Smokescreen

[Son_of_the_South]

Question: If you have a GS "Smokescreen" item and someone casts Blur on you, why does the Blur 'work'?

I ask this because if you have, as an example, Natural armour (from an item) above the level that a pot can provide, the pot (or even spell) wont take effect but if someone casts Blur on you and youre wearing Smokescreen, the Blur does????

If youre weaing a Smokescreen item, shouldnt you see a perm Blur like effect around yourself?

[Son_of_the_South]

Anyone?

[delsoboss]

No perma Blur like effect displayed, but i'm getting the 20% miss chance from it.

Does Blur show up on your buff bar?

It's been a long time since i have been blurred on the character i have the smokescreen item on, will need to get in game and try, but i doubt you're getting double concealment since those don't stack with themselves be it from blur/displacement/smokescreen-item/blurry-item/cloud or fog spells/enemy blindness.

Only the highest applies, maybe since blur has a visual effect that makes it "superior" to the smokescreen effect for the game so it shows up.

Will need to get in game and check the combat log a bit.

[Son_of_the_South]

Blur shows up if cast on me both in animation and buff bar whilst wearing the Smokescreen item leading me to wonder if the effect from the Smokescreen wasnt WAI but i should investigate more in-game also.

Perhaps you're right and the more "superior" effect dominates, in this case the blur spell. Would like to get some Dev input on this to confirm/deny/comment though....

[delsoboss]

Uhm, the situation is quite messed up.

I logged on my smokescreened character, checked the combat log removing and re-equipping the GS smokescreen item and it says something like "you benefit from smokescreen concealment miss chance: +1020" ...
Then i asked a wizard passing by to cast blur on me (having removed the smokescreen item) and on the combat log appeared "XXXX helps you with blur, you are blurry and enemies will miss you 20% of the time due to concealment" ... with blur being displayed both with the visual effect on the character and appearing on the buff bar ...

I don't have the time nor the dedication to test if smokescreen items are really giving 20% concealment or maybe Blur is giving 21% or something else is muddying things, i find it strange that the two effects give so different feedback on the combat log.

Sorry for not being more helpfull.

[Diyon]

I know that if you had a blurry item on before, if someone cast blur on you nothing happens unless you take off the item, no visual, no buff on the bar, unless you take it off. Never had a GS one, but this was the case with the cannith bracers, and ghostly items back when they copied blur. Not sure as of late.

[Therigar]

If you have a GS "Smokescreen" item and someone casts Blur on you, why does the Blur 'work'?

What is the percent displacement that smokescreen gives? IIRC it is 20%.

Blur gives the same 20%.

The two do not stack according to the Wiki.

So, there should be no difference with the smokescreen and blur -- mobs should have a 20% miss chance due to concealment regardless.

If you had displacement that would go up to 50% for the duration of the spell and then drop back down to 20%.

BUT, I think I read that there is a change to how smoke is treated since MOTU and that it isn't in the same category as blur any more. I could easily be wrong about that and would think the Wiki would have been updated if there had been a change. But, it might be that smoke is now considered different from blur.

If that is the case then the two will not stack additively. That is, 20% blur and 20% smoke will not give 40% miss chance. Instead they will be multiplicative and the miss chance will actually be 36%.

However, I'm not sure that the two are different from one another as this is just something I think I read on the forums but that is not confirmed by the Wiki. And, I don't have any characters with both that I can go to in-game to check.

[Braxion]

Question: If you have a GS "Smokescreen" item and someone casts Blur on you, why does the Blur 'work'?

I ask this because if you have, as an example, Natural armour (from an item) above the level that a pot can provide, the pot (or even spell) wont take effect but if someone casts Blur on you and youre wearing Smokescreen, the Blur does????

If youre weaing a Smokescreen item, shouldnt you see a perm Blur like effect around yourself?

Happens to my toon as well.

Prior I had the DQ cloak on, and Blur when cast on my toon would not show up on the buff bar nor the graphic on my toon.

Now I have a GS Smokescreen item, Blur when cast on my toon does show in both places listed above.

I can only imagine Blur & Smokescreen while do the same thing (and don't stack) but are counted as different "buffs" so they show up together.

[Son_of_the_South]

Thanks all for your input and feedback. One can only assume that they are , somehow, different types of effects giving the same end result (concealment), except;

http://ddowiki.com/page/Smoke_Screen (1)

and

http://ddowiki.com/page/Blur (2)

This states that they're both concealment effects and that one specifically does not stack with the other....

Can we get a Developer to provide some reason on this one? How do we go about drawing their attention to the post? I'm concerned that Smokescreen is not WAI and perhaps not as effective as Blur....

(1) DDO Wiki "Smokescreen"
(2) DDO Wiki "Blur"

[Brennie]

I suggest you grab a friend and head to a non-populated PvP area. Equip your smokescreen item, make sure your friend doesn't have true seeing, and let them take a few swings at you. If, by 20 swings or so, they haven't gotten a concealment miss yet, then smokescreen may just be flat out broken :/

If you wanna get SUPER fancy, have your friend record how many times they hit and how many they miss because of concealment independently for each of smokescreen, blur, and smokescreen + blur. I'd be curious to see if smokescreen + blur resulted in different numbers than just smokescreen or blur alone.

[GoRinNoSho]

Careful as there are 2 types of concealment. There is concealment in a cloud spell which is is still effective if someone has true seeing and there is visual impairment/trickery that is designed to impair their vision of the target specifically.

I'd figure that the blur effect shows up/is visible to prevent the caster from recasting and dumping sp.

[Diyon]

I'd figure that the blur effect shows up/is visible to prevent the caster from recasting and dumping sp.

This could be very well what happened. They changed it for this. I know that sort of thing does periodically happen.