominator.

I TOLD you, you wouldn't like it.

As our Mod above, Wandering Mist mentioned,, snapshotting is much more difficult to balance against other classes that don't have it.

So w/o it there is absolutely NO skill required to play any class? Snapshotting is the defining ability, otherwise you are just pushing a single button and remaining stationary??? Or maybe, just maybe, you can find other ways to be skillful with your class.

Across literally every game that has them, your ability to keep buffs up continuously is a major expressions of player skill. Where in the world did you come up with the conclusion that anyone said buff uptime is the only expression of skill?

The only issue you presented was the faulty code that treated recasts as refreshes rather than recasts. If your code isn’t spaghetti, every DoT calculates at initial cast every time.

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