Fizzle madness!

Anyone else think the spell casting is an issue? I fizzle an entire bar of mana several times before I can buff or summon a pet or some times even heal.

So I just returned to the server after a brief break to find myself not being able to cast on any of my toons. I invited a few friends to come check out Takp and sure enough we are all kinda hoping things get corrected or we wont be able to play/stay.

Anyone else remember the week or so when skill ups were borked? So a lot of our toons never got skill ups they needed and now someone adjusted fizzle check rates.. /shrug not sure whats going on but I don't feel like I am going to be able to lvl up my friends and play along side then when all we do is med or zone due to fizzling all the heals and mana away.

Please GM's do something.. Also people share your stories on this.

P.S. This isn't a hate post.. I really do love Takp and the idea and where its going. I just don't enjoy not being able to play due to the issue with fizzles.

Thanks,

Mhael/Thrakak

 

Thrakak, how long were you gone? Are your skills maxed or close? The changes that were made a month or so ago I feel really made the game more accurate. People forget, but back in the day, it was really difficult to cast a spell reliably without your skills being maxed for the level you received that spell.

For Elroz's example, I wonder if its based around certain levels or the equation changes post 50, because honestly at lvl 20, it feels accurate for me. I don't get streaks like that and my skills are close to max or maxed on my three main toons.

 

I'm glad someone else brought this up because I feel like there's still something off. My level 60 shaman casting level 55 Spirit of the Howler with 195 conjuration had 17 fizzles in a row. Granted I'm not maxed, but pretty close and still 17 fizzles?

 

Fizzle rates are still way too high, and the rate that your casting skills level up is broken as well. Ever since the new fizzle code came in, I've been chain casting mezz on my chantie. She started at Conjuration 142, and it was impossible for her to cast her level 49 mezz at all. After chain casting for several days at a time, she finally made it to 160 Conj but she still can't cast the 49 Mezz at all. So the skill up rate has been fairly glacial, and I should be able to cast a level 49 spell at level 53 and nearly max Conj skill most of the time. I still fizzle almost her entire mana bar and rarely get one cast. When I need to cast mezz it's usually an emergency situation, so 30 fizzles and an empty mana bar are not helpful.

 

Just adding that spellcasting skillups also seem accurate to me at the lower levels. There might be something funky though at the high end which I cannot comment on.

 

Getting to 200 has been practically impossible, I would have maxed the skill on AK by now. The skill up rate after 150 has been far too slow.

 

On AK though, was tons easier to max out your WIS/INT since PoP was available. Do you think the slow skillups are related to lower WIS/INT?

 

Agreed, at the low end skill progression is good. High end is severely borked.

 

I distinctly recall fizzling a lot and taking awhile to skill up when I leveled my Druid on Al'Kabor due to having minimal wisdom gear. I actually had a conversation with Utdaan about it when I fizzled a ton of quads.

That being said, I still feel the fizzle rate is very high here.

I could probably pull logs of my skill ups / fizzles as I leveled, to get a feel for what sort of streaks I was getting when leveling.

 

^ I think leveling up logs showing fizzles as you played normally would be very helpful.

EQEmu's random number generator is very streaky (I think this is the underlying problem.) How is the random number generator seeded? I hope it is not strictly seeded based on system time, but contains other variables.

While I do believe skill up rates (post 175+) are rather slow. I believe the fizzle rate is accurate HOWEVER, I do believe there is something wrong with the amount of fizzles that happen when casting spells in a rapid succession (streaky RNG.) I know there is a 2% chance to succeed casting any spell regardless of skill. Perhaps this floor is not being curved correctly as your skill gets higher, that in combination with EQEmu's streaky RNG would result in our fizzle problems here.

It's hard to argue with the data Torven provided from his AK logs however.

Idk what level his enchanter was at the time or his INT, but hes trying to cast a lvl 44 spell with 109 conjuration. At level 44, the max conj would be 220.

I think its particularly interesting though that all the fizzles happen in very rapid succession (within a couple seconds of each other.) He then goes oom and waits 5 minutes to med up and then casts the spell in 1 try. That data actually conforms to a streaky RNG imo.

 

Elroz's streaks of 5 and 7 fizzles on a level 54 spell at max skill are a bit surprising. Is it only Spear of Plague that's doing this, or are all your mid-50's+ spells? Is anyone else seeing lots of fizzles with skills that are actually capped at 235?

I am certainly not, but then, I'm level 54 and still casting mostly sub-50 spells.

 

I see 3-5+ fizzles in a row very often on my Paladin with 235 skills at lvl 60 casting lvl 49 stun, lvl 52 stun, and most annoyingly my 59 rez which takes about 10% mana per fizzle. It happens with most spells. I've seen 5 on my druid casting thorns at 235 abjuration too. So it's not just 1 skill or just hybrids with low WIS/INT and no specialization.

 

Yes, I get them a lot with max skill... I ducked on success, so that I could get more data.

Code:

[ Only registered users can see the bbcode. Click Here To Register... ]

 

More (18 fizzles / 77 success):

Code:

[ Only registered users can see the bbcode. Click Here To Register... ]

 

Hybrid classes don't get any specializations (this was on my Paladin).

 

I chain-fizzle very often on Ensnare (level 51) with an alteration skill of 235. Sometimes it annoys me to the point of using my level 9 snare.

Edit - Just emptied mana snaring:

Casts - Ensnare (51) - 235 skill
• Total: 65
• Success: 38
• Fizzle: 27

When I do fizzle, it is more likely that I fizzle more than once at a time.

 

Lenas: what is your wisdom and specialize skill?

 

Rangers have no specialize; I am level 60 with 120 wis ATM.

 

I thought Specializations only had to do with mana savings, not ability to cast.

 

Speaking of skill ups, my trio has no tracker so I often find myself using Eye of Zomm to explore dungeons/spawns with my wizard. I wouldn't say I'm constantly casting it but I've cast it at least 250 times in my wizard's life time. Just checked my conjuration skill out of curiosity. Conjuration skill = zero.

Normally I wouldn't care, as its a lvl 8 spell and as such it rarely fizzles, however having obtained Eye of Tallon and Flaming Sword of Xuzl this has become a more pressing issue.

 

Made some adjustments to fizzle chance. Should be in next patch.

H

 

This.

The only thing I'd like to add here, is that the recent changes to fizzle rates accounting for skill level did not account for the fact that people had been playing their characters for a year with a very broken skill up rate. Suddenly, enchanters were unable to use their high level mez spells, druids and wizards couldn't port, necros couldn't cast DMF, shamans couldn't make pets... all without spending stupid amounts of time casting level 1 spells in PoK, or blowing thousands of plat on skill ups. Not fun.

I look forward to any positive improvements here.

 

I have to concur here. Just wanted to walk into Chardok, even if things were how they should be, I couldn't get a single mez off, doesn't feel right with conj where it is.

 

Adding on, it takes me a really long time for my 22 mage to get my lvl 20 pet out. Typically 2 or 3 full mana bars.

 

I also fizzle Ensnare with 235 alteration skill. 7 to 10 times in a row at times. Like when the mob is running in Sol A