Newbie question (really, it is)

[gabidaddi 0]

So I'm reading through the forums on builds and there's a lot of acronyms.

Is there a master list somewhere?

Until then.. what the heck is DoT?

Thanks :)

[demonardvark 556]

17 minutes ago, gabidaddi said:

So I'm reading through the forums on builds and there's a lot of acronyms.

Is there a master list somewhere?

Until then.. what the heck is DoT?

Thanks :)

haha no i don't think we have an acronym database here, however i found you a decent one http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/84149117 

I felt when I first started WoW did have a rather steep learning curve, especially back in the day. However,

DoT stands for damage over time. There are some attacks that instantly do damage such as Frost Death Knights Obliterate or a Destruction Warlocks Chaos Bolt. There are other attacks that do just that damage over time. So, Affliction warlocks for instance use mostly damage over time spells. It will deal say 300 damage up front and then 20 damage every 1 seconds for 20 seconds, so a total of 700 damage. Affliction warlocks use mostly damage over time spells where in general i think most classes (most) will have at least one damage over time spell.

The typical thing when you have a damage over time spell is to make sure it's always ticking. Uh oh another term what is ticking? When you are doing damage every X seconds from a DoT, a tick, is when the DoT does its damage. So, some will only do damage or tick every 2 or 3 seconds. Every DoT will eventually expire, aka, no longer stay on the target or tick. So at that time you need to put it back on or "refresh" it.

So anytime you have a DoT you want to make sure it's always on the bad guy and doing damage :). So take Balance Druid's right now. They have three dots, and 3-4 instant abilities. So, they apply their three dots and switch to doing their instant hit abilities. This way they are constantly doing damage. The instant abilities can have cast timers. So, a spell takes 4 seconds to cast. Well during that time you are doing no damage. That's where our DoT friends come in. While we are doing other things the DoT will make sure we are always doing damage on the boss. So, inbetween casts of abilities the DoT's fill the empty space with damage :)

Now, Dot's can get trickier. You can have stacks of a DoT. A stack means basically you have the same dot on the bad guy again. So from before we were doing 20 damage every 1 seconds. Well if that dot can stack, and we reach 2 stacks, then it's 40 damage every second, then 3 stacks, 60 damage, etc and so on. In these cases you not only want to make sure the DoT is staying on the bad guy ie doesn't need to be refreshed, you always want to have the maximum possible number of stacks. Some DoTs like Rend only have 1 stack, others like an old ability called necrotic plague, could go all the way to 15, it just depends on the dot in question :)

if you can any other specific acronyms you need answered don't hesitate to ask. Many are based upon class Warlock - Lock, Death knight - DK. Others are abilities Colossus Smash - CD, Dark Arbiter - DA.

Cheers and welcome to the wonderful world of MMO's (massive multiplayer online :P )

 

[PaasHaaS 81]

If it's Diablo specific that you're looking for, this might be of some use: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7004698754

(Do note it's a bit old)