Misc. minor musings & testing v1.10s oddities

[Crystalion]

In the course of my thinking about tests and problems I often wonder about how particular things work that affect my "plans". Usually I'll find an answer on AS or AB or LL and be satisfied. Often, however, I'll run a quick test to verify an answer.

Most of these results I bury in my mind so I won't "wonder" next time the issue comes up. But I figured if I started dumping some of these into a thread there is a decent chance that a reply to an oddity might reveal (to me) something interesting (like Librarian telling me about v1.09 Golem inheritance of caster replenish life).

So here are a few from the last half hour, for starters...

V1.10s, SP, normal Pindle area, with a Necro (no hireling, no minions) with -25 damage reduction circlet *and* amulet (two perf Life Everlastings) with Bone Armor up... Prowling Dead took down the bone armor and then weren't able to ever do any damage to me. Even so, their no damage hits steadily eroded my durability on my various pieces of armor.

The AS basic experience info is wrong, at least for v1.10s, in several respects.

For example, for 2 players I tested the permutations of:
not/partied
not/nearby
not/nearby w/ in/out of zone (i.e. AS assertion about being in named zone mattering)

The more recent info about xp splits needing to be within ~2 screens *plus* needing to be in zone is true but not the odd assumption one might make from AS statements that a not-nearby partied member who is nonetheless in zone gives +35% xp bonus.

Also the statement that xp is at least 1 isn't precise, as 5% of 18 xp for a Sorc of level 36 killing a blood moor fallen turns out to be 0 xp (killing the quill rats and zombies, at 21 & 33 respectively, give 1 xp).

Finally, a level 1 character killing a level 31 act 5 Enslaved (with do, for a level 36 Sorc, give the 1179 xp d2data indicates) gave only 23 xp, which is way below the supposed 5% minimum suggested on AS. As 23 is such an odd number I'm inclined to guess that whatever formula is used for dilution for kills above you either is capped at 2% or isn't capped. I didn't find it convenient to do additional tests to try to answer that (though they wouldn't be terribly hard).

Here's a fun one I've not tested: If a below clvl 11 character is using a socketed shield, and you stick an Eld rune into it while it is still equiped, I'm sure it remains on their arm but turns "red"... will the character block still? At the increased rate from the Eld? Similar questions can be constructed for, e.g., completing a runeword on an equiped item (with some runewords you could even have the case where only the final rune inserted takes the item over clvl req, such as Honor).

Unlike that test, I have lots of tests I haven't gotten around to doing that I consider significant, in case you were wondering "why doesn't he just do it?". An example would be that I don't understand why my clvl 6 Necro isn't successful damaging monsters near the Frigid Highlands waypoint with CE.

Lots of oddities I have no way of knowing if they are significant. An example of that would be seeing Bloody Foothills lightning catapult hits "shock" my clvl 1 character (no resists) but do no damage. I can think of *several* plausible explanations, but narrowing it down would take too much time away from my other testing (and occasional play).

Feel free to post your oddities here (this isn't a "Crystalion research report" thread). :)

[librarian]

Heiho,

according to some PvP testings Necro's BA is in 1.10 damaged before both physdamred modificators (a change from 1.09). Because of the low damage the Defiled Warriors do with their normal attack, it is all absorbed by your 50 absolute damage reducing via Amulet and Circlet, once your BA is crushed. But they _do_ hit you, so the duration of your equipment suffers.

Can't give you a clue what's up with the exp oddities.

<edit>
stiil have to work on my vocabulary
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[Crystalion]

Often, however, I'll run a quick test to verify an answer.

There was something I wanted to know about Taunt (too messy to discuss here, but suffice it to say that Taunt is one of those client/server can easily disagree skills, and it matters) and I bumped into another oddity along the way...

While you might think Taunt forces the monster to come after you personally it turns out they are quite happy to scrape off on another player or your hireling. In the case of another player, the Taunt AI can release right away, fyi (no time to test further on *that* as I was already far afield). In the case of your hireling, the Taunt AI will not only hold, it will hold past the death of your hireling.

Yes, that's right, the monster, in v1.10s SP repeated tests, will stand stupidly over the corpse of your hireling (ala D1) swinging at it and ignoring all other considerations.

If Taunt worked on act/bosses/champs this would be a major exploit. As it is, I imagine it might have some value as a minor exploit in certain situations in Hardcore.

AFAIK the server is only breaking Taunt when the Taunted monster "can't get at" the target it wants to get to. Since the corpse is easy to get to the AI gets necrophiliacishly stuck.

As this is obviously a (minor) bug and not a feature, I didn't do any thorough testing about using the effect in combination with obvious other techniques, like Confuse, minions, etc.

[Pren]

Heh, how funny. Tonight I finished my new druid's Leaf. I'd been keeping a 2 socket short staff on swap since clvl4 or so when I found it, got a Ral off the first countess I killed, and decided I'd wait for a tir to drop in act 2 (or for me to hit clvl19, then run the countess again for one.) Sure enough I got one and slipped the runes into it. Upon socketting the ral, it went red and I laughed. I do not think this has any effect whatsoever - consider that you can equip an item with +str/dex, then have it go red when you remove those items. For the record, the staff disappeared from my hands. I did not test to see if it was automatically equipped when i turned lvl19 if i had it as the active swap.

[pmpch]

Finally, a level 1 character killing a level 31 act 5 Enslaved (with do, for a level 36 Sorc, give the 1179 xp d2data indicates) gave only 23 xp, which is way below the supposed 5% minimum suggested on AS. As 23 is such an odd number I'm inclined to guess that whatever formula is used for dilution for kills above you either is capped at 2% or isn't capped. I didn't find it convenient to do additional tests to try to answer that (though they wouldn't be terribly hard).

This is correct, the mlvl-clvl>=10 penalty of the internal table has changed from 13/256 = ~ 5% to 5/256 = ~2%

[Guest]

V1.10s, SP, normal Pindle area, with a Necro (no hireling, no minions) with -25 damage reduction circlet *and* amulet (two perf Life Everlastings) with Bone Armor up... Prowling Dead took down the bone armor and then weren't able to ever do any damage to me.

since cyclone armour and energy shield work the same way, this should apply to them as well.

hmm, it might be that all auraevent's work before everything else now. hasn't chilling armour always been so that it shoots out a bolt even if the missile doesn't hit you? and energy armour taking off your mana if you move and as long as the monster swings at you.

i wonder how this applies to blood golems, do they get leech from physical immunes? the amount of damage you take from them getting hit is probably checked from 0 resist, ouch.

the only time i can think of this being good is with being amp'd/decrep'd and if you ignore resists completely in hell.

[Crystalion]

This is correct, the mlvl-clvl>=10 penalty of the internal table has changed from 13/256 = ~ 5% to 5/256 = ~2%

Ah, good to know, thanks.

My latest v1.10s oddites beg the question (which I can not easily test) of whether Fade or Cleansing aura flashing in v1.09 is really handy...

Since the Spirit Ward unique elite ward shield has a 5% chance to proc level 8 Fade when you're struck, I got to wondering how effective the combo, for a Paly, would be of using this shield with Cleansing. I did two and three player normal difficulty PvP tests in the Mausoleum (for convenience because the pentacle and rogue-on-a-stick™ fires can trigger being stuck procs).

It is pretty clear to me that when these auras pulse they remove x% of the remaining duration of the curse (or poison, I assume, though I've not tested that in many versions). It is clear that Fade and Cleansing "stack". An interesting tidbit is that pulses of equal level Cleansing also "stack" as far as my testing would indicate (keep in mind that due to the pulse application nature of the effect, chronograph times for the durations have variability depending on when in the pulse cycle the curse hit, making results subject to statistical interpretation). My theory for this would be that aura pulses of identical slvl are allowed to "overwrite", and since the Cleansing effect is edge-driven (i.e. only the pulses matter) multiple (same slvl) auras reduce the duration for each of their pulses.

Unlike EQ, I never played with aura flashing in D2, so I'm curious if in v1.09 or before you can use this effect to quickly lift a long curse (my test curse was weaken, at a 30.6 second stated, and ~32 measured base duration). I vaguely recall, long long ago, testing Cleansing vs. long duration poisons, but I don't remember any details.

An interesting oddity in testing was when I sought to align partied Paly's Cleansing to be 180 degrees out of phase (that is, attempting roughly one pulse per second alignment) I managed to trigger yet another lying character screen™ bug where one of my Palys would never show any aura, even though was being affected (by two, including his own). In this state I had him leave the test area for another zone, and the display then showed his aura thrown up on his hireling, but not himself (in reality it was up on him too, of course).

If I'm correct in my testing, then a party of Paly's all singing slvl 1 cleansing would take down any curse in the game in under ~2.5 seconds (roughly). A lot of the time a curse like Decrepify would essentially wink out in a fraction of a second.

I didn't test for Fade/Cleansing possibly working to remove slow or chill duration (I know the descriptions only mention curses and poison duration, but you never know, eh?). Nor did I test the "psuedo-curses" like slow missiles and inner sight (taunt PvP could also be tested, unmodded, if you had an act 3 hireling victim with a Spirit Ward--iirc someone posted that taunt works on hirelings/minions but I've not tested that myself).

[Crystalion]

the only time i can think of this being good is with being amp'd/decrep'd and if you ignore resists completely in hell.

:D Ah yes, take off all your resist gear, throw up some Cyclone Armor, and go spit in the eye of a hell difficulty Conviction enchanted boss. A sure fire tactic. :blink:

Just in passing: an old (just after v1.10beta1 release) PK post suggested that MonsterCEDamagePercent in difficultylevels.txt was a nerf to (player) CE just like the adjacent column, which controls the effectiveness of Static Field.

I tried a mod with this set to 1 (percent) in normal and still had no trouble blowing up monsters with the corpses of their slain comrades.

I am instead, therefore, inclined to believe this is nerf on *monster* CE in higher difficulties (fyi: 50, 35, 20 listed for norm/nm/hell) which is hard to notice because monsters have so much more life in nm/hell. I didn't take the time to test this theory however.

[roguebanshee]

hasn't chilling armour always been so that it shoots out a bolt even if the missile doesn't hit you? and energy armour taking off your mana if you move and as long as the monster swings at you.

Correct in both cases. The first is nice when running through the jungle, since you'll always be notified where those -ing dart-blowers are hiding, even if they can't hit you.

Energy Shield even drained (haven't checked if it still does) mana if you were standing on the edge inside town and a monster (or hostile player) attacked you.

[Bolty]

I am instead, therefore, inclined to believe this is nerf on *monster* CE in higher difficulties (fyi: 50, 35, 20 listed for norm/nm/hell) which is hard to notice because monsters have so much more life in nm/hell. I didn't take the time to test this theory however.

This would fit in with information I got early in the beta when I mentioned that Nihlithak's CE was wimpy now. It is scaled for difficulty, but I don't recall any exact numbers. Looks like you have them here.

-Bolty

[Guest]

Ah yes, take off all your resist gear, throw up some Cyclone Armor, and go spit in the eye of a hell difficulty Conviction enchanted boss. A sure fire tactic.&nbsp;

actually i was testing out a (level 99) a druid with arctic blast/grizzly, with the synergy bonus(it is from arctic, isn't it?) and a couple of points i had some 500 points of cyclone armour. that was enough for several LEB hits and 3 hits from lightning spires, gloams still insta-killed me though.

I am instead, therefore, inclined to believe this is nerf on *monster* CE in higher difficulties

nihl has his own CE, which doesn't scale at all, 3 tile range afaik(check the bug thread here) and pretty low corpse %. i'm guessing that column isn't used yet, or is outdated.

there aren't any other monsters with CE unless you count fire enchanted, but the last 100% times in 1.10 i've taken 0 damage from them.