I did further testing and had to turn off monster power completely to see what was happening during actual game play. Without monster power enabled, I can see that it is working as intended from me just standing and not doing anything (not normal unless you are stun locked in place like if you are cc’d by certain affixes). At higher settings and/or with less damage mitigation, there’s a lot happening within each second. Without Prismatic Armor, I had very little margin for error once UA proc’d (I first tested with Storm Armor/Shocking Aspect and then Energy Armor/Prismatic Armor.
I have a minor amount of life regen which didn’t interfere much. I tested again on MP1 and during actual game play with Storm Armor, it looked like I died immediately after UA proc’d. But when I looked through my recording frame by frame, here is what I saw.
I went from 46k (full health) to 33k in one second. I dropped down to 20k at 1.2 seconds and then 7k at 1.66 seconds. From 1.66 to 2 seconds, I stopped taking damage from the first cloud. I resumed taking damage from the next plume and was at 7.1k health at 2.17 seconds (some life regen tick). At this point (based on the amount of damage occurring, it was considered fatal). At 2.2 seconds, UA proc’d and the amount of health points I received was 16.4k. It should’ve been 20.7k (45% of max health) but I believe the DoT was still taking place. If the DoT is stacking at that point (like in this case, multiple pods releasing poison) and you aren’t able to get out of that situation quickly enough (stop taking/reducing damage, popping a health pot, grabbing a health globe, gaining life from regen/attacks, etc), the safety net will only be a brief reprieve. With Prismatic Armor, the margin of safety increases a lot.
I’m not sure if the DoT not clearing once UA is proc’d is working as intended though (since in my case, that was still 4k of health lost). When I tested against a single Blazing Guardian, the DoT from the fire was steady and I received my 45% of maximum 20.7k health when UA proc’d.”
