Damage over time

Abbreviation for "Damage Over Time". Commonly used to describe skills that distribute damage to their target over a period time, rather than all at once.

Please note that there are two types of damage over time:


 * Continous health degeneration, as explained here, caused for example by spells like Conjure Phantasm or many Conditions like Bleeding.
 * Repeated damage in small discountinous portions, usually each second, for a certain amount of time, as caused for example by Balthazar's Aura, Chaos Storm, Eruption and many other spells, especially AoE spells.

These two must not be confused! The important difference between these two is that in the latter case, each portion of damage counts individually, so for example a protection spell or armor that "reduces damage", like for example Shielding Hands will reduce each small portion. Also, each portion triggers effects that are based on taking damage, like for example Healing Seed or Balthazar's Spirit, as opposed to continous health degeneration, which triggers the effect only once (or not at all?).

Some people exclusively mean health degeneration when they say damage over time.