I'd like to start an open discussion on the state of DOT builds in Diablo 4.
Due to the nature of D4's endgame where speed = efficiency, I wonder if DOT builds are left out in the cold and are a relic of an older time when the game (or the series) was slower.
The playstyle of many DOT builds, including the poison Spiritborn I'm playing right now in T12, seems to be to inflict enough DOT to ensure that the enemy will die (their health bar changes to a different shade of red and ticks down) before moving on to the next pack. After all, if you stay with the enemies and keep blasting them till they die in front of you then you might as well be playing a non-DOT direct damage build, right?
There are some problems with this when it comes to D4's endgame activities:
Pit - a 'time attack' activity where quick clear is needed. Also, if you apply DOT and move on you are at risk of missing the progress orbs dropped by DOT'd enemies who are dying several rooms back.
Undercity - as above, another time-based activity.
Infernal Hordes - another time-sensitive activity where you are incentivised to kill enemies as quickly as possible to spawn aether-generating events. DOT will always be slower and less efficient at Infernal Hordes than non-DOT here by its very nature.
Lair Bosses - even if you apply enough DOT to make the boss "moribund" (ie, they are certain to die after X number of seconds), they will still have their immunity phases where you are forced to interact with long mechanics (Harbinger, Butcher, Andariel, etc). Yet again DOT loses out to direct damage where the Lair Boss dies before getting a chance to do their mechanics and phases.
Anyway, I don't have any solutions for this - they're just some thoughts I had after playing a hell of a lot of poison DOT this season. It really feels like D4's "speedfarming" nature effectively is a disincentive to playing DOT. Happy to hear what others think.