Thaumaturge wizard - Current bugs with smolder

bifflinculte

Heya folks.

In this post I’d like to report the current bugs with Smolder. This mechanic is supposed to be the first DPS source of thaumaturge wizard, but it’s affected by several bugs.

1) With the Directed Flames Feat on, normal Smolder deals 50% of its total damage instantly when applied, instead of 75%. Nevertheless, Rimefire Smolder correctly deals 75% of its total damage.

2) The Critical Conflagration class feature no longer adds smolder on mob groups with aoe spells. Only The main target gets affected. Area spells like Icy Terrain, Oppressing Force also add smolder on only 1 target (sometimes 2). During mod 16, this class feature was working fine.
This is annoying because it forces to add Smolder manually at the beginning of a fight.

3) Fireball (off-tab or tab) doesn’t add Smolder on targets affected by Chill, as do the other fire spells (Scorching Burst, Fanning the Flame and Furious Immolation).
If Critical Conflagration is on and you land on a critical, you will add Rimefire Smolder on the main target only (point 2).
Because of this issue, Fireball has to be cast prior to cold spells. But this cast will trigger normal Smolder with bugged magnitude when Directed Flames is on (point 1). So, in any situation, Fireball deals less Smolder damage as intended.

4) The Critical Conflagration class feature is supposed to add smolder “whenever you critically strike with one of your powers”. The arcane DOT encounter spells Ray of Enfeeblement and Entangling Force do not trigger Smolder after each critical hit, but only at 1st.

5) With Critical Conflagration on, Smolder triggered by critical hits from Magic Missile, Ray of Enfeeblement, Repel, Entangling Force and even Chilling Cloud cannot crit.

Please take a look at these issues.

If you have other bugs about Smolder or even Thaumaturge to report in this discussion, feel free to do so.

masteroga

4) probably isn't a bug. For the most part only Entity skills can multi-proc things. If you let any normal damage source multi-proc you run a greater risk of damage loops or broken mechanics from happening

bifflinculte

masteroga said:

4) probably isn't a bug. For the most part only Entity skills can multi-proc things. If you let any normal damage source multi-proc you run a greater risk of damage loops or broken mechanics from happening

Conduct of Ice only adds smolder once, however it triggers Smolder on each critical tick with Critical Conflagration on. There's no reason the Ray of Frost and Entangling Force dot spells don't do so. “whenever you critically strike with one of your powers” is a very clear description.

In the same way, each critical tick of Icy Terrain and Oppressive Force arcanist's can trigger Storm Spell, while Ray of Frost and Entangling Force can only trigger once.

nitocris83

Sharing thread with the rest of the team for review/investigation.

dontez1

Ray of Frost-
Conduit of Ice-
Icy Rays-
Icy Terrain- procs on the first tick ONLY
None do weapon enchant damage..ie the 5% damage from the weapon enchant (Vorpal)

mebengalsfan

dontez1 said:

Ray of Frost-
Conduit of Ice-
Icy Rays-
Icy Terrain- procs on the first tick ONLY
None do weapon enchant damage..ie the 5% damage from the weapon enchant (Vorpal)

I thought part of the fix for wizard with mod 17 was that only the first tick of a DoT when playing as Thaum and using Crit Conflag would proc smolder. As well Ray of Frost would only proc it once until the timer for the at will is held down is reset automatically.

dontez1

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

dontez1 said:

Ray of Frost-
Conduit of Ice-
Icy Rays-
Icy Terrain- procs on the first tick ONLY
None do weapon enchant damage..ie the 5% damage from the weapon enchant (Vorpal)

I thought part of the fix for wizard with mod 17 was that only the first tick of a DoT when playing as Thaum and using Crit Conflag would proc smolder. As well Ray of Frost would only proc it once until the timer for the at will is held down is reset automatically.

This has nothing to do with that.. These encounters DO NOT proc Weapon Enchant Damage from Vorpal..


Ray of Frost- No Vorpal Damage...


[Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Your Ray of Frost deals 14396 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Your Rimefire Smolder deals 15866 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Your Ray of Frost deals 13045 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Your Ray of Frost deals 6367 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Your Shatter deals 69225 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Your Ray of Frost deals 7315 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Your Ray of Frost deals 6751 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Your Ray of Frost deals 6195 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.


Chill Strike - It Does Vorpal Damage!

Combat (Self)] Your Chill Strike deals 51375 Cold Damage to Target Dummy.

[Combat (Self)] Your Vorpal Weapon deals 2312 Arcane Damage to Target Dummy.


Do I need to list all of these again... I made a thread of these before.. Not the first time...


https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1249113/bugs-with-wizard-and-no-weapon-damage-procs-and-no-ap-gain

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serpeer

At will stuck toon, it's a very old bug:

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1247639/mof-cw-stuck-master-expedition-and-relog-issue

masteroga

@nitocris83 any word on This? Getting kinda close to console release date without any PC fixes yet....

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texerret

according to game tootlips every dot that can crit should procc smolder with critical conflagration.
in case of RoF some players (non wizard) were complainning it procced smolder like 7 times... to which i always replay it should procc once for ever chill stack till 6 stacks are reached. and then once for every crit.
So in the hypotetical case of RoF critting in its entirety it should proc atleast 12 times (considering 6 chill stacks and 6 crittical hits ) which doesnt.
and so on and so forth with all the other DoT spells wizard have.

masteroga

> @texerret said:
> according to game tootlips every dot that can crit should procc smolder with critical conflagration.
> in case of RoF some players (non wizard) were complainning it procced smolder like 7 times... to which i always replay it should procc once for ever chill stack till 6 stacks are reached. and then once for every crit.
> So in the hypotetical case of RoF critting in its entirety it should proc atleast 12 times (considering 6 chill stacks and 6 crittical hits ) which doesnt.
> and so on and so forth with all the other DoT spells wizard have.

Critical Conflagration has nothing to do with chill stacks. Critical Conflagration simply says if you deal a crit hit, you apply smoulder....nothing more and nothing less.

As far as chill....there is NO LIISTED MECHANIC on the wizard that says applying chill will apply smoulder. The closest you get is the tooltip on smoulder saying applying chill REFRESHES smoulder duration.

bifflinculte

Here we go with other huge bugs on Smolder in aoe situation, when you add chill (so, all the time). Tests done on close dummies, but I observed the same on regular foes. Critical Conflagration off, anyway it's bugged too (see first post).

o Directed Flames feat off:

- Adding smolder with any aoe fire spell followed by adding chill with any aoe cold spell on several targets => only refreshes smolder to rimefire on 1 target and kill smolder on other targets. All targets get chilled as intended.

- Adding adding chill with any aoe cold spell followed by a cast of any aoe fire spell on several targets => adds rimefire/smolder only on 1 target.


o Directed Flames feat on (it becomes even funnier):

- Adding smolder with Fireball/Scorching Burst followed by adding chill with any aoe cold spell on several targets => only refreshes smolder to rimefire on 1 target and kill smolder on other targets. All targets get chilled as intended.

- Adding smolder with Furious Immolation followed by adding chill with any aoe cold spell on several targets => stacks smolder and rimefire smolder on 1 target and keeps smolder (no rimefire refresh) on other targets. Targets affected by both type of smolder get double debuff from Swath of Destruction passive spell (old pre-mod 16 bug).

- Adding adding chill with any aoe cold spell followed by a cast of Fireball on several targets => adds rimefire/smolder at all. Casting Furious Immolation or Scorching Burst will add smolder on all targets. In this case, Furious Immolation doesn't cause stacking of Smolder and Rimefire Smolder.


To put it in a nutshell, Smolder is completely broken. I can't tell if only a part or all these bugs were already present at launch of mod 16 or are a consequence of recent smolder nerf, anyway they ruin the thaumaturge paragon wether for aoe or boss fights. Smolder mechanics are great and shouldn't be changed, but their implementation is just terrible and have to be reworked.

quickfoot

A lot of these bugs were introduced when they tried to "fix" the dps of thaum in m17 and the multiprocing of directed flames in combination with crit conflag.

As far as coding is concerned, part of the problem may have been from the way they "refresh" rimefire when chill stacks are added. If they replace an existing instance of rimefire with a new instance for example:

critter.effects.smolder = new smolder(args...);

... That would proc directed flames in "on_smolder" handler code. Instead something like

critter.effects.smolder.timer = SMOLDER_BASE_DURATION_CONSTANT;

... probably wouldn't proc directed flames as it wouldn't trigger any "on_smolder" handler code.


Also. I can only imagine how ugly and unperformant the code is they used to "fix" crit conflag, with if, then conditions that are unfriendly on the server cpu's branch prediction, to determine which critter is the "target" of aoe spells. I strongly suspect that whatever they did in crit conflag's code and in any "on_crit" handlers will contribute to technical debt which will make future maintenance of that code more and more difficult as they try to "fix" things, making it harder to meet deadlines. Many times taking some extra time to really fix an issue elegantly and missing one deadline, will make future coding much smoother and reduce cost on the company in the long term.

What I would of done, is fix the issue with chill procing directed flames if the situation is like I suspect and explained above, and in the preview forums before m17 was released. I can only suspect as I can't read the source code, but from playing the game I strongly suspect something along these lines is happening in relation so chill and smolder/directed flames mechanics.

An extremely easy to code and maintain solution to the strong dps of the crit conflag - directed flames combo, is to reduce the directed flames feat affect on smolder by another 10-25% (i.e. somewhere between 50% to 75% of smolders damage). Just change one number and tweak it so that the dps of that build style is more in line with what is intended, instead of the mess they made with crit conflag and adding some icd to smolder.


Just my 2c for what it's worth.

bifflinculte

I think you're right, most of bugs appeared when they started nefing thauma paragon.

They made a great job by reworking former Master of Flame paragon, obbviously. Maybe it was too powerful (highly arguable when you compare with other dps classes, imo). But as often, between keeping things working and ruining them, the second choice is made.

mrx2

Sad story thaumaturge everytime, why everytime didn't fix bug game develepors ?
Why 190k power barbarian does more damage for thaumaturge ?
Developers didn't fix any bug for thaumaturge ...

coolgor28

> @mrx2#5341 said:
> Sad story thaumaturge everytime, why everytime didn't fix bug game develepors ?
> Why 190k power barbarian does more damage for thaumaturge ?
> Developers didn't fix any bug for thaumaturge ...

Hm on what content and why not? 🤔

bifflinculte

mrx2#5341 said:

Sad story thaumaturge everytime, why everytime didn't fix bug game develepors ?
Why 190k power barbarian does more damage for thaumaturge ?
Developers didn't fix any bug for thaumaturge ...

Don't speak too fast ! A major bug has been fixed on preview: Fireball now correctly procs smolder on chilled targets. This is a huge progress for aoe situations, since adding smolder on packs becomes 100 times easier.

However, there are still 99 other bugs to fix on thaumaturge. I've run a medium HE in stronghold, average delay between 2 smolder ticks on 10 mobs pack was over 1 sec, altough all mobs were affected by smolder. On lanch of mod 16, smolder was almost 50% of total dps. Now it's 10%, 20% by counting glowing flames...