Clipping DoTs

[Felycitas]

Specifically.. Devouring Plague.

Why is clipping it a bad thing?

[MellvarTank]

It ticks once on the very last second, so you miss a tick.

[Felycitas]

If I never go out of mana.. is it the loss of a GCD (that could be spent using Mind Flay) that's causing the loss of DPS?

[MellvarTank]

For shadow priests as far as I know it is all about timing. (I don't play one myself, but locks have to worry about dots as well)

Changing the timing (GCD) on a priest would impact your DPS quite heavily from what I have read.

[HDEagle71]

Dots as I play a lock (affliction) and have to watch this close.

More DPS = no clipping better to refresh a DoT after it is complete vs before.

Why IMO on what I have read and view on how each DoT works.
My example not using real spells
DoT #1 does 1000 damage on cast and 1000 additional damage over 12 seconds= Ticking for 250 every 3 seconds = 12 second total DoT
Time = 12 Seconds damage = 1000 (initial cast damage)
Time = 9 Seconds damage = 250
Time = 6 Seconds damage = 250
Time = 3 Seconds Damage = 250
Time = 0 Seconds Damage = 250
Total Damage 2000

If you clip the dot at Time = 1 seconds you wasted 2 seconds of the DoT in which case you could have casted a 2 second long spell that is direct damage or something else to increase your DPS. Clipping right before the damage ticks in this case for this spell will loose you 12.5% of your total Damage for this DoT.

The more Dots you Clip you could be loosing 12.5% across the board thinking of that as a Lock I do 7K or more on bosses depending on movement so 12.5% of 7,000 = a loss of 875 DPS over a 2 minute fight that = 105,000 damage nothing to scoff at. (this is not including buffs, flasks, trinkets etc it scales up to larger losses if you think of that as well)

I am not sure what the loss is if you wait 1 second after each DoT to refresh but you will not loose near as much DPS.

Also in the above example if your DoT does not do 1000 damage at cast and only does 1000 damage every 3 seconds for 12 seconds then you loose 25% of the damage by clipping which will really start to be a DPS loss.

From what I have read if you have to clip a DoT you want to do it just after one of the ticks, I use DoT Button Addon ( I think that is the name) it shows you the tick marks . This way you are not wasting that 2 second or more gap between ticks.

When in doubt cast a direct damage spell then come back to the DoT and get a DoT timer that works for you I had to search for one that allowed me to click the icon next to the DoT bar to cast again. I use hot keys, click on the Addon Icon and Click on the normal bar icon what ever is working to get that spell cast fastest.

Does this help or is it a bunch of crap that is not well explained?

[Quinafoi]

Damage over time abilities are largely measured by their DPET, damage per execution time.

Lets say you have a DoT that lasts 15 seconds and ticks every 3 seconds. You have no haste at all and your execution time is 1.5 seconds for the base global cooldown. If it does 3,000 damage per tick for a total of 15,000 damage, the damage per execution time of the ability is 10,000 (the execution time of an instant is the global cooldown). If you clip the last tick to recast the spell, your prior cast has had its total damage reduced by 3,000, making the damage per execution time 8,000.

The actual contribution of this ability towards your total DPS has been reduced by 20%, because you wasted 20% of the damage that would have been done. In actuality, it actually costs you more than this because of the time since the last tick also being wasted. You not only pay the loss of damage of that tick, but you pay the loss of damage of the time passed leading up to that tick. In this simple case, 20% loss is a theoretical minimum. If you delay 2.9 seconds before cliping the DoT for example, the actual amount of damage per execution time wasted is 5.9, the loss is 5,900 damage towards your damage total in the damage per execution time, or lowering the DPET of your ability to 6,067, almost a 40% drop. You only actually lost 3,000 damage for the one tick, however, you lost more damage in the time you wasted. You didn't just waste the damage of the tick, but the time leading up to the tick.

This ability does 1,000 DPS (15,000 damage over 15 seconds) added to your other spells while you are casting. So effectively while this debuff is actively running, you increase your DPS during that timeframe by 1,000. If there is a delay of say 1.5 seconds before you renew your DoT after it expires (you can expect to spend at least ong global cooldown to make sure not to clip your DoT), you deal 15,000 damage every 16.5 seconds with it, so it contributes a total of 909 towards your total DPS for the fight. Now, if we clip the DoT and lets say you are perfect and renewed it at exactly 12 seconds. Your DPS contribution of this ability towards your total DPS is 1,000 because it is never down and never any wasted time leading to the next tick. Where is the loss you ask? You haven't reduced the DPS of the DoT any, but you have decreased the damage per execution time of it. Now here is how that plays in. On that 12 second cycle, you spent 1.5 seconds on a GCD at the start for putting up the DoT. Now lets say you case 7 1.5 second cast direct damage abilities that deal an average of 6,000 damage. 6,000 / 1.5 is 4,000 damage per execution time of your spammed spell, and 4,000 DPS if you only spammed that spell. 6,000 * 7 + 12,000 is how much damage you deal in your 12 second rotation with cliping of your DoT. That is 54,000 damage, or 4,500 DPS over the 12 second rotation. Now back to the first case with letting the DoT run the full duration but having a 3 second delay in renewing it (16.5 second long rotation). That one has 6,000 * 10 + 15,000 or 75,000 total damage over 16.5 seconds for 4,545 DPS. You increased your DPS by 1% by not clipping your DoT, even when you were absolutely perfect at clipping your DoT at the ideal moment. If you cast one additional spell on your clipping rotation for 6,000 * 8 + 12,000 over a 13.5 second interval, because of the additional 1.5 seconds of the last DoT tick wasted you would drop to 4,444 DPS (down another percent because of the partial tick wasted).

Even if you can clip your DoTs perfectly, it will net you a loss in DPS, not because the DoT itself decreased in DPS, but because the damage per execution time decreased.

You only clip to renew DoTs early if...
1. There is a fight mechanic that prevents you from continuing DPS such as Putricide phase change or Icehowl knockback.
2. You are forced to move and don't have alternative instant cast abilities which can be used during movement.

As a very general point of view...
DoTs tend to have higher damage per execution time of direct damage abilities.
Direct damage abilities have higher DPS than DoTs.
There are exceptions to this general rule, for instance the Eclipse buff for a Balance Druid greatly alters the DPET of the direct damage casts such that they may overtake the DPET of the DoTs.

Because DoTs have higher DPET, they are higher priority casts because they will in the end deal more damage for the time spent casting it than a direct damage ability, but it takes time to deal that damage. Inbetween those high DPET attacks you favor your higher DPS attacks, direct damage attacks where DPET is directly equal to DPS. In the example above, that 4,000 DPS ability only did 4,000 DPET where as the DoT did 1,000 DPS but 10,000 DPET. The higher the DPET of an abiity, the higher it is in your priorities to use it. That's why when DoTs are down it is typically a high priority to renew them quickly.

[Indirect]

A lot of people talk about clipping... The best locks however will inevitably tell you losing 2 seconds on a CoA/Haunt/Etc because you clipped is much better than losing 4 seconds on a CoA/Haunt/Etc because you were getting off a non-crit shadowbolt.