Drain Bolt and Promote Spells

[R`aven Sky`Dash]

Promote Vitality and Promote Intellect share a timer...and icon graphic. for convenience it would be nice if they werent on a shared recast timer. Messes with my buffing harmony :P

Drain Bolt acts funky after its been cast a bunch of times. targets HP stop registering the drop after each hit and doesnt catch up to the animations until the mob is dead most times.

[AmonGwareth]

I moved this to its own game bugs thread because it wasn't really a spell/effect conflict and more of a bug report.

Promote Vitality and Promote Intellect share a timer...and icon graphic. for convenience it would be nice if they werent on a shared recast timer. Messes with my buffing harmony :P

At this time I prefer they be shared.

Drain Bolt acts funky after its been cast a bunch of times. targets HP stop registering the drop after each hit and doesnt catch up to the animations until the mob is dead most times.

You sure this isn't lag? There's no code that would cause this specifically for one spell/ability. If it occurred, it would occur for all.

[Northwind]

Promote Vitality and Promote Intellect share a timer...and icon graphic. for convenience it would be nice if they werent on a shared recast timer. Messes with my buffing harmony :P

Drain Bolt acts funky after its been cast a bunch of times. targets HP stop registering the drop after each hit and doesnt catch up to the animations until the mob is dead most times.

I can confirm the drain bolt effect where target's HP stop registering. No lag either. If I stop the drain bolt and start a normal bolt this never happens.


PS. IF the Promotes have to share the same timer at least please, please change the icon for promote intellect to one adequate for power/focus.

[Thicklesip]

I am reluctant to press this point because I've heard it before, but I have been trying to come up with reasons and I can't think of any, so if I may ask: what is the reasoning behind having both Promotes on a shared timer?

You sure this isn't lag? There's no code that would cause this specifically for one spell/ability. If it occurred, it would occur for all.

In my experience, yeah, this bug can kick in off anything. It just seems to be a matter of animation backup: when animations don't have time to finish before new animations from new actions queue up, enemy health bars (and possibly the player's health bar, though I've checked that less) stop updating. I haven't tested how far behind animations have to get before this bug happens, but given that some dragon animations are VERY long-- Tail Whip can take as long as 2-3 other attacks, and the Breath animation is pretty lengthy-- this bug can easily happen at least 50% of fights.

Drain Bolt is a prime troublemaker in this regard because it's a very fast spell but it uses the standard slow-as-an-iceberg, three-part dragon spellcast animation. Now that I have Dragon Alacrity V these days, I'm actually surprised when I make it to the end of a combat without the animations backlogging so badly that this bug kicks in.

It doesn't fix the underlying bug, but I've had success clearing out the bug by stopping all actions during the combat and waiting for the animations to catch up a bit. This can vary between a Drain Bolt cast's worth of a pause and a more significant wait, depending, and not everyone can afford the downtime twiddling their thumbs since I am given to understand not everyone fights by being indestructible and boring their foes to death.

[Raptress]

My observations have been the same as Thicklesip's: Drain Bolt--especially with Alacrity up--casts so fast that animations cannot keep up, and this causes health bars to stop updating. It is not a problem specific to Drain Bolt; I've seen it happen a lot during group fights, and sometimes Primal Health's animation gets stuck and freezes my own health bar.

As for the icon of Promote Intellect, that's always bothered me too. I have to read the tooltip to make sure I'm clicking the right one, and clicking the wrong one can mean waiting out the shared timer again in order to cast the right one. I could try my hand at creating an icon for it, if that would be helpful?