TheDefenestrator wrote: »

Currently Azureblight in PVE seems to work as follows:

1. When a target reaches 20 stacks, every player wearing azureblight will trigger an explosion on the target
2. No individual player may trigger an explosion more than once every 1 second.

I believe this is unintended; while each player has a 1 second cooldown for their own azureblight explosion, the target appears to have no cooldown. This means that instead of there being fewer azureblight explosions after the cooldown was increased this patch, there are more.

TheDefenestrator wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

TheDefenestrator wrote: »

Currently Azureblight in PVE seems to work as follows:

1. When a target reaches 20 stacks, every player wearing azureblight will trigger an explosion on the target
2. No individual player may trigger an explosion more than once every 1 second.

I believe this is unintended; while each player has a 1 second cooldown for their own azureblight explosion, the target appears to have no cooldown. This means that instead of there being fewer azureblight explosions after the cooldown was increased this patch, there are more.

It was working that way (or similarly) ever since U41. If you had 3 players in Azure on one target with no adds, all three explosions could go off simultaneously.

I watched some more videos, seems like this is correct. That said, the damage is supposed to go to whoever generated the 20th stack. That cannot be multiple people. Next instance of damage should be the next time 20 stacks are generated. I'm not sure the exact problem but something's been up for awhile then.

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

There is something funky going on with Azureblight, unless this is intended. Something somewhere the damage modifiers are completely messed up. It is doing a RIDICULOUS amount of damage, don't think it is the cooldown thing mentioned above but unless THIS BIG of a damage gain is intentional, it is doing almost double the damage it was doing in fights like Bahsei/Reef Guardian compared to previous version of AB. I know my description has no numbers etc to back it up but something odd is going on with the set. Doesn't seem right.

In General Discussion there’s a post about how it may be scaling with the crit damage stat. I haven’t had time to test it, though.

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

There is something funky going on with Azureblight, unless this is intended. Something somewhere the damage modifiers are completely messed up. It is doing a RIDICULOUS amount of damage, don't think it is the cooldown thing mentioned above but unless THIS BIG of a damage gain is intentional, it is doing almost double the damage it was doing in fights like Bahsei/Reef Guardian compared to previous version of AB. I know my description has no numbers etc to back it up but something odd is going on with the set. Doesn't seem right.

In General Discussion there’s a post about how it may be scaling with the crit damage stat. I haven’t had time to test it, though.

Hey, thanks. Glad I am not crazy.

I can't reproduce the issue with the crit damage stat. I'm not seeing any difference between Azure at 70% crit damage and Azure at 88%. You're definitely not alone in seeing that the numbers are very high, but I wonder what's causing it.

virtus753 wrote: »

TheDefenestrator wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

There is something funky going on with Azureblight, unless this is intended. Something somewhere the damage modifiers are completely messed up. It is doing a RIDICULOUS amount of damage, don't think it is the cooldown thing mentioned above but unless THIS BIG of a damage gain is intentional, it is doing almost double the damage it was doing in fights like Bahsei/Reef Guardian compared to previous version of AB. I know my description has no numbers etc to back it up but something odd is going on with the set. Doesn't seem right.

In General Discussion there’s a post about how it may be scaling with the crit damage stat. I haven’t had time to test it, though.

Hey, thanks. Glad I am not crazy.

I can't reproduce the issue with the crit damage stat. I'm not seeing any difference between Azure at 70% crit damage and Azure at 88%. You're definitely not alone in seeing that the numbers are very high, but I wonder what's causing it.

I'm pretty sure it's just that 150% scaling per target is a huge amount of scaling.

It is, and at 4+ targets it will do better than the old Azure. But it shouldn't do close to double the old Azure (especially since Master at Arms doesn't buff it anymore). It really shouldn't be doing even 20% more at best. If those reports are accurate, something else is going on.

It was suggested in the other thread (in General) that the bugged Banner skill may be responsible for some of the increased damage. I'm curious what we'll see tomorrow after the hotfix.

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

TheDefenestrator wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

There is something funky going on with Azureblight, unless this is intended. Something somewhere the damage modifiers are completely messed up. It is doing a RIDICULOUS amount of damage, don't think it is the cooldown thing mentioned above but unless THIS BIG of a damage gain is intentional, it is doing almost double the damage it was doing in fights like Bahsei/Reef Guardian compared to previous version of AB. I know my description has no numbers etc to back it up but something odd is going on with the set. Doesn't seem right.

In General Discussion there’s a post about how it may be scaling with the crit damage stat. I haven’t had time to test it, though.

Hey, thanks. Glad I am not crazy.

I can't reproduce the issue with the crit damage stat. I'm not seeing any difference between Azure at 70% crit damage and Azure at 88%. You're definitely not alone in seeing that the numbers are very high, but I wonder what's causing it.

I'm pretty sure it's just that 150% scaling per target is a huge amount of scaling.

It is, and at 4+ targets it will do better than the old Azure. But it shouldn't do close to double the old Azure (especially since Master at Arms doesn't buff it anymore). It really shouldn't be doing even 20% more at best. If those reports are accurate, something else is going on.

It was suggested in the other thread (in General) that the bugged Banner skill may be responsible for some of the increased damage. I'm curious what we'll see tomorrow after the hotfix.

I think you and I are the only two left who think this set is beyond bugged at the moment lol. Hope they fix whatever the heck is going on.

I haven’t found a bug with the set itself beyond what we knew from U41 about multiple explosions from one Blight Seed and now the fact that the explosion doesn’t interact properly with Master at Arms.

FWIW, there are other endgamers in Discord confirming something is off compared to how it should perform on paper, which is making me think there may be a bad interaction somewhere, either with multiple Azure users or something else.

Messi wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

All that being said, even if it's over performing on target cap, most multi target fights are under cap for a significant portion and that part of the fight is slower due to the scaling. So even with it a bit bugged it may be mostly balanced.

I think it would be best if it was balanced with intent, not accidentally due to a bug haha. To be honest, I would love some clarity on what the heck is actually going on.

virtus753 wrote: »

Messi wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

All that being said, even if it's over performing on target cap, most multi target fights are under cap for a significant portion and that part of the fight is slower due to the scaling. So even with it a bit bugged it may be mostly balanced.

I think it would be best if it was balanced with intent, not accidentally due to a bug haha. To be honest, I would love some clarity on what the heck is actually going on.

For clarity, I believe this is what we should expect to see compared to the previous version:

• The old version provided +30% per target (including the first), up to a maximum of +180% (reached at 6 total targets).
• The new version has a much lower tooltip but much better scaling: it provides +150% per target (not including the first), up to a maximum of +600% (reached at 5 total targets).

I'm using x here to represent the old tooltip, which had a coefficient of 1.565 per UESP. Like most offensive proc sets, Azure should scale purely off of weapon/spell damage. This is also stated in the tooltip.

The patch notes claimed a nerf of ~58% to this tooltip, so the new tooltip should be 0.42x. That would result in the following comparison on paper:

Old scaling: 1.3x, 1.6x, 1.9x, 2.2x, 2.5x, 2.8x
New scaling: 0.42x, 1.05x, 1.68x, 2.31x, 2.94x

At 1 target, the set has been significantly nerfed - a loss of 67.69% (0.42x instead of 1.3x)
At 2 targets, the set has taken a loss of 34.375% (1.05x instead of 1.6x)
At 3 targets, the loss is much more modest: only 11.58% (1.68x instead of 1.9x)
At 4 targets, the new set is better than the old by 5% (2.31x/2.2x = 1.05)
At 5 targets, the new set is better than the old by 17.6% (2.94x/2.5x = 1.176)
At 6 targets, the new set is better than the old by only 5% again (2.94x/2.8x = 1.05), since the new version stops scaling at 5 targets.

This new scaling is working as described in my testing (just myself in Azure on a dummy):

At 2 targets, I get 250% of the damage I get against one target - 100% base + 150% bonus for the second target
At 3 targets, I get 400% of the damage I get against one target - 100% base + 300% bonus (150% x2)
At 4 targets, I get 550% of the damage I get against one target - 100% base + 450% bonus (150% x3)
At 5 targets, I get 700% of the damage I get against one target - 100% base + 600% bonus (150% x4)

I'm finding a higher new coefficient than expected, though. Instead of 0.657, which would be a 58% nerf from 1.565, or even 0.664, which would represent a 60% nerf later buffed by 6% (which is the sequence mentioned in the PTS notes), I am seeing around 0.68-0.71. (I'm having trouble pinning down why it varies so much, as I'm deliberately not using CP to boost the tooltip here, and I'm not using anything else that gives a bonus to AoE or direct damage. I'll continue to investigate.)

Let me take an average new coefficient of 0.69 and redo the scaling with 0.44x (a nerf of 56%) rather than 0.42x:

New scaling with 55% nerf: 0.44x, 1.1x, 1.76x, 2.42x, 3.08x

Now the new version is still worse at 1 or 2 targets, but it's only a loss of a bit over 7% at 3 targets, and the buffs are better at 4+ targets: 10% over the old version at 4, 23.2% over the old version at 5, and back to 10% again at 6.

So if the coefficient is not as low as it should be, even by a couple percentage points, we see a bigger benefit at 4+ targets due to the new scaling.

We also gained more weapon/spell damage since the 2nd-4th bonuses were replaced (although this doesn't explain the weirdness with the new coefficient), so Azure as a whole is a stronger set than it was previously (unless used on 1-2 targets), as it now provides more of the stat with which it scales.

Now this won't explain cases where the set seems to be doing much more damage (like 50%-100% more) than expected - I'm grateful to sarathes for suggesting Banner and its bugs, which I am not going to be able to test before the hotfix.