[RollDeep]

Does THFs WSs count towards a THfs DoT?

[pathwriter]

That's a really odd way to put it, but any damage fundamentally contributes to damage dealt in a given space of time.

[RollDeep]

I'm being told that WSs dont fall in to the DoT pool because its spike / burst damage and that only melee damage goes in to DoT.

[Rikkitikkitavi]

I've never heard of any melee damage being classified as DOT. That's usually what we say for Bio/Dia/Burn etc.

[pathwriter]

It's an old FFXI habit, Rikki. A lot of players of this game, myself included, came to FFXI as their first MMO. The notion of "damage-over-time," which in American games has traditionally referred to spells like Bio and Burn, was applied to melee damage in the way that "damage per second" is generally used. Most FFXI players have moved away from our old habits, at least here on this side of the Pacific, but linguistic anomalies do not die easily.

Regardless, whether damage is "spike" or building over time, it all contributes to the damage and, thus, damage-over-time that a Thief produces. Any attempt to separate the two is arbitrary nonsense.

[RollDeep]

Thanks pathwriter, i knew it was nonsense, its just that i haven't played FFxi in 4-5 years so i wasnt 100% sure of my self. thanks.

[Rikkitikkitavi]

I'm still one of those guys that asks in LS "Which Dps job should I come as?" And people are like "DPS?". Old Wow habits.

I've played both games since they started, but I still can't remember us saying DoT in FFXI lol. I DO however remember when DRGs used to be boss, spamming penta every 5 seconds.

[synthetic]

yeah i catch myself saying dps sometimes too, habit from other mmo's. but dot's have always meant any spell that does damage over time, poison, bio, dia, etc. even in wow and eq2 dot's meant the same thing, i've never heard anyone refer to melee dmg as dot.

[pathwriter]

If I went waaaaaaaaay back in time in the Monk forums, I could find a bunch of posts talking about how Monk damage comes from "DOT" instead of weaponskills.

[NikosThePLDMan]

I still call the damage done between WSs DOT.

[Shamaya]

Oh my god. I remember a fucking retarded debate on vent, where two people argued for literally an hour, heated, on this.

It's just a manner of speech. DoT literally stands for "Damage over Time." This can be interpreted in many ways. For example:

DoT / "Overall DoT": All of the damage from a given source, done in any manner (bio, elemental magic, melee dmg, ws, ja, etc), over a given span of time. Literally #UnitsOfDamage/#UnitsOfTime.

a DoT. The 'a' is very important. When we speak of spells or abilities cast, and then an effect steadily ticking damage on its own (ie how 'poison' works in most video games), we call this /a/ DoT. Examples in FF are elemental DoTs such as frost, shock, etc.., bio/dia, poison..

Melee DoT: In an effort to describe damage in more intricate ways, we frequently talk of melee DoT vs ja/ws etc. Sometimes we leave out the 'melee' and just say DoT, meaning melee DoT (damage done from a melee's autoattack).

Etc etc etc: WS DoT, JA DoT...contributory DoT for lack of better words (bard buffs, etc). Spike Damage..

Spike Damage: Thought of as being different from melee DoT, though it can sometimes be hard to define exactly what is meant. Commonly thought of as big spells, WS, JA's like SA/TA/jump...etc


Also, DPS. DPS means Damage Per Second. Notated, Damage/Second ('per' is semantically equivalent to 'over'). DPS means essentially the same thing as DoT. It just prescribes a specific unit of time. So instead of Damage/Time we have Damage/Second. But from damage per second you can easily find damage per minute, damage per millisecond, etc, so it's fundamentally the same thing. To say that DPS isn't a form of DoT, in this sense, is tantamount to saying something like that a Hamburger isn't a type of food.

It's important to distinguish between literal meanings and conventional meanings (how we use the term in daily speech). In daily speech, by DoT we oftentimes mean "a DoT" and by DPS we often mean "melee DPS," so under that context DoT and DPS have very different meanings.



Easy answer:
WS's and JA's are part of your overall DoT.
WS's and JA's are not part of your melee DoT.