Rotflares by the numbers

[Goat]

Basics

There are three components to a rotflare:

• Initial flare damage, average of 19 over 307 observations against polar bears/mammoths (and there's an injury, too). Seems independent of necro ranks. Edit: 20 average over 643 flares during normal hunting in capped areas.
• Visible damage over time, average of 7 over 29 observations (and injury too). Don't know if necro ranks matter. I suspect not.
• Invisible disease damage, ranging from 7-13 per with no necro ranks to 61-88 per with 180 ranks (no extra injury). Dissipating at 1-3 per round. This range holds for both weapons and runestaves.

Findings

Flare rate
Wyrom told me that the flare rate increases at 36, 136, and 171 necro ranks.

Ranks | Flares | Hits | Percent
0 | 15 | 53 | 28%
90* | 13 | 39 | 33%
136 | 42 | 100 | 42%
171** | 15 | 15 | 100%

*Going by Wyrom's word, this would be the same at 36 ranks.
*100% flares with a runestaff at 180 ranks - haven't tested thoroughly with any less.

I tested on polar bears and mammoths only, with a lance. I didn't count hits that both killed the target AND did not cause a flare, since damage flares can't happen then.

I also tested on players (or they tested on me) to get the disease amounts.

According to Wyrom, the visible DoT and disease cannot be re-applied to a target that is already experiencing them, and I haven't seen anything to contradict that. (Rotflares DoT seems not to conflict with 716 DoT.)

Damage over time
Happens three seconds after the first strike, and then every 10 seconds after that. Does not stack.

Disease
With no necro ranks, we saw a 10 per disease, dissipating at 2 per (2 trials).
With 180 necro ranks, we saw 79/3, 75/2, and 64/2.
The disease rounds are slow - 30 seconds per round. However, the first disease round happens when the first visible DoT damage occurs, which is right around 3 seconds after the first flare. Does not stack.

Opinion
If you can't find any TPs for necro ranks, it's really not going to be worth paying 50m+ for rotflares, unless you've got a weapon that you can't upgrade any farther and you have to take that opportunity to squeeze one more thing into it.

If you can do 36 necro ranks, then you'll flare a little more and your disease will get big enough to matter some. That's kind of cool, but still not worth spending a fortune on.

If you have 171 ranks, it's pretty great. Normal flares are about 25% proc on weapons, about 15% on runestaves. So it's a bit like having four flares added to your weapon or 6.7 added to your runestaff.

At first, I thought the huge disease wasn't useful - if you have to wait 30 seconds, everything will always be dead before it triggers. But now I see the first round happening 3 seconds in, and it's at like 3-4 times the damage of a normal flare. Nice! I can sometimes hit a triton (300 hp) for 220 normal damage on the first shot. Between the flare, disease, and first DoT, it's probably going to be dead before I'm out of RT.

I do appreciate the little damage over time, too... it does occasionally finish something.

Fun Fact
My only death crit in my first ~500 hits was on the very first test shot on Omrii - took his head, neck, and eye.

Thanks
My thanks to Omrii for being both an attacker and victim with my lance, and to Skarrd for keeping us healed. Thanks to Meb, Siierra, and Ragz for help in testing with my runestaff.

[Androidpk]

100% flare rate @ 171 ranks? Up from 42% @ 132? Seems wonky.

[Goat]

Another sorcerer has seen the same from 171. From Wyrom's own mouth:

Wyrom says, "172 is pretty much every swing."
(But he actually meant 171 and we cleared that up)
I added most of the conversation I had with him to https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Rotflares

[Androidpk]

Crazy. Basically becomes an immolation weapon, minus the wave action.

[Goat]

It could be that the actual flare table is 1 in 4, then 1 in 3, then 1 in 2, then 1 in 1. The largest error would be 8% on the 50% case. With 100 trials, that has a stddev of 5, which would yield an error of 8 flares about 5% of the time. Maybe not super-likely, but there's a pleasing aesthetic to it, so I wouldn't be surprised if he designed it that way. On next fixskill, I may do some more trials at the 136 level.

[caelric]

Wow. 100% flare rate. Possibly worth going that high in necro lore, although it means your demon lore is going to suck. OTOH, with that much necro lore, you will be harvesting necro juice pretty quickly

[caelric]

Also, I can confirm that rotflares ARE compatible with blink weapons (after looking at your convo with Wyrom, that wasn't mentioned) Getting a GM to add them to a blink weapon might be an issue, but they are compatible.

[Goat]

My demon lore already sucked, heh. No loss there. I just had to give up my fun mutant mstrikes, basically, to get from 90 to 180. That and some perception.

Re: blink and rot - Wyrom confirmed compatibility of a bunch of scripts on the officials during this Duskruin run. At first he said he wouldn't allow adding rotflares to blink weapons, but then said they were compatible. I wasn't entirely clear on whether he was also saying "and yes, I'll add rot to blink if you buy a certificate" but I think that's where he went with it.

I'd love to get blink, too, someday. But in the mean time, I can pretend I'm using a blink weapon with new 716 in it :-)

[caelric]

8x perfect blink T5 rotflares MCW greatsword for my hasted sorcerer. In Plat, though.

As I work up my necro lore, 100% rotflare rate would be awesome. Overkill, but still awesome

[thesupman]

8x perfect blink T5 rotflares MCW greatsword for my hasted sorcerer. In Plat, though.

As I work up my necro lore, 100% rotflare rate would be awesome. Overkill, but still awesome

What no permabless? Noob!