How I believe GA and pierce should work together

[Jarulf]

Isolde,

You say this is a real bug, could you give me a link to an official source saying so ? Not that I don't trust you, I only want to see how they said it, in which terms.

I believe the most official you might find is:

"Ah. It's a bug (well it was intentional to make the change but not intentional that it actually get shipped) and will be removed in 1.10. Officially."

You just scroll up about 10 posts or so ;)

[RedFin]

I believe the most official you might find is:

"Ah. It's a bug (well it was intentional to make the change but not intentional that it actually get shipped) and will be removed in 1.10. Officially."

You just scroll up about 10 posts or so ;)

This is nice to see. Maybe strafe or immolation gets back to boss skilling skill.

Even though fire arrow was mentioned earlier, which could of course mean that immolation is not going to be raised in damage or mana cost lowered to real worth of maxing the skill in non-magezons.

RF

[ALnitak]

Even if GA won't pierce at all anymore in 1.10, it will still be a must have for single targets. The damage is 5% away from strafe's, at equal level. No strafe lock, no casting delay unlike immolation arrow, no need to make your target be still (while being damaged by the fire), automatically aims at target, and always hits it - unless it is Diablo.

[RedFin]

The reason why i posted like that was:

If strafe get's extra arrows hitting the damage output/time is much higher than non-piercing GA against single monster. This is big if when it comes on hitting. That is if strafe gets those extra arrows to single monster to hit in 1.10.

Immolation arrows are hitting allways if not blocked, fire will burn Diablo with higher chance than GA hits if Diablo is stationary like he usually is, just you have to aim as it does not seek the monster. However we might get even to situation where you need to know fire resist vs. block percentages for monster to get maximum effect out like in D1 resistances.

When i say using Immolation arrow for something, i allways mean that if using it you do some other attack while in delay, but this of course was not clear on my post as it was short version.

But yes i agree that guided will be must have for some occasions (moving targets that are missed with strafe/immolation in situations where MS doesn't do that much good).

About damage: that 5% on skill is much less even when you are getting so much other sources of enhanced damage % (that is auras, dex, % ED outside bow etc), so there are no real reason in damage wise if only 1 arrow hit with strafe to use strafe against single monsters. Then GA beats strafe in 99,99% of cases.

Just my opinion though....

RF

[ManaCraft]

I know. Actually I play 7L myself - I'm quite impressed by it.


ManaCraft

[XOblivionX]

OK, FIRST OF ALL, WHAT IS A BUG?!?!

By the way you have all used it, it seems that YOU HAVE NO IDEA

A bug (in the computer term) is a glitch or a problem with a certain file that was NOT meant to happen.

Now see how silly you are? Who are you to say that blizzard did not mean to have GA pierce more than once? eh? I think the proper term would be IMBALANCE!!!

Now, back to the subject.

I think it would be fair for PvPers that if a GA is blocked by a shield, GA stops just after that. Would prevent zons from being able to keep shield-wearing chars at distance by spamming GA. How does that sound to you, now :

Now, to help you understand thatt......if a shield blocks a GA...IT DOES NOT PIERCE.

Secondly, why would you say GA piercing multiple times a an *imbalance*? Why, that would be as absurd as saying that a sorceress's elemental masteries are an inbalace. Now see here. A guided arrow's power is varied by the type of bow the amazon is using. So? the arrow pierces? And does 50 damage to you...no big deal u can survive that. Now the big probelm is that zons are using WF/Buriza these days. And so its not so much the problem of the game, its about hacks.

in my opinion, there should be NO item that gives 100% pierce, and buriza should be NERFed big time, not so much its stats, but its lvl req, which now stands at a 42...

ALSO!!! THIS THREAD IS SILY AND UTTERLY ABSURD!!! Are you ranting about how many times an arrow can hit you...Well look here! Im gon to buy a cracked short bow and shoot it at you. WOW it peiced you 4 times
And...how much damage did it do? 4 DAMAGE WOW!!!

So tell me now: which is the real factor here: Is it damage, or is it pierce?

~~XOblivionX~~

PS...people should really THINK about it before they post it.....

Edit: Made a mistake typing. Had to 'rephrase'

[Elric of Grans]

Greetings XOblivionX,

Actually, it's a bug: once Blizzard say it is a bug, it is a bug. If you don't like it, complain to them ;)

"THIS POST IS SILY AND UTTERLY ABSURD" etc (other quotes in your post)

Thanks: you've already said what I was going to *cough* :D

[Saga_Keeper]

If strafe and multishot only get 1 hit on a monster, cost more mana then guided (a lot more per level with multi which gets a damage REDUCTION, not increase) I don't see why 1 guided should get 5 hits on a monster, I can fire 10 strafe arrows into 1 monster and only get 1 hit, if anything that's just silly.

Let's compare something really quick. Whirlwind. It's been nerfed several times, it's even slower then it once was... it's still a primary skill and deadly in the hands of a skilled player.

GA nerfed, you still can fire at 9 or 8 frames... so that's 2 or 3 a second anyways, strafe requires an ar check, and could get the same amount (or less) hits in a second... GA goes where you want it to, doesn't lock you down, multi as said has a damage reduction, and costs a ton of mana, same amount fired as guided which could still be used for scouting, corners, and boss killing quite easily...

With the bows of today, GA without pierce will still do incredible amounts of damage... and be a great skill for scalpel work and precision killing... a long time ago I thought it'd be neat if it would bonce around a few targets, but then it'd easily outdo strafe or even multi, so that was sorta out... compared with other skills in the tree, with pierce it is simply unbalanced and potentially much more useful considering:
1)increased damage per level
2)DECREAED cost per level
3)potentiality to be hitting a target with enough shots that it can't move, let alone what happens with knockback or slow.
4)multiple hits=multiple leech with high damage on it, for just 1 shot... fire 1 guided and you can leech back 4x your leech per the damage, easily... not a bad deal for around 2 mana.

SO yeah, just my 2 cents on the issue.

-Saga_Keeper

[WarBlade]

A bug (in the computer term) is a glitch or a problem with a certain file that was NOT meant to happen.

Which is a fairly good reason why people refer to this as the Pierce/GA bug or similar.

Now see how silly you are? Who are you to say that blizzard did not mean to have GA pierce more than once? eh?

The same people that repeat Blizzard's own comments on the situation in saying it's a bug.

Secondly, why would you say GA piercing multiple times a an *imbalance*? Why, that would be as absurd as saying that a sorceress's elemental masteries are an inbalace.

Interestingly, those Masteries do represent an imbalance. When you consider that +Skills to a single skill tree can yield exponential increases that most other builds can't match and throw in +Skill Charms to facilitate that (among other numerous skill sources), then you have an imbalance in the making.

in my opinion, there should be NO item that gives 100% pierce

I'm inclined to agree although I think the criteria should be both item and skill combined focused on the idea of repeat piercing rather than just saying that 100% is wrong. Personally I don't mind a 100% Pierce chance, but having 100% for the monster after and the monster after that should be stomped on, but that's just my opinion. With regards to GA I'm happy about the proposed 1.10 change - It's the only one that makes sense to me.

ALSO!!! THIS POST IS SILY AND UTTERLY ABSURD!!!

I agree. So why did you post it?

PS...people should really THINK about it before they post it.....

. . . no comment :huh:

[Occhidiangela]

Before LoD, GA did not pierce.

With LoD, GA was changed, by the folks who changed the game. Now, I find it very interesting that one of the changers classifies it as a bug, a bug let go for every patch since . . . 1.07? Really? If it were not intended to Pierce, it would have been left untouched, as is, like any number of other skills from DII to LoD.

I concluded, from playing, that the change was deliberate, for better or for worse.

So, dear Isolde, I don't want to impugn your integrity, you actually know how things work, you have been in the belly of the beast, but I gotta ask:

How does it follow that a skill change that came with LoD (we also saw this in the beta) that seemed to me a deliberate change in how the skill behaved, a change to an already perfectly fine skill, is 'a bug,' an unintended consequence of something else not related to GA? Obviously, I do not understand all of the nuance and the variety of code interaction, which are immense, of what you guys changed to turn DII into LoD.

In short, left alone, GA was fine. Was the intention to never have it Pierce, or did something else induce the Pierce feature to unintentionally manifest itself?

You illumination actually confuses me. :)

If, on the other hand, you were to say that the decision to fuse Pierce and GA in the LoD and beyond was made, and you all then decided that it did not quite work out the way you had planned, I could understand that as a 'design improvement error' it needs to be readjusted.

Bug? Unintended action. Design error? Idea that did not quite pan out.

I may be looking at this too simplistically.

[WarBlade]

How does it follow that a skill change that came with LoD (we also saw this in the beta) that seemed to me a deliberate change in how the skill behaved, a change to an already perfectly fine skill, is 'a bug,' an unintended consequence of something else not related to GA?

The GA/Pierce thing is not the only example of things that were in 1.07, but never updated in subsequent patches.

Sanctuary has a similar distinction where the skill was revised again in 1.09, but the description in the skill screen was never updated and still says something like "Adds Damage to Melee Attacks" when it clearly works on missiles after 1.09 too (As with Holy Shock which has the more applicable description).

The Rogue and +Skills was never fixed either. etc.

[Isolde]

Ah, well, there's a bit of a story behind this one.

I was the one who changed GA to pierce in whichever version piercing GA was introduced in, because at the same time I was planning on making it do some other interesting things (swoop around in curvy paths and all that, thus not being able to hit the same target again without going in a big circle). Unfortunately, I never could get the server and the client to sync very well on that one (something to do with how client & server missiles are independent of each other). So I backed out my changes, but accidentally left the pierce column for GA set on. (this was fairly close to right before we shipped).

A few days later, I noticed the problem and fixed it, asking the person making the patch to get the latest file... unfortunately I think our source control program was acting weird around that time, which it sometimes does, and somehow the fix didn't get included in the build.

Was that 1.08? So the fix should have gone into 1.09 at least (which btw was supposed to be released before 1.08 actually got put on the server which is a horrible horrible plan), but it never made it into there either, plus there were all sorts of other snafus with 1.09 in terms of odd code merges (for example the lack of triggered effects in 1.09d vs. 1.09b).

So that's the story. Not very comforting I know :(

In a way all of the elite 1.08 items could be considered bugs as well, at least in so much as they were never meant to appear on the realms...

[Isolde]

I didn't think the rogue could get +skills in 1.07?

[WarBlade]

By + Skills I'm referring to such mods as +1 to All Skills. ;)

-Tarnhelm
-Silks of the Victor etc.

[Isolde]

Yes but didn't equipping mercs not come about until LoD? And wasn't LoD 1.08? I can never get the versions straight...

[jahcs]

I would agree that GA and pierce need to be changed, how is up to the developers.

I feel guided arrow should pierce, once, and then continue on in a line for enough distance to allow the arrow to "seek" another target.

One other skill comparison: I don't see chain lightning choosing the same target over and over to strike.


On another note, the physics of a piercing object: isn't the energy that isn't transfered (not sure if that's the right word) what allows the item to keep going through the objective?

Thanks for your time.

[Ruvanal]

Yes but didn't equipping mercs not come about until LoD?  And wasn't LoD 1.08?  I can never get the versions straight...

v1.06 was the last patch released before LoD was in final testing. Patches v1.07 and v1.08 were combined and released together just about the time that the LoD game was shipped for sale to the public. If you installed LoD with out getting any additional patches, you were effectively playing v1.07 from what the expansion updated the game to.

The LoD mercs could get equipment in v1.07, but the +skills modifiers did not start working at all for them until patch v1.09.

from patch.txt 1.09 section

- Fixed a bug where items that add to skills had no effect on Hirelings.

No major patchs since then. Most of the 1.09a, b, c and d patch work was for computer hardware and connectivity issues (along with a very few anti-hacking bug fixes).

[WarBlade]

Yes but didn't equipping mercs not come about until LoD?  And wasn't LoD 1.08?  I can never get the versions straight...

No, LoD shipped as version 1.07 and hit the stores around the same time as 1.08 became available for download for both LoD and Classic (Just after 1.08 IIRC).

You may recall a brief hullabaloo from some Open players lasting a day or two when they raced out, got the expansion, installed it and suddenly discovered all their precious characters were missing. This was due to their 1.08 characters not being recognized by the now-1.07 game (until the players took the time to download the patch). :lol:

[WarBlade]

The LoD mercs could get equipment in v1.07, but the +skills modifiers did not start working at all for them until patch v1.09.

Ah thanks Ruvanal. I forgot about that one.

I stand corrected: The Rogue lightning bug couldn't take effect until 1.09.

Makes me wonder how they reacted to + Skills earlier though (Battle Command), although I expect the inability to benefit from + Skills was total and included that skill's effect also.

[NERDmanWhippy]

Pierce:
Passive Effect: A chance that your missile will continue through its victim.

Guided Arrow:
Effect: Imbues an arrow with the ability to seek its nearest target.

Your bow will never shoot missiles....It shoots arrows ;)

No quite honestly, I dont think its a bug, but in pvp its totally over powered, and honestly, not many melee chars can get close to a KB-WF Zon....Maby if they changed KB to not work in duels (Much like it dont work on most bosses)...but one shot from a dexizon, can hit up to 4-5 times, it can kill. I hope all the chars are more well balanced, but this is something everyone knows about.....Hehe there are many lame bugs for other chars...hehe Look at eth runes in melee duel...its Instant Jah :)...I cant wait till 1.10 (never will happen) and defense matters again...AR will be clutch for PvP

J