I wanted to start by saying that I was pleasantly surprised to see new monstrology categories added in this update. It was unexpected with everything else that was going into this release so kudos is deserved on this! I am most excited by the golem addition as there are so many great golems that can be added for various themes.
The suggestion comes from something that is needed to update the quality of life in the monstrology system. This coincides with the stat changes that will be occurring in future updates. I believe it is time to change how you collect the final monstrology animus for defeating an enemy. Currently the system only counts direct hits to a monstrology enchanted spell. This adds a challenge by replacing a damage enchant so you had to make adjustments to the reduced overall damage your spells did. But this leaves a glaring hole in the system when some spells that include a dot component do not count as the enchanted spell when the dot provides the damage that defeats the enemy.
I was test farming some golems in Celestia using a max ice wizard. I have worked hard to get a max critical and max damage set so that I can apply the most damage possible to monstrology enchanted spells. With critical being adjusted in this update, I can't always count on a critical doing 2x damage. This meant I couldn't use blizzard to collect animus so I thought I would try out Reindeer Knight. This would allow me to still cast my damage from round one and still be enough damage with the dot component to finish off any enemy that would block my crit multiplier and survive the initial damage. The problem is that the dot damage will not allow me to collect the extra animus for defeating enemies despite the fact that the dot was part of an enchanted spell.
I used an example of Reindeer Knight (Deer Knight would also apply) but there are other key spell break points that would be affected by this. I am sure many classes will have their examples of spells they would like to use but won't because it risks the dot getting the defeating damage. The clearest example might be fire wizards and something like Dragon, where the initial damage is good but the extra dot damage is best for cleaning up kills that may not get maximum crit multipliers.
I am guessing that this kind of change would not be as simple as stated here, but if we are changing how wizards are doing damage, then the monstrology community suffers as a result by not considering this change. Hopefully other monstrologists can add in their opinions on this to show how appreciated this change would be!
This! As someone who farms Medulla often for Pork and Beans animus, I use a Scald Strategy. It means more runs than I'd need to do, using another strategy. But at the same time, the scald strategy is the one that works best for me - I shouldn't really need to choose based simply on which hit I use. As one of only 18 people with the Illustrious Monstrologist Badge (According to Decius on September's KI Live) I think I can speak for most of the monstrology community, if not all, when I say this has been frustrating for us for some time. Fantastic suggestion!
As a myth wizard main I frequently find myself having to choose between Medusa and Basilisk as far as choosing between damage or animus. I'd fully support a DoT counting every tick as an "animus hit".
As a Storm Wizard without common access to DOT Spells, I cannot claim to experience these problems. However, as an avid Monstrologist, I can see how these changes would be significant. I encourage this change, in order to assist the Monstrology community.
