bugs bugs bugs (5.4)

[Poofah]

I want to make a fairly comprehensive list of bugs, so I can post it on the wow forums and possibly get some of them fixed before WoD. Obviously the distinction between a bug and a non-intuitive-but-intended feature is not razor sharp, so these are examples where I think the game is genuinely not working as the tooltips suggest that it should. Please post a) if you know of a bug I've missed, and b) if you have an idea about why it's not working as the tooltips indicate.

edited 3.13.14


1)** Demolish/Belly Slide accuracy is 75%. The tooltip lists their accuracy as 50% (and their damage is balanced with 50% accuracy in mind). However they have been shown repeatedly to hit at 70-75% rates.

** This has been addressed in 5.4.7. Apparently there is a built-in 'miss streak protection' that was too generous to low-accuracy attacks. It is currently unclear whether miss streak protection was removed entirely, or simply modified to be less beneficial. Demolish/Belly Slide demonstrably hit less often in 5.4.7, but we currently don't have a precise value for their accuracy.


2)** Elemental passive vs Sandstorm. Elemental passive says 'Elementals ignore all negative weather effects.' Sandstorm says 'During a sandstorm, all pets take X less damage and their accuracy is reduced by 10%.' Elementals correctly ignore the 10% reduced accuracy, however they incorrectly fail to receive the damage reduction (since it's not a negative effect).

-- the Elemental passive ignored all weather effects prior to 5.4, so this is almost certainly just an oversight as far as implementing the new version. All other Elemental/weather interactions are correct as far as I can tell.

** This has been fixed in 5.4.7.


3) Buffs on dead pets. If a pet dies with a buff active, that buff will continue to affect any damage/healing attributed to the dead pet, and the buff will never expire (even though no buffs/debuffs appear on the pet's 'corpse'). For example if a dragonkin casts Elementium Bolt while the dragonkin buff (+50% dmg) is active, and then dies on that same turn; then the Elementium Bolt will benefit from the +50% dmg two turns later, even though the buff would normally have expired if the dragonkin were still alive. The beast passive is another common example of this -- beasts always die with the buff activated, so any DoTs cast by the beast will receive +25% dmg for the remainder of the match.

-- this almost certainly has to do with Haunt, because DoTs/debuffs need to be suspended while the Val'kyr is 'dead'. To address this, it seems that dead pets in general simply retain their buffs/debuffs. I have no idea if this is intended or not.


4) UD passive versus Minefield. If you swap an UD pet into a Minefield, and the Minefield kills the UD, then the UD will rez and remain 'alive' for 2 additional turns, instead of 1.

-- When a pet swaps into the active pet slot, this creates a new round in the match; nothing happens in this round except for 'xyz becomes the active pet'. Buffs/debuffs do not tick down. The UD passive is a buff called 'Damned' that prevents the UD pet from dying, and then kills the UD pet when 'Damned' expires. 'Damned' normally has a duration of 1 round. So I believe what's happening is that because the 'pet swap' turn does not allow buffs to tick down, 'Damned' remains at 1 round on the following turn, and then finally expires one turn later.


5) Wave vs Trap. Snap Trap and Magma Trap say 'Places a magma trap onto the ground. Opponents have a chance to trigger the trap each time they attack. When the opponent triggers the trap, they will take X Elemental damage and be unable to attack for 1 round.' Magma Wave and Tidal Wave say 'Deals X Elemental damage to the enemy's pets. Destroys objects created by both teams.' When a Wave destroys a Trap, the Trap triggers and deals damage plus a stun.

-- Magma Trap is a debuff with a 9 round duration, and a chance to expire early each round. The expiration of the Trap debuff is actually what triggers the damage+stun. Magma Wave 'destroys' objects, but what this really does is simply forces the Trap debuff to expire. Which triggers it.


6) Negative accuracy bug. This occurs most noticeably with Blinding Poison -- when an ability drops below 0% accuracy, it paradoxically becomes able to hit again. For example the tooltip for Rampage (95% accuracy) while afflicted with Blinding Poison (-100% accuracy) correctly lists -5% accuracy. However Rampage can hit in this situation.

-- There is speculation that the game cannot handle negative accuracy values, and simply ignores the '-' minus sign (ie Rampage is actually 5% accuracy in this situation). This is consistent with my experience, but I don't have enough data to formally confirm it.


7) Related to the negative accuracy bug: several multi-hit abilities are only affected by accuracy debuffs on their first hit. For example Moth Balls while affected by Blind (-50% accuracy): the first Moth Ball will correctly miss, but the remaining 3 Moth Balls will still have 50% accuracy. Or, Blessed Hammer while affected by Blinding Poison: the first hammer will miss, but the 2nd and 3rd hammers will hit.


8 ) 'double damage' debuffs versus 'epic pet' buff. This specifically affects the Beasts of Fable and the Celestial pets, when they are affected by Howl/Flock/Stampede/Inflation or any other debuff that modifies damage taken by a percentage. For example Howl (200% damage taken) versus 'epic pet' (50% damage taken) intuitively should cancel each other out, and result in 100% of normal damage taken. Instead, this results in 150% of normal damage taken.

-- For whatever reason, the 'epic pet' buff seems to operate additively rather than multiplicatively. It seems to calculate 50% of the incoming damage, and subtracts this value from the final damage. This calculation apparently is done prior to any multiplicative modifiers from Howl or etc. So the end result becomes 200%*(X damage) - 50%*(X damage) = 150%(X damage).


9) the Haunt bug. I only put this here for the sake of completion, as I've seen it posted many times, but have never been able to recreate it myself. Reportedly, a Haunting Val'kyr will occasionally fail to rez (even though the Haunt debuff was successfully applied to the enemy pet). If you have information on how to recreate this, please share.

-- preliminary feedback suggests that this might occur when the Haunted pet dies during the end-of-turn, to something that is not Haunt (ie to a delayed-damage or persistent damage effect, such as Bombing Run or Cyclone)


10) Burrow bug. If a pet dies while 'underground' (from Burrow or Sons of the Flame/Root), then the pet battle will suddenly stop in the middle of the round and kick you back to the normal UI. The killing blow will not appear in the combat log. If the underground pet was the last living pet, then the opponent will get credit for winning; otherwise the pet battle just ends with no winner.
It seems likely that this bug would affect Lift-Off as well, but I haven't tested that yet.

10a) In a related issue, the tooltip for Burrow says the pet is 'unattackable', which is slightly inaccurate, because the pet can be hit by other underground pets (and similarly for Lift-Off, a soaring pet can be hit by another soaring pet).


11) Resilience bugs. Chained CCs do not proc Resilience.

-- The Resilient buff is applied when a CC wears off, not when the CC is applied. Therefore, if a pet is CCed while a CC debuff is still up, then the new CC will apply. This can be seen with stuns, polymorphs, and sleeps. For example if you are polymorphed by Frog Kiss on turn 1, and then Frog Kiss procs again on turn 2, you will remain polymorphed for the rest of turn 2 and turn 3. In contrast, if Frog Kiss procs on turn 1, and then fails to proc on turn 2, you will receive the Resilient buff at the end of turn 2, and will properly be immune to Frog Kiss procs on turn 3.


12) Sleeping Gas has an additional interaction that I believe is unintended. The 'asleep' debuff breaks on damage. And when 'asleep' is removed by damage, the Resilient buff is not applied. So if you spam Sleeping Gas, then each attack can remove the old 'asleep' debuff (which doesn't trigger Resilient), and has a chance to immediately apply a new 'asleep' debuff.


13) Critter passive: critters say that they are immune to sleep, but they are not immune to the sleep effect from Moth Dust.


Again, this is a work in progress, so if you think I've missed something, please say so!

[Luciandk]

think youve covered all the major issues. Make sure lecraft sees it, maybe tweet it to him. He seems to care for pet battling.

[Poofah]

I'll tweet it if you volunteer to condense it to 140 characters.

[Luciandk]

Thats why you just link the thread to him.

[Jerebear]

on #4:

I actually wonder if the game considers swapping (whether it be due to the player choosing to swap or due to pet death) and attacks like geyser to be beginning of round events rather than end of round events. I know from a logical perspective, it appears to be end of round (happens before we even input commands), but it would be an alternate explanation to why this gives 2 undead rounds in your scenario. If it were considered a beginning of round event, then that's why it might not tick as well.

That might explain why minefield gives him two undead rounds (not sure if I agree it should...just looking for possible reasons).

As an alternate way to trigger this by the way:

In the celestial tournament, I use an H/H blackfuse bombling against Socks (First pet of Sully's team). A rotation of:
Zap > Bombing Run > Zap > Zap > Explode

This causes bombing run to be the killing blow on Socks after the explode goes off. True to what you describe, he gets two undead round turns. I actually use this to my advantage and stun him which makes him switch pets (since there is a second undead round) giving a free hit on the rabbit.

[Badpathing]

Well, it's not necessarily a pet battle bug, but it is related to pet battles; in fact I had it happen today again.

I do not have the exact scenario figured out that triggers it, but I have often had my weekly "get 10 pvp pet battle wins @ 25" quest NOT register pvp wins. In fact, I have had it outright drop (as it did today at 7/10 wins), afterwhich retaking the quest resets the progress. Today was pretty bad, I had to restart the client, log onto different toons, drop and retake the quest to get wins to register.

Basically, the quest is quite buggy.

[Ligre]

I have tweeted Lecraft about the Elemental/Sandstorm issue. It''s been ignored, just like everything else that should be fixed. I've also put in a lot of in-game/forum bug reports...which were also blatantly ignored. They don't care, sadly.

[Poofah]

I actually wonder if the game considers swapping (whether it be due to the player choosing to swap or due to pet death) and attacks like geyser to be beginning of round events rather than end of round events.

Almost every delayed-damage effect or DoT (Geyser, Whirlpool, Curse of Doom, etc etc) deals damage at end of turn. Minefield is an oddball in this regard.

Swapping is handled by creating a new round in the match, where all that happens is 'xyz becomes the active pet'. Debuffs don't decrement, so DoTs don't tick and any delayed-damage debuff with 1 round remaining will not trigger. I'm not sure how the game handles this, but the easiest way would be to just skip the 'end-of-turn' phase.

The only things I have ever seen happen during this 'pet-swap' round are Minefield triggering, or Mudslide triggering. So it's rare for a pet to die during the pet-swap turn, but if it does, it doesn't get an end-of-turn phase, and that (in theory) is why the UD passive buff doesn't decrement.

This causes bombing run to be the killing blow on Socks after the explode goes off. True to what you describe, he gets two undead round turns.

I assume your pet is slower in this case? This is another oddity with the UD passive. End-of-turn effects are processed in the same order that attacks are, ie fastest pet first. So I suspect what's happening is: at end-of-turn, Socks' buffs/debuffs decrement, and then your buffs/debuffs decrement, which triggers the Bombing Run to land. So Socks dies and rezzes with 'Damned', but since he has already processed his buffs/debuffs for the turn, 'Damned' doesn't decrement, and he gets an extra turn out of it.

I think both of these are bugs that make an already overpowered passive even stronger, for no good reason.

I do not have the exact scenario figured out that triggers it, but I have often had my weekly "get 10 pvp pet battle wins @ 25" quest NOT register pvp wins.

Are you completing it during the same reset that you accepted it? If you leave this quest in your log past the weekly reset, it has a strong chance to bug as you described.

It''s been ignored, just like everything else that should be fixed. I've also put in a lot of in-game/forum bug reports...which were also blatantly ignored.

That's been my experience too, but I was hoping that if we put all the bugs in one place (with some discussion and consensus about what really needs attention), then maybe it'd be a useful resource for them. I suspect that they sort of care, but not enough to wade through all the disparate opinions on the various fora.

[Jerebear]

I don't think it has been ignored. LeCraft said they'd look into it. I wouldn't expect a quick change or even a response, but if he says they'll look into it, I'm sure they will. As much as we chat and interact as a large community here, pet battles are probably a much smaller subset of the entire content experienced by the player base. I wouldn't expect them to prioritize pet battle mechanics over a lot of things. Someone will be on it when they have time is my guess.

[Ligre]

I suspect that they sort of care, but not enough to wade through all the disparate opinions on the various fora.

I dunno man...it's not like people haven't specifically voiced what is really wrong with pet battles since 5.4 launched. I have, several others on the Battle.net forums have...and some folks here have as well. It isn't disparate...it's all pretty obvious and right in front of us (and them, the devs). It's time something were done.

I don't think it has been ignored. LeCraft said they'd look into it. I wouldn't expect a quick change or even a response, but if he says they'll look into it, I'm sure they will. As much as we chat and interact as a large community here, pet battles are probably a much smaller subset of the entire content experienced by the player base. I wouldn't expect them to prioritize pet battle mechanics over a lot of things. Someone will be on it when they have time is my guess.

I'm sorry, but they've had MONTHS now...that's more than plenty of time from when people had begun to bring the bugs/oversights to their attention. I realize that pet battles are a sub/mini-game...and wouldn't expect them to "prioritize" them over something like raid/PvP balance, but really...come on. August thru February now, with STILL no fix to the Elemental/Sandstorm issue...which was worded "Elementals will recieve the damage reduction from Sandstorm" in the patch notes. It was PROMISED to us a month in advance of the patch. 6 months later, we still have Living Sandlings being dotted to death. Again, I'm not going to back off on this (the issue and my displeasure that nothing's been done yet) until we SEE some fixes implemented. It's about time they PROVE to us that they're on it...and not just saying so.

[3wd]

Add one more to the list :

- this is specifically related to Fossilized Hatchling.

After the hatchling will use a bonestorm, and then proceed to use either Bone bite of claw in the next round, sometime you will see some insane damage number doing to your pet. Both Bone bite and claw should do some where around 325 - 395 dmg, but you can see the damage figure going up to around 600 or so.

I have seen this happened many times, I am not 100% sure but will guess this is just a display bug, which the damage done by the bonestorm was never displayed correctly in the last round , hence somehow it was added to the attack in this round.

But as I said, I am not 100% sure if this is a display only bug, as it could actually do more damage than it should be.

[3wd]

Regarding the Valk failing to revive bug, it is mostly related to some sort of aoe skills.

eg.

If you will use cyclone which will do back row damage to your opponent, and when your opponent'r pet moved to the back row and killed by the cyclone and also with haunt on that pet, the valk will most likely not going to come back to live again.

[3wd]

There are 2 more bugs that I can think of :

1. Sons of the flame and Sons of the root both are having some issue which will cause the game to end prematurely. It could happen when the elemental pets were killed during that 3 rounds of sons or even can happen when their opponents will use some type of skills.

2. Stun Seed has a very confusing and strange mechanic and is causing lots of issues currently - the description of this skill clearing mentioned : After 3 rounds, the seed blooms, causing the current enemy pet to take 591 Elemental damage and be stunned for 1 round.

But in fact, it is NOT.

If you will use a valk and haunt at the round when the seed is going to bloom, unlike most of the other delay damage, which your valk can completely avoid, the seed will just still attach to your valk when she will get back up in the back row.

Now only that, even the seed will be attached to the valk in your back row, next round when it blooms, sometime it could stun your front pet and sometime it will just stun your valk in the back, it is very inconsistent and confusing.

In fact, sometime this skill will also cause the valk NOT able to come back after using the haunt.

[Badpathing]

Are you completing it during the same reset that you accepted it? If you leave this quest in your log past the weekly reset, it has a strong chance to bug as you described.

Nah, I finish it weekly. I do however sometimes take the quest on one character, and do it on another.

[Poofah]

August thru February now, with STILL no fix to the Elemental/Sandstorm issue...

I wish their responsiveness/communication were better. But we've had a long time to come to grips with it, and I don't think we can expect it to change.

The wow fora are useless for gathering information. There's just too many disparate and often clueless opinions: it's impossible to separate the important/valid points from the noise.

They're going through a cycle of balance changes for WoD currently, and they've solicited opinions on isolated topics on twitter. On the chance that they solicit opinions on bugs to fix, I want to have a reasonably consolidated and vetted list that we can point them to.

But as I said, I am not 100% sure if this is a display only bug, as it could actually do more damage than it should be.

Did you check the combat log? I often have damage not appear in the floating text, and then it will 'catch up' on a later turn -- but the combat log will list the damage correctly in those cases.

If you will use cyclone which will do back row damage to your opponent, and when your opponent'r pet moved to the back row and killed by the cyclone and also with haunt on that pet, the valk will most likely not going to come back to live again.

This is interesting, and I wonder if it's the same as the issue with Bombing Run. It seems that maybe Haunt doesn't properly revive the Val'kyr if the Haunted pet is killed during end-of-turn (by something other than Haunt). The Stun Seed issue may also be related, but it sounds like it's even more complicated.

I do however sometimes take the quest on one character, and do it on another.

I do this routinely too, across servers even, and it has never caused a problem. I wonder if a server restart was involved? I have had this quest bug on multiple occasions, but it has always correlated with a reset of some sort (weekly or unscheduled, for example a day or two ago there was an authentication server issue and rolling restarts--could that have been involved?).

[Badpathing]

We have had quite a few server issues with those recent hack attempts, so maybe that is the culprit. It does not happen every week, but it happens enough that I have noticed it.

I submitted a bug report.

[Poofah]

1. Sons of the flame and Sons of the root both are having some issue which will cause the game to end prematurely. It could happen when the elemental pets were killed during that 3 rounds of sons or even can happen when their opponents will use some type of skills.

I've had this happen once or twice but I couldn't pin it on these abilities specifically. Did the game just suddenly break out of the pet battle and return you to your normal screen? Or did the game lag and then eventually break out of the pet battle?

There are certain abilities that semi-reliably cause long delays. I'm not sure if the game as a whole is lagging, or my client is lagging. Surge, Roll, and certain multi-hit abilities with Lightning Storm are the main culprits for this. In PvP, this can sometimes cause your turn timer to expire without being able to select an ability. Generally, alt-tabbing to desktop and then back in will fix it. I have no idea if this is related to the Sons of the Flame/Root issue though.

[3wd]

1. Sons of the flame and Sons of the root both are having some issue which will cause the game to end prematurely. It could happen when the elemental pets were killed during that 3 rounds of sons or even can happen when their opponents will use some type of skills.

I've had this happen once or twice but I couldn't pin it on these abilities specifically. Did the game just suddenly break out of the pet battle and return you to your normal screen? Or did the game lag and then eventually break out of the pet battle?

There are certain abilities that semi-reliably cause long delays. I'm not sure if the game as a whole is lagging, or my client is lagging. Surge, Roll, and certain multi-hit abilities with Lightning Storm are the main culprits for this. In PvP, this can sometimes cause your turn timer to expire without being able to select an ability. Generally, alt-tabbing to desktop and then back in will fix it. I have no idea if this is related to the Sons of the Flame/Root issue though.

Its not the lag, the game will just suddenly ended, in some cases, it won't even count a win or loss but in some cases it will count. And you will just return to your normal screen.

Sometime it happens when the elementals die during that 3 rounds of sons, but in some cases, the bug will happen when certain skills used on the other side, either way it's a very buggy skill.

[Jabart]

I've said this before on other threads, but just to reiterate:

I use (and go against) Val'kyr all the time, and I have positively never seen her fail to revive from a Haunt when she is supposed to. The only times she fails to revive are when she is supposed to fail to revive (eg: when losing in a game of Haunt roulette). I strongly suspect that reports of this alleged bug are simply Val'kyr owners unaware that certain conditions can cause the revive to fail.

That said, the rest of the list looks right. Great job compiling it all.

[3wd]

I've said this before on other threads, but just to reiterate:

I use (and go against) Val'kyr all the time, and I have positively never seen her fail to revive from a Haunt when she is supposed to. The only times she fails to revive are when she is supposed to fail to revive (eg: when losing in a game of Haunt roulette). I strongly suspect that reports of this alleged bug are simply Val'kyr owners unaware that certain conditions can cause the revive to fail.

That said, the rest of the list looks right. Great job compiling it all.

The reason is this : not many people will use valk to team up with aoe pets, especially with pets using cyclone.

Some of my friends actually tried this valk build early in this patch : valk + blight hawk + dancer, the idea is to utilize the cri buff of the dancer to combine it with the cyclone and haunt to increase the damage, granted its interesting but eventually not the best build we can find with valk, but during the process, we found out that when a pet was killed by the cyclone and with haunt on it, the valk will have a chance not coming back.

The bug does exist.