Dot/debuff slots on raids. Lets make this happen.

I know there are a dozen places on the forums that some aspects of this topic have been touched on but perhaps if we could keep a tally of the best bang for the buck changes that would free up dot/debuff slots in one location it might expedite the process.

My group of leadership in ROTE have a current discussion about which dots or debuffs we need to police in order to make sure stronger dots or debuffs can land without bouncing.
This is not fun, its frustrating to even think that this is a topic for discussion.
I'm aware that this is a concern in practically any guild that has a strong roster of dot classes and I'm sure most will agree that we would much rather have fun and focus on raiding rather than sparing even a moment of our lives worrying about dot/debuff slots.

If some of you friends in the community want to share ideas here I will be happy to edit the top post occasionally as we come to some consensus for what areas makes the most sense to ask a dev to focus on with the intent to implement changes.

First of all, has there been any mention of increasing the dot/debuff limit recently that I missed?
Unless we added 30 or 40 slots on a raid boss, I still believe there is plenty of work to be done on consolidation and alteration of some dots or debuffs that currently exist.

Top 10 best bang for the buck dot/debuff changes.

1. Necromancer dot/debuffs -Scent of Mortality/Scent of Terris - combine these debuffs into one - totally unnecessary to waste 2 slots on these.
Wounds line - each necro can run 5 spells from wounds line, even though only 3 of them are effected by the focus tab AA... and then when they proliferate the necro simply recasts the base spell again, meaning 10 slots can be taken up by one necro running all 5 wounds. This is by far the biggest slot hog in the game and should have been the very first spell line consolidated 2 or 3 years ago when dot consolidation started. For the love of Tunare, finish consolidation on this line.
Ignite line - a necro could load 5 or more of this line, though the older they get the worse the dot power obviously, I assume many necros might be using 2 or at most 3 of this line though since the newest 3 are all that gets focus tab AA bonus.
13 dot/debuff slots could be reduced to 4 per necro.
For as much as necro's are the biggest complainers of debuff slots, they are by far the worst offender here.

2. Bard dot debuffs - combine the debuff effects to all 4 bard chant dots into a single debuff regardless of which chant is cast, or alternatively simply eliminate the debuff component entirely.
4 dot/debuffs slots reduced to 1 or none.

3. Ranger dots/debuffs - Combine the 2 swarm dots into one. Thats a low hanging fruit.
Change associated effects of Marked shots line (Called shots effect) to be a self buff on the ranger rather than a debuff on the mob.
3 dot/debuff slots reduced to 1.

4. Enchanter dots/debuffs - Combine effects of Proclamation of Tashan and Tashans lingering cry into 1 debuff.
Combine effects of Constraining Coil and Somnolence. (disregard, as we don't want to lose Somnolence effect when a shammy overwrites the slow component.)
These are both really low hanging fruits.
Get rid of Deceiving Constriction. Add its damage and debuff components in to the Mind Coil and Pulmonary Grip lines.
5 dot/debuff slots reduced to 3.

5. Shammys?
6. Druids?
7. Beastlords?
8. Shadowknights?
9. Alliances?
10. Container dots - Container spells such as Necro Combo dot Danvids Grip of Decay and Composite Paroxsym, Shammy combo dots Chaotic Venin and Bledreks Pandemic initially land a placeholder dot/debuff on a boss and then fire their subsequent component spells. Typically the container only lasts a tick, but every tick matters when you have potentially dozens of incoming dot/debuff requests per tick. I imagine that these are more complicated than we might suspect and therefore setting to the bottom priority makes sense to me. One thing I noticed was that there was a small amount of dot damage for 2500 when I cast each of these spells on my necro and wifes shammy. I am aware of other container line spells on the ranger for Summers Sleet and their Composite Fusillade. It appears to be possible to use a container spell while not having a small dot tick present but we are comparing dots vs DD's here and that may make a difference.

Help me out here guys. I am by no means a dot/debuff slot expert. Lets see if we can get a little emphasis put on this topic.

Can you imagine how bad it would be if Rot Vulnerability stacked.

People casting Rot Vulnerability should get benched.

Shaman:
Make a new spell for the Turger's Swarm and Virulent Swarm AA's for shaman that combines Turger's Insects and Turgers Diminishment into 1 affect.

Same for the Malaise AA and Wind of Malaise - Combine the expansion appropriate Malosinara and Noxious Decay effects into one that is cast by the appropriate rank of AA for that expansion.

Melee in general:
Stream line the Intimidation AA affect to encompass all classes. Have it be one affect that is the same for all classes that have the Intimidation AA rather than individual class specific affects.

This is a good exercise.

But this only applies to raids. So before you think cutting debuffs of abilities is okay, actually think about the solo/grouping non-raider who gets shafted so a raid force can load another dot on a boss.

I think most (all?) would agree is that there are a number of things with debuffs as add ons that it would be great to have the ability to toggle this on or off via aas. So in raids, folks toggle this switch to off ... no more bard dot debuff carriers, etc.

This would take coding, but once in place, should be able to be applied to a number of things. Then we as players can control what we do.

I'd be all about Called shots being a self buff. It's nice on one hand to have all your Rangers benefit from the 20% arrow damage, but the recast would make the effect be on most of the time. That's worth the 1 debuff slot on a Raid Boss 100%.

Combining Ranger DoT's into one has a double-edged sword: The Cloud of Guardian Hyperboreads DS effect could punt a good buff on a raid if an event throws multiple bebuffs/DoTs on players. This is probably more of an issue for Pallies and SKs I'd assume with their self buffs. I've never looked into what stacks with the DS, I must admit. Obviously, I just won't use such a weak DoT on a raid.

As far as Alliances, I hate them and always have. Tonight I decided I was going to be a Point Guard and just assist in the other Rangers Fulms' and not cast mine at all. This was the result on Zlandi burn: /2 Zlandicar in 221s, 1,359.9m @6153326 | #3 Jhenna 204.1m@923.6k (1,855.5k in 110s).

There was a tight Ranger spread all within like 10-25k dps of me. I think all of them Fulmed x3 each, my AT was going haywire.

Please don't touch my alliance. - Zlandicar in 165s, 4.92B Damage @29.82M, 1. Caisy +Pets = 243.15M@2.43M in 100s {G}

Disagree. I think reducing the dots to 1 debuff slot each is the winning idea, make the debuff and the damage component be the same debuff. Bards take 10-12 debuff slots, per bard, with normal usage, it's incredibly stupid.

Noxious Decay is on same line as the scent of mortality. Necro version overwrites. Would be good if they both overwrote rot vulnerability too.
I'd like to see Breath of Bledrek and Bolman's Pandemic combined into one dot line. And Affliction duration reduced. But I don't think that'd really help the debuff space, cause then I'd start using disease dots more.

During TOV beta Cascade of Decay and Languid Bite were going to be changed to something else to help with debuff space, but I guess they didn't have time, or couldn't figure out how to change them.

Yes finish the nec dot revamp already!

*Ignite spell line
Scourge of line (dont really need revamp as they share timer)
*Wounds spell line
Misma spell line

Do we have to wait years again? Can't be that much work. I never was a big fan of the revamp and how it was done but get this over with!

* = Revamp first if the plan is to drag on for a few more years.

Wouldn't a better solution be to just not invite bards and necromancers to raids? Then there will not be any issues with max debuff slots. Problem solved.








PS- I am joking. Obviously. Don't get your armor wadded up in a bunch.

Nothing specific to add but I'm totally supportive of any reduction/consolidation of debuffs, buffs, DoTs, swarm pets and procs. This not only helps raiding but group play also.

Whatever they decide to do, and something needs to be done, they need to be proactive with the change. It needs to be more than a "present" fix and also be a "future" fix because as a Nec I've been hearing about debuff slots on raid mobs for years and years and years.

Also, +1 for finishing the Nec spell consolidation.

Necro.. cast 4 dots and FD, grab a beer, hug the dog, take a pee, walk over to say hello to your neighbor..

LOL.. I think the debuff thing is a HUGE issue but a little management isn't a bad thing either. It is a team effort, managing debuff slots seems more reasonable then simplifying some classes to nothing.

Fighting over debuff slots is just the cost of playing a necro. They have to have one drawback.

I do wish they would do something about bard debuffs. I love that we have them, but they really don't do much in the raid setting (same with shortbuffs - recently I have been buff-locked on shortbuffs).

I like the idea of putting one resist debuff on all bard DOTS that debuffs all resists, not just Fire/Cold/Poison/Disease. That would free up at least 3 slots on raids. We are already cutting Caco and Bladed song, because for raids, they are very near worthless. Cut intimidate, cut any "clicky debuff", the list goes on. We run with 5-6 bards on a given night, and of every one of those bards ran a full DPS lineup, we would be short a LOT of debuff slots. Then again, I also liked the idea of an AA that allows us to toggle the resist debuff on and off.

It would be nice to simply add more debuff slots, but I understand that adding a number of debuff slots on monsters is not an easy undertaking, and not as simple as "add 20 more debuff slots". I am willing to bet that there are a ton of upstream and downstream dependencies that might break by adding even a single slot, not to mention possible hard limits to 32-bit code/memory footprint/sql/etc. A sandbox is only so big and adding too much sand will render it useless.

It'd be nice if there was an upgrade to Ancient: Chaos Chant for bards. It has a chromatic debuff which is what you're asking for but the lvl 65 chant debuffs a maximum of 11 points.

I'm confused by this statement. In different words, you are saying that the number of debuffs a class has is equivalent to the simplicity/complexity of a class. Maybe you meant to say something else.


Management is a good thing, I agree. However, 97 total debuff slots on a target is an artificial limit. This is a system limitation and not a game design limitation. Even if a raid force follows debuff restrictions, they will still run into these artificial caps just prioritizing maximum benefit spells in a balanced raid force.

Our raid hits debuff cap during full burn with only 3 necros in raid and 6 DoTs cast per necro. We also do a pretty good job at debuff management. During full burns, classes have debuffs attached to their burn abilities. These need to be investigated for each class.

Examples for necro that I either have stopped using or wait to use:

Gathering Dusk VIII
Slot 1: Decrease Current Hit Points by 25000 per Tick
Slot 2: Increase Current Hate by 20% per Tick
Recourse: Duskfall Empowerment III

Duskfall Empowerment III
Slot 1: Increase Spell Damage by 9% (v302, Before Crit)
Slot 2: Limit Effect: Current Hit Points
Slot 3: Limit Min Duration: 12s
Slot 4: Limit Type Detrimental
Slot 5: Limit Min Mana Cost: 10
Slot 6: Limit Max Level: 250 (Lose 100% per Level)
Slot 7: Inhibit Effect: Hate Mod (AA)

Life Burn VII
Slot 1: Consume 75% of Hit Points to Damage for 200% of Hit Points
Slot 2: Decrease Current Hit Points by 10000 per Tick
Recourse: Lifeburn Recourse VII

Lifeburn Recourse VII
Slot 2: Increase Current Hit Points by 7500 per Tick

Both of these burn abilities have useless non-modifiable DoT components attached that could be removed with no real impact to the class' functionality or difficulty.

Almost every class has examples like these that need to be looked at.

Similar to the Necro Wounds line, the Shaman Nectar line casts a secondary DoT when it fades. Optimal casting would to be refresh Nectar when it triggers the second DoT. So that's 2 debuff slots for 1 spell.

For Bards, I am still of the opinion that combining the resist debuff and the DoT into a single slot is the ideal option. No extra slots required at all, just 1:1 for song:debuff.

For SKs, not a lot to change really (other than just not using DoTs/debuffs in raids ). Maybe adding an optional Harm Touch that does the full damage in one hit as opposed to 60% in DD and 30% in DoT (or whatever the math currently works out to). I think the split was initially added due to maximum damage limits, but those have been increased so it's not really necessary in a lot of situations.