14 Scorching rays in one attack?

[FURYous]

We were in catacombs and opened a door with two wizards. In ONE second they hit me with 14 scorching rays, in a single attack?




This wasn't lag, this is a MAJOR bug, how does a wizard get 14 scorching rays in a single attack in a level 5 quest?

And it was 14 on me, as soon as I died they kept hitting. there was no delay at all between casts, just a constant stream of scorching rays. At the bottom of the combat logs you can see how they kept shooting even after I died. In fact they were shooting so fast that they shot me twice more when I died and before I ported to the land of lost souls which seemed instant to me.

[FURYous]

I have been a VIP since release. I have bought thousands of dollars of points and expansions (always the top packages). I don't mind a challenge and I have died over 50 times on the hardcore servers but this is the straw that broke the whales back.

I want to support a game I love and play 60+ hours a week but the bugs and the lag and the lack of support is just too much.


cya

[cru121]

So you died. We all have. Or a very significant percentage.

Looks like Resist Energy Fire would have helped you.

From the wiki:

Potions
* Jalin Kalabrey <Potion Vendor> in The Marketplace Bazaar - 30pp (Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire, and Sonic available)
* CL7 (resist 20) potions are available for sale in the Tower of the Twelve and in Eveningstar, also in the Catacombs from a merchant in front of the archbishop's chamber.

[Careall]

Yeah. I don't see how the caster hit you that many times with a single spell other than perhaps some un/intentional mechanic of the new champs. I've been hit by a lot of things that I don't think add up, but I couldn't say for sure. I mean, this HC Season's realm is in alignment with the realm chaos or madness or whatever, so maybe rules are intentionally broken? No idea, but that thought's crossed my mind.

From the tree of free advice: Moderate ship buffs and the 20 pt elemental resist buffs from Catacombs - pretty sure those are ML5, CL7 - and you would have taken no damage from any of those. Now that you know that, you could correct course and prevent that same result. You might die from something else but rinse and repeat until you have an unbeatable build or plan.

[FURYous]

So you died. We all have. Or a very significant percentage.

Looks like Resist Energy Fire would have helped you.

From the wiki:

Potions
* Jalin Kalabrey <Potion Vendor> in The Marketplace Bazaar - 30pp (Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire, and Sonic available)
* CL7 (resist 20) potions are available for sale in the Tower of the Twelve and in Eveningstar, also in the Catacombs from a merchant in front of the archbishop's chamber.

I don't think you understand, this all happened in less than 2 seconds. There was no cool down on their spells, all 14 of those hits we from just two mobs in less than 2 seconds. I had 200 hit points so taking 17 damage from scorching ray wasn't the issue, it's the rate of fire of them. Look at the logs, I was hit 14 times in the time it took me to make one attack. So something is broken. the cool down on scorching ray is around 2 seconds which I could have healed through with no issues, there was two healers in the group and I had LoH, nothing could have helped. in the time I died and was ported out to the land of lost souls, they shot 4 more times.


From the wiki:

Scorching Ray
Cooldown: 2.5 seconds (Wiz), 1.75 seconds (Sor)

My question is, how do they get 14+ attacks to every one of mine?

[rabidfox]

My question is, how do they get 14+ attacks to every one of mine?

It wouldn't be 14 attacks, with elite CR adjustment they'd likely be getting 3 rays per cast. The player version of the spell caps at 3 rays (tested to make sure u49 didn't change it), so the question is did the 2x casters cast 5x rays between them really fast or is the max caster level broken for NPCs? Either way, seems like a bug. Equally, looking at the damage vs resist amounts, it seems that the lvl 6 resist 20 pot would've trivialized the damage. It's a shame to die that way but it's good reminder to keep max resists up at all times on HC.

[TartanKane]

Opening doors is dangerous.

You can usually open doors from the side so that you are still behind the wall and cant be hit.

You can stay behind the wall and look into the room using mouse rotate.

You can then use pet to kill dangerous casters/snipe/have someone take agro and go back behind wall while melee charges in etc.

Using these tactics is much slower but much safer.

[cru121]

My question is, how do they get 14+ attacks to every one of mine?

Lag. It only takes a bit of lag.

[voxson5]

Lag. It only takes a bit of lag.

OP's detail really could have only been lag - it's pretty easy to see same effect with player attacks as well.

[zooble]

I'm assuming it's a TR otherwise there's not really a reason to be so angry at losing a lvl 6-7 toon.

But gonna have to say bad luck, mostly because of the lack of resists and your name has been around for a long time.

According to the wiki Arcane Skeletons (and their greater versions) are dangerous "due to their fast and powerful spellcasting".
https://ddowiki.com/page/Greater_Arcane_Skeleton

Keyword in bold.

Even on live (so not a hardcore champ thing), upon observation, they have a cooldown that's faster than close wounds. I've never noticed before since they usually die almost instantly these days and cast an array of spells, some which can do "nothing" (hold, magic missle) so it's not noticeable. 14 hits is 5-7 casts, between two skeletons that's around 2 casts to 4 casts per skeleton. I can believe they can cast that many within 2 seconds based on what I just saw. However, scorching ray was amongst the least cast spell from the couple of minutes I watched for, so that seems like a really small chance of happening. Maybe they are smart and can sense a lack of fire resist?

Anyway, OP isn't the only one, Greater Arcane Skeletons are probably second behind Mimics on the "killed by" announcements.

[Vish]

Told ya they were gonna get ya

[Karthunk]

They cast extremely fast, this has always been the case.

You need to have the shield spell and resists up when going into caster heavy quests on hardcore.

If you're going to fight beholders get a beholder trinket from the store. Just leveling up your character should give you enough free coins to buy a few.

o/

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Careall]

Now that folks mentioned that lag can cause effects to appear to stack, as in the screencaps, I recall having a toon die to lag while doing the swim in Another Man's Treasure. Tough build, lots of damage mitigation, and hit points, but not much in the way of avoidance such as evasion. Anyway, swimming along and a lag spike hits. Suddenly, the game says, "nope, you're not in the middle of the corridor, you're up against the wall face deep in spikes," and the toon was instantly dead. I looked at the damage log to show my regular group the damage, and it looked a lot like what the OP posted. Death Aura heal tick, damage, damage, damage, damage, damage, damage, remove all buffs, and damage: Nothing in between. I didn't think of it as anything odd because I figured I had teleported into a bed of nails and all the nails were sticking me at once. But now, reading this thread, it was probably stacks of damage during the lag being resolved simultaneously.

While none of this is evidence of how 14 Scorching Rays hit the OP all at once, the lag-stacking explanation doesn't feel unreasonable.