Synergies either bugged or have been changed

NotTaylorSwift

After some testing we found out that synergies are now working differently than before the patch in terms of who can take them. We tested graverobber, conduit, and talons and found that it was consistently working this way now. It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe. For example with graverobber, if 4 or 5 people all move to take the synergy, then it will only be available to grab by the first 3 people who enter the aoe. The other 1 or 2 people will not have the option to take it. This seems to be random when the synergy is placed on top of a group of allies meaning that 3 people of the group seem to be randomly selected to be able to take the synergy.

However this is an issue because even people on synergy cooldown are counting towards the '3 people'. So for example again, if 4 people move to take a synergy, but 3 of them are on cooldown and are first in range of the synergy, then the 4th person who is not on cooldown will not have the option to take the synergy. In fact, it will be impossible for anyone at all to take this synergy now that it has been made available to 3 players who were all on cooldown.

This is all behaving the same way for grouped and ungrouped allies.

Is this intended or not? @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno

YandereGirlfriend

This is an enormous bug that I'm grateful that you've found.

Anecdotally, I had been noticing some wonky behavior with the synergy UI but I had just attributed it to lag in Cyrodiil.

I wonder if this is potentially related to the re-factoring of the AoE handling code for various abilities that ZOS has been implementing gradually over the last several patch cycles. Could be that they broke or re-wrote a portion of the them that governed synergy activation and/or UI.

neferpitou73

"Ok, let's take a look at this from a standpoint of status. What do we have in this game that is working?"

Sluggy

neferpitou73 wrote: »

"Ok, let's take a look at this from a standpoint of status. What do we have in this game that is working?"

lol Sadly, this is a perfectly apt quote for this patch. And I think we've got about fifteen minutes of power left so you might want to consider that lifeboat...

Red_Feather

I wonder why so many bugs happened and in some cases even old bugs thought fixed are coming back. Is it possible this was an old build that was shipped?

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Well, at least if you cant use a synergy, it cant steal your passives...

Jameson18

neferpitou73 wrote: »

"Ok, let's take a look at this from a standpoint of status. What do we have in this game that is working?"

This is one of the most legit things I've ever read on this entire forum base.

Jaimeh

I hope the devs can have a look at this @ZOS_GinaBruno, it's pretty serious.

itscompton

As a PS player I'd like to thank all of you on PC helping to test this beta version of the patch. Hopefully your hard work pays off in our version being a bit more polished when we get it next week.

Jameson18

itscompton wrote: »

As a PS player I'd like to thank all of you on PC helping to test this beta version of the patch. Hopefully your hard work pays off in our version being a bit more polished when we get it next week.

Legit.

NotTaylorSwift

this is all in cyrodiil btw, we didn't test outside of cyrodiil so if anyone wants to do that then feel free

vesselwiththepestle

It seems this has not been fixed with the hotfix?

I tested this today, September 1st, and synergies are still bugged. Even on my Necro I can't use my own Avid Boneyard synergy (which is the whole reason to use this morph), if I am not one of the three randomly chosen players... Even Undaunted Orbs can't be used by all players.

YandereGirlfriend

This is such a shameful bug.

NotTaylorSwift

Im not even sure its a bug, it seems like a very poorly thought out and implemented feature idk...

vesselwiththepestle

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

Im not even sure its a bug, it seems like a very poorly thought out and implemented feature idk...

In that case it should have been in the patch notes. If the change was intentional,

- why does it affect the avid boneyard, the whole point of that skill is that you are able to synergize it yourself
- why does it affect the undaunted orbs, the whole point of that synergy is that everyone can use it
- why can players who are on cooldown for the synergy "get" access to the synergy, meaning even less players can actually use it?

InvitationNotFound

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

After some testing we found out that synergies are now working differently than before the patch in terms of who can take them. We tested graverobber, conduit, and talons and found that it was consistently working this way now. It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe. For example with graverobber, if 4 or 5 people all move to take the synergy, then it will only be available to grab by the first 3 people who enter the aoe. The other 1 or 2 people will not have the option to take it.

This behavior has been there for a long time. Maybe as old as the game is.

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

This seems to be random when the synergy is placed on top of a group of allies meaning that 3 people of the group seem to be randomly selected to be able to take the synergy.

Sure it is random and not desynced or any other funny ZOS thing?

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

However this is an issue because even people on synergy cooldown are counting towards the '3 people'. So for example again, if 4 people move to take a synergy, but 3 of them are on cooldown and are first in range of the synergy, then the 4th person who is not on cooldown will not have the option to take the synergy. In fact, it will be impossible for anyone at all to take this synergy now that it has been made available to 3 players who were all on cooldown.

This is all behaving the same way for grouped and ungrouped allies.

Is this intended or not? @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno

Not sure about this part. Might be new or old too.
Have you tested this before and after the patch or just noticed now?

Vevvev

Wonder if this is also effecting the Blood Fountain. Would make it basically worthless in Trials due it's large AoE and if the people that get it don't need to be healed.

NotTaylorSwift

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

After some testing we found out that synergies are now working differently than before the patch in terms of who can take them. We tested graverobber, conduit, and talons and found that it was consistently working this way now. It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe. For example with graverobber, if 4 or 5 people all move to take the synergy, then it will only be available to grab by the first 3 people who enter the aoe. The other 1 or 2 people will not have the option to take it.

This behavior has been there for a long time. Maybe as old as the game is.

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

This seems to be random when the synergy is placed on top of a group of allies meaning that 3 people of the group seem to be randomly selected to be able to take the synergy.

Sure it is random and not desynced or any other funny ZOS thing?

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

However this is an issue because even people on synergy cooldown are counting towards the '3 people'. So for example again, if 4 people move to take a synergy, but 3 of them are on cooldown and are first in range of the synergy, then the 4th person who is not on cooldown will not have the option to take the synergy. In fact, it will be impossible for anyone at all to take this synergy now that it has been made available to 3 players who were all on cooldown.

This is all behaving the same way for grouped and ungrouped allies.

Is this intended or not? @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno

Not sure about this part. Might be new or old too.
Have you tested this before and after the patch or just noticed now?

First part is wrong, synergy was always available to take by anyone. It was never capped at 3 people. I mean by this that only 3 people can even SEE the synergy.

It is working like this consistently every time, so nothing due to lag or desync or w/e.

And it is the same after the patch. This was tested before and after.

vesselwiththepestle

Vevvev wrote: »

Wonder if this is also effecting the Blood Fountain. Would make it basically worthless in Trials due it's large AoE and if the people that get it don't need to be healed.

You need a group of ~6 players to test. Group them together on the same spot, let one of them cast blood fountain and let everyone jump who can see the synergy. Either everyone is jumping (except the caster) or only 3 players. I haven't tested this in pve at all and I don't think @NotTaylorSwift has either. Maybe it is an intentional pvp nerf to synergies/harmony. I just hope ZOS will let us know when they have found out if it is intentional or bugged.

InvitationNotFound

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

After some testing we found out that synergies are now working differently than before the patch in terms of who can take them. We tested graverobber, conduit, and talons and found that it was consistently working this way now. It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe. For example with graverobber, if 4 or 5 people all move to take the synergy, then it will only be available to grab by the first 3 people who enter the aoe. The other 1 or 2 people will not have the option to take it.

This behavior has been there for a long time. Maybe as old as the game is.

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

This seems to be random when the synergy is placed on top of a group of allies meaning that 3 people of the group seem to be randomly selected to be able to take the synergy.

Sure it is random and not desynced or any other funny ZOS thing?

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

However this is an issue because even people on synergy cooldown are counting towards the '3 people'. So for example again, if 4 people move to take a synergy, but 3 of them are on cooldown and are first in range of the synergy, then the 4th person who is not on cooldown will not have the option to take the synergy. In fact, it will be impossible for anyone at all to take this synergy now that it has been made available to 3 players who were all on cooldown.

This is all behaving the same way for grouped and ungrouped allies.

Is this intended or not? @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno

Not sure about this part. Might be new or old too.
Have you tested this before and after the patch or just noticed now?

First part is wrong, synergy was always available to take by anyone. It was never capped at 3 people. I mean by this that only 3 people can even SEE the synergy.

It is working like this consistently every time, so nothing due to lag or desync or w/e.

And it is the same after the patch. This was tested before and after.

Not really. When working on the synergy prevention module before the public release of the RdK Group Tool, I've tested this plenty of times.
Only 3 players were able to take a synergy at a time. Moving did change who the 3 players were, but never more than 3 players were able to take them at a single point in time.
So well, it might depend on your definition of everyone was able to take it...

YandereGirlfriend

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

After some testing we found out that synergies are now working differently than before the patch in terms of who can take them. We tested graverobber, conduit, and talons and found that it was consistently working this way now. It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe. For example with graverobber, if 4 or 5 people all move to take the synergy, then it will only be available to grab by the first 3 people who enter the aoe. The other 1 or 2 people will not have the option to take it.

This behavior has been there for a long time. Maybe as old as the game is.

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

This seems to be random when the synergy is placed on top of a group of allies meaning that 3 people of the group seem to be randomly selected to be able to take the synergy.

Sure it is random and not desynced or any other funny ZOS thing?

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

However this is an issue because even people on synergy cooldown are counting towards the '3 people'. So for example again, if 4 people move to take a synergy, but 3 of them are on cooldown and are first in range of the synergy, then the 4th person who is not on cooldown will not have the option to take the synergy. In fact, it will be impossible for anyone at all to take this synergy now that it has been made available to 3 players who were all on cooldown.

This is all behaving the same way for grouped and ungrouped allies.

Is this intended or not? @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno

Not sure about this part. Might be new or old too.
Have you tested this before and after the patch or just noticed now?

First part is wrong, synergy was always available to take by anyone. It was never capped at 3 people. I mean by this that only 3 people can even SEE the synergy.

It is working like this consistently every time, so nothing due to lag or desync or w/e.

And it is the same after the patch. This was tested before and after.

Not really. When working on the synergy prevention module before the public release of the RdK Group Tool, I've tested this plenty of times.
Only 3 players were able to take a synergy at a time. Moving did change who the 3 players were, but never more than 3 players were able to take them at a single point in time.
So well, it might depend on your definition of everyone was able to take it...

So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that synergies have always been limited to three recipients at any given time and that nothing has actually changed as a result from this patch?

Not that that state of affairs is ideal (TBH, only three seeing a synergy seems like a clear bug) but that it is not something created in this patch?

InvitationNotFound

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

After some testing we found out that synergies are now working differently than before the patch in terms of who can take them. We tested graverobber, conduit, and talons and found that it was consistently working this way now. It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe. For example with graverobber, if 4 or 5 people all move to take the synergy, then it will only be available to grab by the first 3 people who enter the aoe. The other 1 or 2 people will not have the option to take it.

This behavior has been there for a long time. Maybe as old as the game is.

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

This seems to be random when the synergy is placed on top of a group of allies meaning that 3 people of the group seem to be randomly selected to be able to take the synergy.

Sure it is random and not desynced or any other funny ZOS thing?

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

However this is an issue because even people on synergy cooldown are counting towards the '3 people'. So for example again, if 4 people move to take a synergy, but 3 of them are on cooldown and are first in range of the synergy, then the 4th person who is not on cooldown will not have the option to take the synergy. In fact, it will be impossible for anyone at all to take this synergy now that it has been made available to 3 players who were all on cooldown.

This is all behaving the same way for grouped and ungrouped allies.

Is this intended or not? @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno

Not sure about this part. Might be new or old too.
Have you tested this before and after the patch or just noticed now?

First part is wrong, synergy was always available to take by anyone. It was never capped at 3 people. I mean by this that only 3 people can even SEE the synergy.

It is working like this consistently every time, so nothing due to lag or desync or w/e.

And it is the same after the patch. This was tested before and after.

Not really. When working on the synergy prevention module before the public release of the RdK Group Tool, I've tested this plenty of times.
Only 3 players were able to take a synergy at a time. Moving did change who the 3 players were, but never more than 3 players were able to take them at a single point in time.
So well, it might depend on your definition of everyone was able to take it...

So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that synergies have always been limited to three recipients at any given time and that nothing has actually changed as a result from this patch?

Not that that state of affairs is ideal (TBH, only three seeing a synergy seems like a clear bug) but that it is not something created in this patch?

I'm not sure about the second part (that people who took a synergy are still counted towards the 3 players that could take a synergy). I always had the feeling that something is off and quite a bit strange. But i didn't dig deeper into that. So I'm not sure if that was what I thought was off. Could be. Not sure.

To the first part with the 3 players who can take the synergies:
The public release of the RdK Group Tool happened because someone contacted me and wanted a synergy overview addon or something like that. He even offered a few bucks for it. Quite a coincidence as I've already implemented that feature (and other things) into the RdK Group Tool. So I've decided to make the addon public (and of course not wanting any money).
Before making the addon public I asked some guilds (3 to be precise here) if they were interested in giving feedback on its state. All of them gave an initial feedback and 2 of them gave further feedback later on. This has led to quite a few changes and an overall better state of the addon.
Anyway, during that phase, at least two (not sure if the third did) gave feedback about the synergy behavior. The behavior described above with only 3 players being able to take a synergy. So I verified. I can say I'm to 100% sure that this behavior is present since the first public RdK Group Tool release and even earlier (the phase where I implemented some of the feedback).

My bet would be, that this behavior was always there. But I'm not sure.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure about the second part as mentioned earlier.

Imho, it is not a "bug" and just an overall bad game design. Like echoing vigor hitting always the same targets if everyone is in range and has 100% health.

Should that be change? Hell, yes. Same as the priorities of synergies and a lot of other things. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

NotTaylorSwift

how are you saying this is how they have always worked? That's obviously not the case. Sometimes no one can take a synergy anymore, it's just cast to the wind. It was never like that. Did you understand what I was saying in the first place?

What do you mean you don't know if I'm correct or not? We tested it multiple times and with different people. Other people on this thread have also confirmed that if you are not one of the three people then you have no access to the synergy, doesn't matter if they leave the range or not, they are not replaced as a person who can take it. And if the first three people are on cooldown then no one has access to it. That is how it is working. And that is not how it has always worked. So something is either not right or has been changed.

InvitationNotFound

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

how are you saying this is how they have always worked? That's obviously not the case. Sometimes no one can take a synergy anymore, it's just cast to the wind. It was never like that. Did you understand what I was saying in the first place?

Might be a misunderstanding due to the wording.
You wrote:

It seems that the synergy is only available to take by the first 3 people that are in range of it or that enter the aoe.

Always the three closest players were able to take it (at least back to 2019).
You did not specify if your other players got closer to the origin of the synergy or not. (e.g. they enter the click range but are still further away than the others).

I made the assumption here that they did not. If they did, something has changed. Yes.
I read it like the number of players somehow changed, which is not the case.
In that case it would have been a misunderstanding.

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

What do you mean you don't know if I'm correct or not? We tested it multiple times and with different people. Other people on this thread have also confirmed that if you are not one of the three people then you have no access to the synergy, doesn't matter if they leave the range or not, they are not replaced as a person who can take it. And if the first three people are on cooldown then no one has access to it. That is how it is working. And that is not how it has always worked. So something is either not right or has been changed.

The part where I'm not sure is in regards of the second part with the cooldown as I haven't made any tests in this regards. That's where I said it felt strange but I do not know if there was a change or not. That's why i wrote:

I'm not sure about the second part (that people who took a synergy are still counted towards the 3 players that could take a synergy). I always had the feeling that something is off and quite a bit strange. But i didn't dig deeper into that. So I'm not sure if that was what I thought was off. Could be. Not sure.

CrustyCroco

I second that, it was always 3 people, we tested that pretty much everytime they did changes to how synergies work. That's why i'm always saying that everyone in the group has to take the synergies, cause it would be sad, if noone used that synergy until a new one gets casted. That's also why i don't really like synergy block addons (at least for graverobber and lightning flood, nova might still be ok, but also sad, if it only gets offered to healers or supports and then nobody takes it, the nova coinflip i called it) and why synergies have to be refreshed often and with positioning in mind, so there are higher chances that the right people get the synergies offered.
Not sure about the part, that people that are on cooldown still have a chance to get it offered and block others.
Ultimately it doesn't change anything tho, you still want to have good synergy placement and sufficient synergy casts.

During the "group-only" heal test they changed that behaviour, so maybe you tested it in that time duration and therefore were under the impression, that everyone gets it offered to activate.

NotTaylorSwift

CrustyCroco wrote: »

Not sure about the part, that people that are on cooldown still have a chance to get it offered and block others.
Ultimately it doesn't change anything tho, you still want to have good synergy placement and sufficient synergy casts.

I’m not going to keep replying to this as you two have said it multiple times now. If you don’t believe then go test it yourself..

We tested this RECENTLY. Before and after the latest patch. I said this already.

It doesn’t matter if “it shouldn’t make a difference” sometimes it does and ZoS should make everyone aware of the changes they make rather than doing it stealthily. And if it is not working as intended then it needs to be fixed. Regardless of the difference it makes…

CrustyCroco

I think you misunderstood a bit, what i was trying to say. Might have not written it clearly enough.
With "ultimately it doesn't change anything" i didn't try to imply that changes like that (or the negates for example) shouldn't be mentioned/fixed if not working as intended. It was regarding to the actual gameplay, because, if only 3 people get the synergy activation offered, you always wanted to refresh it more often anyways, to "reset" the chances for your dds do get it.

But yea, if there is people blocking it while on cd on top of that, it's even more important to refresh the synergies more often, which i did anyway, so ultimately for me it wouldn't change anything (if i played).

And the "not sure" was regarding to my own knowledge, that i don't really know how people on cd interact while standig in that synergy, so i was not trying to say that i don't believe you.

Maybe that makes my post more clear.

When did you do the tests with the player limit who get the synergy offered? Or more like, when was it more than 3?

vesselwiththepestle

I never had issues synergizing my own Avid Boneyard Graverobber synergy. Something definitely has changed. Maybe the added delay is the core issue? Usually I could cast the Boneyard, scroll my mouse wheel and the synergy would be taken. Now it seems to be roughly half a GCD until the synergy actually is available.

stefj68

i think companion synergy don't register as a real synergy... unless it was fix in last week hotfix, i need to investigate that further

whitecrow

I wish they would put back the gesture animation when exploding people's combustion orbs. Now there's just a short delay before they go off and I always think I missed it.

YandereGirlfriend

whitecrow wrote: »

I wish they would put back the gesture animation when exploding people's combustion orbs. Now there's just a short delay before they go off and I always think I missed it.

The lack of animation is actually something that I enjoy.

Activating the synergy feels much more responsive since they changed it but that's just my subjective experience.