
Continuous Damage, also known as Damage Over Time or DOT for short, is a type of debuff in which the inflicted the monster takes 5% of its max HP in damage every turn that the debuff is in effect. Unlike most debuffs, Continuous Damage can stack up to the maximum debuff limit of 10 (although other debuffs will count towards this limit as well). Unlike most sources of damage, Continuous Damage is armor ignoring, and is not affected by skill effects that reduce damage.
Useful for[]
- Enemies with very high MAX HP
- Bypassing retributive skills
- Ally monsters whose damage is based on number of harmful effects
- Reducing the chance that enemy Veromos will remove a more important debuff
Continuous damage is useful for killing enemies that have very high MAX HP, for example, enemies found in the Trial of Ascension (Hard Mode), or, the Water Guardian. An attacking monster whose skills are based on ATK power might do an astonishingly high 30k damage, but if the target has 1 million HP, suddenly that 30k doesn't sound so great; compared to continuous damage which would deal 50k per turn in that case. (The Water Guardian has 1,665,900 MAX HP, and continuous damage ticks for 83,295 per turn.)
Continuous damage is also useful for bypassing enemy retributive skills. For example, in Dragon's Lair, the boss has an ability Disaster, "When a tower is destroyed, the dragon deals a deadly counterattack to the monster who dealt the final blow." But if the tower is destroyed by continuous damage, then no counterattack can happen. Other examples include the Reflect buff, and ....
Piling on the debuffs is also useful for raising the damage of monsters like Akhamamir and Kro. Continuous damage is a relatively common debuff, so you probably already have a monster that would make a good companion for Kro.
Piling on more debuffs is also useful for reducing the chance that the enemy's Veromos will remove a more important debuff, like defense break.
Countered by[]
- Before: Resistance / Immunity
- During: Invincibility / Endure
- After: Cleansing / Healing
As a debuff, Continuous Damage goes through all the usual steps of activation, resistance, and application. It cannot be applied if the target has Immunity. If the target has Invincibility, then any damage dealt will be reduced to zero. If the target has Endure, then the target may take damage, but its HP will not drop below 1. If the target has Defend, then ????.
Continuous damage can be removed like any other debuff, by monsters with "cleansing" skills such as Garuda (Water) - Konamiya, Ifrit (Dark) - Veromos, Fairy (Water) - Elucia, etc. (To find monsters with cleansing skills, use the Monster Filter Tool to search for the Remove Debuff ability.) And of course, if the damage does not kill you, it can simply be healed by any monster with a healing skill.
Since continuous damage deals damage at the beginning of a monster's turn, you'll want to remove it before that monster's turn comes up. Or, if it has a long duration, you can suffer it for one turn and still be able to remove it before taking even more damage again next turn. Or, you can forget about cleansing it from your team and just kill the enemy first!