Spell Strategist stacking when soloing a single target: Bug or Feature?

Solinur · October 2018

When investigating why Combat Metrics was having trouble tracking the uptime of the Spell Strategist Buff and Debuff, I found that the buff could be applied a second time to the target after the 4s Cooldown is over.

https://youtu.be/8OlDga51S7Q

The effect would then stack to grant twice the mentioned spell damage bonus for the brief period until the first buff runs out.

Elder_Scrolls_Online_2018-10-30_00.01.52.png

Elder_Scrolls_Online_2018-10-30_00.01.52.png

In the screenshot all noncrit attacks are 3694 only the one that hits when Spell strategist is up twice is increased to 3999

Normally in such cases the previous buff would stop, followed by the immediate application of the new buff, like shown below (at 19.5s):

Elder_Scrolls_Online_2018-10-29_23.56.52.png

Elder_Scrolls_Online_2018-10-29_23.56.52.png

Is it intended that Spell Strategist can be up twice on the same target and stack or is this a bug?

WrathOfInnos · October 2018

Interesting. Are you sure that you didn’t have any other effects active that may have caused the increase to 3999. Maybe a spell damage/Berserker enchant or a minor vulnerability effect.

In a DPS rotation you would likely never notice this effect, since you can’t do 2 Light Attacks within a second when weaving skills in between. Although you may get a few lucky DoT ticks between gaining the new Spell strat buff and losing the old one.

I hope the fix for this is not a cooldown increase. The 1s “grace period” is very helpful, especially for players that occasionally miss a light attack weave. If anything, it should just be changed so that you only get the standard 500 Spell damage during the overlap period where you have 2 buffs active.

Solinur · October 2018

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Interesting. Are you sure that you didn’t have any other effects active that may have caused the increase to 3999. Maybe a spell damage/Berserker enchant or a minor vulnerability effect.

Yes, I did this with a Flame enchant (see video). Someone else could reproduce it also.

Floliroy · October 2018

Solinur wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Interesting. Are you sure that you didn’t have any other effects active that may have caused the increase to 3999. Maybe a spell damage/Berserker enchant or a minor vulnerability effect.

Yes, I did this with a Flame enchant (see video). Someone else could reproduce it also.

Yeah i did it too and got the same results.

Solinur · October 2018

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I hope the fix for this is not a cooldown increase. The 1s “grace period” is very helpful, especially for players that occasionally miss a light attack weave. If anything, it should just be changed so that you only get the standard 500 Spell damage during the overlap period where you have 2 buffs active.

I'm actually more worried about the programming implications of this for me, rather than the brief moment of additional Spell Damage. It's not that much of an effect really...