TR capstones broken.

kosmos1988

The saboteur capstone "One with the shadows" does not fully refill the stealth bar. The same time you throw and encounter to deal dmg and refill your stealth meter, he might deflect and get a fey thistle off and boom, you do not get your stealth refill. We never had this issue with the old profound sets. I cant imagine this is how it should be.

Shadow of demise is also acting wierd. It is supposed to add the "SOD" with powers from stealth. Powers = At-wills, encounters & dailies. Now it only reacts to encounter powers from stealth. Our stealth meter is still getting its regeneration interrupted when we take dmg, and i think the "you regenerate stealth 20% faster thing" is not working either. Also the "SOD" can only be applied to 1 target insted of multiple targets.

wentris

One with the Shadows was always bugged like that. The only reason it refilled whole bar in mod 5 was profound set, because of +30% stealth. If you had swashbuckling captain/black ice/white ice set you always had this problem.

SoD is one of the most bugged skills in Neverwinter history, its probably not WAI, or its mechanic is very unclear. I wish it was brought back to Mod 5 state minus bugs but I think devs may be scared of touching it again not to break it in multiproccing state again

topynokattivo

It does not even proc on every encounter (not on smoke bomb at least).

SoD used to be a significant part of PvE dps output in mod5, this bug is greatly reducing Executioner performance.

Any acknowledgement would be much appreciated.

samothrace22

A fix for next module would be nice! A none functioning capstone is pretty big

kvet

Can someone please write up some instructions I can use to replicate this? I'm not particularly familiar with TR so if you could provide some instructions on what one would need to do in order to prove this one way or the other, I'd appreciate it. Thanks

kvet

kosmos1988 wrote: »

The saboteur capstone "One with the shadows" does not fully refill the stealth bar. The same time you throw and encounter to deal dmg and refill your stealth meter, he might deflect and get a fey thistle off and boom, you do not get your stealth refill. We never had this issue with the old profound sets. I cant imagine this is how it should be.

On the first part of this, here's what I did:

1. lvl 63 Saboteur TR vs a target dummy. No gear, no companion
2. Entered stealth
3. Waited for stealth meter to nearly expire
4. Fired off lashing blade and hit target dummy

Observed Result:
Stealth bar refilled as expected. I did not appear to receive the 20% damage buff, however upon further review of the underlying data, it appears I actually did.

Here's what happened when I didn't use OwtS:


Here's what happened when I did:


You have to ignore Lashing Blade since that was the first attack and was the trigger for OwtS. I'm also ignoring Shadowy Opportunity because it proc'd from Lashing Blade while I was in Stealth. Luckily, that damage is called out, which makes it easy to separate. Also my crit rate was a bit higher with the buff and I hit two extra times with the buff, so I'm going to call this a margin of error of +/- 5%.

So, with those caveats:

With buff, sly flourish did: 74969
Without the buff, it did: 58753

That's an improvement of 21.6% damage with the buff, well within the margin of error.


NOW.

You said "he might deflect and get a fey thistle off"

Can you provide more details about this? Exactly what is the scenario you feel isn't working as intended? Is it that you've noticed that if the attack that procs OwtS is deflected, it doesn't actually function?

(I'll dig into SoD later - have to respec and I'd rather not do that until I have this one sorted)

kvet

topynokattivo wrote: »

It does not even proc on every encounter (not on smoke bomb at least).

Smoke bomb, itself, doesn't cause damage. It apply a DoT poison affect, so it stands to reason it wouldn't proc OwtS. The same is true for Path of the Blade. It spawns an AoE DoT but it doesn't actually target an enemy, so therefore doesn't trigger OwtS.

Wicked Reminder, Lashing Blade, Blitz and Impact Shot both work exactly as expected. Stealth is refilled and stealth is maintained
Dazing Strike and Deft Strike also refills the bar but forces you out of Stealth anyway.

I didn't bother testing Shadow Strike for obvious reasons.

I believe Dazing Strike and Deft Strike are not working as intended.

kvet

I just realized I had another TR that was already an Executioner.

My initial tests against combat dummies don't seem to work and I'm not seeing anything in the ACT log related to SoD. There is some sort of debuff icon on the dummy that lasts for some time - way longer than 6 seconds so I don't think it's SoD - but ACT isn't picking up any damage when the debuff expires and I don't see any damage floaters or any buff indicators on myself that would indicate any sort of stealth regen.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the mechanics at play to day for certain what's suppose to actually happen here. I'd appreciate any pointers. I know from recent personal experience that SoD does work at least somewhat because I see it hit me.

EDIT:
I got it to proc with Lashing Blade. At wills definitely do NOT proc it, nor does Dazing Strike and Deft Strike. Need to finish respec'ing to test more. I'm tired of doing this for the day - I'll pick it back up tomorrow.

strumslinger

]Thanks for tackling this, @kvet!

vedran541

One with the Shadows is broken in PvP at least. Because of the proccs people have from getting hit.

Example, when i use dazing to refil my stealth, the enemy will procc Fet Thistle on me, and instantly my refilled stealth will drop below 100% making it impossible to stealth without doing a dodge or using shadowstrike, depending on how much my stealth meter would deplete.

This was not a problem before mod 6 because fey thistle did not do enough damage. But now it does, and its kinda annoying.

I really hope they fix this.

I do not speak for PvE as i never do it.

hedgebet

I don't even play with a capstone at the moment.

With the bugs I get with companion active bonus causing my TR to become a priority target while stealthed, sab is of no benefit.

With the wasted interaction with skullcracker and my most commonly used powers, scoundrel is of no benefit and one can achieve 67% of the run speed bonus from simply obtaining the Giant Strider mount.

With the unpredictable and/or hard to utilize action of SoD I can get far more reliable and controllable damage from avoiding it and investing the points elsewhere -- and let us not even bring up the often wasted Shadowborn that is used to no value on a dot tick.

I am not saying the capstones are of no value to all as I can see where they would be. If one is deliberate and waits and pauses and sets up things you can make great use of them -- at the expense of overall damage and activity that is.

kosmos1988

I think the One with the shadows dmg buff is supposed to increase your encounter damage for 10 seconds for 20%, and not the at-will dmg. So if you throw a smoke bomb to proc the one with the shadows, re-enter stealth and do your lashing blade, you can probably see a difference in dmg there, compared to just a "stealth + lashing" for example.

The problem with the stealth part, To replicate it. I think it will be easiest to replicate it VS players. I notice it happends alot for me in PVP. If i fight a trapper HR or a Conqueror GF or BOTH. Since they have some DOT stuff going on with "jagged blades or thorned roots or fey thistle & the avalance boon or what ever." Any forms of damage while you try to get your stealth meter back by using a encounter power, you wont get the full stealth bar back, and you have to dodge 1-2 times with your "heroic feat = twilight adept" depending on how much stealth you lost during that "failed stealth refill". It kinda kills the Dazing strike & shocking execution opportunity.

kosmos1988

The Owts works, its just that sometimes it just gives you like 90-95% stealth back insted of 100% stealth. And sometimes, lets say i do a 1vs2 fight at the far node. I drop a smoke bomb, and i notice i only get like 90-95% stealth, and all of a sudden the HR pops arrows in me, and now my stealth meter is down to 70%~ and now i need to dodge maybe 2-3 times to regain my stealth meter to full or do a shadow strike. This issue never appeared with the old profound sets because we had 20-30% more stealth meter, we always got our full stealth bar when we procced our Owts. I think it is related to us taking damage at the exact time we proc our Owts.
Either way, it breaks the dazing strike/smoke bomb, shocking execution combo pretty often.
You land your dazing strike and you are about to do a shocking and you notice you did not get your full stealth meter back, and now you need to call if off.

samothrace22

Yep, us pvp rogues know the best about this bug as it happens to us all the time. So hopefully Strumslinger still reports this to the devs

kvet wrote: »

Smoke bomb, itself, doesn't cause damage. It apply a DoT poison affect, so it stands to reason it wouldn't proc OwtS.

I believe Dazing Strike and Deft Strike are not working as intended.

Smoke bomb does indeed proc it and no, dazing strike is not yet working (as in yes it procs it but doesn't fill the stealth bar all the way)

wentris

kvet wrote: »

I just realized I had another TR that was already an Executioner.

My initial tests against combat dummies don't seem to work and I'm not seeing anything in the ACT log related to SoD. There is some sort of debuff icon on the dummy that lasts for some time - way longer than 6 seconds so I don't think it's SoD - but ACT isn't picking up any damage when the debuff expires and I don't see any damage floaters or any buff indicators on myself that would indicate any sort of stealth regen.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the mechanics at play to day for certain what's suppose to actually happen here. I'd appreciate any pointers. I know from recent personal experience that SoD does work at least somewhat because I see it hit me.

EDIT:
I got it to proc with Lashing Blade. At wills definitely do NOT proc it, nor does Dazing Strike and Deft Strike. Need to finish respec'ing to test more. I'm tired of doing this for the day - I'll pick it back up tomorrow.

Dazing strike procs it on 1 target. If you hit 3 dummies 1 should get the debuff. The thing is it seems to prioritize targets with low hp, so if you hit 3 targets and 1 of them dies from dazing strike itself and 2 survive - the dead target still gets SoD mark, but since its dead it doesnt mark anything. Same with Blitz

Smoke bomb - if you cast it out of stealth and then go stealth its going to mark 1 target on 1st tick of smoke bomb that hit after you entered stealth - same rule as above. It does not work at all if you cast smoke bomb under stealth. However I think there is something wrong here. Often when I make combo like: (stealth) lashing blade -> (out of stealth) smoke bomb -> something to regain stealth (invisible infiltrator/shadow strike/lurkers assault) -> stealth while old SoD is running -> old SoD procs and smoke bomb still ticks -> new SoD is applied -> new SoD never triggers... just vanishes, maybe even right after its applied I just see red sign Shadow of Demise. Maybe even normal application (smoke bomb out of stealth + going stealth) doesnt do anything except of showing red sign of shadow of demise I learned not to mix these 2 in any rotation.
However if I go like: (stealth) lashing blade -> something to regain stealth -> stealth while old SoD is running -> old SoD proc -> (stealth) wicked reminder -> new SoD is applied and works as expected.
Same rule as with Smoke Bomb may apply tu path of blades, but I dont even have it leveled to check.

Dailies dont proc SoD as well as at-wills. What I miss most in PvE is Whirlwind of Blades applying SoD on group of enemies

Deft strike - I havent tested it but I guess the issue could be that you leave stealth before applying damage?

rustlord

Just stumbled on this thread today. Will do some testing and chime in about SoD. I've used it to some extent, but I want to gather some numbers to post first. Will be back later.

kvet

The sense I'm getting is that there's no firm understanding of the expected behavior of these two powers. It's hard to know for sure whether they're working as intended or not when all we have is speculation around what powers are supposed to proc them and when...

rustlord

So, went ahead and tried Shadow of Demise on all powers. Log below. As for the "generate Stealth 20% faster" it doesn't work.

Normal regen; about 8 seconds
SoD buff; about 8 seconds
TC slotted; about 6.8 seconds.

* Doing relative tests with 4/4 Tenacious Concealment to establish comparison; generate stealth 15% faster,
* Using cooldown on Lashing Blade as timer, from 20 to 12

Taking damage still interrupts stealth regeneration. Ask the Owlbear I was with on Spinward Rise today. 10K hits within the 6 seconds SoD frame, definitely interrupted and reduced my Stealth bar. On the other hand, there is no 'noticeable interruption' in the regen when I take damage anyway--stealth goes down and regens back up. Same with or without SoD active.

My combat log for encounter power tests;

http://pastebin.com/TjGxqb2g

kvet

You need to run tests without any gear, feats or boons. It's impossible to pinpoint problems if other powers or items are also potential contributing factors. There are issues in particular with the Lostmauth set, so to me any tests that aren't related to that set, but USE that set are immediately suspect. The first thing you need to do is respec without selecting any feats or boons or powers other than the absolute min possible. Slot no gear other than your weapon (no enchant in this case) and put all your companions on the inactive list (unsummoning doesn't count - you need to be rid of their active powers too). Then, when selecting feats choose only feats that don't proc anything or that proc on powers you won't be using for this test.

Basically, if you can't be sure what you're seeing isn't actually caused by some unexpected intermix of powers, feats and gear, then you can't reliably describe the specific defect because you can't be sure what it's root cause is.

rustlord

Redone those dummy tests with a base character; fresh respec, no gear, artifacts, companions, just main hand without enchantment.

http://pastebin.com/2dcmJNYS

Results are all the same.

On the matter of OwtS vs Fey Thistle, I have observed this a lot in PvP. When you activate OwtS with a power that gets deflected, you will trigger Fey Thistle on yourself, damaging both you and your Stealth bar. This seems to happen concurrently 100% OwtS refill - Fey Thistle. So you end up with a ballpark estimate 97, 98% stealth meter, therefore unable to restealth.

When you activate OwtS on leaving Stealth (with Lashing Blade for example) sometimes it will refresh your stealth meter and you stay stealthed, whilst other times you will drop from stealth with a full meter.

kvet

That's interesting! So, it looks like SoD is proc'ing most of the time, there's just a few attacks that don't cause it to proc.

On OwtS, I'm not convinced that's not WAI. It appears that OwtS procs first, refills stealth but the fey thistle procs and damages you, this freezing the recharge of your stealth meter, causing it to remain below 100%. While certainly inconvenient for a stealth-based TR, that doesn't sound like a bug to me. After all, damage is SUPPOSED to reduce or prevent the recharge of, the stealth meter. That said, an argument could be made that the power should set the meter to 100% directly, at which point the meter isn't affected by damage. In THAT case, this would indicate a bug.

I think it would be a good idea to see if someone from Cryptic can shed some light on the intended behavior here. I think it's impossible for us to know if these are bugs or just very weird aspects that are WAI.

beckylunatic

Well, there is the matter of SoD being supposed to nullify stealth loss from damage. The understanding was that's an always-on effect, like Scoundrel movement speed.

wentris

Also there were random unexpected behaviors between SoD + Lurkers Assault. They appeared and disappeared through patches (everything happened after mod 6). Some examples:
1. SoD Mark canceled Lurkers Assault Stealth regen - When you used LA and then cast encounter that marked a target with Shadow of Demise there was no additional stealth regen from LA at all - until mark expired, then everything got back to normal.
2. Sometimes if you cast LA, marked something with SoD, replenished your stealth with something and cast other encounter - the other encounter didnt make you leave stealth. You had like 5% stealth left but you were still invisible.
3. Sometimes if you cast LA, marked something with SoD your stealth stopped regenerating at all. You were stuck with, for example, 50% stealth and nothing could regen it, not even skills like Invisible Infiltrator/Shadow Strike. It persisted through death (both soulforge proc and real death with respawn on campfire). It started working again after some time (10 minutes or so).

I think the mechanic of SoD isnt WAI but you can, moreover, get used to it and use it in way that will bring expected results. It, however, IS crippled and limits your gameplay and rotations heavily. Judging by number of bugs and fixes which happened to this skill and very weird interactions between skills - I think devs are also not sure how exactly this skill works - and that may be main reason its not being fixed for so long.

Also, because of bug #1 I think SoD stealth regen/protection from stealth loss isnt permanent. It works only if there is a target marked with SoD. Which is odd, because you would usually need it most when you want to apply SoD again, not when its already applied. The autotargeting of SoD with AoEs is also odd, because it makes mark last very short/not be applied at all.

P.S. Everything I say is about PvE, I dont know much about this skill in PvP

rustlord

I use SoD on a PvP build. On one account, I don't feel like the piercing damage from it is underperforming, since it still is a net 50% damage increase. On the other hand, it calculates the damage post-mitigation, so (in some points of view) it may stand to reason that the damage being calculated was already post mitigation therefore saying that it is piercing damage is just sugarcoating it. If it were to fall in the piercing category, we might observe something similar to the firewheel bug, 30% of the damage pre-mitigation.

But what I am tackling here is not a performance change, but semantics and tooltips. Said "piercing damage" by SoD should just be reworded to additional 50% bonus damage. The way SoD damage is calculated (post-mitigation and all) makes it arguable whether or not it can be classified as true piercing damage. However, the term "piercing" puts SoD into the subject of "nerf piercing" which I'm inclined to propose is unfair treatment for an already-malfunctioning capstone.

rustlord

I had an interesting conversation about this feat with a friend last night, and I did some testing on that today. My previous tests showed that the stealth part of the Executioner capstone was bugged. Those tests followed that "stealth bonuses were active only when SoD buff is active," hence during those 6 seconds.

I went on to test whether these bonuses were "always on". To reproduce comparable data, what I did was (1) respec my character to base, no gear and feats added and (2) added feat points to reach the capstone.

Findings;

- The base stealth refill is 10 seconds. With or without Improved Cunning Streak, which simply prolongs the duration of stealth, not its regeneration.

- When feated with the Executioner capstone, the refill takes 8 seconds. With TenCon 15% stealth being multiplicative, this can be further reduced to 7 seconds.

- Also without the capstone, taking damage interrupts stealth refill for about 2 seconds. With the capstone, after taking damage the stealth refill fires back up iimmediately.

My conclusion is that the stealth bonuses from the capstone are always on and WAI.