I just tried out my new Combusting Wounds spell, and the effect seemed to be rather underwhelming. I then noticed that my enemy has around the same damage reduction as the spell does damage over time.
Does the damage reduction apply fully to this kind of damage over time effect? If the DR is directly substracted from the damage per second value, this would make this kind of spell rather weak againt enemies with any significant DR.
How exactly do the mechanics work here?
The answer to your question, and the answer to your problem are two different things I think.
Damage Reduction seems to not be taken into account when dealing with Damage Over Time effects. I would be more certain of that if I had more than one DoT spell to hurt my team with, but Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon dealing supposedly Corrosive damage works the same whether my character wears +6 Corrosion DR armor or not.
In Combusting Wounds case... Directly testing it is impossible, it doesn't hurt allies. And however I look at it, the description seems wrong. If it were a DoT effect, we're lacking information about one time - either the time over which that 5 damage is distributed, or time the spell lasts.
What follows is a baseless conjecture
It is possible that this 5 damage gets lost - if it really is DoT it might (extrapolating from my experiences) apply wrong amount of damage, and disappear the reminder if timer is not in the correct by-3-divisivness. Or it might have a long timer (in the realm of 9 seconds, which would be about 2 per 3-second period), and not stack which would fit your experience of unimpressiveness.
Any way I look at it I think we will hear about DoT effects in patch notes sooner or later.
REGARDLESS of whether enemy DR applies to this spell there is a minimum dmg to all dmg done. I believe it's 20%. so if the enemy has 100 DR and ur spell does 5 dmg it will do 1 dmg.
