bugs bugs bugs (5.4)
Posted: February 4th, 2014, 6:50 pm
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!
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!