All is not well with Melee changes

[binnsr]

Spent a bit of time in VoN5 (Normal) playing with the Necrotic Bankers and observed a couple of things.

1) No death on a natural 20.
2) No 100 points of damage on said natural 20
3) varying DR on necrotic bankers.





In this second screenshot, either Necrotic Bankers on normal have more than 2000 hit points, or somethings borked.

I killed enough of them to verify 2 separate 20's (and had to kill 3 groups of them to do that!)

edit: Weapon used: +1 thundering heavy repeating crossbow of disruption

[binnsr]

reading comprehension ftw..

NEW: Disruption, Banishing, and Smiting weapons now do 4d6 damage on a hit, and have a chance to kill the target outright on a confirmed vorpal hit (natural 20) if the target is below 1,000 hit points. If the target has more than 1,000 hit points, they will take 100 damage. Hit die caps and saving throws have been removed from these weapons.

A lot of undead are going to have to be harmed in the making of a crit chance, eh?

[JarnOcelatus]

I wonder if they just copied some code from vorpal. Vorpal doesn't work on undead except for vampires.

[moorewr]

reading comprehension ftw..

A lot of undead are going to have to be harmed in the making of a crit chance, eh?

In one of my screenshots we have a resisted critical hit turn into a disruption kill.. so evidently the death effect and the damage are not tied to the critical hit.

You're right, though "chance" is the key word there. If it isn't proc-on-20 then that explains it. The rate must be fairly high.. maybe 50/50 or higher?

I wonder if they just copied some code from vorpal. Vorpal doesn't work on undead except for vampires.

If you look at my screen shots on page two and Marten's movie on page one you'll see both the 100 point effect and the death effect go off on undead.

[JarnOcelatus]

In one of my screenshots we have a resisted critical hit turn into a disruption kill.. so evidently the death effect and the damage are not tied to the critical hit.

You're right, though "chance" is the key word there. If it isn't proc-on-20 then that explains it. The rate must be fairly high.. maybe 50/50 or higher?



If you look at my screen shots on page two and Marten's movie on page one you'll see both the 100 point effect and the death effect go off on undead.

You're right of course, I had overlooked that. I still hope this is a bug. Proc-on-confirmed-20 would be reasonable, if it's too much less than that it starts to become a bit pointless since most things will simply die from loss of HP.

[justagame]

You're right of course, I had overlooked that. I still hope this is a bug. Proc-on-confirmed-20 would be reasonable, if it's too much less than that it starts to become a bit pointless since most things will simply die from loss of HP.

I completely agree, this "chance of" stuff on vorpal strikes is for the birds. If you're already restricting it to mobs < 1000 hp, the vorpal requirement is a low enough probability all by itself. Reduce it any further and you might as well just toss these weapons and use greater banes, because the death proc becomes irrelevant. I thought disruptors/smiters/banishers were powerful weapons, and supposed to be more powerful than greater banes. Having a vorpal roll proc the kill maintains this. Knocking the probability down even further neuters the death proc down to the point of pointlessness, where you're just swinging a greater bane weapon, but without the +4 to hit.

Let's say, for example, it's a 50/50 chance. That's a 2.5% proc rate. (1-.025)^28 is about 50%. At that rate, if you can take the mob down in 28 swings or less, you're better off using pure dps. And since it now only applies to mobs < 1000 hp, if you can't take a 1000 hp mob down in less than 28 swings, (especially a weapon with +4d6 damage), you shouldn't be swinging a weapon. Simply put, this COULD have been a good change, if it was auto-kill on a confirmed vorpal. Knock it down to a "chance of" proc on a vorpal, and the death aspect of a disruptor/banisher/smiter is essentially worthless -- you might as well just strip it off the weapon and make it a greater bane.

I am a but tired and grumpy, but seriously Turbine, why not just cut to the chase here and strip out any interesting weapon effects and make every single encounter a boring dps beatdown? This COULD have been a great change. In fact, I thought it was, when I thought the death automatically procced on a (confirmed) vorpal. I honestly don't know why an effect that only effects mobs < 1000 hp had to be reduced to a probability so low, that a simple natural 20 wasn't low enough for you.

[Marten]

I did a lot of testing on undead that I am sure have no DW and while I still have quite a few crits for 100 I have not yet seen one Disruption. So if it is chance based it must be one heck of a low chance.

I am still happy with the new extra damage on each hit and at least a pop for 100 on a 20, but yes I think a lot of us did misunderstand because we are tired, poor readers, or the simple fact that the word "chance" was out weighed by "Hit die caps and saving throws have been removed from these weapons."

Thanks binnsr for pointing this out, +1 to you for having fresh eyes.

G'night, more testing tomorrow.

[Matuse]

So vorpal is really better now, since instead of waiting for them to roll a 1 and fail their save, you do 4d6 while you wait to roll your own 20

Vorpal weapons have no special bonus on per-hit like Disruption/Banishing/Smiting. They cut off heads on a 20 for targets with sub-1k HP. On 1k+ they do 100 points of bane damage, but only on a 20.

And I agree that this "chance of" business is lame, particularly for disrupters. They used to be a 5% vorpal (except instead of you rolling a 20, you waited for the monster to roll a 1 on its save), now they are just some extra damage. I'd rather have greater bane. Greater bane gives +to hit and +base damage.

I could see making this change for Smiting/Banishing, since they are (currently on live) on-crit, and it was always kind of lame that low crit range weapons with these effects were basically useless.

Bad enough having to wait for a 20 to pop up, now you have to get the monster below 1K, wait for a 20 to pop up, and then HOPE that this "chance of" actually kicks in and gets the kill. That seems like a once in a blue moon possibility.

[cru121]

3) varying DR on necrotic bankers.

I think zombies take simply half damage from bludgeoning/piercing.

[Dandonk]

I think zombies take simply half damage from bludgeoning/piercing.

Yes, it looks a lot like that in the combat log - the damage reduction is always just around half the damage done.

[Hecore]

Spent a bit of time in VoN5 (Normal) playing with the Necrotic Bankers and observed a couple of things.

1) No death on a natural 20.
2) No 100 points of damage on said natural 20
3) varying DR on necrotic bankers.

In this second screenshot, either Necrotic Bankers on normal have more than 2000 hit points, or somethings borked.

I killed enough of them to verify 2 separate 20's (and had to kill 3 groups of them to do that!)

edit: Weapon used: +1 thundering heavy repeating crossbow of disruption

In both your examples neither critical hit is confirmed, and the release notes specifically state that they must be confirmed vorpal strikes. All your examples show is that, technically, it is working as intended... at least for unconfirmed vorpal crits.

[Brennie]

In both your examples neither critical hit is confirmed, and the release notes specifically state that they must be confirmed vorpal strikes. All your examples show is that, technically, it is working as intended... at least for unconfirmed vorpal crits.

Note that earlier in the combat log, he rolls a 2 (+26) and gets a hit. He then tries to confirm a 20 by rolling an 11 (+30). If the 28 roll was a confirmed hit, then the 41 roll should DEFINITELY have been a confirmed crit.

However, reading this log i was thinking similarly... perhaps the fact that you *cannot crit on undead* is the factor that's screwing up the vorpal effect? If you can't confirm the Vorpal, you can't kill it! Same would go for elementals and constructs with banishers/smiters. Devils should be Banishable, while everything else should be immune if my theory is true.

I assume this is some sort of oversight in the vorpal mechanics translation into banish/smite/disruptors as it pertains to enemies with inherent crit immunity (Dev comments please!)

[Yalann]

Note that earlier in the combat log, he rolls a 2 (+26) and gets a hit. He then tries to confirm a 20 by rolling an 11 (+30). If the 28 roll was a confirmed hit, then the 41 roll should DEFINITELY have been a confirmed crit.

However, reading this log i was thinking similarly... perhaps the fact that you *cannot crit on undead* is the factor that's screwing up the vorpal effect? If you can't confirm the Vorpal, you can't kill it! Same would go for elementals and constructs with banishers/smiters. Devils should be Banishable, while everything else should be immune if my theory is true.

I assume this is some sort of oversight in the vorpal mechanics translation into banish/smite/disruptors as it pertains to enemies with inherent crit immunity (Dev comments please!)

I was just about to mention the same thing about the confirmations. However, something else to note. In the Ancient Giant Wizard example he seems to land a 100 damage hit with a confirmed but resisted critical, so it can't be undead being immune causing any issues. The combination of these cases would imply a chance on confirmed vorpals and that the confirmed vorpal rolls are working as intended on the undead as far as the 100 damage proc is concerned. However, unless I missed it, there are no examples of an instant kill of any undead so far.

[Matuse]

The giant skeletons in the subterrane come with death ward, which may be accounting for some of this resistance, and what is triggering the 100 point hit.

But don't bane weapons indicate bane damage when they hit something? Or does it just say "X damage"?

[Emili]

The giant skeletons in the subterrane come with death ward, which may be accounting for some of this resistance, and what is triggering the 100 point hit.

But don't bane weapons indicate bane damage when they hit something? Or does it just say "X damage"?

It looks typed "bane" in his log so far.

[Shade]

Did some testing of my own at the higher end:

On Greataxer (Half-orc 18/2 barb/ftr 36pnt build)
Weapons:
Triple pos greataxe (greater disruption)
Armor:
Smiting DT armor + Falcion/epic SoS

Greater Disruption:
The 6d6 damage works as intended.
The 100 dmg on a 20 works as intended.
The kill on a 20, under 1000 HP Doesn't work: Screenshot
Landed at least 4 20s on the guy, first few did hte 100 dmg, and he had over 1000hp still. Think they got in the 3k range now. Last one you can clearly see his HP is very low, below 1k, still didnt die. Nor show a save.

It's not a chance, it just doesn't work.

DR weirdness:
Perhaps the 50% dmg from non-slash may be true up to a point.. But it caps out at 32 on epic:
http://img858.imageshack.us/img858/1...nshot01629.jpg
And when I lowered my dmg to test it, the numbers were very sparatic and did not always equal the DR.


Smiting Armor:
Plain does not work on epic. No extra damage. No smiting. Not seeing anything even proc saves. No extra damage on a 20. Needs to be fixed.

[Shade]

It looks typed "bane" in his log so far.

um no. All screenshtos from everyone show its just "damage"

EG: Untyped.
Greater disruption too.

The greenish icon also means untyped, not bane.. Same icon for say vicious damage.

Tho it really doesn't matter, neither are resistable in any form.

[Emili]

Spent a bit of time in VoN5 (Normal) playing with the Necrotic Bankers and observed a couple of things.

1) No death on a natural 20.
2) No 100 points of damage on said natural 20
3) varying DR on necrotic bankers.

In this second screenshot, either Necrotic Bankers on normal have more than 2000 hit points, or somethings borked.

I killed enough of them to verify 2 separate 20's (and had to kill 3 groups of them to do that!)

edit: Weapon used: +1 thundering heavy repeating crossbow of disruption

What is interesting here... is you confrimations are all resisted.

You rolled a 20 : you hit
You roll 16(+26) for crit confirmation: (total 42)

Critical resisted <- telling me this mob's fortification comes into play.

[Emili]

Did some testing of my own at the higher end:

On Greataxer (Half-orc 18/2 barb/ftr 36pnt build)
Weapons:
Triple pos greataxe (greater disruption)
Armor:
Smiting DT armor + Falcion/epic SoS

Greater Disruption:
The 6d6 damage works as intended.
The 100 dmg on a 20 works as intended.
The kill on a 20, under 1000 HP Doesn't work: Screenshot
Landed at least 4 20s on the guy, first few did hte 100 dmg, and he had over 1000hp still. Think they got in the 3k range now. Last one you can clearly see his HP is very low, below 1k, still didnt die. Nor show a save.

It's not a chance, it just doesn't work.

DR weirdness:
Perhaps the 50% dmg from non-slash may be true up to a point.. But it caps out at 32 on epic:
http://img858.imageshack.us/img858/1...nshot01629.jpg
And when I lowered my dmg to test it, the numbers were very sparatic and did not always equal the DR.


Smiting Armor:
Plain does not work on epic. No extra damage. No smiting. Not seeing anything even proc saves. No extra damage on a 20. Needs to be fixed.

Finally see a "disrupt" on log

"Critical hit Resisted" <- is it possible the fortification of the mob is overriding the insta-death?

It is silly I know but am used to seeing fortification notes pop on rogue vorpal effects constantly...

Something in the back of my mind asks if the devs just tapped into the code for "vorpal" to use for "Disruption"? Would be kind of an oversight because successful fort has a by-pass - i.e. cut off heads before with mob still standing due to "Critical hit Resisted".

[Shade]

I cannot say it works or not because the crits all posted so far are followed by

"Critical hit Resisted"

I am used to seeing those messages typically in two places... some purple names and of course epic mob ... that message is the result of their behind the scene roll granted by their fortification.

um..

Undead have 100% fortification.. Pretty simple concept. Thus all critical hits are resisted. This is not some kind of new concept, has been in the game since launch.

This has nothing to do with disruption tho. Sure it works on a vorpal-strike now, which is a 20 + confirmation. But even a resisted confirmation, is still a confirmation. Other on crit effects, such as my good burst/blast, all functioned fine as they always have.

The warforged I tested smiting on, have 25% fortification. So yea some crits were resisted, but i've dealt a good 20-30+ crits per mob, and saw no saves or anything despite that.