[Skill Bug] Mutagen - Not activating at 20% health

Excaltic

Playing on Xbox One X - EU server

Mutagen - Skill Bug
- The skill mutagen does not activate when health drops below 20% Health
- The skill does not activate when casted below 20% Health
- The mutagen is not consumed, but stays active healing over time
- It does randomly seem to activate around 5% health, but not all the time...

In short, skill is not working as intended!

Also, best wishes for 2018, and while I'm still here, thank you for the Xbox One X patch of this game!

The Xbox One X version kicks ass!

Shadowshire

Excaltic wrote: »

Playing on Xbox One X - EU server

Mutagen - Skill Bug
- The skill mutagen does not activate when health drops below 20% Health
- The skill does not activate when casted below 20% Health
- The mutagen is not consumed, but stays active healing over time
- It does randomly seem to activate around 5% health, but not all the time...

In short, skill is not working as intended! ....

Perhaps it is "working as designed" even if we don't like what happens or doesn't happen.

Even so, your first two observations surprise me. As to the third, it seems to me that the character which casts Mutagen cannot consume the mutagen, only benefit from its HoT. If I recall correctly, that is implied in the tooltip for the ability.*

If Mutagen seems to "randomly activate around 5% health" sometimes, then that implies that it was not cast before the character's Health dropped to at least 20% and suffered yet more damage before Mutagen took effect. Albeit, I don't recall whether Mutagen is "instant cast".

Be that as it may, with my hardware and ISP, the Internet, and whatever Bethesda is operating, network latency prevents casting any spell "instantly". When the game client displays Health at or below 20%, it is already lower. Ordinarily, there is just enough latency for NPCs and MoBs to kill my character when Health is below 20% despite anything that I attempt to do.

So, in my experience, the only actions that are likely to benefit a player character when Health drops below 20% are:

1. Retreat, turn around and sprint away, whether an enemy's long-range attack might kill the character nonetheless. When your character is significantly out-numbered and/or the enemy is too powerful, discretion is the better part of valor.
2. Healing from a spell cast by another player character, e.g., one who has the "healing role" in a group, is usually enough to allow the recipient to continue fighting, else, to excercise option #1.
3. Death of one or more attacking opponents (of course). The player must beware of their character remaining within a AoE of a spell cast by an enemy that is still alive, however.
4. A "dodge-roll" away from the attacker(s) might delay pursuit and continuing damage long enough for the character's Health to recover, or long enough for the second and/or third event listed above to occur. Or it can give the character an opportunity to retreat and flee (see #1 above).
5. A "dodge-roll" away from the attacker(s) might give the player character an opportunity to use an "instant cast" spell such as a damage shield. It can also remove the player character from a hostile spell's AoE. If nothing else, a damage shield can offer a brief opportunity to receive healing or to cast a healing spell, whether to turn and flee instead.
6. Sometimes a "dodge roll" or other evasive action simply delays the inevitable (see the list below).
7. Note: ordinarily, a Sorcerer can use Bolt Escape or its morph to flee after the character turns away. In my observation and use, it has not been clear whether it can be interrupted by a hostile player-character. It has not been interrupted by an NPC, other than, perhaps, by some dungeon bosses.

While a player character's Health is less than 20%:

1. Network latency is often fatal, insofar as it delays receipt of the player's input by the game host. The game host never waits for input from any player before it begins or continues executing attacks by NPCs or MoBs. Apparently, the game host does that unless and until it is interrupted by a player's input, processes it, then resumes. When a player does nothing, their character will be killed -- which you will learn after you are AFK for a while, and your character is at a location near one where a hostile NPC or MoB spawns.
2. Using an ability of any kind is likely to be either ignored ("interrupted") or ineffective, unless it is either a light attack or the character blocks, "bashes", or "interrupts" a foe. A "fully charged" heavy attack typically requires too much time to complete before the character suffers enough damage to die.
3. An "instant cast" damage shield often succeeds, but the character sometimes receives so much damage so quickly that the shield almost immediately disappears.
4. An "instant cast" spell which has an AoE might succeed. However, it might not provide either enough healing to prevent the character from being killed, or do enough damage quickly enough to kill the attacker(s).
5. Attempting to consume a potion is often ignored, perhaps "interrupted". If not, then the character usually dies before it can take effect. Or the potion doesn't restore enough Health to enable the character to survive enemy attacks before the character can either kill the foe(s), or retreat and flee.
6. A player character almost always dies before a spell that has a casting time can take effect. Attempting to summon a familiar ("combat pet") almost always fails, if only because the player character dies before the summons succeeds. If the summons succeeds, then usually the character dies before the player can use the familiar's ability. (Note: this happens quite often to NPC's that summon a familiar, so don't complain too loudly if it happens to your character on occasion.)

Your experience(s) may differ. If you have observations and suggestions, please feel free to contribute.

But, yeah, the game does have broken ablities and other bugs. It is just that sometimes it is difficult to discern what was "meant" and whether, if it was, the outcome of our efforts is given due consideration.

For example, there is one dungeon in which a boss casts an AoE that spreads so rapidly that my character has never been able to avoid it, either by sprinting away from its expanding circumference, or by using a dodge-roll away from it. Whether the speed of its expansion was intended, or it is the result of lousy design, or my character cannot avoid it because of network latency, the outcome is a very disappointing, unsatisfying experience of playing TESO.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of other dungeon combat "features" like that one. Those which depend upon whether the player character can obtain an Interactive prompt can be especially unreliable and frustrating. Time-and-goal features presume that the performance of the player's computer and LAN, and their ISP and the Internet, can enable the player to succeed. It also assumes that the Bethesda network and its "megaserver" design are up to the task of supporting rapid action, which does not, unfortunately, seem to be assured.
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* Be aware that what a tooltip states on the Skills UI is not necessarily what it will disclose if you access the tooltip while the ability is placed on the Activity Bar. That is, put the mouse cursor on the Activity Bar skill to read the tooltip.

Bashev

Does anyone else have the same issue? I tested the skill last night in PvP and later check the logs and the burst mutagen activated only once. I also believe that the skill is not working properly.

cjechurchill

I have the same issue. I just made a post about it.

It is not working. And I agree, even if you are below 20% and take damage it seems to only randomly proc....

I am shelving this skill.