Wall of Fire - Critical hit Issue

[BruxaDo71]

Hi,

First of all, I know that since U7 there are some threads about it, but I have some data to confirm my point.
Some days ago when I was farming epic scrolls on OOB I noticed (again) that my Wall of Fire was not "criticing" as expected. I thought it would be because I was running all the time and could not see many numbers, so I decided to test it with no running. I did it, appeared normal, about one critical on six hits. But it was not enough to me, then I started to collect some data.

My character:
Wizard level 20, I had the enhancement Wizard Lineage of elements III (9%) and a Major Fire lore item (9%)

The method:
I did two measures, called Moving and Standing.

Moving - In the first room of OOB, putting two Wall of fire (not overplaced) and running in circles.

Standing - In the same room, I pulled the scorpions and jumped in a safe place. I a Threw a Wall of fire and watched.

When finished, I counted the regular hits and criticals hits from my combat log. I ignored the "(Combat): Spell Crit! Your Wall of Fire has greater effect!" with no result, counted only the numbers.

Numbers:
Moving
2036 hits - 89 criticals: 4,3%

Standing
2062 hits - 349 criticals: 16,9%

My conclusion:
The first tick of Wall of fire is not working properly. When a monster is moving, it constantly go out and back on AoE, reseting it status.
Of course, it can be another thing, but I think it is already a good point to the Devs check if it is really working correctly.

Miscellaneous:
488 scorpions killed
4 epic scrolls dropped, no one worthy of mention.

[Templarion]

Excellent report.

Thank you for this.

I am sure DDO is full of bugs and little things like this. Good thing someone is ready to do some field testing to reveal them.

[BruxaDo71]

Yes, every time (specially after an update) I think something is wrong, but I can't check it by myself all the time haha.

Btw I was trying to submit a bug, but after downgrade to premium I cant submit anymore

[Robai]

...
Numbers:
Moving
2036 hits - 89 criticals: 4,3%

Standing
2062 hits - 349 criticals: 16,9%
...
Miscellaneous:
488 scorpions killed
4 epic scrolls dropped, no one worthy of mention.

If in both cases
- you've killed the same amount of monsters
- and it was the same difficulty
then your numbers are strange, because if you did more criticals then you should have killed them faster and thus make less hits, but you did similar amount of hits?

[Adoraro]

If in both cases
- you've killed the same amount of monsters
- and it was the same difficulty
then your numbers are strange, because if you did more criticals then you should have killed them faster and thus make less hits, but you did similar amount of hits?

They respawn.

[knockcocker]

Excellent post, thanks. I've noticed, anecdotally, that my WoF doesn't crit anywhere near as often as it
should given an 18% crit chance. Perhaps this is the reason...

To me it feels like spells don't crit at all anymore. It's certainly nowhere near as noticeable.
Really not a fan of this new system...

[Templarion]

Really not a fan of this new system...

I do like the new system. It's better. No need to fish for crit fws anymore.

This kind of bugs just need to be handled.

[knockcocker]

I do like the new system. It's better. No need to fish for crit fws anymore.

This kind of bugs just need to be handled.

It's _possibly_ better for DOT spells (if these observations in the OP are just erratics and the actual crits average
out at 18%). It's a nerf for instantaneous AOE such as DBF, CoC, CL etc. You no longer get the chance to
wipe out an entire group of mobs with a critical cast. It's a real pain for a solo arcane and increases dependence
on WoF. IMO, the last thing they needed to do was increase dependence on the single most overused arcane
spell in the game.

[Zharfie]

It's _possibly_ better for DOT spells (if these observations in the OP are just erratics and the actual crits average
out at 18%). It's a nerf for instantaneous AOE such as DBF, CoC, CL etc. You no longer get the chance to
wipe out an entire group of mobs with a critical cast. It's a real pain for a solo arcane and increases dependence
on WoF. IMO, the last thing they needed to do was increase dependence on the single most overused arcane
spell in the game.

increase dependence? if you think it's not good enough, try using some other spells for a change

I like this change also, crit fishing is ********

[BruxaDo71]

If in both cases
- you've killed the same amount of monsters
- and it was the same difficulty
then your numbers are strange, because if you did more criticals then you should have killed them faster and thus make less hits, but you did similar amount of hits?

Yes, in both cases I did in the same difficult (epic), and of course, I killed more monsters on second case (Standing) but it no matter. As I said, I've counted only the numbers from my combat log, hits are always hits, no matter if the monster die fast or slow.

By the way, I managed to report a bug via website. Someone from QA sent me PM, they told me they are looking for it

About this critical hit system, I prefer this way, since it work correctily.

[knockcocker]

increase dependence? if you think it's not good enough, try using some other spells for a change

Erm, that was kinda the point of my post. This change makes it _more_ likely to use WoF to kill anything
that's not fire immune due to it's SP efficiency. With instantaneous AOE and this change, the number of casts
taken now tends towards to number of non-crits required to kill the entire group. Before, a crit had a good chance
of eliminating the entire group. This means you might as well use DOT. The only DOT worth casting is WoF. This is
why I don't like this change.

[SomCrea]

I noticed something weird doing the same thing, but wasn't sure what was happening. After reading this I did 4 tests using the boss scorpion that spawns after the rest are dead.

Method:
for the tsts I used a level 20 Sorcerer, with full fire/ice lines and a major fire lore item, this should have resulted in an 18% critical chance.
After killing all of the small scorpions I destroyed all of the remaining firewalls and spawned the boss scorpion. In both scenarios only one firewall was present at any given time. For standing I cast it on the scorpion and jumped somewhere safe, using summons from Roderik's Wand, non-epic, to draw it back if it left. For moving I cast one firewall and ran in an eccentric ellipse, trying to make it so only pass through damage occurred.

Results:

Standing:
112 total hits, 19 crits. 16.96% of the hits were critical
107 total hits, 21 crits. 19.62% of the hits were critical

Moving:
148 total hits, 4 crits. 2.70% of the hits were critical
156 total hits, 1 crit. .64% of the hits were critical

Conclusions:
My tests backed up BruxaDo71's showing that there is something wrong with firewall's critical chance and pass through damage.

[Trillea]

Thank you for your hard work guys.

One more reason to reset crits to all-or-nothing.

Make it happen Devs!

[knockcocker]

I noticed something weird doing the same thing, but wasn't sure what was happening. After reading this I did 4 tests using the boss scorpion that spawns after the rest are dead.

Method:
for the tsts I used a level 20 Sorcerer, with full fire/ice lines and a major fire lore item, this should have resulted in an 18% critical chance.
After killing all of the small scorpions I destroyed all of the remaining firewalls and spawned the boss scorpion. In both scenarios only one firewall was present at any given time. For standing I cast it on the scorpion and jumped somewhere safe, using summons from Roderik's Wand, non-epic, to draw it back if it left. For moving I cast one firewall and ran in an eccentric ellipse, trying to make it so only pass through damage occurred.

Results:

Standing:
112 total hits, 19 crits. 16.96% of the hits were critical
107 total hits, 21 crits. 19.62% of the hits were critical

Moving:
148 total hits, 4 crits. 2.70% of the hits were critical
156 total hits, 1 crit. .64% of the hits were critical

Conclusions:
My tests backed up BruxaDo71's showing that there is something wrong with firewall's critical chance and pass through damage.

Your numbers suggest that only the 'per tick' DOT is having a critical chance applied.
Pass through is treated as a normal hit with 0% chance for a crit. Hopefully a dev
will comment on this...

[fuzzy1guy]

Maybe this is why i could drop all my crit chance % enhancments and not see any diffrence at all.

Gained back a bunch of AP to be better spent at least.

[Phax]

Just looked into this and this is a bug. Crits do not get rolled on initial damage (entering the WoF), but will on all subsequent damage.

I'll be fixing this and I'd expect the fix will be in the next patch/update.

[TheDearLeader]

Just looked into this and this is a bug. Crits do not get rolled on initial damage (entering the WoF), but will on all subsequent damage.

I'll be fixing this and I'd expect the fix will be in the next patch/update.

You rock!

[knockcocker]

Just looked into this and this is a bug. Crits do not get rolled on initial damage (entering the WoF), but will on all subsequent damage.

I'll be fixing this and I'd expect the fix will be in the next patch/update.

Thanks for looking and letting us know what you intend.

[finalf18]

+1 for the OP and the follow up investigations.

I thought that it was taking longer to kite reavers though a FW in Eye of the titan (stupid ear slug).

Just looked into this and this is a bug. Crits do not get rolled on initial damage (entering the WoF), but will on all subsequent damage.

I'll be fixing this and I'd expect the fix will be in the next patch/update.

Woohoo for devs reading the forum.

As a side note, from one SW developer to another, could you say if software process that you follow goes through a standard regression test plan per release of is it customized to accound for changes specific to that release?

[Anthorin]

So am I right in saying that what this means is kiting mobs in and out of fire walls will be very much less effective than keeping them in it?