Poisonous Serpent "buff" punishes good players who properly weave light attacks

Stamblade

"Poisonous Serpent:
Increased the damage of this set to 3945, up from 3000.
Increased the cooldown to 2 seconds, up from 1.
Removed the proc chance from this set. Now when you deal damage with a light or heavy attack against an enemy who has a poison damage ability on them, you deal an additional 3945 poison damage to them. This effect can occur once every 2 seconds."


A good player can light attack weave and have a chance to miss the second proc on a proper weave, the cooldown should be moved to 1.5 seconds to avoid this from occurring and encourage us to run it again, even with the "buff" It will still be garbage.

MashmalloMan

Isn't it impossible to do 3 light attacks with weaving within 2 GCD's? A high average is around 0.95 light attacks a second, not 1.0+. You should be able to use this just fine.

Edit: To be clear.. 3 light attacks as in:

0.0s = light attack (proc the set)
0.1s = skill
GCD + 1s
1.1s = light attack
1.2s = skill
GCD + 1s
2.2s = light attack (proc the set)

2.2s in between. With proper weaving, it's not possible to beat the GCD, the bare minimum is 2s in between.. right?

WrathOfInnos

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Isn't it impossible to do 3 light attacks with weaving within 2 GCD's? A high average is around 0.95 light attacks a second, not 1.0+. You should be able to use this just fine.

Edit: To be clear.. 3 light attacks as in:

0.0s = light attack (proc the set)
0.1s = skill
GCD + 1s
1.1s = light attack
1.2s = skill
GCD + 1s
2.2s = light attack (proc the set)

2.2s in between. With proper weaving, it's not possible to beat the GCD, the bare minimum is 2s in between.

On average over a long duration I’ve never seen anyone exceed 1 Light Attack weave per second on average, but 2 consecutive ones do often fall within a 1s window. I believe it is cause by latency, and millisecond variations in ping. In my testing I’ve found that most things in this game don’t register at exactly the expected moment, usually within about +/- 100ms.

This is the same reason Kjalnar’s Nightmare was a failure in set design. Anyone will good light attack weaving will get about 2/3 of the intended procs, the other 1/3 will do nothing since it will land about 0.95s into the 1.00s cooldown.

It’s not just Light Attacks either. Even DoTs that tick every “1s” do this. In theory Ice Furnace should be a good damage set for Wardens using Winters Revenge or Necromancers using Boneyard, but in practice it only procs on 2/3 of the DoT ticks because there is zero margin in the set’s 1s cooldown.

I was doing some DoT testing a few days ago on PTS and noticed this effect to the extreme. I suspect it was server lag, and the result was Wall of Elements ticks 1.3s apart and 0.65s apart. I’ll see if I can track down a screenshot later, but those are both far from the intended 1s tick spacing, and sets would need a lot of margin on cooldowns to allow this behavior.

Here’s a related thread I made about this issue back when Kjalnar and Ice Furnace were introduced:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/514783/kjalnars-nightmare-bugged#latest

Edit: Found the picture, this is one cast of Unstable Wall. Wall ticks every "1s" and hit at 2.55s, 3.85s, and 4.50s??? No wonder Light Attacks see some variation if DoTs cannot even be consistent. Imagine if this was a Frost Wall trying to proc Ice Furnace, in theory it should give the bonus damage 11 times (0s to 10s inclusive), but in reality it would have only procced 7 times on ticks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (missing 4 procs on ticks 3, 6, 8 and 11). Maybe the final explosion would have caught the final proc in this case, but Unstable Wall is a unique example for that, and this discussion is more about DoTs in general as well as Light Attacks.



In most cases allowing 100ms of margin would be enough (10% reduction in a 1s cooldown to 0.9s), but in the example there it would take a full 350ms reduction in cooldown to catch all the intended ticks.

Grimhallow

The GCD is .9 seconds, so I’m not sure why they made the cool down 2 seconds instead of 1.7 or 1.8 seconds.

Even if the cool down was 1.7 seconds, this would still be a nerf to PS. What really made this set strong was the possibility of getting two procs in a row.

This change is not a buff; you just trade consistency for damage potential.

MashmalloMan

@WrathOfInnos Thank you for the testing. That is very weird. I'd wonder if combat metrics is 100% accurate, but it seems to be for the most part.

I noticed a similar issue with Relequen actually since release, where I'd do a dps test and get more ticks of Relequen than the amount of seconds in the parse, resulting in higher dps than I'd be able to calculate on paper.

As I'm writing this, I'm considering that this may be because of how the set refreshes and updates it's damage. If it updates the damage and duration everytime a light attack lands, then that means it has the potential to tick at 1.0s then get refreshed only 0.1s after, resulting in 2 ticks within 100ms of each other. This train of thought requires testing obviously, I'd assume ZOS wouldn't allow this to happen, I know they thought of this issue when they designed the Werewolf bleed so the duration updates, but the damage doesn't tick again each time, but also doesn't miss a tick because the duration was refreshed, it just continues at it's designated intervals..

Question: Were you able to do these tests before the changes to client VS sever side hit detection with update 25+? Perhaps the reason the ticks aren't 1 second apart is purely due to these changes, if the add-on is relying on the server to tell it when a damage tick fires off, instead of prerfering the client, the ticks are bound to be affected by lag.

This patch in particular is tackling how aoe dot damage is handled with DK's standard and is planned to be rolled out to all aoe dots, I'm guessing this is apart of some of ZOS's concerns, whether they failed to mention it or not.

All things considered, if the internal CD can not be reliably tracked, than I change my stance on the subject, the CD of anything that says 1s should actually have at least a -10% buffer like you said, whether it's written out or not.

WrathOfInnos

@MashmalloMan Not sure about before update 25, I first noticed it when trying to figure out why Kjalnar and Ice Furnace were so much worse in practice than their theoretical max, but that was in U25. Are there any sets that operate with a short cooldown like this we could check in logs from Elsweyr, Scalebreaker or Dragonhold?

One related issue is that enchant procs can be unpredictable in the same way. I think there was a time when Infused Flame or Prismatic would proc with every 2nd tick of Wall. Now it alternates between every 2nd and every 3rd tick. Can't say I've investigated this one fully, but my understanding is that damage proc weapon enchants are supposed to have a 4s cooldown normally or 2s with the infused trait.

universal_wrath

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Isn't it impossible to do 3 light attacks with weaving within 2 GCD's? A high average is around 0.95 light attacks a second, not 1.0+. You should be able to use this just fine.

Edit: To be clear.. 3 light attacks as in:

0.0s = light attack (proc the set)
0.1s = skill
GCD + 1s
1.1s = light attack
1.2s = skill
GCD + 1s
2.2s = light attack (proc the set)

2.2s in between. With proper weaving, it's not possible to beat the GCD, the bare minimum is 2s in between.

On average over a long duration I’ve never seen anyone exceed 1 Light Attack weave per second on average, but 2 consecutive ones do often fall within a 1s window. I believe it is cause by latency, and millisecond variations in ping. In my testing I’ve found that most things in this game don’t register at exactly the expected moment, usually within about +/- 100ms.

This is the same reason Kjalnar’s Nightmare was a failure in set design. Anyone will good light attack weaving will get about 2/3 of the intended procs, the other 1/3 will do nothing since it will land about 0.95s into the 1.00s cooldown.

It’s not just Light Attacks either. Even DoTs that tick every “1s” do this. In theory Ice Furnace should be a good damage set for Wardens using Winters Revenge or Necromancers using Boneyard, but in practice it only procs on 2/3 of the DoT ticks because there is zero margin in the set’s 1s cooldown.

I was doing some DoT testing a few days ago on PTS and noticed this effect to the extreme. I suspect it was server lag, and the result was Wall of Elements ticks 1.3s apart and 0.65s apart. I’ll see if I can track down a screenshot later, but those are both far from the intended 1s tick spacing, and sets would need a lot of margin on cooldowns to allow this behavior.

Here’s a related thread I made about this issue back when Kjalnar and Ice Furnace were introduced:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/514783/kjalnars-nightmare-bugged#latest

Edit: Found the picture, this is one cast of Unstable Wall. Wall ticks every "1s" and hit at 2.55s, 3.85s, and 4.50s??? No wonder Light Attacks see some variation if DoTs cannot even be consistent. Imagine if this was a Frost Wall trying to proc Ice Furnace, in theory it should give the bonus damage 11 times (0s to 10s inclusive), but in reality it would have only procced 7 times on ticks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (missing 4 procs on ticks 3, 6, 8 and 11). Maybe the final explosion would have caught the final proc in this case, but Unstable Wall is a unique example for that, and this discussion is more about DoTs in general as well as Light Attacks.



In most cases allowing 100ms of margin would be enough (10% reduction in a 1s cooldown to 0.9s), but in the example there it would take a full 350ms reduction in cooldown to catch all the intended ticks.

I just what to point out that Ice furnace proc 100% of the time. I use it on my magicka warden and it proc s everytime I use elemntal wall that is 14 ticks and 14 procs and on winter revenge as well 12 ticks and 12 procs. I never failed to proc or miss a proc for me as long is ice dmg is active. The set proc simultinously with the damage of skills

universal_wrath

universal_wrath wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Isn't it impossible to do 3 light attacks with weaving within 2 GCD's? A high average is around 0.95 light attacks a second, not 1.0+. You should be able to use this just fine.

Edit: To be clear.. 3 light attacks as in:

0.0s = light attack (proc the set)
0.1s = skill
GCD + 1s
1.1s = light attack
1.2s = skill
GCD + 1s
2.2s = light attack (proc the set)

2.2s in between. With proper weaving, it's not possible to beat the GCD, the bare minimum is 2s in between.

On average over a long duration I’ve never seen anyone exceed 1 Light Attack weave per second on average, but 2 consecutive ones do often fall within a 1s window. I believe it is cause by latency, and millisecond variations in ping. In my testing I’ve found that most things in this game don’t register at exactly the expected moment, usually within about +/- 100ms.

This is the same reason Kjalnar’s Nightmare was a failure in set design. Anyone will good light attack weaving will get about 2/3 of the intended procs, the other 1/3 will do nothing since it will land about 0.95s into the 1.00s cooldown.

It’s not just Light Attacks either. Even DoTs that tick every “1s” do this. In theory Ice Furnace should be a good damage set for Wardens using Winters Revenge or Necromancers using Boneyard, but in practice it only procs on 2/3 of the DoT ticks because there is zero margin in the set’s 1s cooldown.

I was doing some DoT testing a few days ago on PTS and noticed this effect to the extreme. I suspect it was server lag, and the result was Wall of Elements ticks 1.3s apart and 0.65s apart. I’ll see if I can track down a screenshot later, but those are both far from the intended 1s tick spacing, and sets would need a lot of margin on cooldowns to allow this behavior.

Here’s a related thread I made about this issue back when Kjalnar and Ice Furnace were introduced:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/514783/kjalnars-nightmare-bugged#latest

Edit: Found the picture, this is one cast of Unstable Wall. Wall ticks every "1s" and hit at 2.55s, 3.85s, and 4.50s??? No wonder Light Attacks see some variation if DoTs cannot even be consistent. Imagine if this was a Frost Wall trying to proc Ice Furnace, in theory it should give the bonus damage 11 times (0s to 10s inclusive), but in reality it would have only procced 7 times on ticks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (missing 4 procs on ticks 3, 6, 8 and 11). Maybe the final explosion would have caught the final proc in this case, but Unstable Wall is a unique example for that, and this discussion is more about DoTs in general as well as Light Attacks.



In most cases allowing 100ms of margin would be enough (10% reduction in a 1s cooldown to 0.9s), but in the example there it would take a full 350ms reduction in cooldown to catch all the intended ticks.

I just what to point out that Ice furnace proc 100% of the time. I use it on my magicka warden and it proc s everytime I use elemntal wall that is 14 ticks and 14 procs and on winter revenge as well 12 ticks and 12 procs. I never failed to proc or miss a proc for me as long is ice dmg is active. The set proc simultinously with the damage of skills

I retract what I said. It tested it and what you said is true, I only got 8 proc from 12 ticks of winter revenge and 10 proc from elemnal wall 14 ticks

WrathOfInnos

universal_wrath wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Isn't it impossible to do 3 light attacks with weaving within 2 GCD's? A high average is around 0.95 light attacks a second, not 1.0+. You should be able to use this just fine.

Edit: To be clear.. 3 light attacks as in:

0.0s = light attack (proc the set)
0.1s = skill
GCD + 1s
1.1s = light attack
1.2s = skill
GCD + 1s
2.2s = light attack (proc the set)

2.2s in between. With proper weaving, it's not possible to beat the GCD, the bare minimum is 2s in between.

On average over a long duration I’ve never seen anyone exceed 1 Light Attack weave per second on average, but 2 consecutive ones do often fall within a 1s window. I believe it is cause by latency, and millisecond variations in ping. In my testing I’ve found that most things in this game don’t register at exactly the expected moment, usually within about +/- 100ms.

This is the same reason Kjalnar’s Nightmare was a failure in set design. Anyone will good light attack weaving will get about 2/3 of the intended procs, the other 1/3 will do nothing since it will land about 0.95s into the 1.00s cooldown.

It’s not just Light Attacks either. Even DoTs that tick every “1s” do this. In theory Ice Furnace should be a good damage set for Wardens using Winters Revenge or Necromancers using Boneyard, but in practice it only procs on 2/3 of the DoT ticks because there is zero margin in the set’s 1s cooldown.

I was doing some DoT testing a few days ago on PTS and noticed this effect to the extreme. I suspect it was server lag, and the result was Wall of Elements ticks 1.3s apart and 0.65s apart. I’ll see if I can track down a screenshot later, but those are both far from the intended 1s tick spacing, and sets would need a lot of margin on cooldowns to allow this behavior.

Here’s a related thread I made about this issue back when Kjalnar and Ice Furnace were introduced:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/514783/kjalnars-nightmare-bugged#latest

Edit: Found the picture, this is one cast of Unstable Wall. Wall ticks every "1s" and hit at 2.55s, 3.85s, and 4.50s??? No wonder Light Attacks see some variation if DoTs cannot even be consistent. Imagine if this was a Frost Wall trying to proc Ice Furnace, in theory it should give the bonus damage 11 times (0s to 10s inclusive), but in reality it would have only procced 7 times on ticks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (missing 4 procs on ticks 3, 6, 8 and 11). Maybe the final explosion would have caught the final proc in this case, but Unstable Wall is a unique example for that, and this discussion is more about DoTs in general as well as Light Attacks.



In most cases allowing 100ms of margin would be enough (10% reduction in a 1s cooldown to 0.9s), but in the example there it would take a full 350ms reduction in cooldown to catch all the intended ticks.

I just what to point out that Ice furnace proc 100% of the time. I use it on my magicka warden and it proc s everytime I use elemntal wall that is 14 ticks and 14 procs and on winter revenge as well 12 ticks and 12 procs. I never failed to proc or miss a proc for me as long is ice dmg is active. The set proc simultinously with the damage of skills

@universal_wrath That is very strange. Can you post any logs or combat metrics showing this?

Ice Furnace is still failing to proc 1/3 of the time for me. I just tested it on PTS with Winter's Revenge. The 13 ticks managed to proc it 9 times. You can see in the combat log exactly what is going on, every time there is less than 1.000s between the previous proc and the next Winter's Revenge tick it fails to deal Frostfire damage. For example the first Frostfire occurred at 3.302 (nearly simultaneous with the WR tick at 3.304), but then the next WR tick came at 4.285s, only 0.983s later, and therefore there was no Frostfire around 4.3s. A similar event occurs 3 more times in this one cast of WR, leading to failed procs at 8.3s, 11.3s, and 13.3s.