Flash of Light

[Danth]

Thanks for the recent changes to Flash of Light. The blindness effect now works almost exactly as I remember.

What doesn't seem the same--and the reason I'm posting this thread (a continuation of the thread from the old forums)--is the aggro generated by this spell. Specifically, it feels too low. This is a spell which was second only to a Shadow Knight's Disease Cloud for massive threat generation, and not that far behind. Flash was so strong for threat that it remained useful into the PoP era.

On P1999, however, Flash of Light appears to generate less threat than a single cast of 'expulse undead' (my wife will pull aggro if we each cast one spell, me Flash, and her Expulse). Overall it seems to generate much less threat than I remember; in some cases I've spammed the spell half a dozen times in a row or more and still lost aggro to a groupmate. That experience in no way correlates to anything that I recall from my previous Paladins; only an SK spamming Disease Cloud could out-threat Flash. Flash should generate such substantial threat that a few casts (at most) ought to be sufficient to ensure aggro for the duration of a typical-length encounter even against nuke-happy wizards. In some cases, just a single cast was sufficient to pull off a Warrior who had been building aggro for significant time.

I'm afraid I can't provide hard numbers. Use of this spell was always something of a mysterious art, rather than science. I speak from my experience on many Paladin characters as a dedicated player of the class. I do not expect things to be 100% identical to Live on this server; if it could be made 'close enough' that'd be satisfactory to me.

Danth

[Danth]

Oh, and to make sure I'm putting it plain, there's nothing subtle about the problem described above. Flash of light feels like it's barely doing anything at all, when it ought to be one of the highest-aggro spells in the entire game. Perhaps this ties into the greater spell aggro issue discussed in another thread.

Danth

[Chushque]

I have also noticed that Flash of Light doesn't pull the same aggro it did back in the day. Used to be a handy tool for keeping the attention on the paladin so the other classes could do their business

[Villert]

I remember Flash of Light being very effective for keeping aggro. From what I've seen on our server, Flash of Light is definitely not working as it is supposed to be / did.

[Danth]

Update: This spell still does not make mobs stick to me like it did on Live. In fact I occasionally lose aggro even when spam-casting it back to back to back, something that simply never, ever happened. This spell. like Disease Cloud, remained good for threat generation into the Planes of Power time frame (for an idea of how strong it was). Right now it's sort of adequate, but just barely, but a pale reflection of its Live counterpart. It frustrates me more than probably any other bug on the server.

As I noted previously, providing hard numbers for this sort of thing is rather a lost cause, but that doesn't mean it isn't in need of tweaks.

Danth

[guineapig]

Just a thought, maybe it was never the aggro it was generating that made the mobs stick to you... but in fact the blindness that it caused?

Maybe it's the blind portion of the spell that's broken? Blind mobs will run away unless there is somebody within reach. If there is somebody within reach they stick to that player.

Anyway, just a thought. Not having flash of light, I have never tested tested it on this server.

I messed around with the Enchanter blindness spell a bit when I first got it and it seemed to get mobs to stick to my pet but it also wore off very quickly which is why I didn't bother to keep it in my spell bar (spell was too situational at best).

[Aeolwind]

Just a thought, maybe it was never the aggro it was generating that made the mobs stick to you... but in fact the blindness that it caused?

Maybe it's the blind portion of the spell that's broken? Blind mobs will run away unless there is somebody within reach. If there is somebody within reach they stick to that player.

Anyway, just a thought. Not having flash of light, I have never tested tested it on this server.

I messed around with the Enchanter blindness spell a bit when I first got it and it seemed to get mobs to stick to my pet but it also wore off very quickly which is why I didn't bother to keep it in my spell bar (spell was too situational at best).

This is some of the issue. FOL has kinda built in exploit mechanic if you will. Whoever stands closest gets beat.

Now, later on, when most mobs are immune, like TOV/VP, it could jack some serious smack aggro. Although, I don't ever remember it being on par with disease cloud/snare/stun, it was still pretty stiff.

[Halladar]

Maybe it changed in a recent update, but it isn't working like live in this respect:

On live say you were in melee with a mob, and flashed it. If you backed off it would run away. If you stayed in melee range it would keep on meleeing.

Here it follows you if you try to back off.

I haven't used it in groups, but it was wonky on live. If you weren't close to a mob, and the mob was fighting a pc, if you flashed it sometimes it would run away and maybe make a train. But only sometimes. My best guess is it had something to do with the aggro list, but that is only a guess.

A lot of people would not use that spell in dungeons.

But here it acts like a fear spell basically. I think it only sticks to you if you are in melee range, but I'd have to play with it to see exactly how it is behaving.

Danth what happens if you flash something and hit it with a ranged attack if it is running?

[Danth]

Right, threat from Flash wasn't quite on par with disease cloud, that's 100% accurate. Disease Cloud is king. Compared to stuns, I'd say they were about even, hard to pinpoint exactly which was more threat, but both were 'very high'. The reason I can't pinpoint it exactly is because Flash of Light was infinitely more spammable than higher-mana stuns, and of course spamming Flash of Light 2 or 3 times was *far* more aggro than a single stun. I know nothing of how it compares to snare since I never played a snaring class to any significant degree.

In my own memory, the blindness portion did not matter; how close I stood to the target didn't significantly impact who it hit. I cast flash of light a few times and the mob stuck to me like glue, even into the PoP era. Pre-expansion often a single cast (plus whatever incedental aggro I generated from melee) would keep a mob stuck to me. Indeed, on Live the Blindness portion of the spell usually wore off within a matter of seconds, if it even landed, so that further correlates to my recollection of the blind itself not really mattering. (Of course, it may be the case that the blind didn't matter entirely *because* it practically never lasted for any length of time--all I know is effect, not cause.)

Halladar is correct in that the blindness routine, while approximating live, might be a little too generous. This may be extremely hard to tweak perfectly, but as it stands now a mob won't run around wildly until it's quite far away, and even then sometimes makes a beeline right back to me. Of course too much tweak would render the safe zone too small and make the spell useless; it's a tough balancing act. For my own part, on Live I was afraid to use this spell against NPC's that had knockback specials, as being knocked back out of range was sufficient for bad things to happen.

When the mob is blind and running around wildly, I can hit it as much as I want and it keeps running around until either Blind breaks or it finds a target in melee range. This is also how I remember it on Live. However, the blindness effect here often lasts much longer than I recollect it lasting on Live. This, however, is the same as many 'random' duration effects (such as Charm, which is so reliable on P1999 that I could set my clock to it) and is therefore likely not a quirk with FoL itself.

Danth

[guineapig]

Maybe it changed in a recent update, but it isn't working like live in this respect:

On live say you were in melee with a mob, and flashed it. If you backed off it would run away. If you stayed in melee range it would keep on meleeing.

Here it follows you if you try to back off.

I haven't used it in groups, but it was wonky on live. If you weren't close to a mob, and the mob was fighting a pc, if you flashed it sometimes it would run away and maybe make a train. But only sometimes. My best guess is it had something to do with the aggro list, but that is only a guess.

A lot of people would not use that spell in dungeons.

But here it acts like a fear spell basically. I think it only sticks to you if you are in melee range, but I'd have to play with it to see exactly how it is behaving.

Danth what happens if you flash something and hit it with a ranged attack if it is running?

What you are saying makes perfect sense. Blind and fear are essentially the same thing except that blind happens when the mob is not within melee range of something on its agro list. Once it's in range it doesn't matter who has how much agro, it sticks to the closest enemy.

If Flash of Light is cast on a mob and it follows you when you run away from it then one fo two things are happening.

A. The blind portion of the spell is broken.... or

B. You actually aren't moving out of melee range, or at least not quickly enough.

So it's easy to discern the difference. If you are obviously out of melee range then the mob isn't actually being blinded.


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As a side not, I could be confused with another game but aren't there certain spells where part of the spell effect would stick and others would not? (Like for example Enchanter nuke on a giant deals damage but doesn't stun.)

In this case the mob could have resisted the blind effect and only the debuff portion landed... or something like that.

Anyway, these are all possible things to consider and any combination of the above could be happening with the Flash of Light spell.

[Danth]

Right, Flash of Light does have a miniscule debuff component which might factor in somehow.

Danth

[Datante]

As Flash of Light is currently my most effective aggro-to-me machine, I am a bit wary of tinkering with its coding. Yes it could be even better at pulling hate, but the last thing I want to see happen is the return of potential train-causing 'fleeing' in dungeons that I saw on occasion back in '99.

Datante (mid 20s paladin)


Edit: Great analysis overall though everyone; thanks for bringing the topic up Danth. Paladins rock!

[Danth]

Oh, I absolutely WANT to see it pull trains when used improperly, that's what balanced out the spell--insane, unmatched aggro (except by disease cloud spamming) at the price of risk in the event that you get knocked out of melee range somehow. In particular we Paladins should be terrified of using this spell against mobs which do things like Grav Flux and other such knock-back spells.

Disease Cloud has its own drawback; as a DOT, it renders the SK unable to use Feign Death.

Danth

[Datante]

A knock-back out of melee range (such as from TTs in Najena) still causes erratic pathing by the mob when flashed (as it should). My concern is when a flash causes a flee when you are standing right next to the mob in melee range, as seemed to happen on occasion in Live.

Danth that is pretty interesting with SK DoTs preventing a good feign death. Just out of curiosity, is any DoTd mob 'immune' to an FD?

[Wenai]

They aren't immune to FD .. the problem is that as soon as you stand up, your DoT is going to hit another tic and then your aggro will refresh. You need to make a dash for the zoneline. Somehow. So if you are in a dangerous area with no chance of zoning. Your choices are:

a) wait for it to wear off
b) continuoulsy inch your way to a zoneline
c) /q out

The issue with /q'ing out is I think there may be a bug where /q cancels your FD. I can't confirm this 100% but perhaps someone could test it as it may be a bug.

[Danth]

"as seemed to happen on occasion in Live."

I believe this happened due to lag and positions not updating correctly. At any rate, I only ever saw that happen when the above symptoms were taking place. Nonetheless, I do agree that the mob-wanders-erratically blind effect is close to what it should be in its current form on P1999; so as to not be misunderstood, if it's off, it's only off a little, not by much. The aggro, on the other hand, makes me want to put my fist through my monitor at its relative ineffectiveness.

Danth

[guineapig]

"as seemed to happen on occasion in Live."
The aggro, on the other hand, makes me want to put my fist through my monitor at its relative ineffectiveness.

Danth

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