1.11 Runewords Bugs

[channel1]

Okay, I should have known this would happen, it was just too good an idea. I equipped my Necro's Act 2 merc with the Peace runeword armor. 2% chance to cast Level 15 Valk, great idea, right?

Well, so far I am 2 for 2 when the valk gets cast, I get a "Your connection has been interrupted" and the game is gone. The second time, there was just enough of a delay that I could actually see that the Valk had been created when the game died.
I seem to recall something similar with the beta version of 1.10.

I suppose the other "Chance to cast" armors will need to be checked for this. I'm scared to report this to Blizzard, I'd rather have the runewords and work around the merc bug, than lose the runewords while waiting for a fix that may never come.

-rcv-

EDIT: No replies here, although I see some have viewed this. I'll just add this comment.

Being able to crash a game by giving your merc a "Peace" armor and letting the merc poke a few critters could be a cheap & easy & nasty way to grief. It would be hard to figure out what was going on, too.

This is exactly the same bug that we found in the beta version of 1.10, if I recall correctly it was with Crescent Moon. Game would crash when the "10% Chance To Cast Level 17 Chain Lightning On Striking / 7% Chance To Cast Level 13 Static Field On Striking" would trigger.

Looks like a good reason for version 1.11a, although I wonder if they will (1)fix it, (2)remove the runewords, or (3)dis-allow those runewords from being equipped on mercs.

[MMAgCh]

There's actually much more wrong with the new runewords, and an old one, than just this. :) I posted about it at indiablo.de, so let me recap:

1.) As you mentioned, 'Peace' causes the game to crash when it is worn by a merc (or it has been turned into an Iron Golem) and the Valkyrie is triggered.
Additionally, even if the Valkyrie is "correctly" spawned, i.e. by the player wearing the armor, she will vanish instantly when any kind of war cry (Battle Orders, Battle Command and likely Shout as well) is applied to her. I'm not sure if this happens when the player character is an Amazon with points in the actual skill, it might not (see point four below). If the PC spawning her is an Amazon capable of casting Valkyrie herself, i.e. with at least one point in the skill, the Valkyrie does NOT disappear when being BO'd. This seems to be similar to the Raven/HotO problem.

2.) Two mods on the new runeword 'Principle' do not appear when the RW is assembled. For one of them, +100-150 life, this is because the wrong code is used in Runes.txt ('life' as opposed to 'hp'). The second mod that doesn't work, +50% ED vs. Undead, fails to appear because the game, on encountering an invalid code in Runes.txt, skips the rest of the row, and this mod just happens to appear after the broken one.

3.) A similar problem plagues 'Plague'. I'm not 100% sure if it's active realmside, but if it is and no changes have been made, it will not have any mods at all when created, besides the ones originating from the runes themselves. This is because the very first mod again uses a wrong code ('dmg-demons' when it should be 'dmg-demon'), rendering the rest of the mods inactive.

4.) Ravens cast from the charges found on 'Heart of the Oak' "die" a second or two after they are summoned. This does not seem to affect Druids with a point in the actual skill and it does not seem to affect any other pets summoned from charges, as far as I can tell. The Oak Sage on HotO sticks around, as do the wolves on 'Crescent Moon'.

However, as far as I've tested, all hit-/ and gethit-skills on the other new runewords appear to function flawlessly even on mercs.

[whathuh]

Wouldn't the easy fix to all this be to remove the "summons disappear when you suddenly lose points" addition that makes trading with an army of skeletons quite annoying? If your summons gain abilities from passive abilities when they were summoned, why does there have to be a reduction in the number of summons you control?

This would probably solve those annoying problems (maybe not the peace runeword), but definately charged skills.