(Bug confirmed) SDI and Spellplauge

[unlord]

Hi everyone,

I just returned to UO after quiting in 2001 and have been playing for a month now.

I was trying to build a mystic archer, the idea was to use spell plauge, double shot with enchant, to get the plauge to proc. This is for PvM only since i'm much older now, and i just want to play uo to wind down after work, nothing to hectic like getting ganked and stuff lol

I did some testing with SDI and found something very surprising. SDI seems to increase the damage of my enchant hit spell, but NOT spell plauge damage. Is that intended? If anything i would think it should be the other way around... spell plauge seems more suitable for SDI to be used.

How i did the testing.
with a normal bow 120/120 focus myst, no sdi. i ran around and proc'd 50 fireballs on earth elems (all of them in the little mine near new haven), procs were in between 14-19damage.

then i casted a new enchant while wearing 37sdi (i kept the 37sdi suit on while doing the test, not sure if it factors in only during the intital cast, or every proc, not that it matters to me)

with 37sdi i did 50 more fireball procs using same bow vs same earth elems. the fireballs were 18-23damage.

With spellplauge i used cows. since they had all 0 resist except physical. It was pretty obvious when the chaos damage proc physical. I killed 50 cows using spellplauge no sdi, taking out the lowest 10damages (assuming those are physical) they were 63-70damage

I did the same thing with 37sdi, and the damage was the exact same! Very disappointing indeed, i was thinking of stacking sdi on my archer to get enchant and spellplauge to do massive damage.....

I didn't get as far to testing the spellplauge proc explosions because i got annoyed with how laggy test center was, and i figured if the intital damage doesnt use SDI, the following explosions wont too...

Am i correct in my findings? SDI does not effect spellplauge? (i tested nether bolt too, and SDI does help nether bolt).

Thanks!

 

[unlord]

An update. Doing more research, on uostratics site under mysticism it says

"All damage spells are affected by Inscription: Nether Bolt, Eagle Strike, Bombard, Spell Plague, Hail Storm, and Nether Cyclone."

I did testing with gm inscription with spell plague, like SDI, it doesnt seem to effect the damage of spell plague.

I'm thinking this should be noticed by now, if anyone can point me to a thread discussing this would be appreciated.

 

[Arcades]

I believe they changed the rules of spell plague so that only casted spells can proc the spell plague damage. Not sure why your increased SDI is not doing more damage tho.

 

[unlord]

Thanks for the reply Arcades.

Yes i'm aware that they changed the spell in publish 69 and publish 69.5 to only proc on spell damage and hit spell effects. I can confirm that hit spell effect do indeed proc the explosions.

Is there any further change to spell plague after publish 69.5?

Have you had experience using spell plague and seeing your damage change when wearing SDI? It seems to make perfect sense to have SDI effect spell plague, and even uo stratics says it does. I will do another round of test on a brand new character on test center agian and take pictures when i have time tommorow, will post them with the damage numbers.

 

[Titans1]

I tested it today on Atlantic just like you did using cows. Only took 2 cows to convince me that SDI doesn't affect Spell Plague. First cow, 0 SDI, 66 damage. Second cow, 49 SDI, 67 damage. Unless the second cow was wearing a whole bunch of armor, SDI did not work.

 

[unlord]

I'm glad i'm not the only one to get these results. After the first 3 nukes i knew something was wrong, but i knew to convince people online i would need to do more numbers. i used nearly 40% SDI, the very first nuke i do should have seen HUGE difference, should be around 90damage.

So unless their patch notes and uostratics info is wrong, this is definately not working as intended. I guess we can agree that this is bugged? I'm surprised no one else noticed for so long, or is it that spell plague got nerfed so much that no one uses it anymore?

 

[unlord]

Okay I'm 100% sure this is bugged now. attached is the image i promised.

You can see that there is a huge difference in damage when using other mystism spells, i tried all the other spells too, but just used eagle strike for this round of pictures. But when using SDI and 100 inscrption, the damage of spellplague does not change, with 47SDI and 10sdi from gm scribe, the difference should be noticiable the very first spell i cast. I positioned myself close to the target too so you can see that i'm indeed naked in the first round of test with 0sdi, and equiped with artifacts in the second test.

How can i report this? Spellplague seems like a fun spell and id love to use it.

PS. for those that skipped to the last message, i didn't just do this test once with 4 targets, i recorded my previous tests using 100targets 100casts, twice (on 2 diff chars). Results were the same. If you don't believe me, try it yourself to see if SDI effects spellplague damage.

 

[BeaIank]

I'd suggest reposting this at http://stratics.com/community/forums/bug-tracking.710/

Misk is always checking there, so it will be easier for him to notice this bug and put it in the list of bugs to be fixed.

 

[startle]

Ok, I'm looking at your pics and notice that you're showing the initial damage from the Spell Plague itself. But, according to UOGuide :

The target is hit with an explosion of chaos damage and then inflicted with the spell plague curse. Each time the target is damaged while under the effect of the spell plague, they may suffer an explosion of chaos damage. The initial chance to trigger the explosion starts at 90% and reduces by 30% every time an explosion occurs. Once the target is afflicted by 3 explosions or 8 seconds have passed, that spell plague is removed from the target

So, I'm under the impression that it's the secondary explosions that are triggered by casting on the target again that proc's the big damage... Is that not correct?

 

[unlord]

Yes from the way i understand it.

you first hit the mob with a nuke, that also adds a debuff "spellplauge". then can trigger up to 3 explosions within 8 seconds by hitting it again with spells. the first explosion has 90% chance to trigger, 2nd is 60% 3rd is 30%. the last explosion is supposed to be the strongest.

All that is correct, however, this doesnt change the fact that SDI did not help the spell damage of the initial nuke.

also the explosions actually don't do that much damage. I tested it on myself and was able to get up to the second explosion going off regularly. To put into perspective the damage compared to the intial nuke, i was wearing all 70s, the initial blast did 20-22damage, the first triggered explosion did 9-10, second did similar maybe slightly higher, the 3rd i'm guessing would be stronger but not by that much.

I also tested this using SDI, no change in damage of initial blast nor the proc explosions, but this was a bit harder to prove because it was hard to get enough number of explosions for a good test. i'm 100% sure about the intial blast, and 90% sure about the proc blasts, both not using SDI.

anyways all that aside, the fact is still the same, SDI didnt help the spell damage of spell plauge.

PS. posted in the bug tracking forum, thanks for the link. awaiting approval now to be seen public. Titans1 if you can also vouch for this when the thread goes public, would be great.