Health Desync Bug(100% mitigation bug) and Random Heal after stun(Ghost heal bug)

MincVinyl

I wanted to create a new thread about this so the information can be condensed down into what we know so far. I have compiled data from what I believe is two bugs which interact with one another. Please try to help me test, see if you can find instances of these bugs happening or if you can recreate them. Please also read and re-read all the way through if you are having any trouble understanding what is going on. I tried to show what is happening in what I think is the easiest way.

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One bug is what I believe to be a calculation mishap which we know as the "health desync" bug which as shown in the video appears to now be preventing the damage receiving player from dying(100% mitigation). On live from what I have witnessed, health desyncs usually let the receiving player die. This 100% mitigation was first brought to attention in a thread called "Call To Test" by @DarkGottbeard shown below.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/509527/call-to-test/p1

The second new bug seen on the pts is what we have previously referred to as the "Ghost Heal" bug, because there seemed to be a strange heal happening that was invisible to combat metrics until @SodanTok pointed out that damage numbers don't make sense. This lead me to find the damage numbers from the health desync bug calulating in a strange way. Then I noticed that the "Ghost heal" was actually the exact amount that was being calculated strange in the health desync bug. I originally opened a forum thread shown below.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/511127/free-heal-after-stun-animation-bug#latest

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Health Desync bug(100% damage mitigation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NXOu6tYMdg

So with what @SodanTok pointed out to me in the other threads, I recreated the combat feed on here with the enemy player's hp events included to have an easier look into what was going on.

19585 hp initially
Onslaught [9648 damage Combat Metrics] [19,197 damage Eso Ui] .,.,.,.,.,.62.097sec
388 hp
487 hp
700 hp
LA [487 damage Combat Metrics] [487 damageEso Ui] .,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.62.687sec
213
312
executioner [312 damage Combat Metrics] [312 damageEso Ui] .,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.62.977sec
0
bash [0 Combat Metrics] [0 Eso Ui] .,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.63.006 sec

another recap with snipe combo(should be a 1 gcd kill)

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It appears we are looking at the inner workings of the health desync bug that people experience on live. Either the damage of the Onslaught is being doubled, or it is being halved. I will have to try to calculate how much damage a receiving player should be hit by and see what is happening. Part of me wants to say that The onslaught should be hitting for the Eso Ui number since I have normally hit as hard if not harder than that before in patches using onslaught. Considering this test was against someone with 75cp allocated 19585 hp no buffs in medium armor i believe around 18k resists I believe I should have easily hit him for close to his whole healthbar. It is possible that either zos tried to make a way to prevent health desync from happening to players and we are seeing it as a complete damage mitigation, or for some reason abilities like snipe and onslaught are showing in the ui that they are doing double damage(i think unlikely) but calculating half somewhere showing in combat metrics. It could be possible that somewhere in the game with some abilities there is a simple factor of 2 in the wrong spot.

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"Ghost Heal" bug

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw_KjMQ73dE&t=200s

Well the "ghost heal" appears to be the server correcting itself from the calculation mishap from the desync bug in some way. lets look at the combat feed again with my hp numbers included.

12114 hp initially
Mob Blitz [3644 damage Combat metrics] [7288 damage Eso ui]
4826 hp
post "ghost heal" hp: 8470 = 4826 hp + 3644 (half the blitz damage gets restored/corrected for?)

Why doesn't the ghost heal happen in my video previously showing this combo?

well, I believe the ghost heal is tied to when the stun animation ends not when you cc break. However using cc break does end the stun animation, therefore it looks like i can proc a heal by cc breaking. My onslaught combo never stunned the player I hit

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Things to test going on:
1. Try to calculate what a damage rotation should be by hand, down to the player's health bar
2. Find and make a list of what abilities health desync (snipe, onslaught,...) (Please, Make sure there is proof if you decide to report one here)
3. Recreate tests on live to see what the outcome is (I believe on live instead of 100% mitigation, the server just decides you are dead already)
4. Find which stun animations proc the ghost heal (snipe stun from stealth, knockdown from blitz,...)

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For Zos
There seems to be a factor of 2 that is off somewhere. I also don't know why it seems there are two separate calculations happening on these abilities that seem to be causing desync, unless the code used for these abilities is drawing the wrong variable before a factor of 2 was used. I'm not a game designer and I only know matlab from 4 years of mechanical engineering college classes, but if I had to point my finger at something I would say it is that factor 2 or 50% either not applying or applying twice. Or if there are supposed to be two calculations for the same event side by side, one of them seems to be missing that factor of two (evidence for this is due to the ui reporting one damage number and combat metrics reporting half of that number). I am not sure, but I imagine if the server has to constantly go back and correct itself, this could be a major source of lag.

What determines whether a player is dead? Is it when the Ui healthbar hits 0, or the damage that an ability reports is greater than the remaining player's life? Answers to these questions would explain where the 100% mit seems to be coming from. (if one of these conditions was disabled, normally seeing a player's healthbar at 0 on live would kill the person, but now it doesn't = 100% mit concept)

It would be nice to get feedback on whether I am right with my idea that zos introduced a 100% mitigation mechanic to save a player who's health is being desynced. Also, if the ghost heal was another mechanic trying to correct for the calculation mishap.

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@Glory
Since you helped before in the "Call to Test" thread, I hope you see this thread and get it to the right people.
Maybe Gina can pass this on.
@ZOS_GinaBruno
I will also try passing this on through the people I know on the stream team.

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Thanks for reading

React

I had to uninstall the PTS this week due to issues with my computer, however I can confirm that I experienced the "Ghost heal bug" multiple times when dueling on the PTS. The duels where we noticed this the most were stamDK vs stamDK, and the ghost heal appeared to be happening when breaking free of a leap almost every time.

Really hope this thread gets some developer attention. You can't let obscure but truly gamebreaking bugs like this go live.

KillsAllElves

People on xbox are healing while on their mounts when i hit them. I have gotten several on their mounts and the health goes to zero and then it goes back to full health as if i didnt do anything.

Nirnroot420

This needs to be bumped and requires high visibility, because it implies that there's something wrong on the calculation level with damage mitigation in general.

Excellent work as always, Minc, doing ZoS's job for them. I still can't fathom for the life of me as to why there has been zero dev attention paid to your threads this PTS cycle because they've been on point.

MincVinyl

Nirnroot420 wrote: »

This needs to be bumped and requires high visibility, because it implies that there's something wrong on the calculation level with damage mitigation in general.

Excellent work as always, Minc, doing ZoS's job for them. I still can't fathom for the life of me as to why there has been zero dev attention paid to your threads this PTS cycle because they've been on point.

It has already been passed to rich, from what I hear it will be looked at in the morning. Honestly Ive been having more fun debugging and testing stuff in eso lately than actually playing. My playstyle has kinda been removed from the game, so far have not found anything to replace high mobility dizzy stamsorc. Mobility kinda died with murkmire, and old school dizzy died with elsweyr. I'm sure if you want to, you can find my rants/thoughts on dizzy in other threads. As for stamsorc, I would hope any changes try to revert it back to that move fast and hit hard playstyle instead of being tied down to really short duration movement buffs, again a rant for another time.

FrankonPC

Glad this is getting the attention it deserves. Huge game-breaking issue imo. Good work guys

mav1234

I'm glad this is getting attention, but I really wish that ZOS would communicate when they are actually looking into something like this. I don't think we should expect that everything on the PTS has been paid attention to, so it is nice to know when something specifically is being investigated - especially something as large as this!

React

KillsAllElves wrote: »

People on xbox are healing while on their mounts when i hit them. I have gotten several on their mounts and the health goes to zero and then it goes back to full health as if i didnt do anything.

This is the PTS section, pertaining specifically to the active test server for next patch. The issues present on the test server are likely not on the current live server.

MincVinyl

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Olupajmibanan

I asked this in other thread, but ask here too. Does the Health Desync bug prevent player from dying in a single hit?

Let's imagine a naked character, with no CP, passives and attribute points allocated that has just the 8744 base health. If a full cp and buffed and equiped stamDK casts Take Flight (no light attacks or other sources of damage), will it instantly kill the character or the health desync bug will take place and prevent the character from dying?

MincVinyl

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

I asked this in other thread, but ask here too. Does the Health Desync bug prevent player from dying in a single hit?

Let's imagine a naked character, with no CP, passives and attribute points allocated that has just the 8744 base health. If a full cp and buffed and equiped stamDK casts Take Flight (no light attacks or other sources of damage), will it instantly kill the character or the health desync bug will take place and prevent the character from dying?

if you watch the first video i linked it shows that multiple hits after the health desync were doing nothing, I have yet to have time on live to check what the outcome is. What it seems to be happening is the server checks itself every gcd(global cool down = 1s) to compare two calculations that are supposed to happen side by side. A health desync is when one of those calculations gets messed up by some factor(in the cases Ive seen it was a factor of 2). Then on pts even though the proper calculation would kill the player, the desynced 1/2 damage calculation says that the player is still alive during that gcd(1s). Once that gcd ends, the server fixes the desync and allows the player to die again. If you look in the kill feed you can see that These combos take place all within that 1 gcd interval, If I were to continue the rotation the player would die.

ElvenVeil

@MincVinyl If zos would put in the effort you do, I think they would have a very happy fan base thanks for trying your best tackle the many many many many many many bugs in the game .

Also as a stamsorc main, if you feel like you want more stuff to test, please look at crit surge not proccing like it should :P I posted about it in the main bug thread, but I imagine it didn't get attention as per usual.

MincVinyl

ElvenVeil wrote: »

@MincVinyl If zos would put in the effort you do, I think they would have a very happy fan base thanks for trying your best tackle the many many many many many many bugs in the game .

Also as a stamsorc main, if you feel like you want more stuff to test, please look at crit surge not proccing like it should :P I posted about it in the main bug thread, but I imagine it didn't get attention as per usual.

I would have to check myself to be sure but i think i know what ia happening. It is the issue that you may only be doing one attack that should go off every 1sec with a 1 sec cooldown. This happens with a few procs like this. What is probably happening is cs has a hard cooldown of 1 sec, but the damage on the combat log if you look wont be 1 sec apart. The damage will be 1sec+ or -0.0XX seconds. This is enough to trip up the proc rate.

Another way to see this happen is by using ravager set and razor caltrops. Caltrops should debuff each second proccing ravager every second. Theoretically it should take 4 sec to hit the 4 stacks, but you will find it takes 5 sec due to calculation times.

Adding more possible proc chances to your build overcomes this hiccup, like more crits for crit surge or more sources of armor reduction for ravager. This hiccup is a byproduct of making it easier for balancing numbers(think of how easy it is to calculate hps numbers). Now what that sacrifices buildwise is possible diversity and build paths. For instance with crit surge if it had no cooldown, a stamsorc could lean into doing damage more and drop vigor. Or if ravager had no cooldown, against groups a player could utilize caltrops to instantly grab max ravager without being too strong in 1v1. Essentially making how you build actually important again.

Before they changed how homogeneous heals like dark deal or crit surge choose their crit, the smarter stamsorcs would run more into blessed to get the 9% spell crit cp bonus. The inclass minor prophecy also made sense, but now both of those don't matter. Sets that gave you spell and weapon crit were also more important, now they arent anymore.

AMeanOne

MincVinyl wrote: »

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Well I'm glad zos responded... somewhere apparently.

MincVinyl

AMeanOne wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Well I'm glad zos responded... somewhere apparently.

They responded through the stream team member i know

AMeanOne

I'm quite happy they responded at all, but it's odd they could never even say they were aware of it on the actual pts forums.

mav1234

MincVinyl wrote: »

AMeanOne wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Well I'm glad zos responded... somewhere apparently.

They responded through the stream team member i know

glad you heard back and got confirmation.

I just don't understand why someone doesn't post here to say the same thing... this is the second cast I've heard where stream team people get developer responses we cant get in threads here. I understand some degree of that, but for acknowledging a bug or expressing plans, such as a desire to fix this for the DLC, for things it would be nice for those of us "not in the know" to still, well, know.

I know you have nothing to do with their communication/lack thereof so I appreciate you taking the time to work on this @MincVinyl .

MincVinyl

mav1234 wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

AMeanOne wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Well I'm glad zos responded... somewhere apparently.

They responded through the stream team member i know

glad you heard back and got confirmation.

I just don't understand why someone doesn't post here to say the same thing... this is the second cast I've heard where stream team people get developer responses we cant get in threads here. I understand some degree of that, but for acknowledging a bug or expressing plans, such as a desire to fix this for the DLC, for things it would be nice for those of us "not in the know" to still, well, know.

I know you have nothing to do with their communication/lack thereof so I appreciate you taking the time to work on this @MincVinyl .

Yeah a part of me wishes that too, but at the same time the people that would be assigned to respond to the forums probably wouldn't be able to explain how the code/calculations worked/changed clear enough. The people actually fixing things are probs better off not sitting there for hours explaining things to pugs on the forums.

Nirnroot420

MincVinyl wrote: »

mav1234 wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

AMeanOne wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Well I'm glad zos responded... somewhere apparently.

They responded through the stream team member i know

glad you heard back and got confirmation.

I just don't understand why someone doesn't post here to say the same thing... this is the second cast I've heard where stream team people get developer responses we cant get in threads here. I understand some degree of that, but for acknowledging a bug or expressing plans, such as a desire to fix this for the DLC, for things it would be nice for those of us "not in the know" to still, well, know.

I know you have nothing to do with their communication/lack thereof so I appreciate you taking the time to work on this @MincVinyl .

Yeah a part of me wishes that too, but at the same time the people that would be assigned to respond to the forums probably wouldn't be able to explain how the code/calculations worked/changed clear enough. The people actually fixing things are probs better off not sitting there for hours explaining things to pugs on the forums.

Agreed. The devs finding and fixing these things shouldn't necessarily be explaining things like this to the masses, but ZoS has an entire community outreach team that can easily explain something like this. A lot of people, including myself, were pretty alarmed at these bugs.

Either way, that shouldn't take away anything from what you and Gottbeard accomplished here. Good work, boys.

React

So they're saying it is fixed for live, but wont come out and publicly say it or elaborate on how they fixed it?

Somehow I'm doubtful it will be fixed.

mav1234

MincVinyl wrote: »

mav1234 wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

AMeanOne wrote: »

MincVinyl wrote: »

From what I am hearing, apparently it will be fixed for the harrostorm dlc.

Things I wonder, was it certain abilities, or a blanket calculation issue. If it was certain abilities, I might try to find other abilities other than snipe/onslaught that do the bug aswell. then see if those get fixed, or if zos only fixed the abilities I mentioned.

I was also just told "it was fixed" so uhhhhh I am hoping that means every possible aspect is fixed and not something like, the health desync still happens...it just kills you now for sure again...Maybe we will see a better description with the patch notes.

Well I'm glad zos responded... somewhere apparently.

They responded through the stream team member i know

glad you heard back and got confirmation.

I just don't understand why someone doesn't post here to say the same thing... this is the second cast I've heard where stream team people get developer responses we cant get in threads here. I understand some degree of that, but for acknowledging a bug or expressing plans, such as a desire to fix this for the DLC, for things it would be nice for those of us "not in the know" to still, well, know.

I know you have nothing to do with their communication/lack thereof so I appreciate you taking the time to work on this @MincVinyl .

Yeah a part of me wishes that too, but at the same time the people that would be assigned to respond to the forums probably wouldn't be able to explain how the code/calculations worked/changed clear enough. The people actually fixing things are probs better off not sitting there for hours explaining things to pugs on the forums.

I don't need an explanation on how or why it occurred. Just noting it is under investigation and a fix is planned. People will still be skeptical of course, but I don't think it is too much to ask that the communication the stream team gets on issues like this could also come as a note on a thread like this.