Thoughts on the v1.10 FE one-hit-kills

[Crystalion]

I'm not a hardcore player, so caveat emptor...

From the Maggot Lair (and also lots of posts on topic at AB):

Hell Ancients is turning into a Hardcore graveyard

For local play at least Telekinesis does activate the ancients altar from a fair distance. If Hardcore players can't wait until this issue is resolved (or at least understood) it seems to me anyone can trigger the ancients from a distance, while their statues are encased in bone (walls or prisons--as long as the Ancients spawning doesn't clean them up, it is pretty easy to temporarily go PvP (with an invite pending, which you accept to end PvP without having to be in town) to be able to cast prisons).

If you are far enough away via telekinesis my guess is that they will initially target the bone (a Decoy in the middle of them would be an excellent way to help with this).

One would then, post trigger, have a scroll in belt for super fast TP to zap the ancients, as one carefully cursors them from the edge of the screen, looking for a roll without any of them FE (except Talic, who, iirc, always is--a nasty fact if that is indeed the key to triggering the one-hit kills).

Just a thought. Much better to wait for Blizzard to take action, imo.

p.s. someone mentioned that barb Leap works against anything except act bosses. Does it work vs. the Ancients? If so, getting a Leap build to HR lock the ancients seems like an excellent idea.

[Ruvanal]

On this bug.... I have been see many of the complaints, but little in the way of any good information as to what is really happening. Currently I have only seen one (from AB HC formum no less) that gave a good accounting of what was happening with character HP and amount of damage being done (sounded like the damage was about 2800 to 2900 per hit in NM? iirc). Most others have been like whining players; "I had a high HP barb and was one hit killed by them" etc. But what did that particular character mean by 'high HP'? What was the difficulty? Which ancient as it seems to switch in some of the retellings? Sometimes they also give resists (maxed, 75% or did they have more?), but usually it is unmentioned. Needed are some good samplings of information or even Blizzard will be hard pressed to fix this if they do not have a clue as to the cause.

Testing needs to be done in SC for obvious reasons.
Is this only in Ladder games?
Is it only the axe thrower or or do the others cause it too?
Do any other SU monsters cause this else where?
What were the unique mods that were active besides the FE? Also take note of any of the mods on the other ancients too as the aura can have some overlap too.
Just how much damage is being done? How consistent is this mega damage also.

Currently I have two suspicions about the cause. One I will let slide for now since I need a lot more information on some of the games internal change to be sure that it something that has really change in the 1.10 version.

The other suspicion I consider to be the more likely. It is the interactions of some of the mods and the weapons that they being randomly given. Keep in mind that some of the unique attribues serve to multiply their overall damage or some element (fire in this case) and that if they get a critical hit all the damage types will be doubled. For the weapons there has been a change for the earlier versions; there are additional affixes that have been put into the ones that can appear on rare weapons. At the higher difficulties the ancients will be getting rare versions of their weapons. In 1.09 this was not as much of a problem since the best dmg% that might occur was 200%, but it is now possible to have up to 450 dmg%. And more importantly is that in 1.09 the highest fire damage affix would have been the suffix 'of Burning' (5-9)to(10-20) fire and no prefixes. But in 1.10 the highest fire on a rare weapon (depending on the alvl of the weapon) is prefix 'Scorching' at (121-171)to(181-240) with suffix 'of Burning' (5-9)to(10-20). With attribues like FE that boost the fire damage that they do and a further increase with a critical hit doubling that, I could see the potential that the damage could go into the damage range hinted at earlier.

But testing would be required to help pin this down.

[Crystalion]

Testing needs to be done

Aside from incidental goodies dropped (like another Hsarus boots) I wasted my play evening on making my new preferred Duriel mule. Made a mistake about an hour in and had to start over--it's that "tired" concept you mentioned. ;) After I give the new mule a spin to see if the achieved characteristics match my expectations 100% I'll do a write up.

This explains why I'm too wiped to do the obvious: supply a test nm/hell character with huge HPs (many 10,000s) and reroll the ancients (softcore) until I see some studly damage (and then take note of the circumstances). Those circumstances can be then be further tested by equiping various uber-test resist:whatever-desired gear to try to distinguish the mix of damage output from the Ancient. Having say +1000 fire absorb available seems like a good test.

The beauty of -direct -txt is that even a neophyte like myself and pretty easily set up such tests. Jarulf's ongoing damage calc thread also provides some timely context to guide the test probes and interpret the results.

Now if only I go get some sleep, perhaps I'll wake up and someone else will already have done the tests and reported back. I can dream, can't I? :)

[Zath]

Crystalion:

I haven't tested this in the v1.10 release yet, but the Ancients in the v1.10s beta completely ignored Bone Walls and Prisons. By that I mean they simply walked right through them like Wraiths and never attacked them at all. The only benefit of using Bone Walls and Prisons is in blocking Madawc's throwing axes, and even then you have to be very careful not to accidentally trap yourself or your minions.

[DarkPhenomenon]

I'm of the understanding that if the ancients are indeed supplied with weapons, it's some interaction between thier skills and equipment WITH the fire enchantment.

If anyone has been Magc finding the NM travincle for any length of time they will have encountered many FE council members.

Might I suggest testing exactly how FE works alone then apply what you find out about FE by itself to the ancients?

I can give some insight to my experiences with FE and the council (geleb is always FE so I'll just use him as the example). I'll tell of what mods, and how they affected me

My Barb level 78. 2100 life, 75% res to everything, no absorb of any kind, no MDR of any kind.
My Cousin's barb lvl 79. 2400 life, 85% fire res, 75% all other res. No absorb. 11MDR/10DR from SoE

1) Plain FE Geleb
My Barb) FE alone has taken half of my life away at times which translates to 1000 damage.
My cousin's barb) 300-400 damage on explosion.
NOTE: max damage was seen with Cursed barbs

Perhaps he got lucky as not ALL of geleb's explosions did 1000 damage to me. The DR, MDR and extra fire res seemed to help him.

2) FE/LE Geleb
My barb) My barb would take about 500 damage every time I hit Geleb once (from the fire enchanted bolts). It does not do the same damage as the FE explosions but it's hits hard enough that I stay the hell away from him when he's FE/LE and let my rogue merc kill him.
My cousin's Barb) Unaffected by the FE/LE bolts. They did so little damage he leeched back to full health which each attack (15%ish life leech)

How could they go from 500 a shot to virutally nothing with 10 extra res and only 11 MDR? My best guess is that fire enchantment stacks on range attacks much like how MSLE bolts stack on top of each other. This would explain why an extra 10 fire res and 11 MDR virtually negate 500 damage.

3) FE/CE Geleb
My barb) Attacking him was no problem, The LE/CE bolts didn't do NEAR the damage as the FE/LE bolts did however I fear his explosion (Fire explosion and cold explosion) as it's taken 1600 damage from my barb before.
My cousin's Barb) He's only taken one of these and it took about 600 away from him.
NOTE: Max damage seen with Cursed barb's


Now that I think about it, perhaps the Extra strong mod was increasing the FE explosions for the really bad hits. I never tried taking an FE/CE explosion while I was cursed under the influence of a council conviction aura.

My conclusion out of all of this. I'm guessing Fire enchantment stacks somehow, weather it's a feature or a bug is unknown. Perhaps the Ancients FE 1 hit kill bug is some of the ancients equipment (maybe it's got multishot or something) which multiplies or stacks the FE explosions.

Things to test though are Resistances, Absorb, MDR and DR.

Find out regular FE damage
Find out FE damage with just max res
Find out FE damage with massive fire Absorb
Find out FE damage with massive MDR
Find out FE damage with Massive DR.

Then try combos. I'll try some of this once I actually obtain MDR, absorb, DR and +max res Gear.

[Guest]

p.s. someone mentioned that barb Leap works against anything except act bosses. Does it work vs. the Ancients? If so, getting a Leap build to HR lock the ancients seems like an excellent idea.

Hmm, it shouldn't. GHIT(GH, something like that) = 0 in monstats2.txt means they can't be knocked back(or can be put into hit recovery), which I think is the case.

I noticed thought just now when fighting with a werebear that he actually stunned one of the ancients (didn't happen often)! So they seem more to work like uniques.