We recently shared two Development Manifestos that discussed changes to Damage Over Time coming in the 3.0.0 beta. If you missed them, here is Part One and Part Two of these manifestos. We received many questions in response to these posts and we've dedicated today's news post to addressing some of them!

How will Minions be affected by these changes?

Most modifiers available to a player that scale the damage dealt by minions affect "Minion Damage". This is a generic damage modifier on the minions that will affect all damage they do, including any damage over time, as well as their hits. In addition, support gems affecting minions apply to all their damage in the same way they apply to a player's skill. They'll benefit from new support gems and changes to existing ones, such as the previously mentioned change to the Increased Burning Damage Support, which will now provide a multiplicative bonus.

How will Righteous Fire be affected by these changes?

Righteous Fire's Damage over Time never took its base damage from a hit (Righteous Fire is not Ignite), so it could never double-dip, and will not be affected by the changes. However, it will now be scaled by any new modifiers to Damage over Time that are added alongside these mechanical changes (but not modifiers that are specific to Ignite Damage). It will be rebalanced to account for these improvements in support available for the skill.

What are the extent of the changes to Viper Strike?

In terms of damage modifiers, Viper Strike's poison will work just like all other Poison, as described in the first post on this subject.

Viper Strike will now have a special property which makes its considered skill effect Poison. This means that for Viper Strike, modifiers to Skill Effect Duration will affect the duration of Poison. In all other cases they will not, due to Poison being considered an Ailment now. This also means Viper Strike will specify the base duration of its Poisons, overriding the default base duration of 2 seconds (it already does this part).

Puncture will have the same modifier with respect to Bleeding.

How will Bleeding and other Damage Ailments work in PvP?

We're going to be re-adjusting the pvp scale of many damage over time effects. We've yet to determine exactly how we'll be adjusting bleeding effects on players, but we'll definitely need to reduce the damage players take while stationary from other players' bleeds.

How is this going to work with the Emberwake ring and Sudden Ignition Threshold Jewel?

Emberwake is being substantially reworked, we'll be revealing how this item will function in the future. Each Ignite applied to an enemy is independent, with its own damage value rolled from the base damage of the skill that caused it.

During the Beta, we're planning to try out a change to Burning Arrow to bring it closer to Puncture and Viper Strike. This should make it a great choice for applying a strong Ignite effect with bow attacks, especially in combination with Sudden Ignition.

Will Caustic Arrow be tweaked in some way by these changes?

The damage of the Caustic Cloud never came from a hit, so it was never possible to double-dip with Caustic Arrow. The mechanical changes of removing double-dipping will have no effect on it - they only affect Bleeding, Ignite, and Poison. Due to the changes to how we determine whether Damage over Time is Area Damage, discussed in the second of these posts, the Caustic Cloud will still be Area Damage. The skill will have a stat that lets modifiers to Projectile Damage apply to the cloud as well.

As a happy side effect of these changes, the effect of Area Damage modifiers will now be reflected in the displayed tooltip damage for the Caustic Arrow.

We'd like to make mechanical improvements to Caustic Arrow in the future, though we may not have time alongside all our other changes in the Beta. We'll definitely review its base damage, but we'd like to improve the skill or add an interesting Threshold Jewel for it in future.

What will happen with Fire Trap and Fire Dash as they cause Burning Ground? Does this affect them too? In which way?

Burning Ground is not Ignite. Its damage does not come from a hit, so it was never possible to double-dip that damage. Hence, it is unaffected by the removal of double-dipping.

Since Burning Ground applies Burning Damage to things within an area, it will always be considered Area Damage, and affected by relevant modifiers. This was discussed in the second of these posts.

Since both the initial hit and DoT will have damage calculated separately, will penetration affect both the calculations now instead of just the hit?

Penetration is inherently an on-hit effect. It cannot apply to Damage over Time.

Since bleeding and poison will now be considered Ailments, will that make Atziri immune to them too?

No, in fact Atziri will be losing her immunities as discussed in the previous post. She may retain some form of ailment protection if we deem it necessary, but this isn't currently planned.

Is the design intent of correcting double dipping also going to come with a rebalance of end-game monster HP?

This is something we'll be reviewing during Beta. It's unlikely that we'll change the health of the highest tier content; The most effective Damage over Time builds made the content far easier than was intended, and with these new changes the bosses should be a more suitable encounter length for powerful builds.

Will these changes mean that we'll see an increase in power of some effects that were reduced in power because of Double Dipping?

We'll be looking at unique items and passive tree values for the duration of the beta, and make adjustments throughout. Multiplicative effects will be receiving the most scrutiny, but we're reviewing every unique item that can interact with Damage over Time effects.

For fire based spellcasters, crit and non-crit have both been appealing options, because both have two ways to scale their damage (initial hit damage and multi for crit and ignite damage for non-crit). The Ignite system only allows one-dimensional scaling and thus will either be extremely powerful early on, or it will get outclassed very quickly by crit based builds that ignore ignite. How will you counteract that problem?

Criticals are now one of the most effective ways to scale damage at the highest level of play. Their damage increases come from a large number of sources, so we can adjust critical chance and critical multiplier values available to players in many different ways. We'll be keeping a close eye on this during the Beta, as Criticals have often been responsible for the highest potential damage in the past.

We're also continuing to look at ways to keep Damage over Time scaling at the same rate as other damage towards end game, through both supports, access to damage modifiers, and potential new special effects on items, passives and supports.

How will Traps, Mines and Totems be affected by this change?

We'll be reverting the Trap and Mine Support multiplicative damage modifier to affect all damage caused by the skill, rather than only applying to hits. Modifiers to Trap, Mine, and Totem damage will still apply to Damage over Time caused by Traps, Mines and Totems, so we're going to be carefully reviewing how this will affect these builds during the Beta.

Will there be a way to make spells, via tree or gem, inflict bleeding, such as those that deal physical damage, or give minions that deal physical damage the ability to inflict a bleed?

Bleeding is specific to attack damage, so it cannot be applied by spells. We're trying out a new Chance to Bleed support gem during the Beta, so you will be able to easily give your Minions or attacks a chance to bleed.

The damage bonus from Hypothermia cannot currently affect DoTs directly. As far as I know this is due to a technical limitation, but will that be addressed with this slew of changes to the system?

No. Conditional modifiers like that fundamentally can’t apply to DoTs. However, we’re doing a push to ensure that the descriptions of such modifiers are more clear about this fact.

Has Herald of Ash been changed because of this system?

Herald of Ash has been reworked. Rather than applying Ignite to enemies, it applies its own unique burning effect. There is a specific property which is displayed on the skill restricting which modifiers can apply to that burning effect, to prevent any double-dipping. Since this is a new kind of burning effect, it will stack with existing forms of burning, including Ignite.

Will the Bloodlust Gem still prevent linked skills from causing bleeding?

Yes, it will. We'll be introducing other support gems to further enhance Bleeding as well, so Bloodlust won't be the only support that applies specifically to Bleeding effects.

We received many other questions about these changes and we'll continue to answer some of these next week!