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How do "on hit" effects, such as +life on hit or chance of fear per hit, work with channeled skills, such as Disintegrate or Rapid Fire? And how do they work with damage-over-time skills, such as Grasp of the Dead or Impale with Chemical Burn or just bleed damage from a weapon?

Specifically, if I have a lot of "on hit" effects, is it advisable to use a lot of channeled / DoT skills? Given that Rapid Fire attacks like 10 times faster than regular attacks, will I gain health faster if I use it with a "life-on-hit" modifier? I'm guessing the answer is some variation of "no", but will be happy to get more details about this.

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  • My guess (and it is only that) is that effects are triggered when an enemy takes damage. If you turn on damage display, you can see that damage happens discretely (at least for Rapid Fire).
    – MBraedley
    Jun 3, 2012 at 13:28

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It depends on the skill in question.

First off, channeled skills are exactly the same as normal skills in terms of triggering things, except you do not need to re-cast the ability between each tick. Each channeled skill has a "Tick" (that occurs more often the faster attack speed you have), and it is these ticks that trigger on-hit effects. Each "Tick" is when you pay the resource cost of the skill.

Now, whether channeled skills are better depends on the on-hit effect you're trying to use. Anything with a listed % chance on hit, e.g. 1.1% chance to fear on hit, will be better the more attacks/ticks you make. Something listed as a "chance to happen", such as the wizard's "Critical Mass" i. e., "Critical Hits have a chance to reduce the cooldown of your spells by 1 second. " are most likely set up for ppm (proc per minute), which means you have a better chance of triggering them with a slow weapon, with the intent that you get the same number of triggerings, procs, over any given time period as a faster weapon.

Lastly, bear in mind that all that matters is the "Tick" times. If Rapid Fire shoots 10 arrows per Tick, all 10 of those arrows represent a single chance on hit (much like the Monk's Way of a Hundred Fists)

So to conclude, no, it is not better to use lots of channeled / DoT skills, for the simple reason that they don't provide any innate advantage. Unless you're fishing for Procs, you'll gain a much better chance to trigger things by using a faster weapon than any particular ability.

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  • So assuming I attack twice per second, I use Rapid Fire, and my "fear on hit" modifier procced, does that mean all the enemies I manage to hit in the next 0.5 seconds with Rapid Fire will be feared?
    – Oak
    Jun 3, 2012 at 13:37
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    @Oak No. Rapid Fire basically spreads your chance to proc "fear on hit" over all the arrows launched in that .5 second period. So while you have the same "chance on hit" per tick, you have a greatly reduced "chance on hit" per arrow.
    – Raven Dreamer
    Jun 3, 2012 at 13:39
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I know the info is limited, but I did start a wiki page on it, so if you find some data, please add: http://www.diablowiki.net/On_Hit_Modifiers

Specific testing of Rapid Fire shows it grants LoH per tick.

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  • Please add your information to your answer.
    – Frank
    Jun 19, 2012 at 17:17

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