Hey again, Neocore.

It's been a bit over a year since my previous Psyker DoT test, and with all the Psyker changes since then I thought I'd give it another go.

I'll start with the TL;DR:

Findings:

Fire Bolt and Firestorm DoTs:

* DO benefit from +%dot damage effects in the Damage Over Time skill tree
* DO NOT benefit from +%heat damage in Heat Attacks skill tree
* DO NOT benefit from +1 sec duration part of "Caustic Reagents" in DoT skill tree
* DO NOT benefit from +2 sec duration from "Haemotoxins"

Perhaps this is intended, but it is not clear from the descriptions. (caustic = poison? haemo = blood, toxin = poison? Maybe neither is meant to affect burn.)

Haemorrhage:

* DOES benefit from +%dot damage effects in the Damage Over Time skill tree
* DOES benefit from +2 seconds duration from "Arterial Wounding" in Physical Attacks skill tree
* DOES benefit from +2 seconds duration from "Haemotoxins" in DoT skill tree
* DOES NOT benefit from +%physical damage in Physical Attacks skill tree
* DOES NOT benefit from +1 sec duration part of "Caustic Reagents" in DoT skill tree


More details:

Methodology:

General approach here was to re-enter the same mission with low damage gear and a higher difficulty (so enemies lived long enough), record the HP of the enemies I was going to hit before hitting them, then record both the direct damage and the final HP to evaluate the DoT portion.

E.g., something like:

Rampager w/167 hp
Force rod single attack: 24 direct
Final HP: 94. 167-94=73 damage, 24 direct + 49 DoT.

I repeated this several times for each skill tree point I applied, in order to test which worked and which did not.

I tested three sources of DoTs:

1. Force rod "Fire Bolt" attack
2. Firestorm with cooldown reduction and -warp heat masteries
3. Haemorrhage with cooldown reduction, -warp heat, and area of effect masteries

My gear had no DoT damage buffs or +%physical or +%heat buffs.

Remaining to test, grouped loosely:

* Doctrine: Hyper-rad Psalm + Haemo-drain Psalm + Binharic Psalm + Hermeticon Psalm + Voltagheist Psalm ("+1 to all DoT durations")
* Doctrine: Technomartyr Psalm + Haemo-drain Psalm + Icarus Psalm + Static-burst Psalm + Uncreator Psalm ("Each vulnerability stack has a 300% increased effect on DoT effects")
* Doctrine: Transonic Psalm + Haemo-drain Psalm + Neuralis Psalm + Volkite Psalm ("All Fleshbane attacks also cause Bleed")
* Doctrine: Terminus Psalm + Haemo-drain Psalm + Volkite Psalm ("+200% Bleeding damage bonus against enemies in 8 meter radius")

* Burn 'procs': Top of Heat Attacks, "Spontaneous Combustion": How do these behave?
* Debuffs Skill Tree, "Dirty Fighting": Do DoTs count as a debuff? Do they benefit? Do multi-stacked dots count as multiple debuffs?
* Single DPS/Ranged Combat/Area Effects: Do DoTs benefit from anything in these trees? Are DoTs considered 'Single target'?

* Generic Affixes: e.g. "+X% Damage Bonus"
* Generic +Duration% Affixes: e.g. "+20% DoT duration"
* Relic Affixes: e.g. "+XX% Damage Bonus for Bleeding Effects"
* Relic Flat +Duration Affixes: e.g. "+3 seconds to Burning effect duration"
* Relic Cooldown-Threshold Damage Bonus: e.g. "+250% Damage Bonus for DoT Effects applied by skills with at least 3 seconds cooldown" (and: does this work on base cooldown or real cooldown?)
* Damage-vs-Burning/Bleeding Affixes: Do they apply to the DoT damage?

* Psyker Power: Fiery Form, both % damage bonus and % heat damage bonus
* Psyker Power: Foreboding, % physical damage bonus
* Psyker Power: Divine Shot, does the bonus affect a DoT applied as part of first attack on an enemy?
* Psyker Mastery: DoT mastery on various powers

* Critical Hit Strength: Is this additive or multiplicative for DoTs? I believe it's Mult for normal attacks, so if it's somehow Additive for dots that represents a significant scaling loss.

* Perk: Mind Rift I / II: Does generic damage bonus affect dots at all?
* Perk: Cull the Weak: Do DoTs count as a debuff? Do they benefit?
* Perk: Attack Anchor: Do DoTs benefit?
* Perk: Grinder: Do DoTs benefit? Does the crit removal prevent crit DoT-duration buff?
* Perk: Heatsinks: Do DoTs benefit from this +% heat damage?
* Perk: Inverse Warp Attenuation: Do DoTs drain life?
* Perk: Psychic Escalation: Do DoTs from psyker powers benefit too?
* Perk: Psychic Supremacy: Do DoTs from psyker powers benefit too?
* Perk: Tactician: Do DoTs from psyker powers with >=2s cooldowns benefit?
* Perk: Under Pressure: Do bleeds benefit from this?
* Perk: Warp Heat Conversion: Does this manifest as +%dmg, or +base damage, or what? Does it benefit DoTs?
* Perk: Warp Resonance: Again, do DoTs from psyker powers benefit?

It's unlikely I'll get to all of these, but if someone else wants to test, it would be great to have answers to some of these.

My current assumptions/beliefs about much of these are:

* that DoTs do not benefit from any general +% damage, or +% physical/heat damage.
* that DoTs do not benefit from buffs to the psyker power that produced them
* that DoTs DO benefit from vulnerability

Takeaways so far:

* Not gaining +duration seriously limits the strength of fire-based DoTs. It also just seems less fun, doesn't meet the fantasy of 'damage over time' when the burn lasts ~3 seconds.

* The lack of heat% and physical% scaling on both DoT types limits the gearing, skill, perk, psyker buff, and psalm-doctrine choices for these builds, and may ultimately make them less viable.

* The "Bonus Duration to DOT Skills" row in the Character > Offense list doesn't seem to reflect any changes. It always says '5'.

Enjoying the new season, but I'd love to see changes/fixes here!

Cheers