UA works on PTR how Hand of Gul'dan does on live

[Thirstytiger]

I originally posted here asking if this is how the new dot works, but was told that it does not work how the dot from Hand of Gul'dan does now. For those who aren't familiar with how Hand of Gul'dan works currently it goes as such: You cast HoG and debuff the target with a 6 second dot. Casting another HoG will empower the dot on the target, increasing its damage and refreshing the duration. So the trick here is to land your second HoG before the final tic of the original dot. Let's say that you get 4 tics of damage from the dot on HoG, if you use this trick, you get 3 tics of normal damage, then you land the second HoG before the last tic of damage from the first dot. This causes that last tic to carry over to the new, and empowered dot. Therefore you get 3 tics of normal damage and 5 tics of empowered damage.

If you cast UA and let the full duration go through, you get 4 tics

of damage, for my testing purposes it was:

• tic 1 - 6,343
• tic 2 - 6,343
• tic 3 - 6,343
• tic 4 - 6,343
  *Re-apply Dot*
• tic 5 - 6,343
• tic 6 - 6,343
• tic 7 - 6,343
• tic 8 - 6,343

Results: 50,744 damage from two uses of Unstable Affliction

Now if you wait until the third tic of UA to do damage then reapply the

dot before the final tic goes through you save your final tic of the initial cast and get 4 additional tics from the second cast. This results in 5 more tics after the 3rd tic of damage from UA(as it would be in the first scenario). However! the 4th tic of the original cast, since it is getting carried over to the new application, becomes empowered, and due to the way UA works, it gets a percentage bonus applied to the new UA. This results in numbers that look like this:

• tic 1 - 6,343
• tic 2 - 6,343
• tic 3 - 6,343
  *Re-Apply Dot*
• tic 4 - 7,849
• tic 5 - 7,849
• tic 6 - 7,849
• tic 7 - 7,849
• tic 8 - 7,849

Results: 58,274 damage from two uses of Unstable Affliction

8000 Damage may or may not be significant when proper gear and

tuning is taken into consideration, however this damage, because it is percentage based, will become exponentially higher with more gear. Another thing to note is if you try to empower your dot before the third tic, you do end up losing a tic that you wouldn't normally lose if you reapplied the dot before the final tic. Just to layout the example like we did in the previous ones:

• tic 1 - 6,343
• tic 2 - 6,343
  *Re-Apply Dot*
• tic 3 - 9,468
• tic 4 - 9,468
• tic 5 - 9,468
• tic 6 - 9,468
• tic 7 - 9,468

Results: 60,026 damage from two uses of Unstable Affliction

Even with us losing a tic from our first UA we are still seeing a gain

in overall damage. This is the ceiling for this trick and if you try to reapply the dot before the second tic to get an even larger 5 tics of the remaining UA, you end up losing damage. Finally just to give an idea of this in the previous format:

• tic 1 - 6,343
  *Re-Apply Dot*
• tic 2 - 10,029
• tic 3 - 10,029
• tic 4 - 10,029
• tic 5 - 10,029
• tic 6 - 10,029

Results: 56,488 damage from two uses of Unstable Affliction

The final thing to note with this trick is that applying your new UA

as quickly as possible after a tic of damage will cause the damage per tic to fluctuate. So let's say in the example that yielded the highest results, example #3, our empowered dot damage became 9,468 when landing the second UA 0.1 seconds after the second tic of damage from the original UA. If I were to land the second UA 0.2 seconds after the second tic of damage from the original UA, the damage would be less, somewhere around 9,200. Inversely if you landed the second UA 0.5 seconds after the second tic of damage from the original UA, the damage would be higher, somewhere around 9,600.

Still have to do some testing and see what the best way to reapply these becomes when you are trying to chain 3 or more UAs in a row. I would assume it would stay pretty true to these results, but will try and update with my results as soon as possible! I feel pretty confident about my testing but if there are any errors or things I could improve upon please let me know! Thanks!

[bio347]

All that seems to be happening here is that UA is obeying pandemic rules. So when you're refreshing it with a tick remaining the resulting DoT has an extra tick compared to normal. The numbers on your second UAs when clipping are about what you'd expect them to be based on how the spell works. Given that UA ignores most of the usual rules for modern DoTs, this seems like it's probably a bug and should be reported as such.

And, for the record, this is NOT how current HoG works mechanically, although the application is similar.

[Deleted]

- snip -

I reported this after testing a bit myself. If I chain cast 2 UAs, I get significantly less damage than I would from 2 individual casts of UA. If I try to reapply it, finishing my cast just as the second tick hits, it suddenly does around 25% more damage than 2 individual casts of UA.

On one hand I doubt this is intended, but on the other hand it certainly does make it a more demanding spec to play.

Edit:

A single cast of my UA does around 100 k damage (109 k on tooltip, interestingly enough), and with 4 UA casts I managed to do 500 k damage. Spamming 4 UAs in a row did 441 k damage. This spell is acting wonky as all hell.

Before anyone asks: I made sure to unequip trinkets, ignore reapplications, remove Compound Horror, etc. All those numbers are entirely from UA alone, and yet still they are pretty wonky.

[Justpassing]

Well you should post this in the beta bug forums too beacuse I sure as hell am sure that this behaviour isn't "intended".

Then again it might be not a "bug", but a "feature".

[Qlosure]

You should try chaincasting 5 in a row with no gear. You'll get roughly 25% damage increase vs 5 x 1 UA. It's really strange.

[Smog]

You can even watch this happen in Finalboss' affliction second pass video from yesterday. The damage never falls off, and even though he is actively narrating the way it /should/ behave, he doesn't actually notice that it's broken.

[Deleted]

You can even watch this happen in Finalboss' affliction second pass video from yesterday. The damage never falls off, and even though he is actively narrating the way it /should/ behave, he doesn't actually notice that it's broken.

I didn't know anything was up with it until I bumped into this thread. I just assumed it worked as it should. From a coder's perspective, I can't see how they would even manage to mess it up. Remaining damage / number of ticks, for the life of me I can't understand how they could mess it up. It is very likely related to Pandemic (25% increased duration at most, seemingly 25% increased damage at most on UA). My guess is that the pandemic effect was either slapped on without consideration of the UA mechanic, or that pandemic effect is kept seperate and therefore doesn't take into consideration that UA is not like other dots.

Usual scenario for pandemic is something like:

Reapply dot -> new dot duration = Base + remaining (Capped at 25%) -> new dot damage = base + 0-25% based on new duration, spread over the new duration. In every other situation adding 25% damage is intended, since the dot doesn't remember how much was left other than the last 20-25%.

Let's hope they fix it, or at least announce whether or not it is intentional. It would help seperate the good players from the bad, but right now it is a hidden mechanic and as such doesn't seem to be intentional.

Edit:

It also looks like the damage from UA is not being handled in chunks internally, unlike what we see as players. I just did a few tests with 5 shards, where I specifically tried to finish casting UA just when the dot was about to tick. It very much looked like the damage from those entire ticks were simply "eaten".

5 shards, ~100 k damage per UA, managed to do a total of 449 k damage with 5 shards.

So it seems that the damage from each tick is treated as a percentage between 0-100%, depending on how close it is to the next tick. So, if you manage to perfectly land a UA just as a tick occured, the remaining damage that is added on to your new UA is the damage from the remaining ticks.

However, if you reapply UA right BEFORE the next tick, the "remaining" damage from that tick is treated as very close to 0% of the actual damage. So, if you time it like that, you are essentially "eating" ticks of damage, which is also how I managed to do less than baseline damage with 5 UA's (5 * 100 k = 500k, I did around 450k with 5 UAs).

This also explains why the numbers vary so much, even though they shouldnt.

Perhaps someone with US battlenet could ask them why it is implemented like that, instead of treating the dot "chunkwise"? It is kinda not intuitive that the damage on the current tick is treated as (DamageFromTick * (1 - (CurrentTickTimer / TickInterval)). I'm not sure that is accurate, but from testing it is kinda looking like that. The rest of the damage is "Safe", only the current tick seems to be affected by how much time passed since the last tick / how much time until the next tick.


EditEdit:

If this mechanic stays in place, affliction is probably going to need some addons to perform their best. Landing a UA just as a tick occured lets you add all of the remaining damage to the new UA (+25% from pandemic, it seems), but if you are a tiny bit too early on the cast, you instead lose out on an entire tick of damage. That is some next level playstyle alright.


EditEditEdit:

Just managed to almost land my second UA "perfectly", and the results are.... Even more strange than I thought.

Tick 1: 25351
Tick 2: 80414
Tick 3: 80414
Tick 4: 80414
Tick 5: 80414
Tick 6: 80414

No crits, no buffs, no nothing. I'm gonna have to look at the algorithm again... This is just wonky as all hell. 2 UAs dealing 4 UAs worth of damage. Whoever coded this should have a stern talking to, he made it waaaaaaaaaaay more complex than it ever had to be, and the results are obviously all over the place.

Last Edit:

Pic for proof (5 UAs, 100 k base UA damage, around 1 mil total damage (Crit = No crit calculated))

https://postimg.org/image/j2086tnep/

When I wrote 1st UA, it is because that is the damage from the first UA tick, and the second UA is applied at that moment-ish. So the second tick (78804) is the first tick with 2 UAs applied (which is way higher than the expected ~40k, and I've seen up to 85k).

So, TL : DR, it seems that there is something wonky going on with the calculations regarding the current UA tick when you reapply UA, and it can make your damage skyrocket. I wonder if this is a bug that occurs when they test their numbers, it would certainly make quite an impact on perceived affliction single target DPS (And actual, when you manage to pull it off).

[Smog]

Yeah, after testing it myself, I'm not going to rehash everything that has been said by others in the thread.

What I will say is: holy shit, UA is completely broken.

[wholol]

How much do you want to bet this is somehow related to the hidden artifact trait for affliction , since they changed the old one from killing ghosts refunds mana.

You might have stumbled onto the tip of the iceberg, have you checked if this works for other dots ? have you checked how many souls the weapon is currently holding or accumulating while you were doing your tests ? maybe there's a hidden ( slight ) damage increase for dot ticks per spirits floating around or accumulated, I'm not talking about soul reap being used, just the souls being there.

Gonna have to test a few things I guess.

[ThePhantombox]

Can someone with a beta account please post this over at the official forums so a blue sees it? Also tweeting the devs might help.

[Thirstytiger]

You might have stumbled onto the tip of the iceberg, have you checked if this works for other dots ? have you checked how many souls the weapon is currently holding or accumulating while you were doing your tests ? maybe there's a hidden ( slight ) damage increase for dot ticks per spirits floating around or accumulated, I'm not talking about soul reap being used, just the souls being there.

Sadly, in my 10 years of playing and testing, I have never gotten a beta. I have just accepted the fact that I will forever be condemned to the PTR haha

- - - Updated - - -

You should try chaincasting 5 in a row with no gear. You'll get roughly 25% damage increase vs 5 x 1 UA. It's really strange.

With the way the spell seems to be working, you would get more damage if you could chain all 5 instantly. However when you cast 5 as quickly as possible, you are reapplying them at the end of their first tic, which in turn loses quite a bit of damage. Again, super odd interaction with the spell it seems.

- - - Updated - - -

Yea the sooner you reapply the dot after a tic the more damage you get out of it. I wouldn't even know how to track something like that other than making a unique scrolling combat text for UA and getting a 'good feel' for how quickly I would need to reapply the dot after seeing a tic.

[Harsesis]

Looking at the tooltip for UA on beta it seems they changed it. It used to say something along the lines of recasting will add the remaining damage to the new application. Now it just says "Multiple casts accumulate increased damage," which is pretty vague in terms of exact functionality.

[Vikter]

I did some testing today on beta also. I was not able to reproduce your results, but my results make me think that UA is double-dipping a little from the Contagion talent.

two ua stacks
Tick #	No refresh	0 tick	    	1st tick	2nd tick	3rd tick
1	13991	        24064		13991		13991		13991	
2	13991		24064		20846		13991		13991	
3	13991		24064		20846		17629		13991	
4	13991		24064		20846		17629		14410	
5	13991		24064		20846		17629		14410	
6	13991				20846		17629		14410	
7	13991						17629		14410	
8	13991								14410	
sum	111928		120320		118221		116127		114023	
bonus			7.50%		5.62%		3.75%		1.87%	
extra			8392		6293		4199		2095

three ua stacks
Tick #	No refresh	0 tick		1st tick	2nd tick	3rd tick	
1	13991		24064		13990		13991		13990	
2	13991		30443		20846		13991		13990	
3	13991		30443		27869		17628		13990	
4	13991		30443		27869		17628		14411	
5	13991		30443		27869		21769		14411	
6	13991		30443		27869		21769		14411	
7	13991				27869		21769		16957	
8	13991						21769		16957	
9	13991						21769		16957	
10	13991								16957	
11	13991								16957	
12	13991					
sum	167892		176279		174181		172083		169988	
% buff			5.00%		3.75%		2.50%		1.25%	
extra			8387		6289		4191		2096

four ua stacks						
Tick #	No refresh	0 tick		1st tick	2nd tick	3rd tick
1	13991		24064		13991		13991		13990	
2	13991		30444		20846		13991		13990	
3	13991		35547		27869		17629		13990	
4	13991		35547		33488		17629		14410	
5	13991		35547		33488		21769		14410	
6	13991		35547		33488		21769		14410	
7	13991		35547		33488		24255		16957	
8	13991				33488		24255		16957	
9	13991						24255		16957	
10	13991						24255		17975	
11	13991						24255		17975	
12	13991								17975	
13	13991								17975	
14	13991								17975	
15	13991					
16	13991					
sum	223856		232243		230146		228053		225946	
% buff			3.75%		2.81%		1.87%		0.93%	
extra			8387		6290		4197		2090

I tried stacking two, three, and four UAs, and refreshing the UA in each case either immediately, after one tick, after two ticks, or after three ticks had elapsed. The first column is just the base UA damage with no refreshing, just reapplying it after it expires an extra one, two or three times as a base damage for comparison. I took off my trinkets and artifact. My talents were drain soul, contagion, demon skin, siphon life, dark pact, grimoire of service, and soul conduit, and I was level 104.

In all cases I got the same fixed bonus damage. When I changed my talent out of contagion to absolute corruption, the bonus damage went away.

Contagion is a talent that says "Unstable Affliction also increases all damage you deal to the target by 15%." UA's damage is increased by 15% by this talent also, always, including the first tick of the first time you cast it.

In general, the way UA's stacking mechanic seems to work is that when you apply a second UA, it calculates the remaining damage that the first UA has left to do, adds the extra damage from the new UA cast, and divides this over five ticks. One tick is for the next tick that will occur with the first UA, plus the four additional ticks of an entire additional UA duration.

The extra double-dipped damage seems to be occurring when the second UA is applied. An extra 15% of the first UA's damage is getting added into the "stack", i.e., recalculated into a new UA. This is on top of the 15% buff that the UA is already getting from contagion. What's interesting is that this only seems to happen when the very first UA goes from being a regular dot to being recalculated into a "stack". Every time I refreshed a third and fourth time afterward (from one recalculated "stack" to another recalculated "stack"), I got no additional extra bonus damage, just the regular additional damage from an additional UA.

The double-dipped bonus damage also decreases if you allow ticks of the first UA to occur, so you get 75%, 50%, or 25% of the extra 15% of that UA's damage. And just to reiterate, this is all 15% of a UA that is already 15% larger due to contagion, hence the double-dipping. For example, in this case my non-contagion UA ticks for 12166 instead of 13991 with contagion. Then up to an extra 15% of the 13991 is added when the first UA is refreshed, depending on the remaining number of ticks.

[ThePhantombox]

The double-dipped bonus damage also decreases if you allow ticks of the first UA to occur, so you get 75%, 50%, or 25% of the extra 15% of that UA's damage. And just to reiterate, this is all 15% of a UA that is already 15% larger due to contagion, hence the double-dipping. For example, in this case my non-contagion UA ticks for 12166 instead of 13991 with contagion. Then up to an extra 15% of the 13991 is added when the first UA is refreshed, depending on the remaining number of ticks.

So basically what you're saying is the faster you apply the new UA's, the more damage you get? I.e. spamming back to back is more damage?

[Vikter]

So basically what you're saying is the faster you apply the new UA's, the more damage you get? I.e. spamming back to back is more damage?

Only the first time you refresh it, every time you refresh it afterward there is no double-dip bonus. My guess is that the calculation is slightly different when it looks at a regular DoT (the first time UA is cast) versus a recalculated "stack" DoT.