**** Lightning

[Aspenor]

Every time I see that, I always wonder why a player knows what sucking a donkeys is like to be able to much said comparison. 1/2 second later I realize I really don't want to know.

I can explain that one for you...

Nick is from New Zealand.

[arminius]

I can explain that one for you...

Nick is from New Zealand.

What, they ran out of sheep?

[Aspenor]

What, they ran out of sheep?

Exactly.

[shagath]

1. Drow/15
2. hard targeting, soft targeting and just shooting.
3. Mouse aiming. Keyboard for moving and casting.

Half of the time I do success to get 2-3 in chain, rest are pure fail. Some mobs are weak against shock so this spell works well against red named ones and does more damage(afaik) than any other electricity spell so I'll just force myself to stick with it, not swap it to ball of lightning.

I don't have many enchantments to boost electricity but I think greater potency VII/maximized/empowered is enough as I use this very rarely. I'm all open to suggestions anyhow.

[Aspenor]

After some minor testing, I'd like some others to see if they have similar findings. Do some things and take note:

- Try using this spell in non-Shavarath quests, against monsters that don't teleport. Make sure you hit your primary target.
- Try using the spell solo. See if you have more success with chaining (I do).
- Try using the spell in a party, specifically against targets that both have aggro against you, and targets that happen to be aggro'd on others. I see more success against targets that are aggro'd on me, and less success against targets aggro'd on others.

I have a feeling I'm slowly nailing down what these problems are. I see the above factors being major contributors as well as the height of casting being a factor. This is a strange bug, indeed.

[Syllph]

I agree fully. Drow Sorc, 30 cha, good gear experienced player:
I was very excited to get Chain Lightning hoping to see it fixed. I immediately set forth to test it out (I chose "Walk the

Butcher's Path" due to the close proximity of the mobs as I was hoping to test out the full chaining effect.)
After blowing out about 500 SP I managed to kill about 3 kobalds. How incredibly, utterly pathetic. I switched to Ball lightning and nailed about 12 in a group.

This settled it for me: even on worthless mobs, Chain lighting was absolutely useless, it either didn't hit or when it hit didn't chain (even in Walk the path when the mobs are so bunched up it should be "easy" to chain) I wouldn't dare try this out in places that I'm used to running like Madstone or Crucible. Well only three more days and I can say Goodbye to the worst spell in my book.

Even if Turbine says they change this spell I will -never- get it again. Just not worth it.

[Teran]

Hmm. I wonder if the code path being used for chaining is similar to the logic being used to determine if a ray hits. Ie. If your ray spell would have missed because the mob was moving / teleporting, perhaps that same movement / teleport is causing the chaining not to happen (but the targetted mob may still damaged due to being in the path of the lightning).

[Jasimine]

Hmm. I wonder if the code path being used for chaining is similar to the logic being used to determine if a ray hits. Ie. If your ray spell would have missed because the mob was moving / teleporting, perhaps that same movement / teleport is causing the chaining not to happen (but the targetted mob may still damaged due to being in the path of the lightning).

Is it possible, expanding on your thought, that what is happening is chain lightning hits mob A, the coding for it to chain around triggers and it fires itself out to the next mob but that mob moves a little in this time and bam the chain misses and you get no damage? If this is the case of what is happening then perhaps what would be better is to have them change chain lightning to a more simplified AoE spell for damage purposes so lag isn't borking it.

[Aspenor]

Okay, was running around, solo, in Rainbow farming twigs. In my case, I had 100% success and generally it worked like this:

Will continue testing in various situations.

[Missing_Minds]

After some minor testing, I'd like some others to see if they have similar findings. Do some things and take note:

- Try using this spell in non-Shavarath quests, against monsters that don't teleport. Make sure you hit your primary target.
- Try using the spell solo. See if you have more success with chaining (I do).
- Try using the spell in a party, specifically against targets that both have aggro against you, and targets that happen to be aggro'd on others. I see more success against targets that are aggro'd on me, and less success against targets aggro'd on others.

I have a feeling I'm slowly nailing down what these problems are. I see the above factors being major contributors as well as the height of casting being a factor. This is a strange bug, indeed.

You know... I wonder if chain lighting is using a hit detection vs. auto hit. Thinking back a few years, Codog posted that people were losing shots (ranged archery)/not rolling due to the fact that the AI was zig zagging like crazy but the client was doing a wonderful job smoothing it out.

If they are doing a hit detection, the lighting is probably arcing to where the mob should be, but in reality is not so there is no damage done even if the lightning apparently arcs correctly.

[Rice]

So many things can be fixed if they just used auto-hit projectiles (like in WoW, for example) instead of this wonky hitbox detection ****. Every damage spell in the game would be 100% accurate. Instead of waiting for chain lightning to calculate where the next target is going to be and try to "catch up" with it, just automatically do damage to all the targets that are within valid range, THEN draw the animation. I'm so tired of seeing the animation clearly chaining then nothing happening afterwards.

Meanwhile, barbarians just hold down left click.

[EmraldOnyxx]

I see more success against targets that are aggro'd on me, and less success against targets aggro'd on others.

This hits the nail on the head ---- along with clear line of sight for effect --- the direct path seems to work best (hard or soft targeting) when the aggro in coming to you and not already on someone else.