Ghost roots cause reduced dot damage
 

The last couple months, a few people have been asking around on the forums about whether dot damage was nerfed or changed or bugged. People talking about how they used to kill X mob with A, B, C dots but now they need to recast one of them. People talking about two shaman epic clicks being enough for hill giants previously, but now they need three clicks. Etc

I suspected that "ghost root" was connected. Ghost root is when a mob that is aggrod on you and charging towards you gets rooted and then appears to continue running straight at you, then through you, then directly behind you off into the distance until you move your character. When you move, it reappears in the spot it actually was rooted at. (Ghost root seems to have some trick to reproducing. I can't always root a mob that is approaching me and get it to ghost. It seems like pulling with a non-damaging spell like malaise or cancel magic, then rooting, will always cause the ghost root, but pulling with body aggro then pulling distance to root, or pulling with a dot and rooting, doesn't ever/always cause the ghost.)


Anyway. I just performed a simple test on blue. A rooted Trissa Whistlesong takes 7 or 8% damage pet tick from Vampiric Curse. A kited Trissa Whistlesong takes 5% damage per tick from Vampiric Curse. This is expected behavior for blue, because of moving dot damage reduction.

However, a ghost rooted Trissa Whistlesong ALSO takes only 5% damage per tick from Vampiric Curse, even though she's actually rooted in place and should be taking 7-8% per tick. (I didn't test whether full damage begins happening if you move to end the ghosting or if the lower damage continues, and I'm too lazy to go check now.)

Please fix for those poor shmucks still not on green/teal (and I guess for us on green/teal too when we eventually get kiting dots nerfed).

Just wanted to bump this and confirm that the issue is still occurring since the latest patch. My experience is: if a mob is rooted while moving (path or aggro'd doesn't seem to make a difference) it will take the -1/3 DOT penalty. If it is rooted while still, it will take the full value of the DOT.

bump still an issue, still extremely annoying

The mobs get ghost rooted, run behind you, disappear and then you cannot land spells on them until you run into melee range. Kinda ruins solo classes, root rotting.

Silly question but is the DOT damage while moving reduction classic?

DoT damage is still buggy and will sometimes tick for the non rooted or feared damage, even when visually rooted.

The ghost root happens to me most often when I stand in place after root breaks and I root the mob (key is you can't move after you root it, but can mouse look and spin left/right) but instead of stopping I runs right through me and off into the distance when you turn around. The mob will warp back to his real position when you move but will tick for the reduced DoT damage for a moving target.

Video of mobs ticking for partial DoT damage while rooted

At 30s into the video you can see Chilling Embrace and Asystole ticking for ~4%, then at 50s I step into melee range to take a round of attacks and then get two DoT ticks for 6/7% like it should act if it was rooted. A natural root breaks at 57%, I root it before it attacks me and get 4% moving ticks after it was rooted.

Up if there is a chance of fixing that

I don't think it is the ghost root per se that is the problem.

If you root a moving mob it will take the reduced damage until/unless you engage it in melee. This is 100% reproducible. Root a non-moving mob and the problem does not occur. Have a mob break root and reroot it without stopping it via melee engagement and the problem occurs (this also can cause the ghost root effect).

If you realize mob is taking too little damage and engage even momentarily in melee it will start taking the correct damage.

The melee trick works, but is not ideal in some cases (e.g., WK ogres with HT).

Another work around is to use a nuke with a stun component after rooting (e.g., dizzying wind for druids). Dots should then take full damage.

Still not working after patch

Bump for visibility.