Dragonborn Dragon Breath

[Michele]

I'm using dragonborn racial Dragon Breath ability and sometimes it hits everyone for 1 damage, is it a bug?

(Combat): You begin to cast Breath Weapon: White at level 23.
(Combat): You hit Plague Reaper for 1 point of cold damage.
(Combat): Spell Crit! Your Breath Weapon: White has greater effect!

And this is when it works instead:
(Combat): Spell Crit! Your Breath Weapon: White has greater effect!
(Combat): You hit Jarilith for 2,376 points of cold damage.

I'm playing a level 15 caster druid in water elemental form.

[zooble]

They broke spells in the spell pass update and any damage spell can hit for 1 (ONE) damage.

BUT somehow, Dragonborn's Dragon's Breath was somehow hit the worst. I've been getting a 70%+ FAILURE RATE on it.

It's utterly worthless atm wasting a cooldown and with its long animation

[Michele]

Probably to avoid the bug you have to stay still.
I now usually cast greater color spray + tsunami, then I stop moving my toon and the mouse and I press "8" on my main bar ("8" is where I placed the "dragonborn white dragon breath" sla).

[DoctorOfLiterature]

I have a blue dragonborn and his breath weapon has worked normally.

[cdbd3rd]

...
It's utterly worthless atm wasting a cooldown and with its long animation.

I have a few Dragons here & there. After the first time trying it, have completely ignored the breath weapon ability because of the animation.

Hitting even occasionally for 1 hp of damage would be demoralizing to say the least.

[zooble]

I stopped running it (for obvious reasons) so can't/not going to check, but it may be related to reaper difficulty. There was a period where it wasn't failing for a few casts in row (extremely unlikely) and I think I was just running Heroic Hard at the time.

First time I noticed it was on my FVS caster on the hardcore server.

[Tilomere]

I'm using dragonborn racial Dragon Breath ability and sometimes it hits everyone for 1 damage, is it a bug?

Yes and no. So your character data is saved in some database. The game does a database pull of important relevant stats to do important relevant actions, such as casting a spell. Until you do another important relevant action that uses a different set of stats, the game doesn't repull stats.

So lets say you do an important relevant stats check of drinking a potion, in which the game pulls important relevant stat of if you have artificer potion mastery. Now, you follow that with a dragon breath, which is not an important action. The game reuses that artificer potion mastery stats to try to execute your dragon breath. That fails, and the failure result depends on your artificer potion mastery data.

This is common with non-spell magical attacks, including breaths, auras, and ED abilities. You can avoid it by using these abilities only after important relevant actions of the same data type. For example, only use dragon breath after a spell.

[Zennez]

well, my guess on this slightly old thread is that what your seeing is this...


the DC for the breath is terrible in that player level is not a factor, so on higher levels and in reapers in can be a pain to get a past the DC even if you are building a character with a high DC for evocation.

Since nearly everything at that level has evasion or some type of resistance, even before failing the DC you are doing half damage.

Targets that save take zero damage, just like a PC with evasion that saves. Where does the 1 damage come from?

Well could be a rounding error.

This is true for all spells that can be saved against, it is confusing I think because they take damage you don't see any indication that the target made their saving throw ; you see only the 1hp indicator instead.

I can say I have observed at level in level 10 Barovia, with my default Evocation + 3 and 23 Charisma I see 1hp a good deal, when I wear a hat +4 charisma +4 command, I see it a lot less.

It works great in low level heroics non-reapers and you can one shot entire armies of kobolds with all the metamagic skills that apply to it for free.

clear as mud? Happy breathing!

[voxson5]

I'm using dragonborn racial Dragon Breath ability and sometimes it hits everyone for 1 damage, is it a bug?

Yes, and I don't expect it will get fixed.

It's due to movement interaction when activating the ability - just try not moving just before before and during the ability it & it will always work as intended. (like seriously stop moving for half a second or so then use it)

I don't know if it's particular directions or if there's some kind of interrupt at a particular part of the animation.

[John3000]

I'm using dragonborn racial Dragon Breath ability and sometimes it hits everyone for 1 damage, is it a bug?

(Combat): You begin to cast Breath Weapon: White at level 23.
(Combat): You hit Plague Reaper for 1 point of cold damage.
(Combat): Spell Crit! Your Breath Weapon: White has greater effect!

And this is when it works instead:
(Combat): Spell Crit! Your Breath Weapon: White has greater effect!
(Combat): You hit Jarilith for 2,376 points of cold damage.

I'm playing a level 15 caster druid in water elemental form.

Probably WAI, came with the across the board nerfs on AOE nukers after some melee forumites screamed nerf 'em. Expect more nerfs to aoe's + probably instakills next as well, as the game shifts to hack n slash.

Cheers

[Michele]

Yes, and I don't expect it will get fixed.

It's due to movement interaction when activating the ability - just try not moving just before before and during the ability it & it will always work as intended. (like seriously stop moving for half a second or so then use it)

I don't know if it's particular directions or if there's some kind of interrupt at a particular part of the animation.

Your "stop moving" suggestion solves the dragon breath problem

[Nhennan]

Your "stop moving" suggestion solves the dragon breath problem

Sadly, that's what is required. I just started using the dragon breath ability on my blue air savant and was annoyed that it wouldn't fire correctly on the move.

On another note, has anyone ever taken (and had success with) the "Augmented Breath" (T4 racial enhancement)? It offers either of:

• Constricting Breath.png Constricting Breath: 20% chance that enemies will be slowed by 50% when affected by your Breath Attacks.
• Dazing Breath.png Dazing Breath: 5% chance that enemies will be Dazed when affected by your Breath Attacks.
• Lulling Breath.png Lulling Breath: 10% chance that enemies will fall asleep when affected by your Breath Attacks.
• Relentless Breath.png Relentless Breath: 8% chance that enemies will be knocked down when affected by your Breath Attacks.

I'm just not convinced that it is a good investment of 2 APs.

And for the bonus question, does it also apply to the Draconic Incarnation ED breath weapon?