arcanist low health bug?

Theignson

I have seen a few different players on arcanists who take damage down to 1-5% of health left-- then the damage stops. 10, 15 players hitting them and they don't lose that last 2000 hp and die. Everything gets absorbed. They use Gibbering shield morphs and kill uninformed players, this I understand.
However, Gibbering shield only absorbs 60% of damage, so it isn't how they do this.
Undeath passive of course helps, but it won't stop you from taking all damage at 1% health.

Any ideas on how this is done?
Someone in zone mentioned there might be a bug with lefthander's aegis that allows this but I don't see how.

The player is not dodge rolling, is not blocking, and runs at at least 3x swift speed + celerity when the mob chases him.

Brakkish

Arcanists do not die. It's a built in aspect of the class.





In all seriousness, I've not seen this occur. Playing as one, or against.

Theignson

Brakkish wrote: »

Arcanists do not die. It's a built in aspect of the class.





In all seriousness, I've not seen this occur. Playing as one, or against.

Yeah, my arcanist is tanky but I can't reproduce this. Of course, there are "unkillable tank" builds, with secret build recipes.

The strange think about this , though, is that the "unkillable" doesn't kick in until the HP are at 1-5%. I just can't figure that out. Why does he take damage until 1-5% and then can't be killed?

CameraBeardThePirate

So the answer here is probably two-fold:

1) Undeath + Runeward. I know that sounds silly and lame or like a cop out answer, but at low health, Arcs are going to be spamming their shields. Unlike block mitigation, Undeath applies to shields. Some quick and dirty math - cut your DPS by 30% and then some for armor (which also applies to shields) is that number under 15k? Probably not killing the Arcanist. So long as they can sustain it, the shields/second are sufficient (they usually are), and they aren't taking Oblivion damage - they'll survive.

2) There was a documented bug last patch affecting all classes but most often happening on Arcanist that would basically cap the bottom of your health at anywhere from 0% to 5%. I'm not sure if it's been fixed - no notes but it may have either been stealth fixed or fixed as a result of other under-the-hood changes.

I'd suggest if you're running into this sort of thing often enough that it's really bugging you, throw on some Oblivion damage. Obliviom damage will cut through shields and ignore all forms of mitigation, which makes it both perfect for killing Arcanists at low health and great at testing if someone's health is bugged out.

Theignson

"2) There was a documented bug last patch affecting all classes but most often happening on Arcanist that would basically cap the bottom of your health at anywhere from 0% to 5%. I'm not sure if it's been fixed - no notes but it may have either been stealth fixed or fixed as a result of other under-the-hood changes."

This has to be it. Ten or more people pouring damage on should overwhelm the arcanist shields. I have a vamp arcanist with undeath and he doesn't have this thing where he gooes down to 2k health and won't die.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Theignson wrote: »

"2) There was a documented bug last patch affecting all classes but most often happening on Arcanist that would basically cap the bottom of your health at anywhere from 0% to 5%. I'm not sure if it's been fixed - no notes but it may have either been stealth fixed or fixed as a result of other under-the-hood changes."

This has to be it. Ten or more people pouring damage on should overwhelm the arcanist shields. I have a vamp arcanist with undeath and he doesn't have this thing where he gooes down to 2k health and won't die.

Because you can stack shields underneath the ulti's shield and it affects how much overall damage the ulti does (i.e. when those shields take damage it counts towards the main shield taking that damage)

The ulti shield is 60% mitigation + vampire mitigation and other sources. Then you have 2x Shield generation methods to constantly reapply the shields.
That's why you see this on the few arcanists running these builds.

Brakkish

What we should examine is why the Arc got down to anything less than 90% HP at any time! Clearly playing it wrong to begin with.







Yes I'm biased, I sometimes play a 1vX Arc PVP Tank.

IZZEFlameLash

Yeah, I've seen 2 people last week with this. They were taking so much damage and yet never died despite 0% health and stayed that way for few more seconds before they actually healed. Haven't seen this happen with other classes outside of Arcanist.

RoxyPhoenix

this reminds me of an infamous Sorc that was roaming around in 2015. The dude was immortal in a similar fashion, got his HP in to 0-5% and stopped taking damage. I remember me and Alcast were obsessed with figuring out how he is doing that, but we couldn't reproduce this effect. Even ZOS investigated the guy and said he plays legit. [yes, ZOS once actively participated in players feedback and shared their findings]. I doubt it's the same thing, but yeh, stories of old..

Theignson

This is still going on. It is mostly one person, as far as I can tell.
Some of the theories above are debunked based on combat metric logs:
1) not all the damage you do to him is absorbed, even at 0-2% health. So it isnt just shields
2)this person still does significant damage, so it isn't a pure tank build. I fought him with my arcanist who has ~6k weapon damage/deadly/all offensive blue cp/malacath and his flails were hitting harder than mine, with almost no crits
3) the damage /protection isnt from sanctum of Absymal sea.
4) they are not blocking
5) they do spam flail, which heals, but itsnt that much of a heal

Clearly they can take damage, since they go quickly to 0-5% health. But at that point they are nearly impossible to kill. Vamp undeath doesnt explain this. In fact nothing I know of explains this.

SandandStars

yep it is. happened on my arcanist a couple days ago in a bg.

serious bug.

and I don’t even run undeath.

IZZEFlameLash

Still a thing. ZOS should really take a look at this. Only certain people doing this consistently. I've only gotten this happen once in a laggy fight. So, I don't know how to replicate to file a proper report.

Zabulus

Saw that happened on some arca, and DK.
At around 0-5%hp, dmg goes like 10-100 dmg only when using skills or ulti.
I think it start to spread ...

Brakkish

Can confirm, seen it repeatedly now.

DTStormfox

There clearly is a bug or an exploit (or even a cheat) that makes arcanist impossible to kill.
One month ago, I was fighting an arcanist with my DK. I loaded him with damage over time and have decent crit damage in the no-cp pvp campaign (8-12k molten whips; and 1-2k damage dots).

I stunned the arcanist at low health with shattering rocks. The arcanist was stunned for 3 seconds. During those 3 seconds, I got his HP to 0 and continued to do 1-2k dot damage and hit him with molten whips. Did they die? Nope, instead they broke free after 3 seconds, cast a shield and just ran off. Considering the arcanist was at 0 hp for approx. 3 whole seconds, it is highly unlikely that server lag or desync is the cause.

I continue to see that some arcanist players can drop to 0 HP yet not die for multiple seconds, allowing them to recover, despite being technically 'dead'.

OtarTheMad

RoxyPhoenix wrote: »

this reminds me of an infamous Sorc that was roaming around in 2015. The dude was immortal in a similar fashion, got his HP in to 0-5% and stopped taking damage. I remember me and Alcast were obsessed with figuring out how he is doing that, but we couldn't reproduce this effect. Even ZOS investigated the guy and said he plays legit. [yes, ZOS once actively participated in players feedback and shared their findings]. I doubt it's the same thing, but yeh, stories of old..

I remember them and I remember hearing his play was “legit”. I thought ZOS investigated again and banned them though.

I am pretty sure the health issue with Arcanist is an exploit, others have reported it including myself. It’s giving Arcanist a bad name too which isn’t good.

reazea

I have not seen this issue for months now. It was super bad when arcanist was first introduced, but I can't remember the last time I saw it, although I think it could still happen with all the shields arcanist has.

Brakkish

Another thread - short clip of just this thing here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/638707/arcanists-stayin-alive-with-zero-hp

Another thread - vids
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/640463/pvp-how-can-you-achieve-this-amazing/p3

These were from 6+ mos ago; hopefully ZOS you're nearly prepared to make a statement regarding this? Working as intended? Bug, no bug? Fixed in patch X... etc?

Bushido2513

Brakkish wrote: »

Another thread - short clip of just this thing here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/638707/arcanists-stayin-alive-with-zero-hp

Another thread - vids
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/640463/pvp-how-can-you-achieve-this-amazing/p3

These were from 6+ mos ago; hopefully ZOS you're nearly prepared to make a statement regarding this? Working as intended? Bug, no bug? Fixed in patch X... etc?

I saw a thread here on another forum where someone said they figured out how to reproduce it and reported to ZOS so they are aware at least but the thing is that it's also not all that common or easy to repeat from what I can see. Seems most Arcanist are happy with the default overtuned shield.

I saw one the other day that looked like it was doing it but then it seemed like it might just be something about shield spam combined with the shield ult and beam shield spam with regen in-between.

But yeah when they get like this one or two people just can't seem to secure the kill even with good damage and executes. Though I have yet to see a place beam. Surviving that at such low health would indicate a definite issue.

LordWenzel

reazea wrote: »

I have not seen this issue for months now. It was super bad when arcanist was first introduced, but I can't remember the last time I saw it, although I think it could still happen with all the shields arcanist has.

I saw someone using this exploit multiple times yesterday in Cyrodiil. We were clearing a keep after a big fight and there was that guy surving a lot of times with 0 hp while a lot of people (and by a lot I mean we were a lot of people, after all it was a really big fight) were attacking this guy simultaneously.
So yes, it definitely still a thing and I hope it gets fixed ASAP.

React

It's just health desync.

I've been playing the class about a week now, and have personally experienced this bug (as the person with the bug). I can confirm from my experience with various different health desyncs, that this is all it is.

There was one instance in particular last night where I noticed that I had hit 0% hp multiple times - which is the first red flag that my health was desynced and not displaying properly. By then proceeding to let myself die, I noticed that after just a few seconds of taking damage at "0%" health, I died as normal. This confirms that it is a simple healthy desync, and not some crazy exploit people are abusing.

Now, the reason you will see situations where arcanists are hovering at 0% hp is because of the combination of impervious runeward and undeath. Let's say an arcanist is desyncd by 5k hp, meaning that when they hit 5khp, they appear as having 0% hp. If they start spamming impervious runeward, which is giving them a 15-20k shield every 1s, as long as they're still at 5khp or below, they will appear to be at 0% hp and taking no damage on your screen. Undeath exacerbates this because once they're at that threshold where the desync makes them appear to have 0% hp, they're probably getting 25-29% mitigation from undeath alone.

Hope this helps.

reazea

Ok, I ran into this issue again big time yesterday.

I got them down to zero health 5 times in less than a minute, and even with a second player hitting them while at zero health they still did not die. This is a player that, no matter what class they play they seem to be able to achieve the impossible and has done so for years. This player is also one of the most prolific teabaggers in PvP. ZOS has taken no action against them even with multiple people posting videos of their misbehavior with their reports.

SaffronCitrusflower

reazea wrote: »

Ok, I ran into this issue again big time yesterday.

I got them down to zero health 5 times in less than a minute, and even with a second player hitting them while at zero health they still did not die. This is a player that, no matter what class they play they seem to be able to achieve the impossible and has done so for years. This player is also one of the most prolific teabaggers in PvP. ZOS has taken no action against them even with multiple people posting videos of their misbehavior with their reports.

If you're on PC NA I'm pretty sure I know exactly who you are referring to. They play on DC and just recently switched to play arcanist.

DTStormfox

React wrote: »

It's just health desync.

I've been playing the class about a week now, and have personally experienced this bug (as the person with the bug). I can confirm from my experience with various different health desyncs, that this is all it is.

There was one instance in particular last night where I noticed that I had hit 0% hp multiple times - which is the first red flag that my health was desynced and not displaying properly. By then proceeding to let myself die, I noticed that after just a few seconds of taking damage at "0%" health, I died as normal. This confirms that it is a simple healthy desync, and not some crazy exploit people are abusing.

Now, the reason you will see situations where arcanists are hovering at 0% hp is because of the combination of impervious runeward and undeath. Let's say an arcanist is desyncd by 5k hp, meaning that when they hit 5khp, they appear as having 0% hp. If they start spamming impervious runeward, which is giving them a 15-20k shield every 1s, as long as they're still at 5khp or below, they will appear to be at 0% hp and taking no damage on your screen. Undeath exacerbates this because once they're at that threshold where the desync makes them appear to have 0% hp, they're probably getting 25-29% mitigation from undeath alone.

Hope this helps.

Actually, it doesn't help.

If I have a health desync on my character, regardless of class, I appear to have an x-amount of hp less but when I hit zero hp, my character is dead. I do not magically stay alive while the UI shows 0 hp or "dead".

Furthermore, in the recorded footage I have, the player is taking a couple of thousand damage while being stunned, you can't cast shields when you are stunned, can you?

Lastly, I occasionally also play arcanist but I never stay alive when I get pushed to 0 hp. No, I die. If it works for some but not for all, then how can it be a desync?

React

DTStormfox wrote: »

React wrote: »

It's just health desync.

I've been playing the class about a week now, and have personally experienced this bug (as the person with the bug). I can confirm from my experience with various different health desyncs, that this is all it is.

There was one instance in particular last night where I noticed that I had hit 0% hp multiple times - which is the first red flag that my health was desynced and not displaying properly. By then proceeding to let myself die, I noticed that after just a few seconds of taking damage at "0%" health, I died as normal. This confirms that it is a simple healthy desync, and not some crazy exploit people are abusing.

Now, the reason you will see situations where arcanists are hovering at 0% hp is because of the combination of impervious runeward and undeath. Let's say an arcanist is desyncd by 5k hp, meaning that when they hit 5khp, they appear as having 0% hp. If they start spamming impervious runeward, which is giving them a 15-20k shield every 1s, as long as they're still at 5khp or below, they will appear to be at 0% hp and taking no damage on your screen. Undeath exacerbates this because once they're at that threshold where the desync makes them appear to have 0% hp, they're probably getting 25-29% mitigation from undeath alone.

Hope this helps.

Actually, it doesn't help.

If I have a health desync on my character, regardless of class, I appear to have an x-amount of hp less but when I hit zero hp, my character is dead. I do not magically stay alive while the UI shows 0 hp or "dead".

Furthermore, in the recorded footage I have, the player is taking a couple of thousand damage while being stunned, you can't cast shields when you are stunned, can you?

Lastly, I occasionally also play arcanist but I never stay alive when I get pushed to 0 hp. No, I die. If it works for some but not for all, then how can it be a desync?

Desyncs happen in both directions. You can be desynced so that you appear to have more health than you actually have resulting in you dying while visually having HP left, and you can be desynced so that you appear to have less health than you actually have. The latter being what you're witnessing in this thread.

The reason you may not have seen it is because whatever arcanist ability or interaction with enemy abilities is causing this, likely did not happen to you. Desyncs are usually caused by very specific and niche interactions. I'll list a few for you.

1. Poison injection being reflected - I think this one was fixed. But for years, if you cast a poison injection against a player with spell wall active, or with the old dk reflect wings, your health would desync. It had something to do with the dynamic execute scaling of the dot after being reflected.

2. Getting hit by a dawnbreaker as a nightblade while Shadowy disguise is active (in stealth) desyncs your health immediately.

3. When you're playing a sorcerer with a shock glyph on your weapons and also using overload, having an overload light attack proc your glyph and apply minor vulnerability will desync your opponents HP.

The list goes on, but you probably get the point. You see the bug much more frequently in those pesky tank players who like to run around keeps from zergs because they're interacting with far more abilities, and likely experiencing whatever specific interaction causes this desync much more frequently. The longer they stay alive in these settings, the more desynced they're going to be. There very well could be situations where they're desyncd 20k+ HP, meaning that they're on 20kHP when visually your UI is telling you they're on 0% HP..

As for being stunned on 0 HP and not dying, it's just desync coupled with things like hots, shields still being active, the shield ult being active and mitigating 60% damage, undeath kicking in and mitigating 15-30% damage, etc. Typically 40k+ HP arcanists are extremely tanky, it isn't unheard of at all to eat a full stun duration without taking much damage, especially on low HP.

I've spent 15,000+ hours in PVP on this game and have done extensive bug reporting. I promise, this is just a desync that is particularly noticeable because of the other factors I mentioned.

Bushido2513

DTStormfox wrote: »

React wrote: »

It's just health desync.

I've been playing the class about a week now, and have personally experienced this bug (as the person with the bug). I can confirm from my experience with various different health desyncs, that this is all it is.

There was one instance in particular last night where I noticed that I had hit 0% hp multiple times - which is the first red flag that my health was desynced and not displaying properly. By then proceeding to let myself die, I noticed that after just a few seconds of taking damage at "0%" health, I died as normal. This confirms that it is a simple healthy desync, and not some crazy exploit people are abusing.

Now, the reason you will see situations where arcanists are hovering at 0% hp is because of the combination of impervious runeward and undeath. Let's say an arcanist is desyncd by 5k hp, meaning that when they hit 5khp, they appear as having 0% hp. If they start spamming impervious runeward, which is giving them a 15-20k shield every 1s, as long as they're still at 5khp or below, they will appear to be at 0% hp and taking no damage on your screen. Undeath exacerbates this because once they're at that threshold where the desync makes them appear to have 0% hp, they're probably getting 25-29% mitigation from undeath alone.

Hope this helps.

Actually, it doesn't help.

If I have a health desync on my character, regardless of class, I appear to have an x-amount of hp less but when I hit zero hp, my character is dead. I do not magically stay alive while the UI shows 0 hp or "dead".

Furthermore, in the recorded footage I have, the player is taking a couple of thousand damage while being stunned, you can't cast shields when you are stunned, can you?

Lastly, I occasionally also play arcanist but I never stay alive when I get pushed to 0 hp. No, I die. If it works for some but not for all, then how can it be a desync?

In trying to find answers to a question there currently are no answers to everything is helpful even if it just rules things out.

Yes usually health desync means what is shown on screen doesn't match the actual value and that can be plus or minus.

DTStormfox wrote: »

React wrote: »

It's just health desync.

I've been playing the class about a week now, and have personally experienced this bug (as the person with the bug). I can confirm from my experience with various different health desyncs, that this is all it is.

There was one instance in particular last night where I noticed that I had hit 0% hp multiple times - which is the first red flag that my health was desynced and not displaying properly. By then proceeding to let myself die, I noticed that after just a few seconds of taking damage at "0%" health, I died as normal. This confirms that it is a simple healthy desync, and not some crazy exploit people are abusing.

Now, the reason you will see situations where arcanists are hovering at 0% hp is because of the combination of impervious runeward and undeath. Let's say an arcanist is desyncd by 5k hp, meaning that when they hit 5khp, they appear as having 0% hp. If they start spamming impervious runeward, which is giving them a 15-20k shield every 1s, as long as they're still at 5khp or below, they will appear to be at 0% hp and taking no damage on your screen. Undeath exacerbates this because once they're at that threshold where the desync makes them appear to have 0% hp, they're probably getting 25-29% mitigation from undeath alone.

Hope this helps.

Actually, it doesn't help.

If I have a health desync on my character, regardless of class, I appear to have an x-amount of hp less but when I hit zero hp, my character is dead. I do not magically stay alive while the UI shows 0 hp or "dead".

Furthermore, in the recorded footage I have, the player is taking a couple of thousand damage while being stunned, you can't cast shields when you are stunned, can you?

Lastly, I occasionally also play arcanist but I never stay alive when I get pushed to 0 hp. No, I die. If it works for some but not for all, then how can it be a desync?

Actually it does help because there are hints at what could be happening even if it isn't explained in dead simple terms.

Your response is showing the same thing that I'm having to admit/understand. That is to say that we don't have enough information or experience with the Arcanist to say everything that could be going on here. So we can't really say if something doesn't help if we don't have the answer ourselves.

The truth is we just don't know what sets are being worn, what cp is set, what skills are being used in what order, etc.

This could definitely be desync, interacting with undeath, sets being worn, and Arcanist skills in a way we've never seen before because there weren't any Arcanist.

We do know that from all the reports that it doesn't just happen to everyone that runs Arcanist, we just don't know at all how it happens to those that it does. Some have said they know and can repeat it and have reported to ZOS so we'll have to wait for something official but at this point since nobody has openly explained it then desync isn't off the table as a contributing factor.

Brakkish

Exploit and Desync can exist simultaneously. Entirely plausible one creates the other.

IZZEFlameLash

Brakkish wrote: »

Exploit and Desync can exist simultaneously. Entirely plausible one creates the other.

Yeah. Agreed. Just because one thing exist doesn't mean other doesn't exist and people aren't gonna use that if they happened to be one of those few that know how to replicate it consistently. This game's PvP history is full of it like many other not-so well regulated multiplayer games. How long did that double glyph glitch lasted for again and that there were enough abusers of it for ZOS to finally take action?

Caecus0

Whatever the reason is behind it, I've noticed it a bunch and saw this post and decided to add my experience to the pile. It just seems the moment Arcanists reach low HP, they just don't go down. Obviously this isn't EVERY Arcanist, but I've only seen Arcanists able to do this in this manner.

React

Brakkish wrote: »

Exploit and Desync can exist simultaneously. Entirely plausible one creates the other.

The thing is, you don't benefit from being desyncd like this. Sure, your opponents can't tell what HP you're truly at after you pass the threshold where the UI is telling them you're at 0% - but your UI is also telling you you're at 0%. You can't make informed choices about when to heal, LOS, ward, go offensive, etc because you just have no idea what your HP is actually at.

It isn't an exploit. It's a desync like numerous others that have been in the game. It should absolutely be fixed, but it's laughable seeing uninformed players insinuating that people are "cheating" because they don't understand what is happening.

These are the same people that send me hate tells calling me a cheater/macro user nearly every time I spend a few hours doing solo PVP.

Brakkish

@React

Simple: Desyncs (if we were to concede it's in fact a desync) are unintended anomalies with the game that can occur for a number of reasons, irresponsible to claim we know all reasons at this point. A bug in the game. Surely we agree on that.

It's a bug when something in game is unintended.
It's an exploit when something unintended is repeated at will for benefit.



What IS debatable is "benefit". In opposition to your thoughts on it; I DO see how obscuring your true HP in any manner for PVP beneficial.

For instance it's entirely plausible that within the framework of your explanation then, that Undeath passive without knowing how it's coded in (it could trigger off of UI code for all we know) could be triggering to mitigate it's full 30% mitigation rating (tooltip at 0% HP) when a player has as you've suggested, 20kHP or something contrary to a sefl UI representation of 0%.