Runic Ward stacking and agro.

[Baccalarium]

<P>OK edit for thesis up front (since I don't think anyone is reading)</P> <P>Stacking of wards is broken. (as if it were ever fixed)   As many wards as you have on a friend will absorb the same incoming damage.    Since my understanding is that hate is generated when damage is absorbed by the wards (treating this as a heal)   then we can generate as much as 3x hate relative the actual useful absorbed damage by having runic,  agis,  and umbral wards all absorbing the same damage at once.</P> <P>This doesn't explain pull agro when when prepull wards are not used, but I wonder if the runic ward might generate hate both when it absorbs damage and when it regenerates.   This would give an additional bit of extra hate off runic.    But this is pure speculation with some other way to experiment.</P> <P>Less consice rambling follows:</P> <P> </P> <P>Ok this was going to be a post something like:<BR><BR><FONT face="Courier New">"Seems like dumping the quelling/accordant spirits right off the pull may be best.   If the tank doesn't get that AE taunt off quick enough and you have to start healing warding yourself, its going to get really ugly.   At a minimum, It seems like you need to cast the agro reducer before you do any self healing/self warding.   <BR><BR>This really does point to needing lower recast on the agro reducer line,  or less agro to begin with,   or a different line somehow tweaked specifically to reducing front end hate.   "<BR></FONT><BR>But now that I've been poking around in log files its going to be much different.<BR><BR>I think Sony blew it on stacked wards yet again.    This <A href="http://home.classicnet.net/dennisj/bufstack.log" target=_blank>log</A> (and <A href="http://home.classicnet.net/dennisj/bufstack.xls" target=_blank>xls</A>) would suggest that the ward component of our buf,  is not stacking properly.   In this example it would appear that both the buf ward and single target ward absorb the same damage,  and I would guess this generates an extra 42 points of heal agro for me every 6 seconds,  even though the single target ward would have absorbed.    There is some possibility that damage is portioned out to all wards on the target,   but the size of the numbers doesn't make it look that way.  <BR><BR>This doesn't likely explain all the agro we get,  as this is only a problem with stacking a ward on top of the runic buf and this shouldn't be the case at pull time.    The possibility that both the absorbtion of damage by the small buf ward, and the regneration of it every 6 seconds is generating agro for the mystic crosses my mind.<BR><BR>Not that its going to change, but if I was writing the code for wards my question would be what order should damage come off of wards.  Big options would be should it be a fixed order or related to when they were cast,  or perhaps distributed among all of them.  I'd probably throw distributing amoung all of them out quick as being  harder to write the code for.<BR><BR>If it was a fixed order,  I'd have to make it come off of the buf ward first since the buf would be meaningless otherwise,  and off the single target next since its heal component would be wasted if covered by the group ward, and finally off the group ward.<BR><BR>I'd rather give the player the option and make these occurr in the order cast and make most recent cast ward take all damage till exires or exausted.   Buf ward occurs every 6 seconds so it would effectly always be the the most recent thus first to get any damage.    Then if you cast  single target ward more rencently than group ward,   tanks damage would come out of single target till drained while group damage came out of group ward.    If you cast single target then group ,   group ward would protect  the single target ward allowing the single target ward to heal the tank up some after 30 seconds.  <BR><BR></P><p>Message Edited by Baccalarium on <span class=date_text>09-18-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:24 PM</span>

[Baccalarium]

OK,  went off to fight satars to try out all three wards at once. Here's the <A href="http://home.classicnet.net/dennisj/satar.log" target=_blank>log</A>.   Note that theres lots of multiple hits to all wards.    So either the damage is being distributed to all of them or its being duplicated to all of them,  Its certainly not eating through the wards in some particular order like you might have expected.<BR><BR>If (as I surmise) stacked wards are broken,  then  I was struck by satars for<BR>base melee(hit  ]  15,16,16,13,31,12,19,22,30,20,21,19,25,16,24,14,16 ,27<BR>base melee(dmg]  45,48,48,26,93,35,38,44,90,32,42,38,25,16,24,14,16 ,27<BR>Mangle (hit  ] 22,34,30<BR>Mangle (dmg] 55,68,32<BR>WildSwing(hit  ] 35,26,35<BR>WildSwing(dmg] 96,26,35<BR><BR>Where the (hit) rows are what the mob hit for(mitigated), and (dmg) rows are what damage was absorbed by wards or my health.   The cases where more damage was absorbed by wards than was actually done I suspect means more agro for the mystic.<BR><BR>There is a possibility that I'm wrong and what really happened is that damage was distributed accorss all the active wards on each hit.   In which case the dmg lines above are what the mob hit for.   I find it hard to beleive that the mobs base damage started in the 40's  at the beginning few swipes than was only teens and 20's at end of fight where the wards had gone down.<BR><BR><BR>And dang, my pizza burnt in the oven while I was working on this. Grrr. <P>Message Edited by Baccalarium on <SPAN class=date_text>09-18-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>03:06 PM</SPAN></P> <P>Message Edited by Baccalarium on <SPAN class=date_text>09-18-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>03:06 PM</SPAN></P> <P>Message Edited by Baccalarium on <SPAN class=date_text>09-18-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>03:07 PM</SPAN> <P><SPAN class=time_text></SPAN>  <P><SPAN class=time_text>grrrr why does every ')'  have to be convereted to a smiley</SPAN></P><p>Message Edited by Baccalarium on <span class=date_text>09-18-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:08 PM</span>

[Debillus]

/agree -- mystics are definately a less desired class in groups due to this one fact. I'm getting  A LOT of heat from my groupmatess when every single group mob except the one being arrowed or single-taunted comes looking for me.  We really do need to speak up about this error of ward agro. Remove agro from wards applied due to concentration buffs please, the effects of ward agro may be justified but the "pull"-agro is ridiculous. /B <div></div>

[Prismata]

Well there's something I don't understand. Since we had our heals curtailed why is it necessary for wards to generate aggro at all? I thought the beefed up wards were meant to replace the healing that was taken away. So why was a penalty necessary? Are the other priest classes penalized for healing? I apologize for my ignorance here, but this makes no sense to me. I know our class is currently broken so I'm not going to belabor that point. The problem is that since I can't heal myself enough to stay alive I have to ward...thus generating even more aggro. Removal of group debt makes the problem even worse. What is the incentive for the tank to keep me alive?

[Jays]

<DIV>All heal/ward type spells generate aggro, nothing you can do about it, it is a fact! It has only not been a problem in EQ2 up until now because aggro designation was broken.</DIV> <DIV>Having said that, I really do think something needs doing about Runic Talisman aggro! If it is the regenerating ward that is creating the excess aggro on the pull then it needs to be looked at.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Ummari</DIV> <DIV>Lvl 50 Mystic of Synergy</DIV> <DIV>Splitpaw server</DIV>

[Baccalarium]

<DIV>Don't think anyone gets it yet... one more try...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>(1127077315)[Sun Sep 18 14:01:55 2005] You strike A thule sattar with a fetid blast!<BR>(1127077315)[Sun Sep 18 14:01:55 2005] YOUR Pox hits a thule sattar for 64 points of disease damage.<BR>(1127077317)[Sun Sep 18 14:01:57 2005] YOUR ward absorbed 15 points of damage!<BR>(1127077317)[Sun Sep 18 14:01:57 2005] YOUR ward absorbed 15 points of damage!<BR>(1127077317)[Sun Sep 18 14:01:57 2005] YOUR ward absorbed 15 points of damage!<BR>(1127077317)[Sun Sep 18 14:01:57 2005] a thule sattar hits YOU but fails to inflict any damage.<BR></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In the above example (first hit in second logfile I linked to)  I have runic,  aegis, and Umbral all up.  Thats 3 wards.     I got hit for 15 points of damage.   My runic ward absorbed 15 points and generated 15 points worth of healing hate,   the aegis absorbed 15 points of damage and generated 15 points worth of healing hate,   the umbral absorbed 15 points worth of damage and generated 15 points worth of healing hate.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thats 45 points of heal hate,   for 15 points of damage absorbed!!!!  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Am I the only one that thinks this needs to be fixed at a minimum to resolve hate issues,  but I would like stacked wards to work too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Edit:Its unknown if the regen of the runic ward generates hate, but that would be additional hate on top of the absorbtions based hate described above.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Baccalarium on <span class=date_text>09-19-2005</span> <span class=time_text>02:24 AM</span>

[Banditman]

Putting this in the channels I have available.

[Karlen]

The way I would like to see wards stack would be for damage to come off of single-target wards first, then off of group wards, leaving the group wards to protect the "group" while single-target wards are still functioning.  "Concentration buff" wards would activate before "regular" wards of the same type (group/single). <div></div>

[Thatdumbg]

This will be easy to test, I'll try to with a tank later. All you have to do is group ward and single target ward the tank, and have him cast a single target taunt on a mob that can put out some DPS. If it stays on him based on the numbers (I'll have specifics when I do the test), then they don't each cause aggro. If they ping to me, then I'll know that they do. Will test this when servers come back up or tomorrow at worst, probably using a yellow ^^^ that will do decent damage in a short amount of time. <div></div>